AHC Using the 800s as a starting date, Prostitution and pornography legal and mainstream worldwide

I have some of the same questions as the earlier commentators.

Are we talking about formally legal prostitution, or does illegal but widely tolerated and fairly openly so meet the criteria?

And currently IOTL where exactly is prostitution legal, where is it illegal but open and tolerated, and where do you get police crackdowns and prosecutions?

My impression is that the norm is not completely legal but effectively legal, in other words open and tolerated.

Also, pornography is a differently matter. Do you mean San Fernando style pornography or hentai pornography? That is difficult because these are fairly recent things. Or do you mean the same tolerance for open depictions of nudity and sex found in Hindu cultures? This is really difficulty because there are cultures quite hostile to any sort of images.
 
Prostitution and pornography were mainstream up until the start of the enlightenment. Albeit a disruptable part of mainstream. It's when the concept of the "fallen woman" myth started. Sex workers lost agency, they became victims and their clients victimisers. From then on, prostitution became something you had to stamp out to protect the workers. Prevent this happening and sex work will pick up legal protection either during the enlightenment in the nineteenth or sexual revolution of the twentieth. Once you've got that, sex work will be little different from carpentry.
 
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Hey I'm back :) Looking to try and respond to some of these so bare with me

"Are we talking about formally legal prostitution, or does illegal but widely tolerated and fairly openly so meet the criteria?"

Former, unless its something like Japan where its dejure illegal but the definition is so specific that it isn't illegal in virtually all legal senses.

"Also, pornography is a differently matter. Do you mean San Fernando style pornography or hentai pornography? That is difficult because these are fairly recent things. Or do you mean the same tolerance for open depictions of nudity and sex found in Hindu cultures? This is really difficulty because there are cultures quite hostile to any sort of images."

Both. Naturally the first two don't exist for most of this timeline, but setting the stage up for a culture that does accept both is more what I had in mind.
 
Sure. Just have more focus on Song of Solomon at some point in church history.

That was always interpreted as being about marital love (and, allegorically, the Church), not about prostitution. In fact, I'm pretty sure that applying the Song of Songs to prostitution would have been considered blasphemous, and a sure-fire way to get yourself anathematised.
 
Did you just finish watching Shimoneta or Kill la Kill?
Pornography just involves sex, right? If true, then Kill la Kill doesn't count since they may be naked or close to it at times, but they aren't having sex that's meant to be for the arousal of the viewer.
 
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