Prostitution definition (& how to pay for college)

Prostitution must include direct cash or barter for sexual activity, or so say U.S. laws. Well, maybe I can’t even state that as written. Perhaps instead I should use "… as U.S. laws are interpreted".

That is to suggest that if I offer you a can of Coca Cola, a Quarter Pounder, and a package of Oreo cookies for $8, and offer an alternative which would be the same can of Coca Cola, the same Quarter Pounder, the same package of Oreo cookies and a night with a fully desirable sex provider for $1008, the latter is NOT seen as "prostitution" in the U.S.

Today I read the most interesting article linked here. The story is centered around the thousands of people who use the website http://www.seekingarrangement.com. That and similar websites are places where usually well-heeled men and young, attractive, adult women interact for what almost always boils down to the legal exchange of sex for money. What is most laughable about the story linked is the scores of people involved who somehow do not define what they share as prostitution. I can appreciate somewhat the idea that the legal interpretations of same can’t clamp down on these liasons as prostitution – just like I can appreciate that the performers at the local strip club are classified as artists in the eyes of the First Amendment. The performers are, still, "strippers", are they not??

I also happen to like the idea that young adults who have the will and the appeal to barter their sexual company for considerable amounts of money have the avenues through which they can arrange those transactions. At the website linked above, interested young women are known as "sugar babies" while, of course, the well-monied men are "sugar daddies". The website boasts 100,000 "sugar daddies" and a staggering "700,000" would-be "sugar babies" perhaps willing to sell it all to help with college tuition.

On the first page of the story one young (prostitute) tells of having "just done what needed to be done" and that reminds me of the then-single mom who doubled as my favorite working girl from the start of this diary, who stated more than once: "I just do what I have to do".

An enjoyable line in the story linked above was uttered by a man said to be in his late 60’s, in reference to the "25 and under" women he prefers to meet through the website. He said: "But I can’t walk into a bar and go up to a 25-year-old. They’d think I’m a pervert. So, this is how I go about meeting them."

I really don’t mind the idea of a man much older than I am liking to have sex with willing women of 25 and under, and of course such sexual encounters aren’t likely to excite the young women involved so it also makes sense that something should balance things more in their favor (the money, obviously).

Indeed we are living in tough economic times and yet the same numbers of new adults are coming of age daily and wanting to make their way in college just as their older siblings and parents did in the past. Few parents ever sit down with their kids and say: "well, I was going to send you to university, but times are tough now so you’re just not going to get to go". And what motivates a kid to get better grades during the first two years of high school if not the idea of being accepted to college somewhere?

I am somewhat impressed by the idea that more than 700,000 young adult women have signed-on to be "sugar babies" at this website. Of course it is free for young women to join and put up a profile, so a lot of them might just be experimentational, at least in the beginning. According to the story, at least 250 UCLA coeds are registered as potential "sugar babies" at seekingarrangement.com. Not only that, but the story cites "231" women from Harvard registered as well (Cal. @ Berkeley 193, USC 183). I say good for them, especially if they can get away with it beneath the legal radar.

Of course this reeks of economic discrimination against those in our society who are more clearly prostitutes (I.E. – you don’t get the can of Coca Cola, the Quarter Pounder, or the package of Oreos with her sexual favors). Are women who are paying for college simply "better" than is the young mother merely trying to put food on the table for her toddler?

Is it because these people pretend (at least at first) to maintain some interest in one another outside of a good fuck, which determines their worthiness to not be prosecuted as having participated in acts of prostitution?

Apparently websites like seekingarrangement.com are the only dating websites on which the numbers of women steadily exceed the numbers of men registered.

The story later gives mock economic scenarios for young college women before concluding: "It’s tough to pay that amount of debt down, live in a decent city and still be able to socialize and do fun things. At some point, you’ll have to start making some major sacrifices". I wonder if he should have told that to the scores of Americans who are those mostly responsible for the rapid snowballing of the recent economic recession.

Again, I don’t mind at all when a woman sells her sexual desirability and her sexual favors to finance whatever she has in mind, and while I’d much rather it be college than drugs, it is probably wrong to discriminate based on factors beyond the point of sale. What if a McDon

alds worker were allowed to keep your change if it could be determined that you were just going to give it to the hobo sitting out front?

A college professor cited in the story "often finds that women turn to sex work when, in their professional lives, they’re unable to make ends meet." Of course! That’s the way of the world… and it is merely an option available to them, for which I am grateful.

That men have such options in far fewer numbers is a function of the world social setting in which men are always chasing and women are usually very protective of their sexual favors. Some scandinavian countries have taken to making it a crime to buy sex, but not a crime to sell sex. Once again, if we continue to gently "approve" of prostitutes then it makes no sense to outlaw the very thing that qualifies them as such. That in much the same way that society gently approves of child abuse (in not making stricter laws and enforcing harsher penalties) and then puts past victims of that child abuse in double jeopardy (by basically outlawing their opportunity to make a living in a vocation for which that previous abuse effectively qualified them).

Additionally, I find it amusing that the rates paid by the "sugar daddies" to what are perhaps more refined, and undoubtedly fresher prospects, are considerably less than their prostitute brethren tend to make for the same amount of time/work/effort. I guess some of that is justified by the barely-legal element of the transactions (less risk, less pay).

On the opposite side, one young "sugar baby" tells of an executive who "regularly gives her $2500 for a night of dinner and sex" (and how many times in one night can one have dinner?).

A private attorney in Las Vegas who specializes in first amendment issues affirms that in order for an exchange to be classified as prostitution there has to be a clear "meeting of the minds" that the arrangement is a quid pro quo, or exchange of sex for money. Absent an immediate sex-for-pay exchange, the legal waters grow far murkier.

One young interviewee mentioned in the story said: "I’m not a whore. Whores are paid by the hour, can have a high volume of clients in a given day, and it’s based on money, not on who the individual actually is. There’s no feeling involved and the entire interaction revolves around a sexual act,"

That is someone who is considerably off the mark in her understanding. When one client is paying "$2500 a night" then one need not see "a high volume of clients in a given day".

I still wholly endorse women who are blessed with a commodity being allowed to barter with that commodity of their own free will. All of the feminists who love to grouse about the seeming inequality between men and women in the workplace and other arenas will at some point need to take away the regulations and let the societal waters find their natural level. Perhaps only then can we talk of true "equality" between the sexes.

I have long believed that much of the unique-to-today societal upheaval is the result of a slow evolution toward that equality, perhaps begun in North America about the time of World War II, at such a point as when women entered the workforce in large numbers. Once women could become independent of men, they had many new avenues opened to them, yet it was a slow evolution when parenting still involved mothers who’d learned parenting from ‘traditional’ women.

In 2011 we are finally realizing more pronounced changes on a path which may cover nearly all of 100 years before the equality of women alters the various "balances" in the society we used to know. Prominent among those ancient balances is the disparity between the supply and demand for female sexuality vs. that of males. Eventually evening that particular lack of "equality" is what prostitution is all about.