Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

184 DEBT
Patriarchy as we know it seems to have taken shape in a see-sawing
battle between the newfound elites and newly dispossessed. Much of
my own analysis here is inspired by the brilliant work of feminist historian
Gerda Lerner, who, in an essay on the origins of prostitution,
observed:
Another source for commercial prostitution was the pauperization
of farmers and their increasing dependence on loans
in order to survive periods of famine, which led to debt slavery.
Children of both sexes were given up for debt pledges or
sold fr "adoption." Out of such practices, the prostitution of
female family members for the benefit of the head of the family
could readily develop. Women might end up as prostitutes
because their parents had to sell them into slavery or because
their impoverished husbands might so use them. Or they might
become self-employed as a last alternative to enslavement.
With luck, they might in this profession be upwardly mobile
through becoming concubines.
By the middle of the second millennium B.C., prostitution
was well established as a likely occupation for the daughters of
the poor. As the sexual regulation of women of the propertied
class became more firmly entrenched, the virginity of respectable
daughters became a financial asset for the family. Thus,
commercial prostitution came to be seen as a social necessity
for meeting the sexual needs of men. What remained problematic
was how to distinguish clearly and permanently between
respectable and non-respectable women.
This last point is crucial. The most dramatic known attempt to
solve the problem, Lerner observes, can be found in a Middle Assyrian
law code dating from somewhere between 1400 and rroo BC, which is
also the first known reference to veiling in the history of the Middle
East-and also, Lerner emphasizes, first to make the policing of social
boundaries the responsibility of the state.52 It is not surprising that this
takes place under the authority of perhaps the most notoriously militaristic
state in the entire ancient Middle East.
The code carefully distinguishes among five classes of women. Respectable
women (either married ladies or concubines), widows, and
daughters of free Assyrian men-"must veil themselves" when they go
out on the street. Prostitutes and slaves (and prostitutes are now considered
to include unmarried temple servants as well as simple harlots)
are not allowed to wear veils. The remarkable thing about the laws is