If every society finds a way to sell intimacy, perhaps the real question is not whether it should exist – but how we manage the human needs, inequalities and dangers surrounding it.
By Dr. Leahcim Semaj
Transformational Psychologist
Prostitution has been called “the world’s oldest profession.” That description is catchy, though probably impossible to prove. What we can say with confidence is that the exchange of sexual access, companionship or intimacy for money and other resources has appeared across an extraordinary range of cultures and historical periods.
It has survived empires, religions, revolutions, criminal laws and public condemnation. It operates in poor communities and wealthy societies. It exists on street corners, in massage parlours, hotels, private homes and exclusive international networks. Today, technology has added websites, apps, encrypted messaging, virtual sexual services and carefully branded “companionship experiences.”
The names have changed. Prostitute. Courtesan. Concubine. Call girl. Gigolo. Escort. Sugar baby. Companion. Sex worker. Sometimes the new name reflects a genuinely different service. Sometimes it is simply more respectable packaging for an old transaction.
But why has the practice been so persistent? Is commercial sex merely a cultural universal—a behaviour that repeatedly emerges wherever human beings organise themselves into societies? Or does its persistence suggest that it serves some need that societies have been unwilling, or unable, to address in any other way?
Let Us Begin by Correcting the History
Popular accounts often claim that some ancient societies maintained “temple prostitutes”—women who provided sex as a sacred duty in temples dedicated to fertility goddesses. It is a fascinating story. It may also be substantially wrong.
Historian Stephanie Lynn Budin and other scholars have challenged the idea that institutionalised “sacred prostitution” existed throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world. They argue that later writers may have misunderstood religious roles, confused ritual practices with commercial sex, or deliberately sexualised foreign cultures to portray them as morally inferior.
So we should be careful. Ancient societies certainly had prostitution, courtesans, concubines and various forms of sexual exchange. What is disputed is whether women routinely sold sex as an official religious service within temples. That historical correction is important. Otherwise, we may build a modern argument on an attractive myth.
Still, whether sex was sold inside the temple, near the temple or entirely outside it, the larger human pattern remains. Wherever there have been people with sexual desires, loneliness, unequal resources and restrictions on legitimate relationships, some market for sexual or intimate access appears to have developed.
What Is Really Being Purchased?
It is easy to assume that the customer is purchasing sex. Sometimes that is exactly what is being purchased. But not always. An escort may be hired to accompany someone to dinner, a business function or a weekend away. A widower may want conversation and the feeling of being wanted. A divorced woman travelling alone may want companionship without the complications of a permanent relationship. A person with a disability may have intimate needs but few socially acceptable opportunities to express them. An older adult may want touch, warmth and human closeness after years of living alone.
Some clients want fantasy. Some want reassurance. Some want temporary escape from rejection, responsibility or emotional negotiation. Some want to feel powerful. Others simply want to feel visible. And some people, let us be honest, want sexual access without commitment, courtship or accountability. The transaction may therefore involve much more than the body. It can include attention, performance, validation, secrecy, emotional labour and the temporary suspension of loneliness. This does not automatically make the arrangement healthy. It does make it psychologically more complicated than the usual moral slogan.
A Cultural Universal Is Not Necessarily an Essential Service
Human societies have also repeatedly produced gambling, intoxicants, violence, corruption and warfare. Persistence alone does not make something beneficial or essential. The existence of prostitution in many cultures tells us that there is recurring demand. It does not settle the ethical question.
To describe something as an essential service usually means that society could not function adequately without it. Healthcare, sanitation, water, food distribution and emergency services fit that description. Would society collapse without commercial sex? Probably not. Yet there may be people for whom access to safe, consensual and non-exploitative sexual companionship feels essential to their emotional wellbeing and quality of life.
That creates an uncomfortable distinction: Sex work may not be an essential service to society, but intimacy, touch, sexual expression and human connection are important human needs. The real debate may therefore be about whether a commercial transaction can ever meet those needs without creating unacceptable levels of exploitation.
Choice – or Survival Dressed as Choice?
This is where the conversation usually becomes dishonest. One side portrays every sex worker as a helpless victim. The other portrays every sex worker as a completely independent entrepreneur exercising sexual freedom.
Human life is rarely that tidy. Some adults consciously choose sex work and insist that the work gives them income, flexibility and control. Others enter because rent is due, children need food, immigration status is uncertain or ordinary employment pays too little. Some are controlled by pimps, partners, gangs or traffickers. Some begin voluntarily and later become trapped. Others may have more bargaining power than the clients they serve.
If a woman chooses sex work because the alternative is hunger, is that free choice? Perhaps – but it is freedom inside a very narrow corridor. Then again, many people sell their bodies in other ways. The construction worker risks his back. The soldier risks her life. The domestic worker may endure humiliation. The exhausted professional sells time, sleep and peace of mind. We generally call these arrangements employment.
What makes selling sexual access fundamentally different? For some people, the difference is sacredness: they believe sexuality should never be commercialised. For others, it is the unusually intimate vulnerability involved. Sex can carry risks of violence, pregnancy, infection, stigma and psychological detachment. It penetrates personal boundaries in a way that most other occupations do not. Those concerns are real. But condemning the worker does not remove the risks. It usually pushes the activity further underground.
The Jamaican Contradiction
In Jamaica, we often pretend that prostitution exists somewhere else. Yet we know about the street trade, ‘back road’, massage parlours, “boops” relationships, transactional arrangements, tourism-based encounters, overseas visitors seeking companionship and respectable-looking relationships held together largely by financial exchange.
We may condemn the woman collecting cash after an encounter while admiring the woman whose rent, car payment and overseas trips are financed by a man she does not particularly love. One transaction is direct. The other is socially decorated.
We should also remember that commercial sex is not limited to women serving men. Men sell sexual services to women. Men sell to men. Women sell to women. Gender-diverse people participate in the market. Women and older adults can also be clients, though society is often less willing to acknowledge their sexual needs.
Money has always influenced mating and marriage. Families once arranged unions around land, status, political alliance and inheritance. Even today, income, housing, professional position and the ability to provide affect who is considered desirable. So where exactly does romance end and transaction begin? The boundary is not always as clean as respectable society pretends.
The Question of Harm
Whatever our moral position, certain lines should not be blurred. A child cannot consent to commercial sex. A trafficked person is not a sex worker exercising occupational freedom. A person controlled through violence, threats, addiction, confiscated documents or economic captivity is being exploited. Consent must be adult, informed, continuing and capable of being withdrawn. Payment does not eliminate the right to say no. Nor does accepting one service imply agreement to every service.
Public-health organisations report that stigma, criminalisation and fear of arrest can make sex workers more vulnerable to violence while discouraging access to healthcare and legal protection. The World Health Organization notes that sex workers face high levels of stigma and criminalisation, while evidence reviewed by UNAIDS links punitive environments with greater health and safety risks. We do not have to approve of sex work to recognise that humiliation and persecution can make dangerous conditions worse.
Criminalise, Legalise or Decriminalise?
There are no simple policy options. Criminalisation may satisfy society’s moral instincts, but it can drive the trade underground, where abuse is harder to report. Legalisation can permit regulation, health standards and designated businesses. But regulations may become so restrictive that many workers remain outside the legal system. Decriminalisation removes criminal penalties from consensual adult sex work while retaining laws against coercion, trafficking, violence and the sexual exploitation of children.
There is also the so-called Nordic model, in which selling sex is not criminalised but purchasing it is. Supporters believe this reduces demand and targets exploitation. Critics argue that it can still push transactions into secluded and dangerous settings.
No legal framework will remove every form of harm. The relevant question is: Which approach most effectively protects human dignity, reduces violence, preserves adult agency and aggressively pursues those who exploit children and vulnerable adults? That question requires evidence, not merely outrage.
Perhaps It Is an Intimacy Industry
“Escort service” may sometimes be a euphemism, but it also points towards a broader social development. We are becoming more connected technologically and more isolated emotionally. More people are living alone. More marriages are ending. Adult children migrate. Older people may survive their partners by many years. Some individuals have large online networks but nobody to touch, trust or talk with at the end of the day. A commercial intimacy industry is likely to expand in that environment.
Some services will involve sex. Others may offer conversation, cuddling, dating practice, social accompaniment or non-sexual touch. We may find these arrangements strange, but their growth would reveal something about the societies we have built. When companionship must be purchased, the problem may not exist only in the transaction. It may also exist in the loneliness that created the demand.
The Semaj MindSpa Takeaway
Commercial sex appears to be close to a cultural universal. Across time and place, human beings have found ways to exchange resources for sexual access, affection, companionship or the performance of desire. But I would hesitate to call it an essential service. Sexual connection, touch, affection and intimacy may be essential dimensions of human wellbeing. Prostitution and escort services are only some of the ways people attempt to obtain them. The mature response is neither romanticisation nor condemnation.
We must distinguish consenting adults from trafficking victims, personal agency from economic desperation, intimacy from exploitation and private morality from effective public policy. We should protect children without qualification. Prosecute coercion and trafficking aggressively. Provide realistic alternatives for people who want to leave the trade. Ensure that adults who remain are not stripped of healthcare, personal safety or legal protection.
And perhaps we should ask a deeper question. What kind of society produces so much loneliness, sexual frustration and emotional disconnection that increasing numbers of people must purchase the experience of being touched, desired or accompanied? The market may be selling sex. But what many people are really trying to buy is a temporary escape from being alone.
The Semaj MindSpa
Human beings do not grow through noise. They grow through understanding.