It is disconcerting to learn from The Sun's report (Oct 27) that High Court judge James Foong's admonition of a foundry worker convicted for rape (that if he wanted to satisfy his sexual urge, he should go to a prostitute instead of raping his own 12-year-old daughter) should draw ire and criticisms from women organisations.

Puteri Umno pro-tem chief Azalina Othman said the judge's remarks "solved nothing" and there was no need to refer the rapist to a prostitute because "he should be able to satisfy his desires with his wife".

Azalina's remarks are equally unhelpful because if the convicted rapist could satisfy his desires with his wife, he obviously need not resort to the daughter!

Anyway what makes Azalina think that his wife would allow him to go near her? If he forced her, the women's groups would equally cry 'rape'.

Women's Aid Organisation executive director Ivy Josiah ascribed the judge's statement as reinforcing the "notion that men have the right to act upon and fulfil their sexual urges rather than to exercise self control" - and that "it is an insult to all men when this is brought forward as a reason for rape".

This is twisted logic because the judge's remarks that the offender should resort to prostitute instead of targeting his teen daughter was not a reason for rape but a reason to avert rape and incest!

It is not as if the judge was advising the offender to procure services of "underage" prostitute in which the element of lack of matured consent and exploitation is implicated.

So the real underlying reason why the judge's remarks really drew flak from women organisations is the misconception by their spokepersons that the judge was legalising prostitution for gratification of men's sexual desire.

On this issue, I think the morally sanitising agenda of women groups coupled with their arguments based on moral hazard is totally without justification and reason in the light of existing realities of the human condition.

Whilst every attempt should be made to improve socio-economic conditions, and by education and vigilance, minimise parental neglect and prevent young girls from being made prey by pimps intent on making a good living out of their so-called immoral earnings, nothing good will come out of treating prostitutes and their trade as a moral disease so much so that the judge cannot even make a recommendation of it without generating controversy.

One of the important qualities of a judge is his knowledge of "lived actual realities" (to borrow the expression of malaysiakini columnist Farish A Noor) of his society without which he would lack the empathy and sensitivity and proportion to make fair judgments.

Prostitution is not only a lived actual reality in this society but is the oldest profession in just about every other society since time immemorial.

So let us not look down on it since it must have served a very important function for such a profession to survive and thrive through the eons of time!

In fact the profession has been accepted as having great therapeutic value in society.

For as long as monogamy exists so will prostitution and the day prostitution ends due to lack of demand is the day when free sex reins which the moralists in the women group will equally condemn.

The fact is that prostitution is the natural corollary that allows the excess steam pressure within the restrictive pipe of monogamy to vent itself without bursting the pipe in detriment of offspring.

The ladies of the night are just providing a service for a fee and whether it offends one's moral feelings or not, it is an honest living that must elicit sympathy rather than condemnation since it is subject to dangers of disease and abuse.

As women's groups fight for women's rights, they should fight for the rights of women plying this trade rather than treating them as moral lepers and not recognising their important contribution to society as the judge in his infinite wisdom had done.