You think so? To this day, there have been far fewer female buyers of prostitutes' services than male buyers. There must be reasons for this gap both on the supply & demand sides.
Yoshie ----------
Well, I can't wriggle out of that. Them that's got, sell to them that don't? I mean we are at the very mythic core of capital here and there's bound to be some vagueness of interpretation.
I made a lot of reference mistakes in the post, getting carried away in rhetorical turns. For some reason (probably wish fulfillment) I had thought that Zeus had made it with Athena. Wrong. Athena was virgin. But here is a hint at a possible mythical answer to the point about the imbalance between male and female procurers---it turns out to be a question of power relations:
``b. Many gods, Titans, and giants would gladly have married Athene, but she has repulsed all advances. On one occasion, in the course of the Trojan War, not wishing to borrow arms from Zeus, who had declared himself neutral, she asked Hephaestus to make her a set of her own. Hephaestus refused payment, saying coyly that he would undertake the work for love; and when, missing the implication of these words, she entered the smithy to watch him beat out the red-hot metal, he suddenly turned about and tried to outrage her. Hephaestus, who does not often behave so grossly, was the victim of a malicious joke: Poseidon had just informed him that Athene was on her way to the smithy, with Zeus's consent, hopefully expecting to have violent love made to her [where have we heard that excuse before?]. As she tore herself away, Hephaestus ejaculated against her thigh, a little above the knee. She wiped off the seed with a handful of wool, which she threw away in disgust; it fell to the ground near Athens, and accidentally fertilized Mother Earth, who was on a visit there. Revolted at the prospect of bearing a child which Hephaestus had tried to father on Athene, Mother Earth declared that she would accept no responsibility for its upbringing.
c. `Very well', said Athene, `I will take care of it myself.' So she took charge of the infant as soon as he was born, called him Erichthonius and, not wishing Poseidon to laugh at the success of his practical joke, hid him in a sacred basket; this she gave to Aglauros, eldest daughter of the Athenian King Cecrops, with orders to guard it carefully...'' (The Greek Myths, Graves, R. Penquin, 25.b-c, 96-7p. Yes, I know, Graves is suspect, but Pierre Grimal gives more or less the same rendering in, The Concise Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 66p)
So we could blame it on dirty old uncle Poseidon since he claims to have pimped his nice, Athene off on Hephaestus as a joke. As often it was with uncle Poseidon, he was down on his luck in his plots against his nice. I love the idea the poor fool mechanic blasted on her leg, stumbling around in his own lameness to get to the treasure. Oh, honey, I love you...
Still Athene got a baby without having to put out, which is a dream of domestic bliss for a fair number of women I've known, ie. keep the kid, forget the guy.
Later in the same section Cecrops was noted to have ``...instituted monogamy, divided Attica into twelve communities, built temples to Athene, and abolished certain bloody sacrifices in favor of sober barley-cake offerings...'' In other words he instituted the division of land as property and installed monogamy which both seem to be at both the material and mythic root of all capitalist societies. So the point is that it is monogamy and property that sets the ground work for the oldest profession.
Athene on the other hand gave Attica the olive tree---which was the material source of wealth for primitive agricultural capitalism. I am tempted to add Cecrops exchanged noble atonement in blood for the bourgeois guilt offerings of bread---the symbolic origin of law and state. In sequent events, these accomplishments are further refined by Theseus who married Aglauros on (or for?) his ascension to the throne of Athens. Athens was of course one of the twelve communities of Attica, and Theseus's reign begins an imperialism of murder, since he executed all his sons in order to short circuit primal geniture and move power from noble heritage to material wealth, and carry out the federalization of Attica under Athens. This was a fake move toward neo-liberalism, almost worthy of the US State Dept, since Athens held the largest olive groves and most of the oil production, thanks to Athene.
So we have it all in mythic form, although the logical and linear historical orderings are completely a-skewed. Well, the dialectic of reason will take care of all that.
I am having a great day. Just got back from cycling and opened Dennis Redmond's translation of Negative Dialectics (introduction section). Check it out if you're interested.
(http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/ndtrans.html)
I see a huge number of posts with Rob Schaap on Foucault that I haven't read yet. Now, those have to be related to this thread. Why do I suspect Rob is taking a rhetorical beating? (ans. Stands to reason?)
Chuck Grimes