Irrelgiosophy's filthy and foul podcast always starts with a handful of stories about skunk-dicks in the news. Skunk dicks are terrible people, doing terrible things, usually in the name of religion or tacitly condoned by religion. The most recent podcast, Episode 105 The Ten Commandments, goes over the recent story from Egypt about the military subjecting women protesters to "virginity tests" (which either Layton or Chuck pointed out was probably a polite euphemism for rape) because apparently they were worried that the protesters might actually be prostitutes. (?). This is a prevalent theme in the Middle East: Women as prostitutes. And I was thinking...

How the fuck is that possible. Women can't drive, can't leave the house without a man, can't speak to a man, and if caught alone with a man is beaten, if caught kissing a man is stoned to death. So how is possible for any woman, anywhere, in the Middle East to be a prostitute?

It's simply not. The word "prostitution" utterly fails as a descriptor for what must actually occur. The general understanding here is a prostitute is a woman who sells herself for sex with or without the help of a man for various reasons, usually indicated by price: a desperate woman addicted or starving will sell herself far cheaper than a woman looking to make a lot of money very, very quickly. This cannot be what a prostitute looks like elsewhere. In the Middle East, she could not possibly prostitute herself without the help of a man. It seems to me, she cannot sell herself at all. She has to be sold, with or without her consent. That has to be a far, far different thing.