Contemporary accounts from 400 years of history 1500-1900 (Dickens, Tolstoy, Hardy, and many others wrote extensively on this in the 19th).
Historical records of the Lancet Medical journal from the 19th century ...
And the Historical records of the catholic church from the 12th century.
and the historical GDP which shows this is very much in line with what we find in modern poor societies at these GDP levels like El Salvador, Haiti, and Somalia...
There is no scarcity of women, lower gdp figures don't limit how much is available like iron or timber. or food ...GDP just determines the price of their labour and the poverty that will push them to trade that labour.
and your response amounts to: "Nuh Ugh"
Seriously every single piece of evidence we have says that 1100-1900 a single digit percentage of women were employed in prostitution and maybe a very low double digit percentage had engaged in it at some point in their lives. (And yes how people manage to feed themselves and keep themselves alive absolutely seems like the kind of matter of material necessity than can be extrapolated backwards)
We have bawdy authors from the 16th century painting this picture, senitmental authors from the 17th, moral reformer authors form the 19th, quite impressive records from all these eras including very early records from the 11th century...
and what I consistently find is people just deny it because they don't want to believe it.
Seriously every single piece of evidence we have says that 1100-1900 a single digit percentage of women were employed in prostitution and maybe a very low double digit percentage had engaged in it at some point in their lives. (And yes how people manage to feed themselves and keep themselves alive absolutely seems like the kind of matter of material necessity than can be extrapolated backwards)
A single digit percentage of the total population or a single digit percentage of the urban population? Big difference in a 80+% rural society.
I'm not convinced learned city-dwellers' (or soldiers') writings are representative of the rest of the population. I think if you don't live in a city and you have the resources to spare to get yourself a woman to fuck who you don't want to have kids with, you buy (or otherwise obtain) yourself a slave, and have her spinning cloth or do chores around the farm or be otherwise productive the rest of the time. At least she won't necessarily by definition be completely negatively productive for you, the way going to a prostitute is. Prostitutes are for people who are either rich enough that paying one doesn't affect them, or so broken-down that they don't care about tomorrow.
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Notes -
I've given you 3 types of evidence:
Contemporary accounts from 400 years of history 1500-1900 (Dickens, Tolstoy, Hardy, and many others wrote extensively on this in the 19th).
Historical records of the Lancet Medical journal from the 19th century ...
And the Historical records of the catholic church from the 12th century.
and the historical GDP which shows this is very much in line with what we find in modern poor societies at these GDP levels like El Salvador, Haiti, and Somalia...
There is no scarcity of women, lower gdp figures don't limit how much is available like iron or timber. or food ...GDP just determines the price of their labour and the poverty that will push them to trade that labour.
and your response amounts to: "Nuh Ugh"
Seriously every single piece of evidence we have says that 1100-1900 a single digit percentage of women were employed in prostitution and maybe a very low double digit percentage had engaged in it at some point in their lives. (And yes how people manage to feed themselves and keep themselves alive absolutely seems like the kind of matter of material necessity than can be extrapolated backwards)
We have bawdy authors from the 16th century painting this picture, senitmental authors from the 17th, moral reformer authors form the 19th, quite impressive records from all these eras including very early records from the 11th century...
and what I consistently find is people just deny it because they don't want to believe it.
A single digit percentage of the total population or a single digit percentage of the urban population? Big difference in a 80+% rural society.
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I'm not convinced learned city-dwellers' (or soldiers') writings are representative of the rest of the population. I think if you don't live in a city and you have the resources to spare to get yourself a woman to fuck who you don't want to have kids with, you buy (or otherwise obtain) yourself a slave, and have her spinning cloth or do chores around the farm or be otherwise productive the rest of the time. At least she won't necessarily by definition be completely negatively productive for you, the way going to a prostitute is. Prostitutes are for people who are either rich enough that paying one doesn't affect them, or so broken-down that they don't care about tomorrow.
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More options
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