Unpaid sex and paid sex face identical social stigma

Evidence

Their situation and the Jews’ were often rightly compared: usury and money lending were forbidden by the Church exactly as extra-conjugal sex was; but society can no more do without financial speculators than free love, so these functions fell to the damned castes: they were relegated to ghettos or reserved neighborhoods. In Paris, loose women worked in pens where they arrived in the morning and left after the curfew had tolled; they lived on special streets and did not have the right to stray, and in most other cities brothels were outside town walls. Like Jews, they had to wear distinctive signs on their clothes. In France the most common one was a specific-colored aglet hung on the shoulder; silk, fur, and honest women’s apparel were often prohibited. They were by law taxed with infamy, had no recourse whatsoever to the police and the courts, and could be thrown out of their lodgings on a neighbor’s simple claim. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 215 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In prostitution, the relation of the sexes is reduced to its generic content because it is perfectly unambiguous and limited to the sensual act. It consists of that which any member of the species can perform and experience. The most diverse personalities can engage in it and all individual differences appear to be of no importance. Therefore, the economic counterpart of this relation is money, for it, too, is beyond all individual differences; it is at the species level of economic value, the representation of what is common to all. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 360 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marriage and prostitution differ only in price and contract length — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1646; Prostitution reduces sex to species-generic content matched by money — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 360; Christian society assigned both prostitution and usury to stigmatized, spatially segregated castes — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 215

Broader Connections

• Christian society assigned both prostitution and usury to stigmatized, spatially segregated castes #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 215
• Prostitution reduces sex to species-generic content matched by money #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 360