Guest Post: This is CNN?

Let's see, we've got Howard Stern, the Bunny Ranch and a 22-year-old virgin who isn't using her real name ... I'm looking around the web, and I'm seeing *nothing* that gives this story any credibility whatsoever.

 Virginity has been auctioned off online before ... and nobody has gotten six figures, let alone seven.

CNN should be embarrassed by their coverage for more than idiotic moralizing. They don't even have a story. The media is being played as suckers ... fish/barrel again.

Virginity auctions are not new, for instance see this story from 2004 -  Experts Predict Virginity Auctions to be the Next Boom.  Probably they are a lot more common than the commentators realise, in the current context which has reached a higher profile and price than perhaps Ms Dylan herself realised.

The context of the commentaries, while deplorable, at least place her actions in the broader context of the continuum of exchange (Zelitzer 2005) of sexual favours for commodities and services, and perhaps, hopefully blur some of the margins between the sterotyped commercial sex scene envisaged by the commentators and the more mainstream 'heteronormative' exchanges that go on. 

What perhaps is more interesting is the men (I am not assuming that no women or other genders pledged, but merely following the line of thinking of the publicity)  who have pledged such amounts, raising the question of the price that some men place on virginity, since this has more general implications. Perhaps they were just trying to help her out.   

Reference:

Zelizer VA. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princetown 2005

 One thing that struck a cord in your post was the disqualifying effect of sex work in future careers. Having a background in art and interior design, nothing that remotely overlaps issues of sex work, I still encounter this, even in some communities that are supportive of sex work and sex workers. Somehow, the notion of sex work discounts a persons abilities, skills and educaton.

 It's a stereotype that obviously runs deep, and realistically, one that will be around while.

Rebecca and Michael both picked up the threads I thought were most interesting also - not the fact of the auction itself, but rather the price that some men place on virginity on the one hand, and the way that doing sex as work is framed as contaminating or ruining a person for any other kind of work. 

Both those things send important messages about the place we give to sex in our dominant culture. It is somehow so special and so sacred as to be ruined if it comes into contact with the market place (and by extension anyone who would willingly trade it must also be ruined), and yet that status apparently makes it so desirable as to generate a willingness on the part of some people to pay large sums of money to participate in a woman's first intercourse. 

I guess what interests me now is the capacity members of this society have for holding contradictory ideas in their heads without acknowledging the contradictions! 

So what exactly is virginity? Is it tangible, is it measurable or able to be valued? Why is a man's virginity valued differently in society than a woman's? And why do women apparently 'lose' their virginity? Some have it stolen, others give it away, some apparently sell it with the understanding that having intercourse with a virgin is prized higher than intercourse with a woman who has had a previous sexual encounter. Virginity in a woman appears to be shrouded in mythology as some sacred ritual, the crossing of the hymenal threshold, a rite of her husband to break the knot. There are much fewer accounts suggesting that this might be a positive experience for a woman, although anecdotally many women describe it as a negative experience or disappointing for the reasons Lorraine mentions. Could it be that the expectations created by mythology doom women to be disappointed by reality, and that the price placed on virginity by Ms Dylan's suitors is, as Elizabeth suggests, an inherent contradiction - prized befopre the event - discounted thereafter.

Now, turning to the reference to sex work - is this sex work? It does not fit the conventional stereotypes, but does fall within the much broader construct of the exchange of sexuality for consideration. Ms Dylan and her sister are described as students. A study of college students last year suggests this is very common. Also there have been many studies now of students in sex work, which are fairly consistent across countries with an incidence of around 3-6%, and prevalence studies within towns and cities with large student populations suggest about 50% of sex workers are students.  The sentiments expressed by Lorraine are also very common in interviews with sex workers - someone pointed out to them that they were giving away what they could be charging for.  

The other issue here is the relation between sex work and other choices. Much is made by those morally opposed to sex work about rescuing women and exit schemes. Yet in practice most sex workers find themselves barred from alternative employment by the stigmatisation of their professional choices, and what many describe as the 'gap in the resume' problem. It is those who are most opposed to sex work who actually end up trapping women in sex work, if they wish to leave. Only decriminalisation, destigmatisation, normalisation and mainstreaming will genuinely enhance women's choices. Another consideration is that financial circumstances are a common reason for entry into sex work. Yet those opposed to sex work never consider addressing the predeterminants of unequal opportunity and wage disparity. Sex work remains one of the better financial choices for women in the service sector.

References

Jordan, J (1991) Working Girls: Women in the New Zealand Sex Industry talk to Jan Jordan, Auckland: Penguin

Jeffrey LA, MacDonald G: Sex workers in the Maritimes talk back. UBC Press, Vancouver 2007

Jeffrey and MacDonald: The economy of sex work in the Maritimes. Can Rev Soc Anthr 2006

Tom Joaquin sent me a link to Natalie Dylan's piece in The Daily Beast. She characterizes her auction not only as a way to raise money but also as an experiment in casting off mainstream norms and developing her own values system:

 Are you rolling your eyes? I knew this experiment would bring me condemnation. But I’m not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing. You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point! For me, valuing virginity as sacred is simply not a concept I could embrace. But valuing virginity monetarily—now that’s a concept I could definitely get behind. I no longer view the selling of sex as wrong or immoral—my time at college showed me that I had too blindly accepted such arbitrary norms. And for what it’s worth, the winning bid won’t necessarily be the highest—I get to choose.