Whether they were “Socialators” in Battlestar Galactica, or “Companions” in Firefly, or any number of other euphemisms, one SF trope that seems particularly insidious, especially in movies and TV, more-so than in literature, although it is still prominent there, is turning the world’s oldest profession into something glamorous and honorable, even exalted. I recently had the misfortune to read a book where they took “Make Love, Not War” literally, and all women were drafted at 18 to serve a couple years in a sex corps to keep the peace, under the idea that a free and easy sexual outlet was all it took to quell man’s violent nature. (This was only a background element, not the main focus of the story, but on the other hand, the primary plot about laser light shows being the most highly regarded form of art wasn’t particularly compelling either. And don’t get me started on how unlikable the characters were.)
Maybe it’s a relic from when SF was just another facet of Men’s Adventure magazines, or maybe it’s capitalizing on the stereotypical basement-dwelling Geek’s desire to have high quality women to command at the wave of a few credits or gold pieces. Or, more cynically, it’s the desire of Hollywood producers who actually DO have high quality women at their mercy, career-wise, to further normalize the idea that “Sex work is real work” to help smooth away the resistance to their hamfisted efforts on the casting couch.
TV Tropes has a number of entries about this, from “Unproblematic Prostitution” to “High Class Call Girl”. Writers like to call up the imagery of the Geisha, and make their Space Hookers come across as brilliant sexual artists, with additional talents that help the protagonists, such as advanced degrees or connections to corporate executives and high ranking government officials. (Funny how they are not corporate movers and shakers or government officials themselves…). They forget, of course, that Geisha were not actually prostitutes, and only rarely took lovers. There were still actual brothels in Japan for that sort of thing.
Science Fiction has gotten a lot more difficult to write as the frontiers of reality have pushed back against the flights of fantasy. We have had to accept that you can’t get to the moon inside a Victorian upholstered artillery shell, or set foot on the Jungles of Venus. And maybe that’s why a lot of SF in recent decades has turned towards the softer sciences where theories are more prominent than scientific facts, making it simpler to speculate.
However, even in our understanding of society, there are some realities that can’t be ignored. A few of them are listed in the aforementioned “Unproblematic Prostitution” entry. The primary social reality that undermines all of the tropes is that when you commodify sex, you are putting women on sale. Maybe it’s just fractionally, for a few hours out of her lifetime, but when your fantasy/SF hero comes along and waves a few C-notes to get a woman to do what he wants, it’s not the “Combination of Sex and Capitalism” (“… which are you against?” the excuse goes) but the sublimation of Sex TO Capitalism.
“Sex work is real work,” they like to say, but when you turn sex INTO work, it strips it of all of its better qualities. “Do what you love and you’ll never work another day in your life,” is another lie. I’ve known too many artists who go from having a fun hobby to chasing unsatisfying commissions, eventually burning out from endless requests by cretins for illustrations of their vilest fantasies. So the idea that our happy Space Hookers are having fun and getting paid, and what’s wrong with that, turns into burnout in pretty short order, because the kind of guys who go out looking for “That kind of girl” are not interested in the parts of sex that make it as enjoyable as it is for a compatible couple. They don’t have girlfriends for a reason. So the trope that Prostitution is just Sexy Fun Time falls by the wayside in the face of human nature.
SF also likes to postulate that science will make sex consequence free with perfect contraception and cures for all diseases. Writers and Producers fail to see the actual social costs and secondary effects, some of which we are finally running afoul of today, as women are aging out of their “Hookup culture” days and finding themselves alone and with few prospects for a lasting relationship, while at the same time human reproduction is falling below the replacement rate worldwide. And of course, nature being what it is, there will always be new diseases from new planets or new alien races or who knows WHAT our horny young space cadets have been sticking their dicks into. Human biology has less security in its OS than a Commodore 64.
And of course, when you turn people into a profitable commodity, there will be people looking to maximize that profit. So the effort to paint a happy face on Space Prostitution expects the Pimps and Madams to somehow decide that their chattel are better off lazing about in luxury, that happy hookers are productive hookers. See above about the clientele. They don’t give a shit. They have cash, and they think that entitles them to whatever they want. And the pimps want that cash, so they will not tolerate their girls being non-productive, and they will not be generous in any way that does not maximize profits.
“But what about a Post Capitalist society?” What about it? If you’re not commodifying women and sex, then you can’t have prostitution, right? So that leaves the state, and the dystopian horror of government-run brothels, only they’re “free”, right? And any system you try to invent that restricts this to clients of higher “Status” puts you right back to capitalism, but instead of cash, you’re trading something else, like influence, or black market goods. I mean, if you try to make it about Eugenics, then there’s sure to be corruption about whose genes are considered superior….
So getting back to Capitalism, once you have made sex a legal commodity, and women into Capital, there will be an industry. And if it’s not legal, there will be a black market. There will be trafficking. In fact, even if you do legalize it, there will be a black market that chases profits that are not taken away by the legal system. (One need only look at the legalization of pot to see that the idea that legal weed can eliminate the illicit trade, AND be taxed at ridiculous levels, is a scheme that can only be taken seriously by people with no grip on reality. Avoiding those taxes and licensing fees makes illegal pot a much cheaper option for those who want it.) Regardless of one’s economic system, if there is something people want, and there’s a way to benefit from providing it to them, there are people who will take whatever risk is required to provide it.
The Space Hooker trope also demands that there be no social stigma attached to prostitution. For that to work either the population of women needs to all be the same (See the mandatory service trope above) or somehow sex needs to be simultaneously worthless and valued. That is to say, it has to be valued or else Space Hookers would be out of a job, but also not valued so that giving it up for money is no big deal, no different than waiting tables. I think this version of the trope has its basis in the Free Love movement in the 1960’s. Then, as in the fictional future, they thought that contraception and Penicillin eliminated all the possible consequences from sex. Physically, maybe, but the real point of the movement was Hippie guys using it to convince Hippie girls to put out without any kind of commitment. Convince them that they’re revolutionizing society and the real result was drugged out party girls who got passed around and then dumped when they realized they actually wanted something more. Free Love was more like Love Free.
Eliminating the Social Stigma from Prostitution is about as easy as eliminating the social stigma from Slavery. Either way it’s the buying and selling of somebody’s body.
To bring this around to my initial point, Cui Bono? Why do we see so much of this trope coming from producers who spout #MeToo slogans out the other side of their mouth? Well, though I am slightly loath to make this a political screed, there is one side of the spectrum that pines for a 1960’s that never really was (much like the other end wishes for a 1950’s that was equally mythical). Politics is downstream of Culture, they say, and these people have maneuvered themselves to where they control the levers of power in our media. They can achieve their Utopian Dream of a “Free Love Future” if they constantly feed this meme (in its original meaning as an idea that spreads like a thought virus) into all the entertainment they can possibly wedge it into. They believe they can turn the culture into one non-stop orgy (where of course their power, wealth and position make them highly sought after by the highest quality women), and you can tell when some of them have jumped the gun a little and become well-known sex-pests or rapists. But scroll down in that TV Tropes entry to the Red Dwarf video that is linked. The Hologram crew have achieved this future: There is no disease or pregnancy, no expectations other than it is considered healthy to go at it twice a day, and it’s considered rude to turn down any sexual request. But Rimmer’s questions while trying to fit in reveal the truth, there are no partnerships or commitments, and love and family have been completely eliminated as counterproductive to mental efficiency. Is that REALLY Utopia? Or just a Brave New World?
… So if you’re gonna go and create your own Utopia, with Hookers and Blackjack, just stick to the gambling instead. Maybe throw in a few Sex Droids if you find empty, meaningless sex essential to the plot. But please don’t press women into that role.
Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas 