Monday, 10 September 2018

A matter or morality....

Humanity never cease to impress me...


It is generally a common knowledge that it is acceptable when people are being utilised for their – emphasis on “their” as this is not just about women despite the general views and cases – morphology such as face, hair, or physique for example, advertising cosmetics, hair care, and fashion products. However, in contrast it is greatly forbidden and frowned upon when instead people offering others ”services” with their reproductive organs. The thing is, of people falling into this category, they can be roughly divided into two subgroups; first is the ones who were paid to do the service i.e. prostitutes. Second, those who are willing to do it for free with certain friends but never involved in romantic ways, or known as “Friends with Benefits”, will be referred as FnB from here on, in several places.

Viewing those two subgroups, it should be a reasonable to see them as no different because essentially, utilising their reproductive organs for services is morally terrible and people who did that should be condemned for that no matter what. But, there is this everlasting perception that people consider still prostitutes as the worse of the two. So why is that? In order to seek out a greater point of view regarding this case, twelve interviewees were chosen and questioned for their opinions regarding the topic in the span of two days between 8th to 9th September, 2018.

The responses from the interviewees generally had the same points of views bar one. Nine of them commonly do agree that there are more negative views upon the prostitutes because of several aspects. First, they were seen as lower due to publicly declaring and promoting themselves that they would do “services” to be paid, thus they could be fully exposed to all sorts of people around for what they are doing. Second, prostitutes should have longer histories of getting into moments with greater number of patrons of various backgrounds, so surely the risks of getting sexually-transmitted diseases (STD) goes higher, especially considering the third aspect, that there often are no fundamentally mutual feelings between the prostitutes and their momentary partners, who the former see the other as only patrons and the latter whom views the prostitutes as nothing more than service-providers. This led to prostitutes may be hiding the facts that they had been transmitted STDs historically so they can still perform services for a living, thus risking their patrons with the diseases. Additionally, prostitutions are considered to be illegal in many countries and yet they still prevail undetected in more-secluded sections of the public, and thus people see them both as practicioners of morally forbidden activity as well as law-breakers.

On the contrary, the intervewees view the FnB as the lesser bad of the two for several reasons. The first one is that they do not openly declare that they will do sexual services to others and instead only with certain friends with mutual trusts, so their actions are not publicly exposed. Related to the second and third reasons for prostitutes, only the reverse, there should be lower risks of STD transmissions due to both partakers should have known each other better so that they should be sure that no infections will take place. Moreover, FnB conduct their acts usually for the sake of themselves as a rather peculiar form of social engagements to further strenghten their bonds simply as friends. It is interesting to note that this behaviour.

It is interesting to note that three of the interviewees have different views. The first one, whom had experienced life in Australia, where it can be said contemporary Western lifestyle, in which where the things discussed here often take place, is present. The interviewee had been living for nearly 2 years in Australia and had been knowing several Caucasian-descent friends with, of course, more free way of living than an Indonesian due to their customs and and environment. The interviewee told me during the interview that never she had seen or heard first or second-hand accounts of free-sex occurrences, and came to understanding and agreement that at least on where she was, people see prostitutes and FnB as the same and both were equally condemned for their actions. The second one has similar thoughts even without experiencing years of living abroad. She argues that wherever religious and cultural values are embraced upon by the public, people would by default go against both prostitutions and FwB-stuffs for what they do is quite often premarital sexual intercourses as well as one with person who is not the legal partner. In the end, what they do are equally amoral in the eyes of public.

The third interviewee with different perspective has a rather contrarian one, for in his personal point of view, the risks of STD transmission should be equal, and that the prostitutes should be one of the lesser “evil”. His arguments include the fact that, disregarding norms and customs, prostitutes did provide services commercially while in contrast, FwB do not. Further elaboration he had provided is that with FwB, one may never knew wether he or she may have already been in a romantic relationship or even married a legitimate and legal partner, which if the relations with a friend is caught red-handed, will very likely stir social issues such as partner-partner conflicts that may lead to break-ups, divorces, and thus the inner circle (i.e. family and friends) of the partnered friends with benefits thus may see the pair as disgraces and deny them acceptance.

Even so, the interviewees do agree that no matter what, in essences the actions both prostitutes and FnB took are nevertheless to be frowned upon, and in that regards, it all goes back to every regions and whatever faiths or cultural customs the people are following. The human society surely had been shaped by the customs and cultures growing alongside with the species from the beginning and it is nothing strange that getting involved on a sexual relations with ones not the legitimate partner is a no-no, even in communities contemporary people consider to be, less advanced. However, one could ask for him/herself, is all the unspoken agreement that sexual intercourses with randoms is frowned upon have something true on itself, or is it just a mask to hide a terrible truth? 

Well, perhaps it may be discussed another time, for it deserve its own focused attention.

R.A.S. (10615040)

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