There has been a lot of people speaking out against portraying the Uleria cultists as prostitutes. Without accusing anyone I think that smells of 20th century moralism. What one must realise is there are many kinds of prostitutes, some I think are very appropriate for Ulerian cultists and some I feel are not. The issue of the morals of prostitution in the RW is not somthing I'm going to talk about at all in this post since I think it's entirely beside the point.
They could be like the Greek hetaes who were highly educated and well mannered. Demosthenes once said that Greek men in his time had hetaes for pleasure, concubines to take care of the bodily needs and wives to produce offspring and take care of the house. The hetaes were the only women the men in ancient Greece recognised as equals. In many ways the Greek hetaes were the first free women. There had been princesses in other cultures who were educated and who were familiar in the ways of etiquette. But they were born into their positions. The hetaes were different, they fought for their position, bought their freedom, studied litterature and philosophy, and managed to get a better grip on the contemporary men than any eastern princess ever did. The Greek divided their prostitutes into three groups: The Deiktrides were the common prostitues. The auletrides were dancers and performers. They earned quite a lot and could easily rise to the level of hetae. The hetae could walk freely around in the city. And by marking the tombstones in the local graveyard they could signal witch one of their numerous admirers they would receive later that day. Thus even though they were prostitutes they were far from available to anyone. They held parties, sometimes only for women, and entertained their guests with classy diners.
Or the Uleria cultists could be like Indian temple dancers. In the
last century BC one can find about 300 words for prostitute in younger
sanskrit: An educated luxury prostitute is called an ganika, a
templeprostitute is called devadasi and a common prostitute is called
vecya. Hindu culture set great value in free sex while rape and forced sex
were scorned. Payment and gifts were seen as acceptable ways to help a
girl make up her mind. But the culture's ambivalent attitude to women
resulted, among other things in marriages where men could treat their
wives as slaves or servants and at the same time in attitudes like this:
"Women take twice as much pleasure from their food, they have four times
the insight, they are six times as brave and get eight times as much
pleasure from sex." In a culture where it was dishonourable to outlive
your man, and honourable to throw yourself on his funeral pyre the
alternative of becoming a temple dancer would mean a more independent
life. The problem was that one had to satisfy both male gods and paying
customers. But it was a option. The dancers were below the priests in rank
but they were the pride of the temple and some became local 'pop-stars.'
As far as I can see uleria cultists in peloria could be both hetae, ganika and devadasi. They would not be the common prostitutes but rather the kind of courtesans that love sick poets write tragedies about, women admired and fought over by armies of menn (and perhaps women).
On the other hand I don't think uleria cultists are prostitutes among the rural orlanthi as I don't think prostitution is a known phenomenon in those areas (note, prostitution as opposed to sex slavery). Portraying her as an aspect of Ernalda would be more appropriate there. But in cities, like sartar ,I guess there would be a growing presence of pelorian prostitution, and perhaps even Esrolian prostitution (whatever that is). Perhaps male prostitution only is tabu in Sun County if the male buyer plays the submissive role (as it was in rome). Perhaps their uleria temples has got a rather large body of male initiates. In cities where one have a strong guild structure the uleria temple hierarchy could be the guild hierarchy of the sexworkers. Guilds like those found in europe in the 1400s. Other places the Uleria cult could organise homes for prostitutes like the Magdalena homes. In those places prostitutes could stay for a while before they once more took up their trade.
Someone on the digest said that Uleria cultists were not prostitutes since
prostitution was something different from love. I find this comment both
naive and strange (sorry whoever you are). If you look at the volumes of
poems and tragedies written by poets that were unable win the favours of
some courtesan you wil realise that love could very much be a part of it.
"Love me forever, but don't get angry if others do likevise" was
embroidered on the belt of the hetae Hermoine.
ps: If the excellent book Verdens vanskeligste yrke (The most difficult of trades) by Nils Johan Ringdal ever is translated to english I urge anyone interested in the subject to take a look at it. It's a jolly good read.
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