The XX Factor: What women really think.

Just Call Us "Women Used by the Blogosphere"

The always-interesting Melissa Gira Grant here introduces us to new terminology recently encountered at a panel discussion among self-described “male feminists." A panelist told her his organization doesn't like the term “sex worker.” They much prefer “women used by prostitution". Because you know what really empowers women? Exclusive use of the passive voice ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

The Economy Nosedives and One Man Turns to Prostitution

"Everything's falling apart." So begins the first episode of HBO's Hung, a new dramatic comedy that premieres this Sunday, June 28, at 10 p.m. The opening shots highlight downtown Detroit's urban blight, and the economic downturn serves as backdrop for the tale of a man who takes desperate measures to survive financial hardship. Because it's HBO, this particular red-blooded American man doesn't score a part-time position at Starbucks. He becomes a male prostitute.

Forget Hemlines. It's the Latvian Hookers You Need to Watch

Guys Aren't Complicated

Scared Straight Johns

Jessica, I, too, read the Los Angeles Times piece on "john school," the traffic-schoollike program for men who seek out prostitutes. As the article states, programs like this one are nothing new; they've been doing it in San Francisco for years. And, at least according to the article, it sounds as if it's an at least moderately effective way to discourage johns from seeking out working girls in the future. Typically, arrested johns pay a fine, do or not do a few days in jail, and are done with it. In this case, johns who fulfill the course requirements (they must be first-time offenders, have to take an HIV test, are required to fork over $600) can choose to attend john school, for which they will score a "free pass—of sorts." The solicitation charge is held over the john's head for a year after completing the course, and if he doesn't repeat offend, his case is closed. According to one study, since the San Francisco program was created over a decade ago, recidivism rates have dropped by 30 percent. Why? Well, perhaps it's because, at least in the case of the Los Angeles john school, looking at pictures of the penile consequences of sexually transmitted diseases, listening to the hard-core testimonies of real street workers, and learning how johns can get set up and robbed instead of laid doesn't really inspire johns to go out and repeated offend. What john schools lack, though, is any kind of deep-seated interest in why men seeking out prostitutes. As I've mentioned previously, I solicited stories from men about why they pay for sex as part of an online project called Letters from Johns. Without understanding the complicated realities of johns' psychologies, the system fails those caught up in it.

Babies Running Brothels

There are two stories today about how different prostitution-related crimes are being prosecuted. One is the story of 16-year-olds Tatiana Tye and Jazmine Finley, who are accused of running a brothel out of an apartment in Phoenix that they allegedly rented solely for prostitution. Both girls are being tried as adults, and according to CNN, Tye is charged with "one count of child prostitution and three counts of pandering, or serving as a go-between or liaison for sexual purposes," while Finley faces "nine counts of child prostitution; two counts of receiving earnings of a prostitute; and one count of pandering."

The other comes from Los Angeles, where men caught soliciting prostitutes are given the opportunity to attend a scared-straight-style program rather than face prosecution. According to the L.A. Times:

For eight hours, the men are yelled at, pleaded with and lectured. One weary-looking john, who says he has come straight from a night shift at work, receives a firm shake from Margolis every time he nods off and eventually is told to stand up to stay awake. Each presentation is aimed at either scaring them straight with all the terrible things that can be inflicted upon a john or opening their eyes to the ugly realities of the sex-for-money industry. It's not meant as a feel-good therapy session or an opportunity to explain away bad decisions, so there is no give-and-take in the class. The johns are not allowed to ask questions or speak. They sit and listen.

And Spitzer Gets a Column?

Since Spitzergate broke, I've been pretty ho-hum about the whole thing. Men cheat. Men have sex with prostitutes. Such is the nature of the universe. But when the guy who ran the escort service that Spitzer patronized got 2½ years in prison last Friday, I couldn't help but think: And Spitzer got a Slate column? As the kids say, WTF?

Mark Brener, a 63-year-old former tax specialist, was convicted on prostitution and money laundering counts. In court, Brener asked for leniency, and his lawyer suggested Brener's crime had no victims, although, that's a claim I'd refute. As the judge put it: “It may go on all the time and be the world’s second oldest profession. It’s certainly my view that a number of people are significantly hurt by this.” I suppose I have less of a problem with Brener's conviction—it wasn't like he was sitting around baking chocolate chip cookies—than the vast discrepency between Brener's sentence and Spitzer's never having been charged. With anything.

Obviously, I'm no legal eagle. I'm not even exactly sure exactly why this contrast so bothers me. Any of you legal birds interested in weighing in with your thoughts? I guess I thought all's fair in adultery and prostitution. Apparently not. That the pimp is punished more harshly than the governor who partook doesn't seem like the best policy to me.

The Virgin Speaks

Last week Samantha and I weighed in on the case of "Natalie Dylan," the 22-year-old self-proclaimed virgin who's selling her virginity at auction. The top bid is at $3.8 million. Now, in a personal essay, Dylan explains why she's selling her hymen for millions. Referring to the auction as a "sociological experiment," Dylan asserts it was her recently acquired bachelor's degree in women's studies that made her do it. After she pops her cherry, she's going to pursue a masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, and her virginity auction is preparation for her "upcoming thesis project." Apparently, while pursuing women's studies, Dylan became aware that "virginity" is a tool the patriarchy uses to keep women down, a paradigm she wants to subvert by selling it to someone. Come again?

When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men.I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

How ... feminist? How ... empowering? Whoever invented women's studies must be gnawing at her wrists at this very minute. "Are you rolling your eyes?" Dylan wonders. Why, yes, I am, Miss Dylan! "But I'm not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing," she continues. Thank God. "You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point!" Ah, the wisdom of the young. She concludes: "These days, more and more women my age are profiting directly from their sex appeal, but I’m not sure other women should follow my lead." That would make two of us.

Until today, this sexual spectacle's onlookers have been attempting to discern where Dylan is coming from, personally and politically, but her essay makes it more than clear that her pseudo-feminist blathering is little more than a misguided attempt to conceal her mind-boggling idiocy. Suffice to say, I won't be bidding on her.

Selling Sex and Selling a Kidney

I'm just a little late to this conversation—and regret not getting into the thick of it before the fantastic, boisterous, and honest Melinda signed off—but Samantha, you asked, "Why this [Natalie Dylan selling her virginity] is so far from empowering?"

Hmm, well, let me try out a few reasons. One, it perpetuates the idea that the motivations behind sex are fundamentally different for men and women; that is, men have some primal, rationality-busting want for it ($3.7 million?), while for women, it's something to be bartered, rather than something to be sought or enjoyed to the same degree men enjoy it. Would a man be able to sell his virginity for that price, or even try to?

Two, this kind of stunt can really feel all-around degrading. It's not even the sex. Natalie Dylan reminded Melinda of Aliza Shvarts, the Yale art student who said she was self-inducing miscarriages, but it reminded me more of somebody like Damien Hirst, the artist who punks the modern art scene by taking its decadence to the extreme and proving he can foist animal parts preserved in formaldehyde for $8 million on gullible art-world status-seekers. The prices that Hirst and, say, Jeff Koons fetch humiliate those art buyers who take the art seriously and pay bajillions for such pieces, and Natalie Dylan humiliates the guy who values a high-profile deflowering session at $3.7 million. It's kind of funny to watch, but I'm not sure who's empowered by such an expose.

And I liked Audacia Ray's idea that "the notion of empowerment that gets kicked around is solely about the sex act, not about the money." Yeah—what kind of power, exactly, is it that a woman like Natalie derives from putting her virginity on sale? It's the power of cash, or, to be more precise, cash-savviness: the pleasure of knowing you're doing something society frowns upon and raking in the bucks while your prudish peers stand by. Is this feminine empowerment? Do we consider somebody who intrepidly sells her kidney on the black market "empowered"? Maybe you would, but I think I'd call that person "resourceful," at best.

I Don't Buy It ... Your Virginity, That Is, or That Selling It Is "Empowering"

Ugh. I'm not sure what to make of Natalie Dylan, the 22-year-old who popped her media cherry in the fall when she put her virginity on the market and is now back on the scene with her staggering price tag in hand: $3.7 million is the highest bid so far to be the lucky guy to bang her for the first time. (Don't believe her that the hymen's intact? Well, the lie detector backs her up, and she says she's willing to undergo medical tests for doubters).

The libertarians, of course, say this is the free market at its best: "I frankly don't care whether or not the young lady auctions off her virginity, and if someone is foolish enough to pay her more than three million dollars for the somewhat dubious honor of deflowering her, that's between the two parties in the contract as far as I'm concerned," writes Jazz Shaw on the Moderate Voice. That's basically what they said on Jossip, too, and Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden seems to think "Natalie" (she's going by a pseudonym to protect her safety but apparently has no problem with having pictures like this or this floating around) is on the right track: "If demand is that high, it sounds like a lot of working girls could save themselves a lot of trouble, go for the big bucks in a one-off and retire," he wrote on his blog.

That free market argument makes sense to me. Her body, her choice to sell it for millions. What bothers me is that she's a women's studies major claiming this is "empowering." To whom, exactly? I guess the idea is that she's sending a message to other students who need help financing their education (her goal, hilariously, is a masters in Marriage and Family Therapy). The message: You, too, can pay for your education by having sex with strangers.

But does that actually qualify as empowerment? When Izzie on Grey's Anatomy stripped off her scrubs and shoved her boobs in Alex's face to make the point that she wasn't ashamed of having put herself through med school by posing for underwear ads, I was screaming and grabbing my own boobs right along with her. The logical side of me has a hard time explaining why this is any different, other than that it's illegal (Emily, Dahlia, it is illegal, right?) and less regulated: She's not in a studio posing for pictures; she's in a bed somewhere, being penetrated by a stranger. But even imaging it going totally right—the guy is clean, he uses a condom, he doesn't hurt her—it still feels off to me. Can any of you articulate what I so clearly can't: why this is so far from empowering, and why prostitution is not the same as modeling? Or is the libertarian argument as sound as it seems at first glance?

Is Spitzer Sorry?

Jacob Gershman's New Republic spanking of Eliot Spitzer for not appearing contrite enough upon his return to public scrutiny by way of a new Slate column is causing a minor blogosphere kerfuffle. As Gershman sees it, Spitzer isn't sufficiently sorry for having sex with a call girl, cheating on his wife, and, according to a former Spitzer aide, "the fact that the entire state government ground to a halt." Instead, the New York governor turned Luv Gov should endure a period of professional mourning, throw himself into public service so he'll be re-seen as wholly contrite, and then slowly but surely earn back the trust of the hopefully forgiving (and forgetful) American public.

Unsurprisingly, Salon's rabid legal dog Glenn Greenwald doesn't exactly agree. Greenwald, whose general modus operandi involves identifying one wrong, comparing it to anything the Bush administration has ever done, and deeming the supposed wrong a right by comparison, posits prostitution as a victimless crime for which Spitzer should never apologize. Rather, he presents Spitzer as a pseudo-victim who committed a "minor, consensual, victimless, private crime," a teeny-tiny not-even transgression for which he was "forced to resign as Governor, had intimate details of his sex life voyeuristically dissected by hordes of people driven by titillation masquerading as moral disgust, and was as humiliated and disgraced as a political figure can be." Sniff. Dick Cheney should apologize! he trumpets.

Back in January, I launched an online project called Letters From Johns. While call-girl stories aren't all that uncommon these days, there wasn't much known about why men pay for sex. I put out a query, asking men to send me their anonymous stories about why they'd paid for sex, and the letters started coming. While many of the men I heard from were contrite and conflicted, many were not. Take, for example, "I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done." Unlike Greenwald, I don't believe prostitution is a "victimless crime"—the business of buying and selling sex is far too complicated for sex workers and johns alike to be summed up so succinctly—but I don't know that I understand why Spitzer should have to apologize for what other men do, too, private actions that sometimes sit in stark contrast to their professional lives. The only difference is that Spitzer got caught. Maybe he could apologize for that?

"My First Client Was a Sugar Daddy Type"

In light of recent conversation here--"Do You Really Want a Sugar Daddy?", "Sugar Daddies We Love," "True Romance"--inspired by college senior "Melissa Beech"'s "My Sugar Daddy" story on the Daily Beast, I thought it would be interesting to hear from an expert. After all, since Slate has given a john a column, it's only fair a former sex worker gets to speak here, too. I asked my friend, blogger and retired courtesan Debauchette, what she thought of the piece and discussion. Is Beech a savvy romantic, a "sugar baby," or a prostitute in denial?

Debauchette writes:

"I read the Melissa Beech piece with interest, which discusses her relationship with a sugar daddy. I don't have much love for the term 'sugar daddy'--it's infantilizing and makes me think of tiaras and baby talk. That said, this 'daddy' aspect of the term is a reminder of where the power lies in this sort of arrangement. Sugar babies sleep with men for money and material perks, but when that perk is a credit card or an apartment in someone else's name, it results in financial dependency, not financial freedom. This is why I prefer prostitution.

My first client was a sugar daddy type. He was very charming, very kind, and very married, and when I met him, he offered a similar sort of arrangement. His reasoning was that if he couldn't offer commitment, the right thing to do would be to pay me for my time, time that might be better spent elsewhere. It was sort of a cost-benefit balancing act, and it worked because I never felt like I'd wasted my time with him. But unlike Beech's arrangement, I didn't want gifts or a monthly stipend. I wanted to be paid for time spent, like an attorney, or a therapist. And it worked. For the time we spent together, it felt as though we were two independent people put on equal footing with the exchange of cash, and that transaction freed us to have a very open, honest, and sexual relationship. Six years later, he remains one of my closest friends.

A friend of mine believes that every relationship involves a transaction, that everyone makes an emotional compromise for end goals, like marriage, or family, or financial stability, or a life that isn't spent alone. Personally, I don't believe that all relationships are transactional, but I do think it's common, and I think that might be why Beech's piece has provoked such a response. She appears to be committed to one man who's offered to cover her financial needs and wants, and her relationship developed from a clearly articulated transaction. The thing is, this doesn't just remind me of sex work. This could apply equally to marriage."

I couldn't agree more.

True Romance

To Hanna's question about whether any of us feel we could pull off a "fake romance," a la those high-end prostitutes who "date for months before pairing up'' and stroke more egos than anything else: Most women are pretty good actors, I think, having been trained from the beginning to smile and make people feel good. But what I wonder is how fake these romances for hire really are; if that Pennsylvania college student is so gaga for her sugar daddy, how is that different from what the Real Housewives of wherever feel for their rich hubbies?

When I was single, in another century, I finally eased up on judging women who seemed to be chasing dollar signs when I realized that it wasn't so much that they were making some kind of moral compromise or settling for security as that they just found money sexy, the same way I found it a turnoff. No kidding, wealth was a mark against a guy in my book, which was filled with social workers, dollar-a-word writers, and men struggling with possible religious vocations. Not because I'd taken a vow of poverty or was making a stand on principle, but because that just was my taste, same as that college girl Meghan wrote about goes for Louboutins and the "poshest'' hotel in Atlantic City.

Either this "be your own pimp" option further blurs the definition of prostitution or it brings clarity to the trading of sex/youth/looks for money/power/security. But that's a trade that sure is taken for granted in our culture—or so it seems on all these "win a rich bachelor" reality shows. And though it's our own bargains we should worry about, it's hard not to look at the people on both ends of those deals and think: Wow, you get what you pay for (and pay for what you get.)

The Oldest, Holiest Profession

The New Yorker has a fascinating piece this week about devadasis, sacred sex workers in India. It's not online, but it's worth checking out. Delhi-based journalist William Dalrymple (author of White Mughals) focuses on two contemporary devadasis dedicated to the goddess Yellamma, in the southern state of Karnataka. It's a hard tale. Both women take a certain pride in their work—they make relatively good money, for example, and they have more dignity than "common" prostitutes. Because they're considered auspicious, they're often invited to bless upper-caste weddings and receive various gifts during holy days. At the same time, their lives are exceedingly grim. AIDS is a major issue, and many women are sold into the profession against their will by destitute families.

Dalrymple quotes his subjects extensively—at one point, there are nearly 20 unbroken paragraphs of straight quotation—and he does a skillful job of revealing the tensions between what these women say their lives are like and the reality of those existences. I found myself wishing for more, for better context, though. I still had a lot of questions about the practice when I was finished—like, for example, how legitimately "sacred" is the sex work if the priests themselves denounce these women? Maybe Dalrymple's chapters about devadasis in the forthcoming anthology Aids Sutra (about AIDS in India) or in Dalyrmple's own book about pre-Hindu religious traditions will shed more light on the subject.

In the meantime, you can check out Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller's The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood—written in 1900—for her take on the subject.

Slate After Hours

We Are All Under 40 Now

This excessive Botoxing and retouching has something to do with the collapse of the classes, or at least the shifting in what used to define the super-rich. "The 'luxury' experience has become thoroughly middle-class, even prole (two words: 'Gucci T-shirt')," Sandra Tsing Loh wrote a few years ago in the Atlantic, in a rare book review that did not reference her children's school. When I was in my 20s, my dermatologist was a product peddler, but in a sad pushcart kind of way, selling some kind of skin cream only he could provide (now Clinique sells it). I remember my mother once took me to Georgette Klinger, and I felt like I was in the Trump penthouse, and I in fact was so uncomfortable among the minks and lapdogs that I had to leave. Now Georgette Klinger is like the MacDonald's of spas; the super-rich go to these souped up urban spas where you can color your hair and get a face-lift in one session. I went with my post-mastectomy friend to the plastic surgeon once, and it was just how Melinda described—two doctors who looked identical, with absurd winter tans and actual golf ties. The place was gleaming, and they had their own chocolates! To me, the blending of boob job and cancer was very jarring. But they clearly considered both just facts of middle-class life. And they were just here to serve.

I'm sure there is no connection here, but since this is my latest obsession, I will try it out. If all classes have gotten bumped up a grade, does this explain why prostitutes are so middle-class now? In the escort service trial now unfolding in D.C., the latest call girl on the witness stand had a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and held clinical and academic positions all over the world. She started working for the escort service when she was 56. Not a typo. She was caught serving a john at 63. Surely she must have had some work done.

Powerful Women and the Men Who (Sort of) Love Them

So here's a question to the men out there: Do we think this story will get less play because of an undercurrent of pity for Thomas Athans; i.e., Men who are married to more powerful women are justified in their straying, to satisfy their sense of manhood? Michael Lewis once wrote a sort-of-but-not-really joking column in the Los Angeles Times about how the mark of a great man these days was marrying a woman more famous than he was and then destroying her career. Sir Denis Thatcher was always a figure of some fun in Great Britain, endlessly spoofed in Private Eye, known for calling his wife "The Boss," and subject of cuckold jokes featuring Ronald Reagan.

As for starting a new XX Top 10 List of Pols Who Don't Cheat: The only problem with that is, it will lead us to glorify the overly ascetic types, such as the latest incarnation of Barack Obama, as portrayed in Maureen Dowd's column this morning: no chocolate, no chocolate cake, no white-chocolate frosting, ("too decadent for me"). Affairs, presumably, also fall into that category.

Another Arresting Detail

I thought this factoid from the article was striking, too, and sad. Of the 20-year-old prostitute: "She told police she had only been working as a prostitute for about a week and didn’t know how many men had visited her the day she was arrested, according to the report."

Let's see, four men an hour ... an eight-hour day, or whatever ... ugh.

Politician's Spouse Caught in Prostitution Ring

"Athans was pulled over by police on I-75 minutes after leaving the Residence Inn on Livernois, just east of I-75 and south of Big Beaver, the evening of Feb. 26."

[...] 

"On further questioning, he acknowledged he had paid the woman $150 for sex."

[...] 

"Police went to the hotel after a detective working on Internet-based prostitution at hotels in the city came across a solicitation for sex on a Web site, backpage.com. Plainclothes detectives went to the hotel and set up a surveillance and watched Athans drive up, go inside and then leave about 15 minutes later."

So Athans is cheap, fast, and knows a punch line when he sees one.

Whatever You Say, Senator