They Work Hard For The Money

Some insights are so obvious that it takes an academic to think of them.

Take this doozy, for instance, from an ABC News report on a study of prostitution by John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University:

"Like any statistical model, this one ignores the diversity of real people and the complexities of love and pleasure, changing social mores, et cetera. Still, once all its equations have been solved, a simple fact remains: Most women enter prostitution for the money."

Gee, ya think? And here I was assuming that women were eager to turn themselves into ambulatory semen receptacles just for the hell of it. Silly fucking me.

His study creates an artificial distinction between wives and prostitutes, with the attendant income differentials between the two. But his study (at least from the ABC News redaction of it that I've read on the web), ignores, as academics so often do, the obvious.

Women go into prostitution for the same reason that men who are seven feet tall go into basketball -- because they can. It's an option that's always available to them: it's just that some women, for various reasons, choose to avail themselves of that opportunity and others don't. And since I'm assuming that the average woman doesn't find the idea of humping dozens if not hundreds of random strangers to be all that appealing (female readers of this blog feel free to disagree with me on that one), it usually takes a sizable economic incentive (or dire economic need) to persuade them to do so.

It's like the following old and very sexist (but nonetheless revealing) joke:

MAN: Would you have sex with me for a million dollars?
WOMAN: A million dollars! Sure!
MAN: Well, would you have sex with me for a penny?
WOMAN: A penny! What do you think I am?
MAN: We've already established what you are, sweetheart -- now we're just negotiating price.

I once had a very lengthy conversation with a call girl back when I worked as the late-night concierge for a Greenwich Village condo building in the late 80s. She had gone up to visit a friend of hers in the building and afterwards came down and struck up a conversation with me. The next thing you know we were sitting on the couch in the lobby and talking until the sun came up. She really needed to vent, and had a lot to get off her chest.

A couple of things she said that night have stuck with me over the years, but right now I'll only mention one. She said that the next time I was on the subway or walking the streets, to notice the receptionist holding a handbag that's much too expensive for her salary, or the paralegal whose outfit is completely out of her income range.

"It doesn't take that much," she told me. "Just a couple of tricks a week to make a nice extra income. You'd be surprised how many women in this city supplement their incomes by a little hooking on the side."

The fact is that men always want sex and women can, in theory, choose to provide it. That gives women a certain power over men that they can always turn to their economic advantage -- provided that they can get past their presumed aversion to random sex with strangers whom they do not necessarily find attractive and whose hygiene may not be the most hygienic.

So why is prostitution so well paid? Well, let's put it this way -- how much would it take to get you to fuck some random, unattractive and quite possibly smelly stranger for money?

I thought so. And I'm not even a professor of mathematics.

Tom Moran

Much thanks to Audacia Ray of wakingvixen.com for bringing this piece to my attention.