The XX Factor: What women really think.

When Economies Are Tight, Virgins Go to Auction

Regarding the news that Natalie Dylan, a 22-year-old women's studies major, is selling her virginity to the highest bidder (currently, the top bid is at $3.7 million), Samantha wondered how selling one's virginity is, as Dylan claims, "empowering." For the expert opinion on the tricky relationship between sex, money, and empowerment, I asked Audacia Ray, a former sex worker and author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration, to weigh in with her thoughts on the matter. 

I'm a former sex worker (the put-myself-through-graduate-school kind) and a vocal advocate for sex worker's rights and the ability of women to make their own choices about their bodies and sexual expression both inside and outside of the sex industry. That said, I find the trope of "empowerment" a bit tiresome and oversimplified. The spectrum of conversations about female sexuality (commercial or otherwise) doesn't seem to actually be much of a spectrum: women can either be empowered or degraded about their sexuality. When I get asked about whether or not I felt empowered by my work in the sex industry, I always feel compelled to say yes, but I say it without much conviction. If I don't affirm that I'm empowered, that means I've been a victim—or that I'm about to hit the inquirer with a heady dose of semantics.

Jobs in the sex industry are often seen in a roughly hierarchical way by both people inside and outside the business, depending on the degree of nudity and sexual interaction and the amount of money one gets paid for the work. Stripping and modeling (sometimes even including porn) work seem to be increasingly acceptable, perhaps because they give the impression of flirting with naughtiness while the woman doing it is a good girl in bad circumstances. The stigma and the social price of crossing the line into sex for money is a bit different—and also viewed differently by law enforcement. The hierarchy tends to be enforced by "Never would I ever..." statements that sometimes enforce norms that aren't even all that logical but are driven by emotional reactions.

I'm all for people making money off of their assets and a bit of cunning marketing. If a girl can get $3.7 million for her virginity, why the hell not? But let's also step back a minute and separate sex and money. When the sex industry gets discussed, it's usually the sex part that is emphasized. The notion of empowerment that gets kicked around is solely about the sex act, not about the money. Maybe this is part of a cultural seduction that people want to buy into: the idea of the prostitute who is compelled to do her work because she's brimming over with sexual desire and the money is a nice side benefit. But the reality is that most sex workers, like other members of the work force, do their jobs because they get paid. So if you want to talk empowerment, maybe it's time to talk about money, too. Do Wall Street workers feel empowered? Well, maybe not in this economy.

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?