The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

"Things ... You Might Not Think Were Safe"

Meghan: And/but.

I'm with you that what we're talking about here is darker and deeper than any sea dingle. So I retract my earlier query about Spitzer's rationality, since clearly "reason" is not what's at issue. And I agree that someone's private sexual behavior/desires/fantasies have no necessary relationship to his/her public behavior, and "sketchy behavior in the bedroom doesn't necessarily correlate to deeper corruption in the courtroom or the city hall."

But here's what really bothers me about L'Affair Spitzer (and so far it's getting amazingly little media attention): Remember that little bit in the affidavit, in which the Feds recorded an exchange between two employees of Emperor's Club VIP—one apparently a sort of booker, and one the prostitute assigned to Spitzer? They have an conversation about whether "Client 9"—alleged to be Spitzer—is "difficult," and "Rachelle" comments that she's heard Client 9 will "ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe—you know—I mean that ... very basic things ..." To which "Kristen" responds, "'I have a way of dealing with that. ... I'd be like, listen dude, you really want the sex?' ... You know what I mean.'"

 A touch of bravado there—but what we glimpse, behind it, is a world in which the threat of sexual violence is omnipresent: Women are alone in hotel rooms with unpredictable, unknown men, who may demand things "you might not think are safe," or worse, and if a sex worker's "way of dealing with that" doesn't work, what immediate recourse does she have?

For obvious reasons, it's hard to get good stats on violence against sex workers, but this exchange reminds us that the world of high-end call girls isn't, in the end, all that far away from the violence of the streets. 

And that's what really bugs me about Spitzer. Not the adultery. Not the "crime" (I tend to think prostitution should probably be decriminalized, though I haven't thought it through completely yet). Not the fantasies, however dark they may have been.  But the creepy hints that somewhere, some more important line may have been crossed—that he treated these women whose bodies he bought in a way he knew no one ought to be treated—that fantasies about sex and power may have turned into abusive behavior that endangered real live human beings.