What’s funny is prostitution was legal most of the time and in most places in the western world until recently. Widespread prohibition of it is not as much a holdover from medieval times as a recent sex-negative feminist innovation. Which makes sense when you consider that the people punished are usually horny, kind-of-sleazy guys.
It’s probably most accurate to say it’s an unspoken alliance between the two groups—feminists and traditional moralists. But when the church was actually politically powerful, prostitution was much less likely to be prohibited than it is now.
I did a quick Google. Being a pimp was regarded as distasteful and had legal consequences so most rich people running a brothel used an intermediary freedman to manage his investment.
> What’s funny is prostitution was legal most of the time and in most places in the western world until recently.
That attitude towards prostitution closely correlates with those same societies considering women to be property. Anti-prostitution laws and the emancipation of women go hand-in-hand.
