prostitution in the Trek Universe?
- Thread starter Yevetha
- Start date
Don’t forget Marlena, the Captain’s Woman in “Mirror, Mirror.” It’s implied that this is a common thing in the MU, for a starship captain to have an officially assigned mistress. We’re never told, though, whether “Captain’s Woman” is a full-time occupation or whether she had another job aboard ship. My opinion is that she was a qualified officer in the sciences department, since she wore science blue. If serving the captain’s sexual needs were all she did, she should have worn red for “ship’s services.”
Unless I could be a gigolo servicing women who weren’t bad-looking, I’d rather clean toilets.
That’s one definition. Or it can simply mean a task, duty or responsibility, whether one gets paid for it or not.
Hmmm . . . (thinks for a moment)
Unless I could be a gigolo servicing women who weren’t bad-looking, I’d rather clean toilets.
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Prostitution is worse . I've cleaned toilet at motels and at a large auto dealership/repair shop. And while I've never been a prostitute, I have in years past have done volunteer work at hospitals, and have seen the girls brought into the emergency room, drug effects, beatings, prostitutes were in literally every night according to the nurses.
I didn't notice the same with janitors.
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Just because a large percentage of the sex industry falls into the conditions you describe does not mean you get to make the statement 'prostitution is worse that cleaning toilets', because a smaller percentage of sex-workers do NOT fall into the conditions you describe, and you're kind of being insulting to those workers by lumping them all into one category. Sex slavery is one thing, and that's where the beatings take place. There is such a thing as the consensual sex worker who is not beaten/on drugs.
but were these prostitutes in a place where prostitution was legal? Many of the problems you reference in relation to prostitution are due to it being illegal, and the related issues that causes. Take away the illegal aspect, and prostitution is just another legal service provided for money, like washing your car or something.
(And I'm not knocking those who've cleaned toilets. I've had to do it, too. I found it to be pretty disgusting and degrading. Whenever I hear how degrading prostitution is, that's just the comparison that comes to mind.
The bottom line is that a lot of us work jobs we may not like and wouldn't work at if we really had a choice. Prostitute is just nowhere near up there in my view of crappiest jobs.
True, but truly happy and successful prostitutes are few and far between. They exist mostly in the movies.
Hmmm . . . Has the TV and Media forum done a “Hookers with Hearts of Gold” avatar contest yet?
truly happy and successful fast-food restaurant cashiers are few and far between as well. What does that prove? People who do crappy jobs to make their way tend not to be all that happy with where they're at.
And I bet that the really succesful prostitutes may very well be pretty happy if they're making lots of money.
The Dabo girls are strippers are worst, at best they are similar to the "booth babes" at various game and comic conventions, pretty faces designed to lure in someone to buy something. They aren't really prostitutes. I doubt the Federation rules that govern DS9 would allow Quark to engage in prostitution.
However there might be prostitution in the Ferengi alliance, considering that it would likely be seen as a legal way to make profits. Also considering how corrupt Cardassian society is, what with several Cardassian officers have Bajoran mistresses, I can image there would be an off the books prostitution business, where officers cheat on their wives with a prostitute and then talk about the importance of the family later.
She was indeed a science officer. In her first scene Marlena talks about her day in the chem lab.
At least in Roddenberry's vision, prostitution is nothing negative. Which is why the Federation would have no problems with it.
Well, sex is always an exchange and a transaction. Trying to single out "prostitution" as a special sort of sex, let alone assign it a moral value, would be pretty darn difficult if the criteria were to be the nature of payment involved, when Roddenberry has already established a futuristic economy where "nature of payment" is deliberately blurred.
I guess prostitution could more generally be characterized as "organized sex", the organizing introducing an element of coercion that might be objectively objectionable. But Roddenberry would probably have nothing against organized orgies... And what is objectively superior about the lack of organization?
Timo Saloniemi
I guess prostitution could more generally be characterized as "organized sex", the organizing introducing an element of coercion that might be objectively objectionable. But Roddenberry would probably have nothing against organized orgies... And what is objectively superior about the lack of organization?
Timo Saloniemi
Only insofar as all forms of interpersonal relationships, including family, can be described transactions of sorts.
If that were true, the entire cast of Twilight would be broke.
Yevetha
Commodore
Are they the Federation Members?
Quite so. But there's no "only" there - the exchange of goods, services and promises thereof is such a fundamental part of our lives that it cannot serve as the distinguishing characteristic of prostitution. Any two-bit lawyer could take any random sexual act or intent and establish it as involving payment. (Or coercion, for that matter.) So once again, we only have our common sense to keep our definitions straight - or to discard them as unnecessary.
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