As part of her "Recession Road Trip" series, Christina Davidson interviews Princess, a forty-something woman who took up prostitution to help pay her father's medical bills. A former office manager, Princess was unable to find a new job after her company folded in 2008. So she put the word out through friends that she was "opening my pussy for business," and now she works independently, without a pimp or even a Craigslist ad. But it's Princess's description of her life that seem to have triggered Atlantic commenters' bullshit alarms. She says she "won't service married men or women, men of the cloth." And of the moral status of her occupation, she explains,

Like daddy says, there ain't no shame in bein' a ho. Society may look down on us, but that don't mean society's right. Catholic priests tell us how to live while they's diddling little boys in their free time. Reverends tell us how to live while they's hiring male hos and doing meth. Nu-uh. Don't no one tell me how to live. I have a mind and I can decide what's right and what's wrong for myself. [...]

Hurting people's wrong. Causing pain's wrong. Lying's wrong. Judging people's wrong. Stealing and murder, obviously, wrong. And hypocrisy, that's sometimes the worst wrong.

Commenter OGWiseman responds,

[S]ome of the quotes don't sound right. Would a Philly ho really say she doesn't service "men of the cloth"? Would "hypocrisy" really be on her list of sins? That sounds like an educated woman writing, not a prostitute speaking.

A commenter named decklap concurs:

Maybe Im sheltered here but my life experiences have not lead me to encounter many women who will proclaim "I's opening my pussy for business" AND be able to hold forth on the state of decline in the Catholic church, the whole thing is a clunky re-working of the hooker with a heart of gold cliche. Its an editorial masquerading as a story to suggest that it is representative of something more than Ms. Davidson's personal opinion on prostitution.

Commenter AswanDamn chimes in to defend Princess, sort of:

[D]id you guys read the section that describes her previous life as an (wait for it) office manager of a design firm? Did you stop and think for a moment that maybe this story wasn't about a typical "philly ho," but about the lengths desperate people will go to for their families?

But then jake4357 smacks Aswan down:

The office manager part is made up, too.

Whether or not Davidson is guilty of fabrication (which is, I'd remind the commenters, a very serious charge), the whole exchange is pretty upsetting. It seems impossible for some of the readers to believe that a prostitute can also be educated, or that someone could move effortlessly between slang and elevated language. But this is something college students and hipsters do every day, and you don't need a pair of Chucks and Phoenix tickets to mix high and low diction. The idea that someone poor enough to turn tricks must exhibit speech patterns that are completely predictable to people who read about her on the Internet is not only offensive but ignorant — OGWiseman and the others forget that who is "poor enough to turn tricks" was never completely obvious and has changed drastically with the recession, and that human language is far more nuanced than simple class categories would suggest.

Even AswanDamn, who tries to defend Princess, ends up doing so at the expense of "the typical philly ho." The implication of Aswan's words is that someone who once held a white-collar job would only turn to prostitution out of "desperation." But is it true that most "typical hos" have never worked in an office? That they are qualitatively different from Princess because they turned tricks before the economy got really bad? Who are these "typical hos" anyway? Perhaps the most interesting comment of all comes from summer, a commenter who claims to be a sex worker herself. She writes,

I started in "the business" as a masseuse nearly two years ago when my financial company shut its doors and the major lender who supported our institution crumbled. I have two college degrees, 6 years in the military,an outstanding resume and references. After 8 months of scraping by on unemployment and selling nearly everything I had of value, I was down to the beds that me and my little girl slept on. I saw an Craigslist one day regarding "sensual massage" - used the last $50 I had - got some cheap lingerie, candles and a spa CD at Wal-Mart - and set up shop. The only experience I had was a UC extension class on massage at that point - but at the end of the first day - I made enough to cover the rent.

And:

Now - when I am with my children - I am totally focused on them and their activities. I have a "provider phone" - linked to THIS business, a personal phone and a number for my financial business. We are relaxed and so much happier. I enjoy making people happy all day and have made a lot of wonderful friends. I only work when my daughter is in school (my sons are in college and out on their own now) and I am truly the captain of my own ship.

We can't prove summer's story anymore than we can Princess's, but the fact is that educated women do become prostitutes, and some who turn to sex work out of necessity stay because they like it. Some may disagree with Princess's assertion that prostitution isn't wrong, but it doesn't do either side of the debate any good to assume that prostitutes are all degraded women who can't make a coherent argument — or to artificially divide them into "typical hos" and nice women just providing for their families. The changes brought on by the recession should spur us to reconsider our preconceived notions about class, work, and language — not let them calcify into prejudice.

"Ain't No Shame In Bein' A Ho" [Atlantic]

An escort agency manager identified only as James told the London Times's Helen Croydon that the TV version of Belle's story made some young women proud to be prostitutes. He says,

The TV series did glamorise it [...] Whether that is good or bad I won't say but I noticed that after it was shown, our younger girls - the ones aged 18 to 21 - started to think that what they did was cool. I call it the ‘Belle de Jour phenomenon'. They used to want to hide it but recently I hear they have come clean to friends - boyfriends, even. Not only has it become acceptable to them but some even aspire to it.

So will the revelation that Belle de Jour is Brooke Magnanti — educated, currently with a loving partner, and apparently with no regrets — convince more young women that prostitution can be cool and even risk-free? Magnanti's (alleged) ex, who has begun an extremely long-winded blog about her, has this rather bizarre answer:

Anyone who reads it and decides to take up prostitution because of it has much deeper issues. Her blog and books were merely the litmus paper that indicated/highlighted it, not the cause.

For example, having watched Twilight you don't just then fall for the next moody, pale adolescent you see. He might be a ravishingly intriguing vampire who can unlock the door to an exciting world, allowing you to escape your rather mundane one. However he might also just be quiet because he has nothing to say and pale because the world he will show you hidden in his bedroom is the Online Gaming forum he inhabits everyday when he should be out in the sun kite surfing every now and again as well. He will be fat, spotty and myopic by 30, not eternally youthful with good cheek bones. There is nothing wrong with the former, but don't be surprised and berate him for it when it happens.

Twilight references aside, the Daily Mail offers a cautionary tale for any young woman who might want to follow in Magnanti's footsteps. The lead is classic Daily Mail — "This week the anonymous sex blogger Belle de Jour revealed her true identity as a scientist and claimed she enjoyed her work as a prostitute. But can any woman justify glamorising prostitution?" — but Christina Errington's story is disturbing. She writes about having unprotected sex with older men as a university student, first because she needed the money and later as a form of retaliation against her overprotective and uncommunicative parents. Two men hit her, and she says "it took me several years of being in a trusting and loving relationship [...] before I could make love without stirring up unpleasant recollections of my life on the streets." She concludes her piece thus:

It is easy to say, as Brooke Magnanti did this week, that selling your body for money doesn't hurt anyone. But it does, and the damage that is caused to a woman's self-respect is sometimes irreparable.

It's clear that prostitution can carry psychological as well as physical risks, whether or not a prostitute is educated and middle-class. But it's somewhat unfortunate that Errington implies she deserved to lose her self-respect because she did sex work. Croydon writes that "those entering this sort of 'work' must have specific non-emotive character traits to be able to handle the psychological strain," and it's obvious that Errington, who took up prostitution in response to poor family relationships, felt this strain keenly. But what "non-emotive traits" would someone need in order not to feel it? Was Magnanti's comfort with her profession the result of her personality — which her ex describes with the words, "she wiped her nose on her sleeve and ate peas off her knife whilst discussing advanced astronomy etc at the dinner table" — or simply of good luck? It's hard to know, perhaps because both Errington's story — the fallen woman scarred by her days of selling herself — and Magnanti's — what Croydon calls the "happy hooker" — are such popular media narratives. What's missing from the public conversation about prostitution — and what continues to be missing despite Magnanti's confession — are nuanced portrayals of both the attractions and risks of sex work. These exist — Michelle Tea's Rent Girl is one. But they get less attention than stories that fit into established prostitution cliches, which, despite her new candor about her identity, Belle de Jour's still does.

Image via Daily Mail.

Happy Hookers: The Other Belles De Jour [TimesOnline]
I Was A Student Call Girl Like Belle De Jour - And The Shame Will Never Leave Me [Daily Mail]
Untitled Post [Brookes Owen]
Belle De Jour's Father: I'm Broken-Hearted After Discovering Her Past [Telegraph]

[London, November 17. Image via AP]

A detail of an art installation addressing the theme of prostitution, entitled 'The Hoerengracht ' by US artists Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, is seen during a press view at the National Gallery, in central London, Tuesday Nov. 17, 2009. According to the gallery 'The Hoerengracht' ('Whore's Canal') made between 1983-88 and inspired by Amsterdam's Red Light District area is one of the most significant pieces of installation art made by the Kienholzes before Ed Kienholz's death in 1994.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Belle de Jour revealed herself as scientist Brooke Magnanti in an interview yesterday with India Knight of the Times of London. She says she took up prostitution as a way to make quick money while finishing her Ph.D, and that she had begun to feel "it was time" to acknowledge that period in her life openly, not just in her anonymous books and blog entries. Knight's piece also references "an ex-boyfriend with a big mouth lurking in the background," but Helen Pidd of the Guardian says the real impetus was a forthcoming exposé in — of course — the Daily Mail. Pidd also writes that some are angry at Magnanti for "glamorising and normalising" prostitution.

Magnanti says she charged £300 an hour (her cut was £200, or about $335), and was "very lucky" never to have had any problems with her clients. But Pidd also quotes Finn Mackay of the Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution, who fires back:

To come out saying, 'It's so wonderful' is a slap in the face to the great majority of women who have had horrendous experiences in the sex industry. I'm glad to hear that she hasn't been burned, beaten, buggered, raped and spat on, but she shouldn't sell down the river those whose experiences are different from hers by glamorising and normalising sex work.

On the other side, public health professor Helen Ward says,

Belle de Jour's case is not the norm, but it's not that unusual either. Policy makers tend to portray sex workers as either drug-addicted young women [...] or as trafficked migrant women who have no control over their lives. But I've been working with sex workers for over 20 years as a researcher and as a doctor, and I know that there is a wide range of people involved in sex work.

This last statement is key. Not all prostitutes are graduate students pulling down hundreds of dollars an hour for safe sexual encounters, nor are they all streetwalkers exchanging blowjobs for drugs. What separates Magnanti from women Mackay mentions may be simply the presence of other options. Magnanti says she chose sex work over waitressing or borrowing from friends and family. She also worked as a computer programmer at one point but found prostitution "so much more enjoyable." Magnanti had both a support system she chose not to utilize and other marketable skills — sex work, for her, was freely chosen as the most attractive of a number of possibilities.

For many prostitutes, that's not the case. The Chicago street prostitutes Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner spoke to for Superfreakonomics often don't have education or monied friends to fall back on, and for them prostitution may be more necessary than "enjoyable." As Levitt and Dubner point out, their experience with sex work is also very different — they make less money than Magnanti, and they face greater risks. Levitt and Dubner don't really address the fact that prostitution is just one of the many areas where being middle class and white gives you a significant leg up. But Magnanti is now in a position to address this.

Now that she's out in the open, Magnanti could point out that her writing doesn't "glamorize" prostitution — it merely reveals that for some women, sex work can have big payoffs and manageable risks. For others, it can be exploitative and dangerous. Women (and men, and children) around the world need protection from forced prostitution, no one should have to view sex work as the only option, and prostitutes living in poverty deserve protections (like legalization of their activities) that might not necessarily be popular with high-end prostitutes who rely on illegality for high prices. The truth is that prostitution as a whole is neither glamorous nor dangerous. Instead, it's as complex as the sexual urges prostitutes satisfy. Magnanti is well-placed to examine its complexities — let's hope she does so.

Belle De Jour Drops Her Anonymity [BBC]
Belle De Jour Revealed At Last: Scientist Who Penned Diary Of A London Call Girl Outs Herself To Foil Daily Mail [Guardian]
Now I'm Not Anonymous... [Belle de Jour]
Sexblogger's Tale: How My Life Changed Forever [Guardian]
I'm Belle De Jour [TimesOnline]
Belle De Jour Says Her Mother Supports Her [Telegraph]

In an excerpt from their new book Superfreakonomics, Levitt and Dubner profile two women. One, LaSheena, has "a beaten-down look in her eyes," and makes her money stealing and turning tricks on Chicago's South Side. She says prostitution "bothers me mentally," and she's not pulling down that much money either — street prostitutes in Chicago make about $350 a week. The other woman is Allie, an attractive blond who works about 15 hours a week having sex with men in her pretty bedroom for $500 an hour. Allie "genuinely likes the men who come to her" and "they treat her, in many ways, as men are expected to treat their wives but often don't." She's also building on the entrepreneurial skills she's learned as a prostitute by going back to school in economics. Life, for Allie, is good.

It's so good, in fact, that "the less she works, the more she earns," and she can charge ever-higher fees without scaring off clients. Levitt and Dubner write,

Although she views herself as similar to a street prostitute, she has less in common with that kind of woman than she does with a trophy wife. Allie is essentially a trophy wife who is rented by the hour. She isn't really selling sex, or at least not sex alone. She sells men the opportunity to trade in their existing wives for a younger, more sexually adventurous version - without the trouble and long-term expense of actually having to go through with it.

And:

Street prostitutes like LaSheena might have the worst job in America. But for elite prostitutes like Allie, the circumstances are completely different: high wages, flexible hours and relatively little risk of violence or arrest. So the real puzzle isn't why someone like Allie becomes a prostitute, but rather why more women don't choose this career.

Echidne of the Snakes takes Levitt and Dubner to task on several points. She points out that they don't delve at all into the reasons why women aren't all lining up to be hookers:

It's something about the mysterious women, refusing to supply sex for good money, when they should. They are probably too stupid to realize that they could do that instead of getting married as trophy wives. Which is just prostitution under another name.

She also thinks Levitt and Dubner see Allie's behavior — "She is happy to see you every time you show up at her door. Your favourite music is already playing and your favourite drink is on ice. She will never ask you to take out the rubbish." — as "the proper way for a wife to act." That may be true. But the whole analysis comes off as less sexist than flippant, uninterested in larger questions of why some women can make lots of money at prostitution but others can't. Levitt and Dubner imply that it's some combination of talent and business smarts. But the real issues here may be those of race and class.

Levitt and Dubner don't explicitly identify Allie's or LaSheena's race — in terms of physical characteristics, we know that the former is blond and the latter has "straightened hair." And we don't know all the details of their backgrounds either. The authors say nothing of LaSheena's upbringing or education, but we know that Allie "grew up in a large and largely dysfunctional family in Texas," joined the military, and became educated enough to get a job in computer programming. So at the time she became a sex worker, it seems that Allie had entered the middle class. Given that she makes her living as a street prostitute, thief, and drug lookout, we can assume that LaSheena has not. And this may be the biggest difference.

LaSheena probably doesn't have the resources to set up a nice bedroom where gentlemen can lay their $500 on the dresser. She may not be able to afford their favorite drink, or a stereo to play their favorite music. She may not have the education to engage in the kind of talk that Allie's clients want along with their sex. And most of all, by virtue of her class, she's probably not able to act like the kind of trophy wife Allie's clients — middle-aged white men with plenty of disposable income — think they deserve.

The fact that Levitt and Dubner ignore all this — in addition to whatever role race might play in prostitution opportunities, if any — is the biggest blind spot in their article. Yes, the comparison between wives and prostitutes is sexist and outdated and problematic. And yes, the question of why more women don't become sex workers ignores the fact that sex isn't just a commodity like any other. But what Levitt and Dubner really seem to be asking is why more women don't become high-end escorts like Allie. The answer is probably that they can't, but Levitt and Dubner apparently aren't interested in why.

Freakonomics Returns: Vice Work If You Can Get It [TimesOnline]
The New Career Choice For Women: High-End Prostitution! [Echidne of the Snakes]

[Rio de Janeiro, August 26. Image via Getty]

A Brazilian prostitute dances among performers as part of a Rio de Janeiro Health Secretary event running alongside a fashion show presenting creations by DASPU - a local fashion label run by prostitutes - in Tiradentes square, a hub of the city´s prostitution, in Rio de Janerio, Brazil on August 26, 2009. Prostitutes and advocates paraded the summer collection by DASPU, owned by Davida, a Brazilian NGO that works towards better health, safety and legal conditions for sex workers on the streets of Brazil. AFP PHOTO/ANTONIO SCORZA (Photo credit should read ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images)

As I've looked to illustrate the stories we've written about sex workers — both in terms of rallies for their rights, and women turning to sex work during the recession — I end up scrolling through pictures of women from all walks of life, and from all over the world, who engage in sex work. And as I've read more and more about sex work, the dichotomy between the ways we view women in the developed world and those in the developing world who chose to sell access to their bodies strikes me more and more deeply.

Although many take a default view of sex workers in the developed world as responding to rational choices about the economic valuation of their bodies, there is story after story after story after story after story about how sex workers in "free" societies are often driven by a sense that they have few other options or coerced into the work; meanwhile, an equally nuanced view of sex work in the developing world seems to escape us.

What follows is a sampling of sex workers from around the world: some are posing; some are protesting; some are simply going about their days. Some are more wealthy, or happier-looking than others; some reveal their faces; others camouflage them; still others hide them in shame. Some are exploited, while others seemingly feel more in control of their destinies. But one thing no one can do is predict from whence they came, or where they're going, simply by looking.

A prostitute blows a whistle during a protest commemorating the International Day of Sex Workers in Lima, on June 02, 2009. The demonstration gathered almost 100 people and is one of the first open event of this group of the Peruvian society. (JAIME RAZURI/AFP/Getty Images)

A picture taken on March 6, 2009 in a brothel in Offenbach, western Germany, shows a prostitute waiting for clients. Times are hard down at brothels in Germany, where the current financial crisis has triggered a sharp decline in clientele. (MARTIN OESER/AFP/Getty Images)

An Indian sex worker shouts slogans during a protest march in Kolkata on July 01, 2008 against the proposed amendments to the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act in Indian Parliament. Several hundred sex workers and social workers and activists took part in the march where they burnt the effigies of the Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chaudhary and Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil. (DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/Getty Images)

A sex worker sits in a passageway at the upmarket Xclusive brothel in Sydney's Bondi Junction on July 1, 2008. Upmarket Sydney brothel Xclusive won't be offering papal packages, but it is putting on extra sex workers to provide sexual succour to lonely tourists and Sydneysiders during World Youth Day. The purpose-built Xclusive brothel, which has luxurious rooms complete with double showers, spas, custom-made beds and panic buttons for the sex workers, is expecting a 150-200 percent hike in business during World Youth Day. (GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images)

Young women who have left their village after being abandoned by their parents for acting as prostitutes to Moroccan UN soldiers sit in front of a house that they rent in the village of Trainou, near Bouake, Ivory Caost's second city and the former capital of the rebel-controlled north, 29 July 2007. Moroccan UN troops in the central city of Bouake have been accused by locals of committing 'sexual abuses'. The UN suspended the activities of the the Moroccan forces contingent in the west African country last month due to the accusation, pending investigation. (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

A Ukrainian prostitute stands in front of a bed in a brothel in an appartment in Berlin, 12 September 2007. (AXEL SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Bolivian prostitutes turn into their second day of hunger strike at an AIDS clinic they took over defending their right to work, in El Alto, 12 km from La Paz, on October 23rd, 2007. Some 50 prostitutes went on a hunger strike Monday and threatened to march naked down the streets of El Alto to reopen the bars and strip joints closed down by the local population last week. Many of El Alto's residents last week demonstrated outside the town's 32 bars and strip joints forcing them to close, complaining that they are magnets for lawbreakers and a bad influence on children. (AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images)

Sex worker Sue Davis is pictured 07 December 2007 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Davis is part of the BC Coalition of Experiential Women, a group defending the issues of sex workers. (Philippe MOULIER/AFP/Getty Images)

A semi-nude Nepali sex worker of the Badi community climbs the gate of the Parliament complex during a protest rally in Singha Durbar, Kathmandu, 22 August 2007. Police in Nepal detained 13 men and women who tried to strip in front of parliament here to protest the decades-old practice of forcing girls from their community into prostitution. Members of the poor Badi community are one of the most disadvantaged groups in the country. For generations, many have been forced into the sex trade because of a lack of other options. (STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

IPSWICH, UNITED KINGDOM - DECEMBER 12: A prostitute who gave her name as Lou talks to reporters (unseen) as she stands on a street corner December 12, 2006 in Ipswich, England. Police, who were already investigating the murders of three prostitutes whose bodies were found earlier this month, found two more bodies today and are warning sex workers to stay off the streets. The killings recall memories of the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, serial killer Peter Sutcliffe who admitted to killing 13 women, mostly prostitutes, in the 1970s. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A woman prostitute, drug addict and HIV postive (C) who wish to keep her identity anonymous, smokes a cigarette in a street of a shanty town in Phnom Penh on June 10, 2008. The United States said that Cambodia still needs to do more to fight human trafficking, even though an annual State Department report said the nation had made progress. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images)

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN - AUGUST 10: Khazak prostitutes prepare for the evening ahead as they walk outside their brothel home August 10, 2006 in Almaty in the central Asian country of Kazakhstan. Fifteen years after the breakup of the former USSR, the millions of Muslims living between the Caspian Sea and China, who for decades found themselves repressed under Communism, are experiencing an economic and religious revival. Following the August 1991 abortive coup attempt in Moscow and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan declared independence on December 16, 1991. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo: Prostitutes dance at a centre run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in preparation for World Aids Day, 29 November 2006, in Kinshasa. The 'Biso na Biso' centre in the run down district of Massina provides medicine, health care, and education programmes for sex workers. (LIONEL HEALING/AFP/Getty Images)

Amsterdam. A picture taken 23 April 2004 shows a man standing in front of the window of a prostitute in the Red District of Amsterdam. (TOUSSAINT KLUITERS/AFP/Getty Images)

A group of prostitutes from the Merced neighborhood stand a protest in front of local assembly 04 October 2007 in Mexico City, complaining for the arrests they suffer from police. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)

CAMDEN, NJ - FEBRUARY 17: A woman involved in the sex industry waits on a street corner February 17, 2005 in Camden, New Jersey. Camden, a crime ridden city in the south of New Jersey, has both a high prostitution rate and an escalating HIV/AIDS rate among its young people. A New York man infected with a highly drug-resistant and possibly aggressive strain of the AIDS virus has galvanized health officials around the country to consider the possibility of what some people are calling a 'Super HIV strain.' (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Gisenyi, RWANDA: Adeline, 19, prostitute, stands at the doorway of her house 28 April 2006 in Gisenyi, Rwanda. Forced into prostitution after losing their parents during the 1994 genocide, some 200 women have joined an association to fight AIDS and try to build themselves a new future. (JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images)

PADUA, ITALY: A group of prostitutes took to the streets in Padua, 16 May 2007 to protest against a new fine on clients caught in the act, which is aimed at cleaning up the streets of this northeastern Italian city. The 30 or so demonstrators also distributed leaflets calling for a concerted fight 'against sexual traffickers and not those who ply their trade freely.' Banner at (C) reads- The Symbol of Love-. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIJING, CHINA - JUNE 21: Women hide their faces as police raid an entertainment center which is suspected to have prostitution business on June 21, 2006 in Beijing, China. Authorities have launched campaigns to crack down on prostitutions in the city. According to state media, male and female prostitution, both of which are illegal in China, are nonetheless widespread. According to a draft guideline released by the Ministry of Health, prostitutes are being made the focus of the ministry's latest efforts to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

File photo taken March 30, 2007 shows a prostitute working on the street in central Oslo. On February 6, 2009, and a month after it came into force, a Norwegian law banning the purchase of sex has nearly eliminated street prostitution, but for the few sex workers remaining, working conditions have become much tougher. 'The clients are extremely nervous. Most of them don't dare come here,' says Nadia, a 22-year-old from Oslo who has been a sex worker for eight years. Since January 1, men who buy sex face up to six months in jail, pay a fine or face both. The law prohibits the buying of sex but not the sale, so the prostitute goes free. (TRULS BREKKE/AFP/Getty Images)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: (L-R) Brazilian prostitutes Regina, Jane Eloy and Maria model clothes from the fashion brand DASPU, a firm supported by the Non-Governmental Organization Da Vida (To the Life), which supports the project of a new group of prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro, 17 December 2005. DASPU has planned to act as a support to old prostitutes at the end of their professional lives. (ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL, REPUBLIC OF KOREA: With policeman looking on, South Korean prostitutes sit wearing white mourning clothes take part in a protest rally against new enforcement laws targetting human traffickers, in front of a government office complex building in Seoul, 06 December 2004. Dozens of people gathered to protest a government move to regulate and restrict the local sex industry — including a tough anti-prostitution law which took place in September. (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

Mombasa, KENYA: Photo taken 20 June 2007 shows a brothel run by a number of prostitutes with one of them lying on a bed next to a child, a product of the trade, at Kenya's coastal town of Mombasa where sex-tourism, increasingly involving minors, has become rampant. Between 10 and 15 thousand under-aged girls are now involved in the growing industry that has prompted the Kenya government and hotel owners and managers to introduce a code that must be adopted by hotel operators along the Kenyan coast to prevent the prostitution of minors, many of them girls, by denying suspected under-age clients that are unaccompanied by a related adult admission without proof of age. (TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images)

DUBI, CZECH REPUBLIC - OCTOBER 25: Prostitutes attempt to lure passing motorists from the display window of a roadside brothel October 25, 2003 in Dubi, Czech Republic. Prostitution is big business along the Czech Republic's borders with Germany and Austria, and the country has become a major transit point for criminal gangs trafficking women from eastern Europe into western Europe. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA: Estefani, a sexual worker who is member of the female soccer team 'Estrellas de la Linea' goes back to her 'laboral activities', 23 September 2004 in Guatemala City. The team denounced it has been discriminated by authorities after being expelled from the female soccer local championship because of their profession. (ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Taiwan prostitutes, holding hats and masks of their deceased colleagues, protest outside the presidential building in Tapei, 17 September 2004 accusing President Chen Shui-bian of depriving their professional rights. They charged that Chen, when serving as Taipei mayor, refused to follow a 1998 decision of Taipei city council to postpone ending legal prostitution by two years as the immediate crackdown that year had forced many of them out of jobs and driven some into debts. (SAM YEH/AFP/Getty Images)

An Iraqi mother (R) with her 14 years-old daughter, both of them prostitutes, wait for clients at their home in Baghdad 07 September 2003. With the end of the Saddam Hussein's regime, many Iraqi women prostitute themselves to survive. AFP PHOTO/ Thomas COEX (Photo credit should read THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images)

Greek prostitutes argue during a protest held by more than 50 prostitutes in front of a brothel in Athens 04 August 2003. The women protested the plans by the Athens municipality to shut down at least 15 brothels for being too close to churches and schools. (FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: A South African prostitute waits for a client on a Johanneburg street corner 23 August 2002, despite the local police effort to 'clean' the city, before the World Summit on Sustainable Development starting 26 August. (Photo credit: YOAV LEMMER/AFP/Getty Images)

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - JULY 03: A Prostitute works on Auckland's Karangahape Road, Thursday. The new law passed legalizing prostitution makes it easy for girls to work the streets during the day as well as the night. (Photo by Dean Purcell/Getty Images)

Two teenage prostitutes ... wait in detention October 25, 2000 in the Juvenile police office in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. The girl in the middle is 7 months pregnant. There are an estimated 3000 to 4000 street children in Mongolia, a country where 36% of families live below the poverty level. About 20 nongovernmental shelters in Ulaan Bataar try to combat the problem by offering hot meals and places to wash and sleep. The shelters also encourage the children to attend a special school since many of them have no formal education. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Newsmakers)

Paris, FRANCE: French prostitutes demonstrate, 18 March 2006 in Paris, during a 'Hooker Pride' march in protest at a three-year-old old law banning them from soliciting on the street. Banner reads 'passiv soliciting = activ repression'. (FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/Getty Images)

JAKARTA, INDONESIA - JULY 10: A prostitute shows an outreach worker how she uses a condom July 10, 2004 in Jakarta, Indonesia. A recent report issued by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS states that six provinces are now being classified as badly affected with a serious increase in 2003 among drug users and sex workers. The 15th International AIDS conference will be held in Bangkok beginning next week. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Earlier: Can't Buy Her Love
German Sex Workers Feel The Pinch Of The Recession
Helping Women Help Themselves
The Problem With The "Happy Hooker" Myth
When Did Sex Work Become Less Stigmatized Than "Menial" Labor?

[All images via Getty Images]

While you might hear the words "Daily Mail" and "escort addiction" and mentally call for the check - I did - Andy Bodle's essay is suprisingly interesting. Misguided? Troubled? Worrisome? Sure - as only those things written with "now I know better" authority can be - but also thought-provoking. See, Bodle's not, he's at pains to tell us, the kind of guy who would have ever seen himself paying for sex. And he says now, "I'm ashamed of exploiting women, and of having supported a degrading, dangerous industry. I don't expect anyone to condone what I did.But now, after many years have passed, I want to explain why I was propelled into that addiction - and why so many other men are, too." And he;s still kind glad he did it!

Well-educated and successful, Bodle nevertheless had a disastrous history with women: mocked in school, painfully shy, and by his own reckoning stood up 27 times in the 90s. Cue violins.

When I hit 30, I hadn't had a girlfriend - or even a kiss - for three years. I was starting to feel desperate: lonely and with little to look forward to. I'd never seriously thought about paying for female company: my image of the sex industry was of kerbcrawlers and kneetremblers in needle-strewn alleyways. But, according to the article, it was very safe and very clean. You visited the girls in plush, rented apartments; you were paying for companionship, not sex.

Of course, although he treats the transactions like dates - insisting on buying the escorts dinner, bringing them flowers, and choosing to believe the pros "like" him - they invariably end in sex. And not shockingly, this boosts his ego. He gets 'hooked' - blowing through his savings, forswearing normal dating altogether. "My reasoning went like this: why should I hang around trying to pick up women in bars when I could meet far more attractive women with no risk of getting hurt emotionally?"

As we've seen, the man is susceptible to the media; not shockingly, he falls for one of the working girls, even paying for her to spend his birthday with him. "I was convinced, after that, that Hayley and I had a special connection. Maybe the whole Pretty Woman myth was true. Maybe, if I played my cards right, I could persuade her to quit escorting and be with me."

Um, no. His bubble is further burst when one woman mentions that his visit will allow her to pay her electric bill. And he has a revelation.

In a year of visiting escorts, this was the first incontrovertible evidence I'd heard that not every girl did escorting because they enjoyed it. Some of them were doing it because they had to. And even though Sylvia seemed to like me, even though I had helped her out in the short-term, I was helping to perpetuate that situation. Perhaps I'd been naive not to notice anything amiss before; perhaps I was just too immersed in my own self-pity at being single to worry about anyone else's feelings. But the truth is that up until that point, I had genuinely been convinced that all the girls I'd seen were selling their bodies entirely of their own free will.

When one escort starts crying, he leaves without sex and gives up the lifestyle, gradually easing back into non-paid relationships. While the depth of his delusion - or denial - is kind of hard to grasp, we try to stay with him. So, does he regret it? Well, here's where the article gets weird.

Many people say that men who use escort girls hate women. That may be true for some; but in my case, I believe those escorts stopped me hating women. I feel gratitude towards those sweet, beautiful girls for the warmth they showed me. Guilt, absolutely, that I helped perpetuate an industry that is unregulated and potentially unsafe - but also gratitude. I firmly believe that while some sex workers are escorts by choice, thousands of others are not. And the fact is, when you book an escort, you never know which you are going to get. And that's why I'll never again try to re-create the 'girlfriend experience'. The truth is that it's an unedifying sham.

Basically, what's at war here are what he thinks he should think about the women, and his own self-interest. Is he sorry he - maybe - exploited women and promoted an industry he finds problematic? Nah, it was worth it! And in some ways this piece underlies what many find worrisome about the world of high-class escorting (as opposed to the more obvious pitfalls and degradations of less rareified forms of sex work.) That in some ways it's the men like Bodle - lonely, naive, certainly self-deluding - who are a big part of the problem. Because while these men might treat an escort with respect and kindness, they're also buying into the fantasy - allowing them to misrepresent their own actions, and, more to the point, effecting the way they view real-life relationships. Take that telling admission that now he can have "more attractive" women with less effort - do we really think this superficiality and entitlement won't carry over into a normal dating life? To say nothing of "relationships" - which he admits he considers them - centered around pleasing him, fulfilling him, demanding nothing? Sure, good training wheels. And we're not even getting into the sex element.

It's easy, as women, to underestimate the self-esteem issues inherent in this kind of give-and-take. It's funny: when I ask some male friends (the type who'd 'never pay for sex') what they make of men who do, one word always comes up: "pathetic." A guy who can't get sex on his own terms seems, implicitly, more problematic than one who'd indulge in an unhealthy power dynamic, or a current system that allows for the degradation of women (even allowing for a best-case-scenario view of sex work.) And ironically, of course, it's this same kind of judgment that draws men like Bodle into "addictions" like the one he describes - a wish for that kind of validation. And tying self-esteem up with paid sex? Well, as plenty of women have found out, the Pretty Woman scenario rarely works out.

I Was Addicted To Call Girls: A Respected Script Writer Explains How He Succumbed To The Lure Of Paying For Sex [Daily Mail]

McReynolds, as she told the Washington Post, says that she was first offered money for sex at the age of 13. What wasn't in the Post story was that she was given the money by a family friend, who invited her over when his wife wasn't home. She says she never really considered herself a prostitute, telling NPR's listeners, "I just thought I was having sex for money." But sex for money led to drug abuse, which led to more sex for money: what went from servicing men in her social group quickly became street prostitution when she needed an easy way to support a burgeoning heroin habit.

Harrison's path to prostitution came around somewhat differently: she began having sex at 12 with members of a (somewhat) older peer group she met while partying, going to clubs, drinking and doing drugs. She began having sex for money — she, too, never thought of herself as a prostitute — within her social circle to get things (money, drugs, etc.). But as her substance abuse spiraled out of control, she turned to prostitution to support her habits, her basic needs and the lifestyle she wished to keep living.

Both women said that, in their heads, they expected that, eventually, they would end up leading some sort of glamorous life — and Harrison specifically references the idea that she expected that the end of Pretty Woman was always just around the next corner. Instead, she and McReynolds ended up in the court system, as addicts and, in McReynold's case, infected with HIV.

The saddest uplifting part, of many sad parts, of the interview is when Harrison talks about how, in participating in McReynolds' program, she learned that she didn't have to rely on men for self-esteem or to live her life.

"I must say, in the beginning, my self esteem was very low. And for me to start working on the outside part of me was a big plus for me. For the ladies, when I would arrive at the group, the ladies would give me compliments. It wasn't from men. It was from the ladies. 'You look nice," or this and that, this and that. It boosted my self esteem up, it was not from a man, and I considered what the the ladies were saying was genuine. They didn't want nothing in return. I didn't have to do anything. And that's what I received from the program. As I was receiving the information, I kind of allowed myself to open up. It helped me with learning how to... you know, no situation's gonna occur on the street that I don't have to listen to a man, or I don't need a man to tell me that you look good. I don't need someone to pick up and ask me if I need a ride. I can get to where I'm going without that now. You know, always finding a shortcut, it always leads to, at least for me, always going back to the same old life — partying, drinking, having sex.

Both of the women talked about how prostitution, and the seemingly easy money they earned from it, made it hard to let go of the lifestyle, despite the damage it did to them in other ways — in the Post article, McReynolds says intimacy issues stemming from her years of prostitution helped end her marriage. For both women, the key to leaving the lifestyle was realizing that they had value to themselves — and to other people — outside of their ability to be sexual.

So, now go tell another woman she looks nice today. And be sincere.

Prostitution A Difficult Job To Escape [NPR]

Earlier: Helping Women Help Themselves

Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason says she doesn't thing it's all that great for women.

The fact is that booking clients online and controlling the circumstances of the rendezvous probably made prostitutes and other users of the site much safer than they would otherwise have been-it's a little tougher to google a guy you just picked up on a side street by leaning into the window of his car. So this is probably a net loss for the safety of the sexually adventurous and/or those who like their sex with a little capitalism mixed in.

While I disagree that people seek out paid sex acts for ideological reasons or just because they like "adventure," many prostitutes do, apparently, utilize Craigslist for the ease of the transactions and the ability to potentially track down clients.

As Hunter Walker at WebNewser points out, though, shutting down the Erotic Services boards (which already cost money to advertise on) will likely do little to stop sex workers from using the site to target potential clients.

Ads for prostitution regularly appear on other areas of Craigslist and getting rid of "erotic services" shouldn't make much of a difference. Today, a quick scan through the first few ads in Craigslist's "casual encounters" personals page for New York revealed multiple posts that were clearly advertising illicit services.

So, then, why do it? Well, Madigan and other prosecutors have been trying for ages to get founder Craig Newmark to better police his boards with regards to prostitution advertisements. Law enforcement has been known to respond to potential advertisements to arrest prostitutes. But with the arrest of the so-called Craigslist killer, politicians and the media finally had a point of leverage against Newmark. They're going after it now under the guise of protecting us ladies from all those big, bad men out there that will try to hurt us. Never mind that prostitutes advertise in other ways, or that the big bad men that are supposedly answering the ads for paid sexual services are the supposed predators: they're going to go after the women (and sometimes men) that supposedly need protecting. They're wrapping their law enforcement strategy in a big, old, paternalistic blanket! Don't you feel warm?

Prostitutes Get Screwed (And A Happy Ending) [Reason]
Craiglist Getting Rid Of 'Erotic Services'... Or Are They? [WebNewser]

Earlier: Craigslist Caves On "Erotic Services" And Goes Adult

She runs a program called the Angels Project, which gives prostitutes a chance to avoid prison sentences by attending classes, working, getting job training and getting clean. Most of her clients bear little resemblance to Ashley Dupre.

Many of these women, ages 18 to 60, are mothers, grandmothers and even great-grandmothers. They would blend in easily in a grocery store line or at midweek church services. Their clothes are baggy, not tight. Instead of high heels, many go to work in tennis shoes. Most find their clients on the street, out in the open, with little protection from sexually transmitted diseases, violence and arrest.

Most of the women are trying to support their drug habits, and others are engaged in "survival sex" to pay the bills or buy food for their children, McReynolds said.

This is the other side of sex work — not the woman who does it to fund a lifestyle, but the women who are forced or coerced into it for food.

McReynolds knows of what she speaks.

The women know the outlines of her story: She was 11 when she started smoking marijuana and drinking J&B scotch. When McReynolds was 13, a 60-year-old neighbor paid her $40 for sex. Five years later, she was using heroin and selling her body in alleys, cars and abandoned buildings. She quit school and started punching a street clock, split shift, 5 to 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., charging $20 at a time when crack addicts were getting as little as $5.

McReynolds tells the women that low self-esteem is behind their behavior, and she embraces the role of disciplinarian. She hugs a crying woman who says she missed classes to tend to her sick mother but added a month to the woman's required stay. "You have one last chance," McReynolds says. "You can't help your mother if you don't help yourself first."

Her goal is to save them before their behavior catches up with them. In 1985, McReynolds learned she was HIV-positive.

But she doesn't coddle the women who take the diversion to have an easier time than jail: she and her fellow counselors report women that don't show up for class, storm out and return to prostitution. She understands, but she doesn't let them walk all over her

.Not everyone is receptive to spending four months of her time going to classes, three or four hours a day, and staying out of trouble. The program graduated 129 women between October 2006 and December of last year. But 209 others were booted out for failing drug tests or missing classes.

One recent afternoon, after classes, two women got into a car instead of the van waiting to take them to their residential program. Staffers ran screaming after them, but the women did not return.

She recognizes that, despite therapy and a nearly twenty years away from sex work, it still has effects on her.

Eventually, McReynolds got therapy and found jobs as an HIV counselor and outreach worker for women trying to get their lives together after prison. She got married, but the relationship didn't last. Among other things, flashbacks from the streets made intimacy difficult, McReynolds said.

The program itself is deemed effective by D.C. police, prosecutors and judges, as few that finish the program end up returning to prostitution, in no small part due to McReynolds' insistence that women get their GEDs and that they are provided with basic job training (like how to dress appropriately for an office). One woman says:

Simmons, who didn't leave prostitution even when she had a broken leg and was on crutches, has nothing but admiration for McReynolds. "She taught us how to be ladies. I thought of myself as a woman, obviously, but never a lady," she said.

That's the self-esteem McReynolds was trying to get her to find.

On the Street, Selling Hope [Washington Post]

Some brothels have cut prices or added free promotions while others have introduced all-inclusive flat-rate fees. Free shuttle buses, discounts for seniors and taxi drivers, as well as "day passes" are among marketing strategies designed to keep business going.

Yeah, you read that right. AARP members and taxi drivers get discounts, which is probably enough to keep my from dating German taxi drivers or elderly German men for the rest of my natural life.

It gets worse, sort of.

Anke Christiansen, manager of the "GeizHaus," said the effects of the economic crisis were clear. "The regular customers who used to come by two or three times a week are only coming by once or twice a week now."

A "GeizHaus" client, who gave his name as Pascal, said: "Naturally we're all feeling the effects of the crisis." He added that he could no longer afford his usual two or three visits a week.

GeizHaus charges $50 American for sex acts, which means Pascal used to drop $150 every week for sex with a professional sex worker. Therapy costs less than that, dude.

One brothel has an all-you-can-[whatever] policy:

Berlin's "Pussy Club" has attracted media attention with its headline-grabbing "flat rate" — a 70-euro admission charge for unlimited food, drink and sex between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

But I'm totally sure the sex workers there are getting their fair share of money, right?

There are, of course, concerns about new sex workers entering the field because of the economic crisis.

[Stephanie Klee, a prostitute in Berlin and former leader of the German association of sex workers] and others said they were alarmed that amateur prostitutes — mostly women with low-paid careers — were increasingly turning to prostitution to make ends meet.

"More and more women are moonlighting on the weekends," said Ahrens. "They're not able to get by with their main job and are in pretty dire straits. For some it works out okay but it's tough for some others and they often don't stay very long.

Well, at the point at which one is sexually servicing elderly men and taxi drivers for half price, participating in all-you-can-fuck days and constantly renegotiating your fees downward, yes, I suppose the women who take up sex work to pay the bills don't find the rewards, such as they are, worth the risks.

Amid Recession, Oldest Profession Gets ‘Creative' [MSNBC]

With the state's unemployment rate topping 10 percent (making it the 3rd highest in the nation) and Providence's unemployment rate at 11.5 percent, club manager Bob Travisono feels like giving back to the community.

"So many people in Rhode Island have been hit hard by the economy that we wanted to do our part," he said, adding that he couldn't think of a better place than the Foxy Lady to find that ideal job.

In fact, he says, they're looking to hire "bartenders, waitresses, masseuses and strippers." (Can some one please tell me what legal services masseuses provide at strip clubs? Is this common?)

With the economy in such dire straits, apparently Providence-area men aren't taking my advice or keeping up with the trend to stay home and fuck themselves, they're heading out to drown their sorrows in bare breasts and watered-down drinks. I guess it's just another way in which the economic crisis is keeping more women employed than men — even in the sex industry. Yay us?

Strip Club Fair Offers Solution To Skimpy Job Market [CNN]

Earlier: During The Recession, Go F*** Yourself
Will The Recession Make Workplace Equity Better For Women?
Kinkonomics: Is Freelance Fetish Work A Good Way To Earn Extra Cash?

The anonymous blogger says that while the quantity and "quality" of call girls has not changed, there seems to be higher price elasticity of demand — i.e. the more a call girl charges, the fewer clients she can expect. The post continues:

On the Eros guide (warning contains explicit content), the central clearing house of escort services in the New York area (of course, I only visited the Eros cite to research my forthcoming article on the subject), some of the "VIP" providers are offering "Wall Street adjusted courtesy rates". A non trivial number of the women also claim to be formerly employed in the "financial services industry".

Behind the blogger's I'm-so-naughty gags (he [or, to be fair, she] also writes that "there may be some guilt-ridden bankers in New York looking to get spanked") is the interesting observation that more people may enter sex work during a recession. These are usually people who were "already on the fringe of the industry" — the blogger cites a one-time kept man who became a rent boy when the economic crisis drove his benefactor out of town.

But talking about prostitutes like they're sacks of sugar — with supply, demand, and price elasticity — ignores larger questions about the social position of sex work. Swedish academic Susanne Dodillet had such questions when doing her comparison of Swedish and German prostitution laws. Germany recently legalized brothels and made prostitutes eligible for all the benefits of other skilled workers. Sweden, meanwhile, passed a 1999 describing prostitution "as an unacceptable expression of society's genderised power structures." Dodillet says Swedes are more trusting of their government to provide moral guidance, while Germans remember the Third Reich. She also writes,

While Swedish prostitution policies are based on a normative view of how equality should manifest itself for women and men, the German left emphasises that there is a large range of sexual identities and modes of expression. According to this way of thinking, selecting some as more equal and thereby superior to others entails discriminating against deviants.

Will a recession make us more accepting of prostitution as more people enter the industry? Will greater trust in our government after the departure of Bush II actually pave the way for stricter prostitution laws? Or are we just going to keep treating sex work with a combination of tacit acceptance and occasional persecution? Unfortunately, history suggests the latter.

Sex workers in the recession [Economist]
Is Sex Work? [EurekAlert]

These kind of jobs don't usually involve actual sex, writes Tracy Quan (a former call girl) for The Daily Beast. "The sector is poised for expansion as more unemployed and underemployed women begin looking for extra cash." And it doesn't matter if you're not really "into" the scene. Writes Quan:

Because many of these freelance pro-dommes are just supplementing their incomes and don’t plan on staying in sex work forever, they may not be as erotically hardcore in their outside lives. “I wasn't really that interested” in S&M, says Chloe. “I got involved because it was easy money. The strap-on? I'm OK with it, but it's not really a personal interest of mine.”

Maybe you're thinking, why spank a businessman or let some dude suck your toes if you're not even into it? But the same could be said of answering phones, making a latte or cleaning someone's house. (In Mumbai, profesional men are finding that sex work on the side helps them earn a decent living.)

On the other hand, unlike being a receptionist or a barista, working in the sex industry is an occupation some women might be reluctant to talk to friends and family about. Chloe, the art student Quan interviewed for her piece, says her mother "would probably cry" and be "very upset" about her fetish gigs, although Quan speculates: "some parents would be secretly proud of a daughter resourceful enough to hack the increasingly rigid class system that permeates New York life."

Still: Do you believe a job is a job? Do you believe extra money is extra money? If there's no kissing, no sex, just spanking or foot worship, is there any harm in freelance fetish work? Quan puts it this way: "Even if you’re bossing your client around in a pair of thigh-high boots, you’re still working in a service industry. And after an hour, your feet hurt."

Kinkonomics [The Daily Beast]
Male Professionals Double As Sex Workers For Extra Income [Hindustan Times]

MEGAN says:
Graphics of supposedly aroused women aside, I think we should first off give some credit to Daniel Bergner for writing a much more nuanced piece about Meredith Chivers' research than did his colleague Andy Newman earlier this summer who gleaned nothing from it other than women are really, really bi. Thankfully, the longer form piece allows Chivers to clarify one very key point, which Chivers says:

"I hammer home with my students, 'Arousal is not consent.' "

I think that's a really key point actually, for both men and women: men don't necessarily get erections because they want to have sex at a given moment, and women don't necessarily get southern blood flow (the physiological ladyboner, such as) and lubricated because they do, either.

And although I think the discussion about rape fantasies and physical arousal during rape is interesting and key to developing a better understanding, I think that Chivers' colleague Marta Meana sort of misses the point of a rape fantasy to a large degree. Chivers findings that women become at least minorly physically aroused by depictions of sex regardless of the depiction — and Meana's point that the female body hides its arousal from a distance while the man's is (pardon the pun) rather pointed, which means that, social constructs of women as sexual aside, it's possible that we are also biologically attuned to view the female form as more arousing regardless of orientation — are together quite interesting. Chivers work indicates that there are quite possibly evolutionary reasons for women's ease to some level of physical arousal despite circumstances — which, sadly, says a depressing lot about the long-term and wide-spread existence of rape from our earliest days — and hammers home the point that arousal isn't consent.

But Meana's points in particular about rape fantasies, and to a lesser degree Chivers', really stuck with me. This idea that women want in some way to consent to being ravished, to allow themselves to be "taken" or to be forced into submission and, through that, into enjoyment strikes a different chord for me than it does for Meana. Chivers says:

"It's the wish to be beyond will, beyond thought," Chivers said about rape fantasies. "To be all in the midbrain."

But even that says that it's not biological, that it's cultural and psychological, that it's some desire to overcome women's own personal barriers to full sexual enjoyment through being forced over them. That's sort of a sad state, I think. Sex is great when you are all in your mid-brain, when what you're told ought to feel good or what is supposedly good is gone and rational thought has fled; when you don't give a shit that your ass is dimpled or your breasts are sagging or that he has a belly or whatever; when you don't care what noises you are making or he is; because those are things the social-you cares about and that version of yourself has been subsumed by the biological-urges-are-paramount iteration of self. And I just feel like this idea that women need to be desired to the point of domination fails to recognize that some part of that — in my opinion, some large part of that — is rooted in the Madonna-Whore social construct in which "good" girls don't want it as much as boys, or don't like it as much, or don't enjoy it as much, rather than in some inherent biological wiring.

ANNA says:
I'm less interested in the rape-fantasies discussion than you are, probably because on some level it makes me uncomfortable, and probably because I don't feel I have the tools to adequately address it, but can we stop here and, as Meana somewhat suggested, cease to use the phrase "rape fantasy"? The underlying definition of the word "rape" implies not only a lack of power but lack of choice, and for those who fantasize about being dominated, to me (and to Meana) there is a lot of power and choice inherent in that fantasy: you get to pick the time, the place, the person. As for the sexologists' evolutionary theory that the female sexual organs — even under threat of harm — can and will protectively lubricate, that is no surprise to anyone who has willingly had intercourse with a partner despite not exactly being in the "mood"... and found herself becoming wet "despite" herself.

To address your point about being "biologically attuned to view the female form as more arousing," I agree that it is possible, but I don't quite buy it. Having come of age in the early '80s, when most every Hollywood movie seemed to be a college-comedy headlined by men but made for the express purpose of showing naked, nubile young women, my ideas about what was considered "sexy" were firmly rooted in the female form. I think in many cases, they still are. Although it's hard for me to say whether or not I was consciously mentally attracted to these images, I sure as hell know my body was; but was that my biology speaking or my subconscious as influenced by the culture, in which "sex" = "naked breasts, and crotch shots"? I will say that Mr. Bergner's early line about Chivers' research — "the readings from the plethysmograph and the keypad weren't in much accord" — resonated quite strongly with me. Or, as Chivers says later down, "the horrible reality of psychological research is that you can't pull apart the cultural from the biological."

What I was most interested in, and kept coming back to all day on Saturday after my first read-through of this piece, was the idea of how "narcissism" plays a role in female desire:

The generally accepted therapeutic notion that, for women, incubating intimacy leads to better sex is, Meana told me, often misguided. “Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need.

Although I have a problem with the word "narcissism" to describe this phenomenon, the underlying idea, "being desired is the orgasm", stuck with me. (I should have said this earlier but I think it's obvious at this point that I am coming at this piece not so much from an analytical POV as a personal one.) I would say that, over the course of my adult life, a good half of the sexual urges directed at a particular man (whether I knew him intimately or not) sprung up on their own (i.e., I found him attractive) and the other half made themselves evident only after (and, I would guess, in response to) interest expressed by him. It's as if discovering that I was the object of someone's lust, interest, or curiosity flipped a switch inside me to the "on" position.

MEGAN says:
Well, goodness knows I never lose interest in rape fantasy discussion, but I think we're sort of saying something without even saying it. It's a rape fantasy not necessarily because it's about domination and forced submission within the context of sex, but because it's a fantasy of what rape is: that it's about sex, or physical desire, or a man desiring you and so losing control of his civilized self that he reverts into something animalistic (I believe at this point Dennis Prager would bring up rape-y chickens) not bound by social mores. And, yet, rape isn't about the expression of physical desire but about the expression of dominance, sadistic dominance, over more than one's body. Actual rape is removed from sex, insofar as it isn't about sex but that sex is the tool used to achieve deeper and more sociopathic ends. Rape is rooted in society, inextricably so, because the use of sex as a tool to achieve those ends requires the framework of consent to be able to subvert as a means to a different end than simple sexual gratification. So actual rape isn't about losing control or about giving up control or, one might say, if one were more versed in the language of the BDSM scene, topping from the bottom. Rape fantasies are, as you say, fantasies about submitting to a supposed aggressor with full consent and knowledge that you can be the one ending it. It's a fantasy of domination even as it's a fantasy about what rape really is. But I think it's a useful description of what the role-playing is for those reasons. I don't have a problem with the term: unlike one of the commenters on the article, I have no illusions that either of the men that sexually assaulted me did so because they thought I "wanted" it. They might have chosen to justify their actions to themselves or others in that way afterwards, but there was no mistaking what was going on either time.

And, the point about being biologically attuned is more Meana's point than mine.

Meana explained the gender imbalance onstage in a way that complemented Chivers's thinking. "The female body," she said, "looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex" — a suggestion that sends a charge through both men and women.

Though I agree more with you that such is most definitely cultural (of course, we all know I have a prediliction for nuture over nature arguments), it's an interesting counterpoint to the argument that arousal is not desire/consent, particularly as it applies to men and women and Chivers' findings that women respond sexually to even naked women engaged in mundane activities but not to unaroused men — though that, too, could be cultural or social, since we're sort of taught that aroused men are indicative of — as you point out — being desired.

In terms of the "narcissism" argument, though, I am not convinced that this is an inherent difference between men and women. Aren't we all equally narcisstic? Don't we all kind of get off from being desired? Is that not the impetus for the "girlfriend experience" in prostitution, to take it to an extreme I don't like? Is showing an interest in a man who might not otherwise find you attractive not equally a turn-on for him? I mean, I think women are more conditioned not to set themselves up for rejection in quite the same way, certainly, but showing an interest in a guy, at least in my experience, can work about the same way. So I'm not sure it's female narcissism as much as human narcissism.

Meana's point with regards to narcissism and masturbation were really interesting, actually. She wrote:

Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women's erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it.

I wonder, though, if it sort of depends on how one defines pleasure. I guess, to me, the thought that men don't masturbate to orgasm thinking about orgasming is sort of hilarious? But it makes me wonder if Meana is definining "getting pleasure" as being penetrated, and "giving pleasure" as... oral sex? Or something? Is a man automatically thinking of "giving" pleasure if he is penetrating a woman (in my experience, the reality of that is, um, well, it's not automatic) and a woman only receiving it if she is being penetrated? But I guess I don't define myself as being pleasured if I am being penetrated; I think of it as both giving and receiving it. It is interesting how much Meana comes back to issues of power and control, now that I think about it.

ANNA says:
I agree with you about the "narcissism" argument not necessarily being specific to women, but it was the first time I had really ever heard it broached w/r/t sexual desire and response (let's be clear I am not a voracious reader of sex research), and, although it could be interpreted as insulting, condescending and sexist — and is most assuredly politically incorrect — I didn't take it that way, mainly because I don't think that the researcher MEANT it that way. But to answer your question, "don't we all kind of get off from being desired," I suppose the easy answer is "yes", but there are such subtleties even there, and for some women, "being desired" can quickly go from flattering to intimidating or scary.

Agreed on the narcissism and masturbation: I wish Meana and/or Bergner had defined exactly what is meant by "giving pleasure" and "getting it" actually. And that, of course, brings up a larger, really interesting question that, although it has no one "answer", is still something I'd want to hear from people: What do you think about when you masturbate, and how would you define it: As "giving pleasure" or "getting it"?

Jesus Christ, there was a lot to unpack in this piece and I feel like we didn't even touch on a lot of other, important things — the methodologies used in research (a friend emailed me today saying, "Apparently the research study that showed women were more catholic in their capacity for arousal than men are was performed with equipment that can't tell the difference between a near-orgasmic blood flow to the vaginal walls and a research subject shifting in her chair? Are they fucking kidding us?"); questions about the participants in the research and whether they represent the "norm" in any way; what that "norm" is; the fact that a man wrote the piece; more exploration into same sex attraction among self-identified, firmly "heterosexual" women... the list goes on.

What I came away with ultimately, were dozens of questions, no answers, but a renewed desire to, as Chivers says she hopes her research will, "shift the way" I perceive my capacity to get turned on.

MEGAN says:
Strangely enough, I can answer some of the methodological questions, having participated in one of these sex studies. First off, they screen you pretty thoroughly — people with a strong aversion, morally or otherwise, to pornography are generally left out because of the inhibition factor mentioned in the piece. Second off, the plethysmograph they use is a really blunt instrument — it doesn't measure changes in what is going on in your vagina as much as it measures light. It's sort of the size of a regular plastic tampon applicator, fitted with a light sensor and a light emitter. When you insert it, it establishes a baseline measurement for light reflections, based on its location in one's vagina and then, as one becomes aroused and the vagina becomes engorged with blood, more light is absorbed than reflected and that's how it measures things. But, as you shift, the light and the sensor move closer to (or further away from) the walls, which impacts how the light refraction is measured. So, that's why it's not as sensitive a measure, but it's also what makes it relatively easy to pick up the difference when dissecting the data.

Also, Chivers' research doesn't touch on same-sex attraction among self-identified heterosexual women, and Lisa Diamond's research is the one that touches on fluidity in sexuality among self-identified lesbians and bisexual women. Chivers' research only shows that women respond to sexual stimuli physically in ways they aren't conscious of — but, again, physical arousal isn't consent or even desire. Both Chivers and Meana speculate that it is partly an evolutionary response to overall sexual stimuli (keep in mind, watching monkeys fuck got a sexual response from women) and partly, perhaps, a social/cultural response based on being socialized to find female nudity attractive and arousing. They specifically aren't arguing that it makes women more bisexual, because that's both desire and consent, not arousal. I think most of us would agree no matter if we get a little physically stimulated watching monkeys fuck, that doesn't mean we want to fuck monkeys. We just tend to want to fuck who we'd want to fuck anyway.

What Do Women Want? [New York Times]

Related: What Women Want (Maybe) [New York Times]

Earlier: Are All Women A Little Bi? In A Word: No.

Bakewell's argument is that, since time immemorial, men liked to fuck women without actually having to deal with them, and making it into a monetary transaction suits those needs pretty well. She says:

There is, whether we like it or not, a compelling need for many men to have sex without strings, sex with a stranger that is over and done with once the cash has changed hands. Throughout history they have found ways of doing so, whether with sacred temple maidens or in the garrison brothels set up to serve fighting armies. We can chase it up and down the legal ladders, hound it down dark alleys and squalid bedsits, but its persistence tells us that we won't eradicate it. So let's face up to the fact and make paying for sex legal.

Bakewell takes issue with the British government's initiatives to crack down on street prostitution (arguably the least-regulated form with the highest incidence of coercion) and on their efforts to ramp up penalties on men that patronize trafficked women. In her mind, making the whole thing legal and then regulating it is the best (and most feminist) way to go about it, objectification-objections be damned.

Of course, she undermines her argument on two counts. First she argues that regulating brothels will allow residents to keep prostitution out of their neighborhoods — though she points out that a law that deregulated the lap-dancing cafes ended up doubling their number and giving locals little control over having them in their neighborhoods. Second, she says, "I want to see a world where women have enough self-esteem to stand up for themselves against exploitation and abuse." Is sex work not exploitative? Does decriminalization prevent abuse? Does legalizing what some argue is the objectification of women lead to less exploitation and abuse of women in society? Those are difficult arguments to make. Bakewell, having met a handful of regulated Dutch prostitutes and having found them not terribly fucked up, thinks that such is the case. The women at Nevada's brothels might tend to disagree with her description of regulated sex workers:

These particular women - like those I met at a lap-dancing club - weren't the sad dregs of humanity. They had a robust attitude to their lives, a lively street intelligence and an eagerness to better themselves.

Apparently, since Bakewell has found a clatch of well-adjusted strippers and sex workers, we can decriminalize it and stop worrying so much about trafficking and the reasons (or abusers) that drive women into prostitution?

That said, I think there are plenty of good, solid reasons to decriminalize the selling of sex, not the least of which is the ability to then regulate sex work (which Bakewell touches on, albeit briefly). There are also good arguments in favor of the state's interest in criminalizing the buying of sex, and in favor of ramping up punishments on the men that patronize women without giving a thought about whether they are being coerced (since, let's be honest, they're already treating them as objects). But let's not argue that feminists are wrong that sex work is part of the objectification women — because we're not wrong — or that trafficking isn't an important issue that deserves lots of attention, or that there aren't sex workers who are exploited and abused even within legalized systems. That's just willful blindness and unhelpful to the argument — sort of like the men that have sex with trafficked women.

Paying For Sex — What's So Wrong With That? [The Times]

Related: No Federal Prostitution Charges for Spitzer [NY Times]
Election Summary - November 4, 2008 [San Francisco Department Of Elections]

Earlier: To Regulate, Or Not To Regulate: Regarding Prostitution, That's Still The Question
UK Suggests That Men Who Patronize Trafficked Prostitutes Be Prosecuted
Recession And Sex Work