The History of Sex: Prague -- 'The Girls Love What They Do' -- (Chapter X, Part 25)

Tramping off to another club, I ask him why Czech women get into prostitution.

'Lazy!' he snorts. 'Most of them are just plain lazy. A job in marketing pays about US-five an hour. So most of them would rather sleep 'til noon and go to a place where they can smoke and drink on the job. They're agnostic, so they don't have any guilt to hold them back—well, they have social guilt, but they make sure their families never find out. But the girls love what they do. I've never known one of them to leave the work permanently. You could offer them a job in an office paying just as much or even better, but they'd still want to work in the clubs.'

Lazy?
A prostitute touts for trade on a Czech highway
(photo by Heather Faulkner)

Being Irish-American, John's an atavistic Catholic, born into a religion but unable to remember what he's lost.

That said, he's a demon on divorce rates, telling me apropos of nothing that 60% of marriages in the Czech Republic end in divorce: twice as many as in Slovakia and three times the number in predominantly Catholic Poland—'and the archbishop in Poland recently said, "We're failing!"' he laughs.

If hell froze over, John says he'd probably settle down with a nice Polish girl.

'I would never marry a Czech: they drink and they're agnostic, so they're liable to get high and cheat on you—and probably forget about it.'

I remember the Russian biznesman in Venice making a similar remark.

'Do you really think the main difference between Czechs and Poles is religion?'

'It's the only difference I can see. After all, the two countries are right next door to each other and have similar cultures.'

The History of Sex: Prague -- 'The Most Atheistic Country in Europe' -- (Chapter X, Part 18)

An even bigger mystery is why so many ex-comrades resorted to the world's oldest profession after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The easiest explanation seems to be that prostitution (and human trafficking) have always thrived in Central Europe—an early Czech feminist opened a local branch of the International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women immediately after World War One.

It could be that the reopening of the borders after 1989 simply gave women and the men who prey on them more opportunity to ply their trades.

But there's more to it than mere logistics.

As with Spain's cultural revolution during the 'Me Decade,' the former satellites of the USSR had the misfortune of playing catch-up at a time when the 'Greed is Good' ethos was all the rage in Western society.

Both Britain and America had produced more than a few 'robber barons' in their time, but even the Carnegies and Rockefellers felt compelled to throw some money at philanthropy, if only as a hedge on hellfire and damnation.

Fast forward a century later, and rather than capitalism with a human face, the former Soviet bloc has gotten capitalism without a conscience.

According to czech-bride.com,
'The Heart of European Union countries is truly Czech Republic.'

Communist rule degraded sex into a tonic for boredom, an impotent protest against the system, and even a currency in its own right, while simultaneously dispensing with religion.

Traditionally, Czech national identity had revolved around religious figures like St. Wenceslaus and Jan Hus, yet the Czech Republic now vies with other former Soviet satellites as the least religious country in Europe.

As many as three out of four Czechs are agnostics or atheists—a statistic that horrifies US missionaries who've parachuted in to 'save' the country (much like Western feminists).

'The Czechs say they're the most atheistic country in Europe, and they say it with some pride,' an emissary for the Catholic Church told a US newspaper.

'This is how Western civilization may look in fifty years.'

The History of Sex: Prague -- Sex and Communism -- (Chapter X, Part 12)

By the Sixties, though, all that had changed.

The Czechs were both physically and psychologically closer to the West than the Soviets, with easier access to new ideas.

Whereas those born before the Communist coup tended to be true believers, the younger generation knew that Socialist rhetoric rarely matched social reality.

'I don't remember anyone having any qualms about hopping into bed with one another,' says Jan Kaplan, a Czech émigré.

'Part of the allure of collective farms and summer projects was that they were fuckfests: "To hell with bourgeois ideas of chastity; let's have a lot of sex!" How did you get young people to build factories for free? Because at the end of the day, they got to fuck themselves silly.'

Jan Kaplan was also a consultant for
Prague's Museum of Communism

Not surprisingly, then, Prague flourished as a center of sexpionage during the Cold War.

Che Guevara partied there with Fidel Castro's brother while trying to broker an arms deal for Cuba.

According to their official minder, both the Czechs and the Russians viewed Che as 'an anarchist,' while Raul Castro—now the president of Cuba—'was no laggard in debauchery:' 'Every night I went with him to some nightclub, where we would stay drinking and dancing with the hostesses until the small hours. I would also procure blonde girls for him to sleep with—he was obsessed with blondes.'

Che Guevara's lived in Prague for a few months in 1966
before setting off on his ill-fated trip to Bolivia
(Source: Czech news site)

To find out more about the heyday of sexpionage, I've decided to try and track down one of the last veterans of the era.

Like many top Czech spies, Ladislav Bittman defected to the West after Soviet troops crushed the 'Prague Spring' of 1968, a doomed attempt to reform the Communist bloc from within.

In The Deception Game, written shortly afterwards, the former deputy chief of 'Department D,' describes how he helped pioneer the field of disinformation.

'For a long time I was a disciplined Communist intelligence officer, speaking the same language and thinking along the same ideological lines as my fellow officers, praying with them to the same god named Lenin, admiring the majestic panoramas of the Charles Bridge and Prague's Hradcany Castle from the headquarters of the Czechoslovak intelligence service.'

The spies' HQ was actually a former monastery kept intact by the Communists because of its artistic value.

'As a result, Party and official meetings took place in the monastery's chapel, where portraits of melancholy saints looked down from the walls.'

The former spooks' HQ
(the dark facade beneath the dome)

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Freud's Science Fiction -- (Chapter VIII, Part 31)

Unlike Freud, who said most humans are 'trash,' I think the majority of people strive—consciously and subconsciously—to make sense of the world around them.

So there are good reasons why his theories have saturated the modern psyche.

Freud on the cover of Time, 1924

The most convincing lies contain an element of truth, and Freud was a genius at making the obvious look new and the specious sound true.

Yes, a toddler may be jealous of his father's time with his mother, but that doesn't mean the kid wants to off him and get off with her.

In fact, his 'jealousy' may not be sexual at all.

Anyone with any practical experience of children will tell you that a toddler can be 'jealous' of anything that gets between him and his feeding machine: a sister, a cat—even a book or chores.

In fact, anyone with a puppy will notice similar behavior when you introduce a rival animal into the house—but this canine 'jealousy' doesn't mean the dog wants to commit an unnatural act with its owner.

Not everything's about sex.

A SECULAR RELIGION

Although Freud insisted that what he'd 'discovered' was unassailable fact, much of it was nothing but science fiction.

In the absence of any proof, his followers had to have faith, and psychoanalysis developed all the hallmarks of a secular religion, creating the template for virtually every personality cult and self-help movement to this day.

With Freud's blessing, apostates like Jung were excommunicated and their characters publicly assassinated.

by Phil Selby

Psychoanalysis also coincided with the birth of cinema, embedding 'Freudian symbols' in the minds of the masses while always appealing to people's sense of their own self-importance, giving even the most innocuous dream or slip of the tongue a Deeper Hidden Meaning.

In their defense, many of Freud's followers were fooled because they didn't know better: he tried to destroy incriminating paperwork—ironically, the woman who saved him from the Nazis unwittingly wrecked his posthumous reputation by salvaging his letters to Fliess.

What's more, his associates cynically drip-fed his most damning papers into the public domain over decades—in fact, some archives won't be released until 2057.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Pleasure-Seeking Pagans -- (Chapter VIII, Part 8)

Venus in Furs is a remarkably modern tale about a Galician nobleman who falls in love with a rich, young Russian and turns her into a sadist.

Severin and Wanda von Dunajew initially bond over their belief that the Christian world is corrupt; it's more honest to live as pleasure-seeking pagans.

Unlike many modern hedonists, though, they're realistic about 'the world of the ancients:'

'Pleasure and cruelty, liberty and slavery went hand in hand. People who want to live like the gods of Olympus must of necessity have slaves whom they can toss into their fish ponds, and gladiators who do battle while they banquet, and they must not mind if by chance a bit of blood bespatters them.' 

As in his real-life fling with Fanny, Sacher-Masoch's alter ego in Venus in Furs adopts the common servant's name of Gregor and follows his Mistress to Italy, where she seduces a Greek.

Besides their contract, Wanda goes the extra mile by having Severin write a suicide note in case she opts to kill him.

Sure enough, the crueler she treats him, the more he worships her, especially when she's wearing fur.

'Furs have a stimulating effect on all highly organized natures,' Severin explains. 'Science has recently shown a certain relationship between electricity and warmth… This is why cats exercise such a magic influence...'

'A woman wearing furs, then, is nothing else than a large cat, an augmented electric battery?' 

'Certainly.'

You'll have guessed that the ending isn't warm and fuzzy: Severin is 'cured' by being whipped within an inch of his life; he then turns into a sadist himself.

Years later, the Galician tells a friend what he's learned: in love, a man 'has only one choice: to be the tyrant over or the slave of woman.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- And Venus Laughed: How Siggie & Co Got Us All Jiggy -- (Chap. VIII, Pt. 1)

Chapter Eight 

AND VENUS LAUGHED 

How Siggie & Co Got Us All Jiggy 

in Fin-de-Siècle Graz and Vienna 

'Things have become livelier. The sexual business attracts people who are all stunned and then go away won over after having exclaimed, "No one has ever asked me about that before!"'

--Sigmund Freud, in a letter to his mentor, Wilhelm Fliess, 1893 

While the French elevated decadence to an art form, their Teutonic counterparts turned it into a science.

A German pioneer in 'sexology' championed the Marquis de Sade's work, and a certain Austrian shrink popularized the term 'sadism' and its pain-loving partner in 1890—naming 'masochism' after a fellow academic (much to his colleague's chagrin).

Even now, the West is struggling with the fallout from fin-de-siècle Austria and its role in inspiring not one but two 'Sexual Revolutions.'

Like Istanbul and Venice before it, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a nexus of East and West, controlled by a sclerotic ruler and legions of bureaucrats.

Economically powerful but politically impotent, the moneyed classes focused on pleasuring themselves during the 'Gay Apocalypse,' an era combining Klimt's erotica and the timeless waltzes of Strauss, initially described as 'African and hot-blooded, crazy with life.'

And when the whirl of life ended, the elite insisted on leaving eine schöne Leich: a 'beautiful corpse.'

A modern take on the theme
by Martin Schmid

At the top of society, the young heir to the Empire killed himself and a mistress (conspiracy theorists maintained they were murdered), and the death of the Crown Prince—and the succession of a cripple to the German throne—seemed to prove that Western civilization was breeding itself into extinction.

Nietzsche had declared God dead, and in the midst of this nihilistic, eroticized milieu—where the demimonde was 'everywhere but unseen like the sewers'—a fame-seeking Viennese neurologist with a messiah complex began obsessing about the sex lives of children.

Let's Talk About Sects, Baby

From the archive: 2010

Will the religious inherit the earth?

Apparently so, according to an article in The New Humanist, 'the magazine for free thinkers' (so long as they think like we do).

Sorry, I added that last bit in.

Editor Caspar Melville features the work of American political scientist Eric Kaufman, who's written a book called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

'Kaufmann is arguing that the secularisation thesis, the assumption that modernity leads inexorably to a lessening of religious belief and a day when we are all rational humanists, is wrong...'

'Further, he is saying that there is something about our current form of liberal secularism that contains (here's another headline) the seeds of its own destruction.'

'Since the birth rate of individualistic secular people the world over is way below replacement level (2.1 in the west), and the birth rate of religious fundamentalists is way above (between 5 and 7.5, depending on the sect), then through the sheer force of demography religious fundamentalism is going to become a much bigger force in the world and gain considerable political muscle.'

'Literalist religious conservatism is being reborn, and we secular liberals are the midwives.'

They have to be carefully taught:
'Secular Baby' by Martin Rowson
for The New Humanist

By 2050, Kaufmann projects that:

• Israel will be mostly Orthodox Jewish (Haredi). 
• America will still be more 'religious' than Europe, though slightly more secular than it is now, with the non-religious portion of the population plateauing at about 17% versus 14% now. 
• Mormons will displace Jews as the third-biggest religious group in America (and Muslims will be fourth, pushing Jews to fifth; I'm guessing that Protestants and Catholics will stay at numbers one and two). 
• Europe won't quite be 'Eurabia,' but Muslims will make up 10-15% of the population in countries like Germany, France and the UK. 

WHY ATHEISTS? 

Unfortunately, neither Kaufmann nor Melville make much distinction between religions: they seem to think they're all equally delusional.

But it's notable that humanism has its roots in Christianity. Even the word 'secular' comes from the Church. 

And while non-Christian, secular 'new humanists' wonder why 'fundamentalists' are winning the 'battle of the babies,' it seems the answer is, well, fundamental.

In What's So Great About Christianity (not at all biased, that), author Dinesh D'Souza turns around the old evolutionary question of 'why has religion survived?'

He imagines two tribes, one religious, the other secular, asking: 'Which of the two tribes is more likely to survive, prosper, and multiply?'

'The religious tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The secular tribe consists of people who are not sure why they exist at all.'

'The religious tribe is composed of people who view their every thought and action as consequential. The secular tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.'

'Should evolutionists... be surprised, then, to see that religion is flourishing?... It is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation... It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no higher purpose to life or the universe.'

And when you put it like that...

You can read the rest of D'Souza's book here.

The History of Sex: Geneva -- Torture in the Protestant Rome -- (Chap. V, Pt. 7)

However, several other cases ended in death, including that of another Frenchwoman named Anne and her manservant.

Anne Le Moine must have been middle-aged when she took up with Antoine Cossonex, who was a particularly nasty piece of work: not only was he arrested for adultery, but also incest, for he'd allegedly molested her daughter at the same time.

With the teenager testifying against Antoine, and the alleged lovers stonewalling the court, the authorities resorted to torture to extract a confession, sanctioning the estrapade.

L'estrapade (aka strappado) is more commonly associated
with the Inquisitions of Rome than with the "Protestant Rome"

After tying his hands and feet behind his back, Antoine's interrogators would have winched him into the air with a rope and pulley, then let him drop just short of the floor, the successive jolts wrenching his joints and dislocating his shoulders.

Antoine quickly cracked and confessed that he'd been fornicating with Anne for eight months, sometimes twice in one day and 'even in the bed of the master.'

He also admitted far more than they needed to know: it turned out Anne had given him a love token—a gift-wrapped tuft of pubic hair.

Antoine repaid her devotion by trying to rape her daughter, admitting to his torturers that he'd groped the teen's breasts and genitals and rubbed his penis against her.

DAMNED WITH ALL THE DEVILS

Anne made matters even worse under torture.

Instead of simply confessing and pleading for mercy, she adopted the (plainly insane) tack of wild defiance, cursing her husband, the court and no doubt Calvin himself, while also adding blasphemy to her rap sheet.

One account says she screamed that 'she wanted to be damned with all the devils to the deepest depths of hell (and) that she hoped to spend eternity with them at the bottom of the abysmal lake.'

Alas, she didn't get her wish with Lake Geneva, but she did end up in the River Rhone.

The court was so appalled by both lovers that they were put to death the next day: Anne was drowned and Antoine beheaded, a gender distinction that seems to have been common in Europe, possibly because drowning was somehow thought to be a more humane form of execution for 'the weaker sex.'

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- 'Disobedient Women Should be Punished' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 11)

Despite Turkey's paper protection of women's rights, so-called 'honor killings' still haunt the country—and Muslim communities throughout Europe.

A parliamentary investigation in 2006 documented 1,091 of these murders in Turkey over a five-year period, though the true number may be much higher, even after recent legal reforms to lengthen prison terms.

'Honor killings' are still legal in neighboring Iran:
women are buried, then stoned

'Now that the penal code has been changed, the families try to force the women to commit suicide instead,' says Canan Arin, a lawyer who opened Istanbul's first women's shelter back in 1995.

Speaking to me in her study on the European side of Istanbul, with books lining the shelves and jazz burbling in the background, she tells me that one of the main barriers to securing convictions for 'honor killings' is that many judges come from traditional backgrounds.

'Deep down, they think that disobedient women should be punished and the penalty should be death.'

DON'T CALL IT A CRUSADE

To overcome the honor problem, some reformers have tried to rename murders 'traditional killings.'

But Ms. Arin argues that this change is more for male politicos than female victims; the root problem is that women's honor is treated as a commodity. If a girl has sex outside marriage—even if she's raped—'her uncleanliness is a stain on the family honor:' 'Honor is represented by women, so politicians can't openly say they're against honor.'

Like many of her allies, however, she's reluctant to make a link between Islam and the oppression of women—after all, the reports that call her a 'crusader' for women's rights are just an awkward reminder that modern feminism is a Western import (like the Crusades, derived from the Latin for 'Cross').

Instead, Ms. Arin takes refuge in a relativistic stance. 'It is difficult for all patriarchal systems and patriarchal men to accept the need for women's rights. We are living in a man's world, and Turkish men are no different from that.'

'But isn't the problem that Western-style reforms inevitably increase secularization?' I ask.

'Turkey should increase secularization,' she counters adamantly, echoing the outspoken atheist I met at Topkapi Palace. 'We need more secularization, and religion should be entirely personal.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Ataturk and the Keepers of the Harem -- (Chap. II, Pt. 8)

Eunuchs being in short supply these days—you just can't get the help—the current Keeper of the Harem is actually a woman.

Canan Cimilli works alongside two other women in an office where every expense has been spared: there's only one computer between the three of them.

Despite her imposing title, Canan speaks in a shy, girlish voice that's easily overruled by the trio's alpha female, a raucous, middle-aged mamacha who's probably never had an opinion she didn't like.

As Canan starts showing me photos of the many rooms in the Harem that are falling apart, her dark-haired elder pulls up a chair and hijacks the conversation, informing me that there are no restorers or curators in residence at Topkapi.

WOMEN IN CHARGE

'The Turkish Ministry for Culture not give money for Topkapi. The Turkish government keeps the reality secret.'

'What do you do as curator of the Harem?' I ask Canan.

The other woman flaps her hand dismissively. 'Curators of Turkish museum do everything: they guardsman, housewife, archeologist. Only women could work for such a small amount of money.'

'Why's that?'

Canan stops laughing long enough to reply. 'Because in Turkey the men have to make money for the family.' 

And before I know it, I'm immersed in a moanfest about the male domination of Topkapi and Turkey in general.

Topkapi's top managers are both men, it seems: one a secular academic, the other an imam who lives on site, along with the Prophet's relics.

'MACHIAVELLIEST'

As for Turkey's prime minister, well, my informer doesn't think much of Recep Erdogan, either.

'He's machiavelliest. You know what that means? He go to Europe and say one thing, then he comes home and does another. He's fundamentalist—he supports women wearing the headscarf.'

'You don't?'

'I'm atheist,' she volunteers proudly.

'But her mother was a Muslim!' Canan laughs.

'I hate religion. Do you know who is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk? Atatürk is big man in Turkey—he is very handsome. He has blue eyes—like you—and light hair. All the Turkish women love him.'

Ataturk (with remarkably blue eyes)

Not least because Turkey's autocratic founder made sure the new Republic implemented female-friendly reforms that were not only revolutionary for the Mideast but advanced by Western standards: first he banned polygamy and the veil and then, in 1934, he granted Turkish women the right to vote and run for election—a full decade before French women had the same privilege.

Canan's colleague bustles over to her desk to retrieve a small, black-and-white portrait of Atatürk at his matinee-idol best.

It's a billfold-sized photo, the kind that a woman might keep in her pocketbook to remind her of a lover, only here it's propped up on a lone gilded shelf above the telephone (in addition to the standard, government-issue portrait of Atatürk in uniform, naturally).

THE PROPHET FOR ATHEISTS?

And I can't help but wonder if Atatürk is to Turkish atheists what Mohammed is to their Muslim sisters.

'In my life, my husband is first man'—the woman taps her wedding band. 'My father is second man'—she touches her heart. 'And Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the third man.' She beams and shows me the photo again. 'I love him.'

'She's got three men in her life!' Canan cracks.

Funnily enough, the Father of Modern Turkey died in the Ottomans' Imperial Harem (no, not from that; he had cirrhosis).

One of the last sultans, the grandson of a French Queen Mother, had decided that he needed new digs to replace Topkapi, so he splashed out on a great big, frilly confection of stone in High French Style.

When the Dolmabahce Palace was finished, he transferred his Harem there in 1853.

Decades later, Atatürk used Dolmabahce's defunct Harem—complete with its pastel-pink hall—as his base in Istanbul.

By the time he died there in 1938, some eighteen women had been elected to Turkey's parliament.

* * *