FOR a while, everybody sounded a little hysterical. New York City Criminal Court Judge Morris Schwalb, exasperated at the extent of prostitution, arbitrarily ordered two girls to be locked up without bail. "Streetwalking prostitutes contribute to disease," the judge declared. "They are responsible for serious crimes." An attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, on the other hand, denounced Schwalb for "an utterly outrageous exercise of judicial power." Mayor John Lindsay, like so many mayors in such embarrassing circumstances, ordered yet another "crackdown on vice." But as the police began rounding up streetwalkers, 50 militant Women's Liberationists picketed the criminal court, and one of their placards charged: PROSTITUTION: MEN'S CRIME AGAINST WOMEN.
That was last month. Now things are returning to normal, with the girls once more patrolling the streets. Still, the midsummer thunderstorm about the world's oldest profession raises anew one of the world's oldest questions: What can or should society do about the sale of sex?
The whole subject of prostitution is full of ambiguities and hypocrisies. Even to define the word is not so easy as it might seem. We generally think of the transfer of money as the element that makes prostitution a crime (although money plays a subtle part in all sorts of sexual relationships). Yet in a number of states, as well as in Webster's newest dictionary, the definition of prostitution includes not only the exchange of money but also the rather vague concept of promiscuity. Ohio law, for example, forbids both getting paid for sex and "the offering of the body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse without hire." But what is "indiscriminate"? St. Jerome decried women who had known "many men," and monks argued over the number that would warrant condemnation; one said 40, another 23,000.
In a harlot's life, the matter of how much varies as widely as how many. A former Miss Denmark who received $1,500 for one night's entertainment undoubtedly considered herself far removed from the black girls who charge $15 on the neon-lit streets of Boston's South End. One notable sniper at hypocrisy, George Bernard Shaw, was fascinated by this matter, and he is supposed to have asked a lady at dinner one night whether she would go to bed with him for £ 10,000. The lady hesitated but agreed, so Shaw asked if she would do the same for £2. "Certainly not!" the lady cried. "What do you take me for?" "We have already established that," said Shaw. "What we are trying to establish now is the price."