The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Virgin Speaks

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

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

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

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

Selling Sex and Selling a Kidney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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