The XX Factor: What women really think.

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.