While writing my last post, I ran across an article about trying to reduce the number of families who had their daughters become devadasis. I was fairly sure that I knew what that meant, but Googled for confirmation and thus saw this NOT SAFE FOR WORK site, which was the third hit. Abhi blogged about it previously here.

I don’t want to be putting down someone whose circumstances and mindset I’m only gleaning from a website, but for a devadasi to operate for personal profit seems rather irregular. I suppose this independence removes it from the most objectionable aspects of the “traditional” devadasi system as still practiced today. Yet to be doing it so differently while working under the same name worries me, because that kind of definitional blurring often works to bury the problematic actions under the newly legitimized ones. Kama dismisses the question of why she isn’t working in a temple with “For many years it has been illegal to leave girls in the temple because of the many problems that have become associated with the poverty and exploitation of many Devadasi.” This answer seems to minimize the inherent problems of temple prostitution.I had a similar problem with Tracy Quan. As you might be able to tell from the titles of her books, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and Diary of a Married Call Girl, Quan operated in the higher socioeconomic echelons of sex work, and her criticism of Nicholas Kristof’s concerns about prostitutes in developing nations seemed one-dimensional. The women Kristof described and “rescued” (that being the aspect of his activism that I’d question) were in brothels, distanced from their families, being drawn into substance addiction — in no way exercising agency to gain a better life than the one they’d had before becoming prostitutes. Indeed, in Quan’s either-or of sex work or sweatshop, the women initially had intended to work in the latter and been coerced into the former.

At a pettier level, I also admit that I question the degree of religious sincerity involved in Kama’s venture, because it appears more likely to be a ploy for a customer who either believes he’s having a religious experience, or who gets off on the exoticism (“everything I know about Hinduism, I learned from the Kama Sutra“). This —

My fees are to be paid in cash, in UK pounds, to me before any session begins. I really appreciate being handed your offering to me in a discreet envelope when we meet. Many clients greet me with a kiss and use that moment to give me the envelope with your offering. It is not culturally appropriate for me to ask you for money so please be sensitive to my needs regarding this matter.

— struck me as a bit silly. Being paid at the beginning of a sexual transaction is not such an uncommon practice that it needs to be justified as “culturally appropriate.”