If you are selling your time, undivided attention, and the (unspoken) offer of sexual entertainment, you're an escort. If you're selling a specific sexual activity for a certain amount of money, you're a prostitute. If you won't have sex with the man you're dating unless he buys you an expensive dinner, you're a (relatively cheap) prostitute.

Guides To Call Girl Work Out [The Sun]
Related: The Internet Escort's Handbook

Perhaps those posts will lead Ms. Kirchner's mother to a deeper understanding of the oldest profession and her daughter's reasons for choosing it. But, says Morgan Winter on the Utne Reader's website, "There seems to be two basic motivations for writing about one's tenure as a hooker, neither educational. The prostitute either wants to glorify or vilify the industry and its consumers. Either of these seems simplistic and disingenuous. After all, not only are we talking about the oldest profession, we're also trying to understand arguably the most complicated physiological aspect of nature—sex—through books about themes that, if authored by anybody other than former prostitutes, would fall under the 'teen' section in the local library." Even with a more nuanced view of prostitution, I can't imagine any mother would be particularly thrilled to discover that her daughter was a hooker. I got an awkwardly scolding phone call from my mother when I wrote about foreskins. I can't even imagine what she'd say if I told her I touched them for a living!

Insanely Sane Conversation With My Mom [Bound, Not Gagged]
The True Stories Of O[Utne]

Related: Young Beauty Sells Her Body, Breaks Our Hearts
a href="http://gawker.com/5006394/diane-sawyer-rats-out-hooker-to-her-parents">Diane Sawyer Rats Out Hooker To Her Parents

Ed Note: We hear about and see so many stories that we can't find the time to comment on that we're gonna try something new: "Leftovers", a daily "accounting" of the stuff we had to leave behind. Let us know if you like it, and, obviously, feel free to click through on the stories and flesh them out for everybody.

Prostitution In America [ABC News]

*(This is not a criticism, people.)

Left: October 5, 2006. Right: November 7, 2006.

Left: November 17, 2006. Right, April 24, 2007.

Left: September 9, 2007. Right, December 1, 2007.

Left: December 4, 2007. Right: February 25, 2007.

Left: March 11, 2008. Right: March 12, 2008.

(Images via Getty)

But by all accounts, Silda and Eliot had a decent marriage before the deluge. Newsweek offers some alternative theories. Susannah Breslin, a writer who is soliciting "Letters from Johns" on an eponymous website writes about some of the letters she received, and most of the prostitute-frequenting married men she's talked to went to hookers because their wives no longer had sex with them or because they got their rocks off on the taboo of it all. "For some men, especially those who are seen as particularly moral or righteous in their public lives (think of all those fallen preachers)," Breslin notes, "Part of the appeal is the fact that it is illegal and a moral transgression in their eyes."

It could be an honest-to-goodness kink, or maybe it's Spitzer's biology! According to Newsweek, men who cheat are "sensation seekers" who have "lower levels of monoamine oxidase A," the chemical that regulates dopamine, the "pleasure" neurotransmitter. Also, the kind of person who is a politician is often incredibly egocentric. Says University of Washington political scientist John Gastil: "For high-profile offices... you have to have a kind of personality where you are very interested in yourself and your personal needs, as well as the needs of others... When the gratification of your desire for social change becomes the justification for so much of what you do in your career, it's not a leap to then say, 'Well, my other desires and needs are equally justified.' You come up with elaborate justifications. 'Hey, 23 hours day I'm working hard for the people of New York. Time for a little me time!'"

And Spitzer will have a ton of "me" time now that he's resigned. The oft-heard moral of this story — to me, at least — is be wary of anyone who goes around crowing about how moral and ethical they are. If Spitzer hadn't claimed to be such a paragon of virtue, the people of New York would probably be more forgiving. Look at former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci or former D.C. mayor Marion Barry. Both left office "disgraced" but returned after a couple years. People forgave them because they never expected them to be particularly moral in the first place. If Spitzer had been honest with himself about his true moral fiber, maybe we wouldn't have seen poor Silda's destroyed visage on our television screens yesterday. She — and we — would have known better.

Dear John [Newsweek]
His Cheating Brain [Newsweek]

Earlier: Enough About Eliot. What About The Hookers?

Standing by her husband's side during his press conference was her decision to make, and probably a tough one. But was it the right one? How would you deal with a life-shattering betrayal — when everyone is watching?

Silda (named after a Teutonic goddess) grew up in Concord, NC, attended Meredith, women's college in Raleigh, and went from there to Harvard Law. She met — and married — a fellow Harvard student named Peter Stamos; the marriage lasted 29 days. Later she joined prestigious NYC law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, billing 3,300 hours a year — more than nine hours a day, including weekends. She married Spitzer in 1987 and put her career on hold in 1994. They had two children by then (they currently have three daughters, 17, 15 and 13), which impacted her decision: "I felt very conflicted and emotional about leaving my job," she told Vogue last year. "It was not something I wanted to do, but I have never once doubted that it was the right decision for us. You don't want to give up your dreams, but you also have to confront the reality of your life. Ultimately, it was more important for me to have my family work."

Somewhere along the way, her focus shifted from career achievement to domestic accomplishment. Add that to standing next to her husband as he admits a breach of trust and you've got a recipe that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many women. Writers from the L.A. Times interviewed females from different cities, and of different ages and walks of life. The reaction is the same: Women are ashamed of Silda. "I find it nauseating . . . phony and awful," Leah Schanzer, 38, tells the paper. Her friend Leslie Heller, 47, agrees. "It makes it seem like she's Susie Homemaker. She shouldn't be standing there, next to him." Says Linda Walters, 61: "She should've said, 'This is your fight. This is your battle. You stand there and get yourself out of it.'" "I'd have paraded in front of the microphone with a knife," says Cassandra Horton, 43.

Should a woman who has given up her career for her family stand by that family — including her husband — no matter what? It might make Silda look bad to face the press while holding her husband's hand, but would it look worse if she didn't? Is there bravery in standing by your man, as it were? Or, should Silda, as Dina Matos McGreevy — whose husband announced he was a "Gay American" — writes in today's New York Times, have made the decision to stand by herself and let the man in question face the cameras on his own?

NY First Lady's Charmed Life Slips Away [Breitbart]
Silda Spitzer, The Wife Who Gave Up Career To Back Politics And Ambition [Times]
Stand By Yourself [New York Times]
Gov.'s Wife: Brainy, Beautiful, Betrayed [CBS News]
Wife Puts Troubling Face On The Spitzer Scandal [L.A. Times]
Stay With Shpritzer, Smart Lady [NY Post]

Related: Poll: Would You Have Approved If Silda Spitzer Had Punched Eliot When They Were On That Stage? [Say Anything]

And I don't necessarily mean "frequented prostitutes" while the two of you were together. I think for most people, being cheated on with a prostitute would be serious cause for relationship reevaluation. I dated one dude who admitted to frequenting hookers when he lived in Ecuador, and I must admit, it made me think twice about getting in a serious relationship with him. But that was just me; have your say in the poll below and/or in the comments.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

In the same vein, a new bank in India has opened that caters specifically to prostitutes and sex workers. Women in the country's sex industry have trouble opening bank accounts because of prejudice and lack of identification. (Many of the women are saving money to get out of the business altogether.) Shilpa Merchant, who founded the new bank, says a woman with a savings account is more likely to refuse a customer who does not want to wear a condom, because she doesn't have to worry about where her next meal is coming from. (The government has also recently teamed up with prostitutes to cut down on girls being kidnapped and forced into the sex trade. Profiting by selling a person for sex is illegal, but paying for sex with an adult prostitute is not.)

Meanwhile, in this country, CBS News reports that professor and Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt studied the finances of prostitution. Hookers in Chicago claim 3% of the sex acts they performed over a two-year period were "freebies" given to cops to avoid arrest. In addition, business is better on holidays and condoms are used 25% of the time, with customers paying a small increase in price for unprotected sex. Risky business, indeed.

The Jezebels have decided to pool some cash and loan it to a woman on the Kiva site. We'll let you know how it goes.

Oprah Effect Brings Microlending To Main Street [Reuters]
Bank For India's Sex Workers [Reuters]
India Turns To Prostitutes To Help Beat Trafficking [Reuters]
The Economics Of Prostitution, Analyzed [CBS News]
[Kiva.org]

Home for elderly prostitutes [CNN]

The time has passed for moralizing about why men buy sex and why people sell it. Let's step forward and into the reality of it and have a safe, fair, good workplace for it.

Paterson said that once the brothel is up and running, she will be working there as a volunteer only, and will not be paid for her time. As a co-op brothel, it's a bit hippy dippy in that it will be run and funded by the women working there, and a portion of the profits will be used for issues like drug detox and helping women get out of the industry if they so choose. The only real problem with Paterson's whole plan is that prostitution remains illegal in Victoria, but she plans on getting around that by registering the brothel as an escort service.

Brothel will empower women, ex-writer says [Globe and Mail via Salon]

Why is it that when the newest prostitute on the block, or should I say blog, comes along, they're always at such pains to tell us how fabulous it is to have sex with men for cash, and how they aren't really prostitutes, they're high class call girls , or international escorts, like Jet Set Lara, who also likes to think of herself as a courtesan, she tells Marie Claire this month.

And they've always got Ph.D's in biophysics, and they're all trained in the Japanese tea ceremony and speak five languages and they're all so utterly detached and just a little world-weary and even though they screw men for money, they're somehow, well, more interesting and better people than you, you commonplace pathetic little drab.

Lara charges $10,000 a day for a fuck, but hey, she's spending $7k a year on underwear, and a girl's gotta make a living.

"The men I meet l like expensive toys - I suppose I fall into that category, so spending $25,000 on a tryst with me doesn't seem like that much to me. I've forged some amazing friendships through this business......I correspond with authors, political journalists and even a former Bush aide, all of whom see me as their muse."

A muse! Not a prostitute! We're sure there are truckstop whores in Kenya who say exactly the same thing about all the taxi drivers and truckers they "correspond" with for $3 a go in their roadside shacks.

It's a grand old life, this fucking people for money thing.