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I suppose that depends on what you mean by “wrong”

Jill

I liked Eliot Spitzer, I really did. And I can understand that lots of other people liked him too, and now they want to defend him. But are liberals serious arguing that “Spitzer did nothing wrong“?

The outrage over former New York governor Eliot Spitzer hiring an A-list hooker makes me feel like throwing a gigantic, crippling pile of superheavy biology and economics books at everyone in the United States and possibly the world. Are we still so Victorian in our thinking that we think it’s bad for somebody to pay large amounts of money for a few hours of skin-time with a professional? Have we not learned enough at this point about psychology and neuroscience to understand that a roll in the sheets is just a fun, chemical fizz for our brains and that it means nothing about ethics and morality?

Except that it does mean something about ethics and morality when it’s illegal and you’re a governor. And, while I don’t know the details of Spitzer’s marriage, I’m gonna guess that the majority if the time, it matters when you’re married. Call me old-fashioned, but I think when you make a commitment to someone, you honor it. Now, if Spitz and his wife had a deal where he could sleep with as many other people as he wanted, fine. But given the circumstances — specifically, chatter about Spitzer’s sexual requests, which reportedly included some condom-free activity, and the fact that he’s a prominent public figure for whom being caught meant total ruin — I have a hard time believing that his wife was a-ok with everything.

Plus, no, I don’t think we’re all on the same page that prostitution is totally morally acceptable, especially when the reality of sex work includes lots of women and girls who aren’t there voluntarily. Perhaps in theory, sex work isn’t problematic (although even that’s debatable). But in practice it often is. In Spitzer’s case, he was with a woman who was by all accounts there on her own volition. That’s great. While I have no problem with women who choose to go into sex work, I have to admit that I do have a problem with men who purchase sex. Perhaps that comment is going to get me attacked, but I’ll stick to it: I don’t think that it’s immoral or wrong to sell sex or to work in the sex industry. I do think that men who buy sex are committing a moral wrong. Sex work is not a morally clear issue, and no, we most certainly do not all agree that buying sex is nothing more than a fun roll in the sheets without any ethical or moral strings attached.

Of course, my moral opinions aren’t really the point. But even if we put that aside, Spitzer also may have committed a variety of financial improprieties in an effort to hide his sex work purchases, in addition to, you know, illegally purchasing sex. That’s definitely “wrong” in my book. And although I don’t think prostitution should be criminalized, I do think that the kinds of financial buggery Spitzer is accused of is rightly criminal. And as liberal people who expect a basic level of responsibility and ethical judgment in our leaders, I think we have to be just as hard on politicians we love as those we loathe. Which is why we have to be tough on Spitzer: Because he was wrong, legally and ethically. It was not simply a private matter. And when we cover our eyes and act like we don’t understand how anyone could possibly have a problem with what Spitzer did, we look like idiots.

57 thoughts on I suppose that depends on what you mean by “wrong”

  1. I never felt the need to defend Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I didn’t feel that impeachment was just, but he made a serious boneheaded decision. Having Lewinsky deliver pizzas to the Oval Office was straight out of a porno movie.

    Clinton did good things while in office. But he had serious fidelity issues long before Lewinsky. He gave the Republicans an opportunity to take him down. His political savvy and the GOP sex scandals during the impeachment process saved him.

  2. I absolutely agree. My problem with most of the sex trade–including pornography–is that it requires the objectification of a human being. When we allow the hiring of prostitutes or the distribution of pornography, we also allow a person to be viewed solely as an object for personal pleasure. It’s that kind of dehumanization that leads to more sinister activities, such as rape and human trafficking. Whenever my eyes land on pornography, I try to remind myself, “This is someone’s sister. This is someone’s daughter. This is someone’s best friend.” Maybe if we can start seeing sex workers as human again, we can stop some of these other problems at their root.

  3. This isn’t about paying for sex, per se. Reasonable people can differ about the ethics of patronizing prostitutes. I’m willing to concede, for the sake of argument, that the exchange of money for sex is 100% A-OK.

    I still think Spitzer did something very wrong: He gambled his political future on the operational security of a fly-by-night escort service that plied its trade on the internet. He knew the risks. Yet his thrill-seeking took precedence over his stewardship of the State. He let us all down.

  4. Having Lewinsky deliver pizzas to the Oval Office was straight out of a porno movie.

    Which, oddly enough, never would have happened had the GOP not shut down the federal government in a snit and thus the interns were the only ones working.

    There’s a whole world of difference between being a moral-crusader prosecutor/AG who made a name shutting down prostitution rings and then getting caught for patronizing one such ring and consensually shagging an intern, or having a consensual affair with someone not from your office. Which is why the whole David Paterson “Oh noes! He had an affair!” thing isn’t going to drive him out of office like it did Spitzer. Because Paterson didn’t break the law, nor is he open to charges of hypocrisy like Spitzer is.

    Besides, unlike Silda Wall Spitzer, Paterson’s wife was up there with him to tell the press about her own affairs and that they’re not an issue any more, thank you.

    Not that it stopped the NY Post from running a “Girls! Girls! Girls!” headline, or doing a feature on the sex tapes with one mistress. Which is all the more amusing because Paterson is blind; was the audio really good?

    Basically, I don’t give a flying fuck if a public figure has a consensual affair unless a) it’s with a minor; b) it’s exploitative in a way that goes beyond the mere power-differential issues inherent in a employer-employee relationship (i.e., if there was coercion or if there were some kind of quid pro quo or other harassment; or c) the pol who was caught was the kind of moralizing tightass whose downfall in a sex scandal can only be poetic justice, and schadenfreudelicious.

  5. I try to remind myself, “This is someone’s sister. This is someone’s daughter. This is someone’s best friend.

    Or just, you know, “This is someone.” The important part is that she’s a person, not a thing. How many people love and value her is entirely irrelevant. Maybe nobody does. It doesn’t matter.

  6. Both paying for sex and “consenting” to sex for money are moral wrongs, for similar reasons. The difference comes in the choices available to each participant, in my view. I can conceive of a situation where someone feels somehow forced into paying for sex. I can conceive of a situation where someone providing sex for money isn’t being forced or coerced in any way.

    But those conceptions aren’t the norm, are they. Instead, people (usually men) buy sex because that’s what they want to do. Other people (usually women) sell sex because that’s the least bad option they have. So the moral burden is much more on the purchaser, in 99% of the real world scenarios. Both are committing a wrong; one is stealing bread because they see a nice-looking loaf and feel like a snack, the other is stealing bread because they are starving and their children are starving.

    Same crime, different judgments. Eliot Spitzer is a user and a putz and I condemn him.

  7. I don’t think that it’s immoral or wrong to sell sex or to work in the sex industry. I do think that men who buy sex are committing a moral wrong.

    Bingo, Jill. Hence the Swedish model, and the end to the notion that this is a victimless crime.

  8. Great post, right on the mark. I have no interest in dictating morality to anyone, but legality is another issue. Spitzer broke the law, first and formost. He was also proven a hypocrite, which I think has a lot of bearing on his fitness for office, and finally, he did, in fact, consentually enter into a contract with his wife, which included certian expectations of monogomy, which he flagrantly violated. That, in my opinion, is a serious breach of ethics, not just morality, and ethics do count in an elected official. If he had failed to honor some other legally binding contract, I’m sure few but the most die hard Spitzer apologists would try to spin it as just “one of those things”. But hey, it’s just a marriage contract with a woman, so really, who cares?

  10. while I don’t know the details of Spitzer’s marriage, I’m gonna guess that the majority if the time, it matters when you’re married. Call me old-fashioned, but I think when you make a commitment to someone, you honor it. Now, if Spitz and his wife had a deal where he could sleep with as many other people as he wanted, fine. But given the circumstances — specifically, chatter about Spitzer’s sexual requests, which reportedly included some condom-free activity, and the fact that he’s a prominent public figure for whom being caught meant total ruin — I have a hard time believing that his wife was a-ok with everything.

    You can believe that, but it’s not relevant here. Really, it’s not.
    That’s part of their private lives and it’s not your business.
    Stay on topic – the issue of what he did wrong is about what he did wrong to the citizens of New York state: he violated his state laws, he played financial games, and he lied to us.

  11. he did, in fact, consentually enter into a contract with his wife, which included certian expectations of monogomy

    You know that for certain? You know the intimate details of their relationship, do you?
    Do you think if they did have an open relationship that they’d reveal that detail to the press? I don’t think so.

  12. Say what you will about men paying for sex, what I don’t understand is all these posts I’ve been seeing about how in many cases women prostitute themselves because the money they make from it means the difference between life and death, which them conclude that because of this, the Swedish model is the best solution. It is indeed true that this fact casts doubt on issues of consent, however, I fail to see how the Swedish model will help in those situations.
    If the money a woman gets from men paying her for sex is the only thing that keeps her from starving, won’t simply “ending demand” mean that she will starve? How would the Swedish model help women in this situation?

    I think a better idea would be full decriminalization with a focus on providing women with better opportunities to support themselves and their families (as well as helping out any women who are being physically forced into prostitution). That way they’re less likely to starve while we figure out what else they’re supposed to do.

  13. Newitz is sharp and often interesting, but she has some pretty strong techno-libertarian tendencies, which (as we’ve seen recently) leads to some rather simplistic thinking about prostitution.

  14. In a vacuum, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with prostitution or the people who’d pay for sex.
    But we live in a patriarchy, not a vacuum. Johns don’t care that the sex workers they’re visiting may have been trafficked or are otherwise unwilling participants. They can get away with degrading and brutalizing sex workers, which is part of the appeal.
    Women are still members of the sex class. And sex workers are especially stigmatized.

  15. Alternet changed that headline. I doubt it came from Analee herself. When I bookmarked it, the headline was “Everyone needs to chill out about Spitzer.”

    For the record, I think Spitzer did somethingn very wrong – persecute and prosecute sex workers while at the same time engaging the services of one. The problem here is HYPOCRISY and the real women whose lives are affected by criminalization.

  16. You know that for certain? You know the intimate details of their relationship, do you?

    Quoth Spitzer:

    I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family.

    Doesn’t sound like he thought it was an open relationship. We can probably take him at his word, no?

  17. Shorter Annalee Newitz: I’m hip and you’re not. This is not a new subject for her.

    NY Citizen, if his relationship were open, do you really think the Spitzers would have kept quiet about it at that point? Oh no, we might be able to diffuse the outrage if Silda knew about it and was fine with it so it’s nobody’s business, but we shouldn’t say that?

    Sheeeeeright.

  18. While I have no problem with women who choose to go into sex work, I have to admit that I do have a problem with men who purchase sex. Perhaps that comment is going to get me attacked, but I’ll stick to it: I don’t think that it’s immoral or wrong to sell sex or to work in the sex industry. I do think that men who buy sex are committing a moral wrong.

    Preach on, sister Jill.

    Women in the sex industry are dealing with the short end of the patriarchal arrangement; I’m not swinging judgments at them. Men in patriarchy are limited by it, but they have the privileges and advantages of a system whose constraints and biases are wildly disproportionate and unjust. Them with the freer choices ought to bear the heavier burden in making them.

    Do not buy sex. Do not convert intimacy to commodity. This is what I say to men.

  19. I am unclear why buying sex must be morally wrong.

    In Spitzer’s case, we know (as well as can be ascertained) that the prostitute was willingly in the business, so it’s not the fact that it’s forced that makes it wrong; is it then that he’s married and made a vow of fidelity to someone else? But that means that a single man attending a willing prostitute is committing no moral wrong, surely? And if he is, why is it wrong?

    What of a single woman who uses a prostitute’s services? They do exist (albeit not nearly as common as male clients).

    Hugo: the Swedish Model has been proved to harm prostitutes, because it takes away the “decent”, law-abiding johns and leaves only the vicious, brutal and dangerous ones; with fewer clients available, prices fall, meaning that prostitutes have much less choice in whom they serve. Thus, the Swedish model results in a greatly increased risk to women. This is attested to by the Swedish prostitutes themselves.

    Those talking about prostitution “objectifying” women: if prostitution is decriminalised and destigmatised, then a prostitute can operate as any other service-provider can. A prostitute is not an object for personal pleasure, and doesn’t need to be seen as such in order to do her job. She is a service-provider, and in many cases is a highly-skilled professional who ought to be respected as such. Because the law makes a special case out of sex work, and stigmatises it (whether you use a law targeted at sellers or at buyers, the fact that it is a special case perpetuates the stigma), the prostitute is put in a situation where she cannot rely on the sorts of protections that allow other service-providers to be seen in this way.

    “This is someone’s sister. This is someone’s daughter. This is someone’s best friend.”

    So is every other woman I’ve seen naked – what’s your point? Does being someone’s daughter, sister or best friend preclude a woman from being sexual? I have exactly the same attitude – that the woman on the screen is a person, but I don’t view that as making what I see inherently wrong or disgusting. I suspect that viewers of porn take away from it only those attitudes that they started with before they viewed it. If you see porn as involving the degradation and objectification of women, then I think you probably started off with a view of women as degraded and objectified (or as only worthy of being degraded objects). If, on the other hand, you come to porn with the assumption that women can have some sexual agency, then that’s what you see in most porn sex, since very often the woman is portrayed as being as heavily and pleasurably invested in the activity as the man. Obviously, some men do take away the negative reinforcement of their view that women are just objects to be used, but porn is not responsible for that opinion – something or someone else taught them to hold that view, before porn ever appeared on their radar.

    *****

    Getting back on topic – Spitzer did something wrong, in that he did something that by the fact that he attempted to conceal it from everyone else (including his wife) he knew was unacceptable, and that he likely viewed as morally reprehensible by his own moral code (given how fervent he was in cracking down on prostitution).

    Just once, I’d like to see a completely unrepentant politician in one of these “OMG he bought sex” type scandals, who not only didn’t bother to apologise to anyone in public, but who told the world that the pre- and post-sex part of the service was excellent therapy (research shows that a large part of many man’s reasons for buying sex involve the pre-and post-sex part of the service), and the sex itself was superb and performed with exquisite skill. (Assuming that the prostitute was known to be willingly in the trade) I’d like to see him suggest everyone else pay to have a go too, thus giving good publicity and custom to a working woman; and also focusing on more than just her appearance, but talking about her talents and expertise as a person and a service provider.

    Kowtowing to the spurious morality of the sex-phobic press is a surefire way for a politician to lose my respect.

  20. The cognitive dissonance that shows in comments on sex work-related posts is hilarious and depressing. A controversial enough topic can short-circuit all of you into magical thinking so easily. Where were you when Holly interviewed Sienna Baskin? where were you, Thomas? where were you, SaraMC? not so quick to spew vitriol on someone who bases her thoughts on prostitution on field work, rather than hearsay and rhetoric, are you?

    I think the likes of you (and I mean you, Thomas, SaraMC) are just too sheltered and squeamish about the topic to have a meaningful opinion. You sound incredibly ignorant, and since you are so arrogant and forward about it, I don’t feel any obligation to point it out nicely.

    I have sold sex. I have bought sex. There are more facets of prostitution than you seem to care to admit. I have been a camwhore in my teen years: I would show my naked body to perfect strangers who would shower me with “gifts” in return. As a young adult, I occasionally buy sex from beautiful self-employed hermaphrodites (who represent to a woman a much safer bet than other women). A hour of phone sex can earn me months of call credit. I have chosen not to sell my dirty laundry at a premium, but I know I could have, and very profitably so. While you read this, countless married heterosexual men are being pounded in the ass by well-paid, well-oiled and well-endowed “bulls”. Sweet transvestites are paying or being paid for as many clandestine sex acts with dominant men as they can fit in a night. A minority will get paid by some of the aforementioned married men for the reverse. Are they criminals? Am I? Who are you to decide? I don’t want to make this a “book smarts” argument, because I find it stupid, but no amount of Andrea Dworkin or angry blogs qualifies you

    It’s true that most paying customers are male: female customers have, in fact, a reasonable expectation of getting the same goods for free (lesbian girls as young as 13 cruising chat rooms for older women with whom to engage in domination or douche play, for example). You will meet many “couples seeking” where the female partner is mostly just there to balance the stigma attached to the male (she’s consenting but not willing, so to speak). Think the hitchhiking scene from “It Happened One Night”

    You will find, Thomas, that intimacy is, in fact, already a commodity. Male intimacy in particular. “We” even have a saying for it: “many people like pussy, but everyone likes cock”

    It’s really not that big a deal. A decadent society like the one I was born in has, I guarantee you, a lot of room for casual, perfectly safe sex work and non-demeaning objectification (at least, no more demeaning than you ask for). And you cannot just wish and rant it away

  21. Cue the blog rhetoricians purple-prosing endless variants of “it’s not the same thing!” and missing my point on blind stonewalling

  23. You can believe that, but it’s not relevant here. Really, it’s not.
    That’s part of their private lives and it’s not your business.

    It’s pretty damn relevant to the author’s claim that Spitzer did nothing wrong — she was pretty clear that she meant he didn’t commit any moral wrongs in addition to ethical ones, so the point stands.

    Do try to keep up.

  24. I am unclear why buying sex must be morally wrong.

    I don’t think it “must” be morally wrong. According to my moral compass and from my standpoint in the world, buying sex is morally wrong, but that isn’t the point of this post. I said that I think buying sex is wrong only to refute Newitz’s argument that liberals are all on the same page about sex work, and that we all think sex is just brain chemistry and a roll in the sheets. That’s hardly the case. You can think she’s right, and that’s fine — my only point is that there’s a lot of dissent in the ranks when it comes to the morality issue.

  25. “Spitzer also may have committed a variety of financial improprieties in an effort to hide his sex work purchases… That’s definitely “wrong” in my book… I do think that the kinds of financial buggery Spitzer is accused of is rightly criminal.”

    Care to say why? So far as I’m aware his crimes are structuring (i.e. withdrawing $5k three times rather than $15k once, in the hope it would avoid attention) and making a financial transaction to promote an unlawful activity (i.e. prostitution). They don’t seem ‘rightly criminal’ acts to me.

    There’s nothing magic about reporting $15k, if they raised the threshold to $20k you wouldn’t be fulminating about how terrible it will be for people to be able to go about wantonly withdrawing lower amounts without government scrutiny. The second is circular – you can’t say prostitution shouldn’t be criminal and then say they’ve got him bang to rights for making a transaction that’s only illegal because prostitution is illegal. If prostitution was legal his transaction would be too.

  26. James-

    Part of the allegation is that he set up shell companies in order to transfer money around and obscure where it was going and where it came from. The whole point of such activity is to cover up shady dealings and make it more difficult to trace money trails, and it was Spitzer himself who pushed laws to make such behavior illegal.

  27. think the likes of you (and I mean you, Thomas, SaraMC) are just too sheltered and squeamish about the topic to have a meaningful opinion.

    Sheltered maybe, Squeamish? I’m this blog’s most vocal BDSMer. I’ve been slapped, kicked, flogged, canes, fucked in the ass with no warmup, pierced with needles, spat and pissed on and loved it.

    I did read Holly’s interview with Sienna Baskin. I have heard the claims that criminalizing the transaction is similar to criminalizing the seller; I remain unpersuaded.

    As to the moral, rather than the legal question, there is really little point in talking to me. As I’m a non-cognitivist (a generalized term that encompasses the more familiar terms “emotivist” and “nihilist”, though neither formulation fits me precisely), my moral principles are simply my values; not derived from furniture of the universe that one could argue me out of. I believe what I believe. I’m opposed to the buying of sex. I ain’t fer it, I’m agin’ it, and that’s that.

  28. Snowdrop Explodes: I find it hard to believe that these “law-abiding, decent johns” who would leave if prostitution was decriminalized without decriminalizing its purchase actually exist. What’s changed? They were committing a crime before, and would be after decriminalization. The only thing that would change is that the prostitute wouldn’t be committing a crime. Why would this make them stop purchasing sex?
    Another note – legalizing prostitution has been shown to increase instances of sex trafficking, NOT decrease it. It is a sad truth that a good number of the men who purchase sex use it as an opportunity to misuse and abuse the prostitute. When there are prostitutes who are protected by law and must be treated well, this group of men will find other women and/or children that they are able to abuse.

  29. I agree with the overall point of the post, Spitzer did something illegal and that in and of itself is wrong. The original article seems to blur the line between Spitzer’s case and the debate about the legalization of prostitution and whether or not we as a public deem it worthy of being a crime. At the same time I feel a great disappointment in the media and public’s obsession with airing and then dissecting politicians private lives.

    Obviously Spitzer feels he did something morally wrong, many of us believe that cheating on your husband or wife is morally wrong, but it does not seem fair to me that we become the moral judges simply because these people hold public office. I am sure everyone reading this knows someone who has cheated on a spouse. The facts stand for themselves as the recent spat of articles on monogamy not actually working have been churned out by various news sources, people cheat and they have affairs. But they also usually deal with the aftermath in the privacy of their own home, in their own marriage.

    Having an affair does not impact your ability to be a good leader or to do your job well.

  30. Snowdrop Explodes: I find it hard to believe that these “law-abiding, decent johns” who would leave if prostitution was decriminalized without decriminalizing its purchase actually exist. What’s changed? They were committing a crime before, and would be after decriminalization. The only thing that would change is that the prostitute wouldn’t be committing a crime. Why would this make them stop purchasing sex?

    The Swedish answer is that they stop purchasing sex because you elevate the penalties for purchasing sex. Purchasing sex is now a felony in Sweden, whereas before it was something more like a misdemeanor, or mostly unprosecuted (which is the case here in the US).

    Another note – legalizing prostitution has been shown to increase instances of sex trafficking, NOT decrease it. It is a sad truth that a good number of the men who purchase sex use it as an opportunity to misuse and abuse the prostitute. When there are prostitutes who are protected by law and must be treated well, this group of men will find other women and/or children that they are able to abuse.

    This is based on the example of the Netherlands, right? I’m not saying it couldn’t be true, but the explanation there seems to be much more complex than simply “legalization of prostitution — causes –> increase in sex trafficking.” A lot of sex workers and sex workers groups there seem to be saying the shutdown by the government is aimed more at gentrification than on stopping sex trafficking, among other things. Holland’s policies on immigration seem to be involved, etc.

    I have been poking around doing research since I completed that last interview and I have yet to find a coherent explanation of why this causation would exist. I don’t get the idea that A would simply cause B. For instance, let’s say 40% of the men in Amsterdam want to misuse and abuse sex workers. Before decriminalization, these men buy sex from 40% of the sex workers working on the black market, where they can’t really get much protection or autonomy, because it’s a black market. Then let’s say that you legalize, which provides some measure of protection for 100% of the sex workers — driving 40% of the men to try and buy misuse and abuse elsewhere. In fact, driving them further into the black market, into extremely heinous businesses that involve trafficking.

    Now, what is the right thing to do in this situation? Probably to arrest those 1000 men and the traffickers who provide them with women and children to abuse, right? It actually seems like this would be easier to do if you lift the first rock they’re hiding under — the existing black market of sex work that was legalized — those women are now protected, so some percentage of the customers now run somewhere else — and it’s to a somewhere else that is much more black and white because unlike the brothels that were decriminalized, if it involves trafficking and coercion, you definitely want to eliminate it and get women out of there.

    (The number 40% I just picked at random, but it can’t be 100% otherwise all the decriminalized / regulated brothels would go out of business right away. And of course, this is a vastly simplified picture — but I am still not understanding how people get an even MORE simple conclusion like “legalization increases trafficking and abuse of women” out of it.)

  31. It’s pretty damn relevant to the author’s claim that Spitzer did nothing wrong

    I’ll repeat: that was not the article’s original headline. So that may not, in fact, be the author’s intent. Jill, you know as well as I do that Alternet often writes their own headlines.

  32. Thomas: so be careful what you say and where you say it. One of you can be reasoned with. Thousands of you is a petition. Millions of you will vote my life out. “It’s like we walk with dynamite in our mouths”, as one cartoon cat so poignantly put it

  33. This is just some questions, Thomas, not any kind of “trying to convince you otherwise,” since I’m actually interested in trying to figure out what the various moral justifications are for determining what’s good or bad on this topic, so I want to know what you think.

    Do not convert intimacy to commodity. This is what I say to men.

    Is converting intimacy into a commodity always bad, regardless of if you’re the buyer or the seller? It sounds like you are just giving some sellers a pass because their choices are limited — so if a seller of intimacy was not constrained like that, is that also just as bad?

    Also, what about other forms of intimacy? Is it bad to buy and sell services like “I’ll pretend that I really like you and want to spend time with you” even if they don’t involve sex? (that’s a lot of the mizu shobai work in Japan) How about “I’ll act like I’m your friend on an hourly basis” or “I’ll be your companion and provide you with company while you’re in town on business” or “I’ll sit and listen to all of your problems and provide you with a sympathetic ear and advice?” How about “I’ll provide you with a homey atmosphere and a friendly smile and cooking like your Mom made” or “I’ll rub your shoulders and try to get you as relaxed as possible?” Maybe none of these things are quite as intimate as sex, but they all partake of some emotional experience that we’re “ideally” supposed to get in a “genuine” way, but we can also pay for them as a commodity.

    Is sex somehow different? Is it different mostly because it’s usually performed under exploitative and gender-biased conditions, and all too often under coercion and abuse? Or is it inherently different? (I think the answers to those questions lead us in very different directions.) Or… is all of this stuff bad because it commodifies intimacy? Is commodification of intimacy worse than commodifying something else, like creativity or nutritional sustenance?

    I don’t think it “must” be morally wrong. According to my moral compass and from my standpoint in the world, buying sex is morally wrong, but that isn’t the point of this post.

    Jill, I agree that statement of Annalee Newitz’s was pretty obviously overreaching or clueless about whether liberals agree on this. Obviously liberals don’t, nor do progressives or even radicals. Maybe this is off-topic from what your original point was but what I’m more curious about is various people’s moral compass including yours — what’s the moral wrong here? Does it have to do more with the circumstances under which sex work is performed in the world we live in, who tends to buy and who tends to sell, etc. Or is there something more fundamental?

    If it’s the circumstances — then wouldn’t we also say, buying cheaply made clothing is wrong, because most of the cheap clothing in the world is made under exploitative circumstances, sometimes in sweatshops, sometimes under near-slavery conditions, etc? Of course the buyer and the worker are separated by far more distance and middlemen in those cases, so it’s easier to dodge blame… but it’s also way more common to be a buyer. (I think.)

    (I agree with you, of course, about Spitzer’s wrongdoing on any number of other fronts — infidelity that seems clear from his statements violated his relationship with his wife and family, suspicious money-moving to try and cover up something he knew was illegal, hypocrisy relating to crusading against sex purchasers while he himself was one, etc.)

  34. And actually, after reading the Alternet article again — I do think Newitz overreached when assuming that buying sex is purely a personal choice, and has nothing to do with ethics or morality. On the contrary, I think a lot of kinds of purchases have everything to do with ethics and morality and are rarely “just” personal choices. Buying and driving a Land Rover is not a personal choice either, not really. The politics of buying sex work are much more fraught — and illegal — than the politics of buying a SUV, and most everyone is aware of this.

    However, other than those assertions like “doesn’t everyone know this by now?” and the bad headline, I think Newitz’s article does make some good points about people not understanding what “exploitation” really means and how sex work is similar to, but stigmatized / viewed as very different from, other forms of labor and economic exchange which all may or may not be exploited or coerced.

    Another reason I’m asking “why is an economic exchange of sex and money so much more problematic than all the other icky economic exchanges that occur every day” is that I really wonder if the moral arguments here can go in a direction that doesn’t lead us towards right-wing truisms about people’s body and sex. A right-wing point of view would be that “Sex is Special,” “Sex is Something You Only Do With Someone You Love,” “You Can’t Have Sex With Just Anyone,” and then on into “Save Yourself for Marriage” and “Casual Sex Damages the Flowering Hearts of College Girls” and all that other stuff.

    What I want to know: is there a different explanation for why sex as a sellable service is inherently different from other sellable services, that doesn’t go in that direction.

  35. I’ll repeat: that was not the article’s original headline. So that may not, in fact, be the author’s intent. Jill, you know as well as I do that Alternet often writes their own headlines.

    I realize that. But the headline is a pretty concise summation of her point. In the article, she says:

    As far as I’m concerned, the one unethical thing Spitzer did was to hire a sex worker after prosecuting several prostitution rings.

    Emphasis mine. That would imply that she doesn’t think anything else he did was unethical, no?

  36. Maybe this is off-topic from what your original point was but what I’m more curious about is various people’s moral compass including yours — what’s the moral wrong here? Does it have to do more with the circumstances under which sex work is performed in the world we live in, who tends to buy and who tends to sell, etc. Or is there something more fundamental?

    A little bit of both, I guess. I mean, in theory, sex work isn’t a problem — it’s selling a service just like any other, and if divorced from a patriarchal social system, it wouldn’t be problematic. But, in my view, a whole lot of service professions are seriously problematic when placed in our racist and sexist system (for example, housekeeping isn’t a problem on its face — it is problematic, though, when it falls disproportionately on women, and when higher-income white women are able to outsource it to lower-income and less powerful women of color). Sex work seems to me to be particularly exploitative because so many women are trafficked into it, and because sex, for a whole lot of people, is different than other types of physical work. Maybe it’s silly that’s it’s different, but I think we largely recognize that it is. Rape is considered “worse” than simple assault. Being forced into sex work is, for many people, considered “worse” than being forced into domestic or field labor. I think there’s an argument to be made that that’s silly, and that perhaps sex shouldn’t be different, but in many peoples’ realities, it is. That has to be accounted for. Further, the reality of sex work is that it’s the most vulnerable people who are open to exploitation. Yes, there are some sex workers who are in it totally voluntarily and love their work. But world-wide, that is definitely not the norm. Does the stigma on sex work contribute to the low status of most sex workers, and many of the associated problems with it? Yes, definitely. But, having lived in a place where sex work is legal, it’s pretty clear to me that full legalization doesn’t solve that problem.

    As for why selling sex is not a moral wrong but buying it is, to me, it’s a necessity argument. People need to make money using the skills that they have. People need to survive. And yes, I realize that some sex workers do quite well and are head and shoulders above simple survival — good on them. I don’t think that’s wrong, either. But no one has a necessity to purchase sex. And there is something about the power imbalance and the (albeit temporary) ownership aspect of another person’s body that bothers me about buying sex. Again, this is a personal moral thing and I’m going to have a really hard time explaining it — and I’m content to admit that it’s perhaps not a consistent or entirely logical position — but I would not be with a man who felt entitled to buy sex. No way.

    Of course, my preference in men is neither here nor there. The best parallel I can come up with (in sort of a reverse way) is shopping at Wal-Mart. Do I think Wal-Mart is an evil company? Yes. Do I have nothing but disdain for the people who own and manage Wal-Mart, and who profit off of it? Yes. But do I understand why people shop there and work there? Of course. Do I think that people who buy stuff at Wal-Mart or who work there are doing something morally wrong? No way — even though they’re a necessary component of Wal-Mart’s survival.

    In my ideal world, I don’t know if sex work would exist or not. I really don’t think so. But I also realize we can’t make law based on my ideal world, and I have absolutely no idea what a comprehensive, perfect sex work policy would be. My opposition to buying sex has much more to do with the realities of sex work and patriarchy than it does with the fundamental idea of buying sex, but I’m not sure that something more fundamental is totally absent from my moral view. So in the meantime, I try to err on the side of listening to sex workers and making their lives as easy as possible when it comes to policy. When it comes to theoretical discussions, though, I have a harder time arguing that buying sex should yield no consequences or is totally ok.

    This is definitely not the clearest of comments, because I’m still parsing through a lot of these issues. Ask me in a week and you’ll probably get a totally different response 🙂

  37. Actually, that made a lot of sense. It raises another interesting question:

    In an ideal world (that still includes economic exchanges) would anyone pay someone else to clean their house?

    I agree with you that being forced into sex work feels worse than being forced to clean someone’s house — and that’s largely because the former is rape. If you remove the coercive element (including economic coercion or restriction of choice, which is vastly harder to remove) then I’m no longer as sure.

    I kind of think that a lot of liberals and progressives have an abstract ideal world in mind in which nobody cleans anyone else’s house for money. Everyone cleans their own house. But I also suspect that stems from the idea that housecleaning is a “lower class” demeaning job that, in our economy, generally gets done by people who can’t find better work. But if we valued all forms of labor equally, and there was no coercion involved, if the landscape of choice and opportunity were leveled — then would it be so bad? Or, for a slightly more imaginable scenario, what if someone who didn’t like housecleaning bartered two hours of computer repair work for two hours of housecleaning?

    Then transpose that to sex work — these are all hypothetical situations to tease out exactly how much of the opposition has to do with economic realities and injustices and patriarchy, and how much is something fundamental. Let’s say Person A has a very hard time having an orgasm alone and does not have a sex partner, and Person B is someone who’s skilled at getting people off and has no personal issues doing it for others. Person A barters an hour of gardening work, weeding and watering Person B’s garden, in exchange for Person B coming over for an hour and getting Person A off. Has anything immoral happened?

    What about if you gender Person A and Person B in various ways — does it make a difference?

    I tend to think that if you don’t find a problem with that scenario, then the ultimate goal is not “eliminate sex work” in a prohibitionist way, but in trying to reach material conditions in which sex workers have rights, power to set prices and conditions and practices, are valued as skilled workers rather than stigmatized as whores, and can exit and enter the sex work market as they wish without coercion or more economic constraint than exists for other forms of work. And then eliminating or reducing violations of those things. I don’t think either prohibition or the latter model is “100% achievable,” nor do they solve larger systemic problems of our world like labor exploitation, misogyny, entitlement of rich or privileged people who buy from the less wealthy or privileged, coercive labor, etc — but I do think it makes a big difference which one you set forth as a goal.

  38. You forgot to mention that he was prosecuting people involved in prostitution, and pushing for stronger penalties for related violations while he was banging a prostitute.

  40. Once you strong arm women into conceding that buying sex could conceivably be morally right, it appears the next step is to demand that women “understand” that male partners have to visit prostitutes on occasion, it appears. I’m not okay with a boyfriend going to prostitutes. I accepted it when I was very young and wanted to be bohemian, but in retrospect, I realized that the boyfriend who confessed this to me was practically begging me to stand up and say no, I don’t believe that’s right. It set a larger pattern of me bending over backwards, him testing the limits of how much I would humiliate myself to seem like I was soooo coooool and it ended very badly.

    Katha Pollitt once asked me in a debate where I was being the sex-positive “sex work is great!” feminist if I’d approve of a boyfriend doing it. I was humiliated to think about how I had and what a massive mistake that really was.

  41. Holly, I probably should have laid off commenting today altogether because I was too busy to spend any time and so instead of unpacking the thought I just threw it out there half-chewed.

    I’ve written elsewhere, notably at Feministing in comments, that I think we ought to move from a model of sex as a commodity that is given or traded, to a model of sex as a performance, and when partnered a joint performance. In a commodity model, women are reduced by having sex, so they had better be careful with it and trade it for something of value. I think that is the prevalent view in patriarchy, is inherently patriarchal and I am against that model. I think a performance conception eliminates the concept of “slut”, and moves rape from a property crime to a violent invasive personal wrong, more like kidnapping. It eliminates sex shame and locates sex as mutual and pleasurable for both parties. I also think that the commodity model is inherently heteronormative in its assymetricality. Sex as a commodity has to map onto the notion of someone giving or selling and someone else getting or buying; which imposes a man/woman gender binary where it does not belong.

    I do subscribe to a kind of sex exceptionalism. Perhaps sex is unlike anything else; I’m not sure. But I am sure that in patriarchy sex is unlike anything else. Of course, bodily autonomy is part of the reason. But a large part of it is just that in patriarchy, women are reduced to sex, sex is a commodity, and the privileged can acquire the commodity exploitively. In a society where we accept disparities in wealth and power we also accept a lot of coercive economic relations. I think we’re not moving away from that any time soon; so I want to move sex away from the economic exchange to free it from the “someone gets screwed” aspect of out commerce. Pun intended.

    I’m also pretty much just against patriarchal male sexual entitlement. Nobody has a right to partnered sex; on my account one ought not to have partnered sex unless one can interest a partner.

    I am a Swedish model proponent because I think that it changes the power relationship between seller and buyer. Right now, it is both easier and more socially accepted to prosecute the sellers; they are generally the disempowered folks. I’m not too worried about what would happen in a world where the campaign to prosecute johns was so effective that it completely eliminated the demand; I think we are a long way from that.

    I am giving sex workers a pass. I’m adopting an asymmetrical view of participation in the transaction because my view is that, on the whole the participants tend to be differently situated.

    On the non-cognitivist thing, I usually don’t get into it because it’s such a fringe view. I guess I’m just testy at being called some kind of moralist. Atheist kinkster and blue-nosed moral scold? Usually, someone’s telling me that since I’m an atheist, feminist, sadomasochist and liberal, I’m some kind of amoral, hedonistic sociopath. That’s the name-calling I’m used to, at least.

  42. It sit back and watch in amazement at all the hoohaa surrounding this issue. I guess Australian’s think differently on this subject. The last major “sex scandal” we had involved a politician who admitted that when he went to the strip club and did what he did, he was too drunk to remember anything because he had been drinking all day using tax payers money…….. Overnight his popularity rose 5 points and subsequently he has been elected prime minister……. I guess we just care more about what he is doing for our country than what he is doing with a small piece of his anatomy…….

  43. Once you strong arm women into conceding that buying sex could conceivably be morally right, it appears the next step is to demand that women “understand” that male partners have to visit prostitutes on occasion, it appears.

    Yuck. I’m sorry that happened to you, Amanda. It sounds like an ugliness waiting to happen one way or another — the abusive “testing of the limits,” I mean.

    As far as I’m aware, I don’t know anyone who buys sex or wants to buy sex. Of course, this might just mean they don’t tell me. I’ve met clients of friends on occasion, but barely said more than a few words to them. (And they were paying to be dominated, it probably bears mentioning.) So I have to say, this is all pretty far from my personal experience, except as an ally of people who do sex work. But I don’t think the next step from looking at whether buying sex is inherently immoral has to be “men in our society have to buy sex sometimes.” There’s a giant gulf between those things in my book, not least because of what’s been mentioned many times, the fact that so much sex work is exploitative, gender-biased, tied up in abusive or power-trip desires somehow, and economically coerced to some degree.

  44. Thomas,

    I’m actually kind of convinced by your model of sex exceptionalism. If I understand correctly, you’re saying that in a patriarchy sex will never be able to be traded in a non-exploitative way between men and women. Of course that leaves some exceptions, like sex that reverses patriarchal expectations, or homosexual sex, but that does seem like it makes sense for most buying and selling of sex. Of course, even with gay sex there are power differentials — notably the economic ones. And those exist for buying and selling all kinds of labor — even when the labor is “someone to perform with,” which does put you on more of an equal footing in terms of what’s happening, but still in less of a position of power. (I just had a conversation about exactly that last weekend with a professional musician.)

    I guess what I wonder about is sex exceptionalism with respect to the “bodily autonomy” and squick-factor part. It seems clear to me that for those reasons, coerced sex work can be reasonably held to as worse than other kinds of coerced work (or maybe only on a similar level as things like coerced surrogate motherhood, also a really disturbing thought). But that just seems to be saying, we ought to be really careful with some kinds of work since they cut closer to the bone and are more dangerous with your person than other kinds of work. Sadly there are a lot of dangerous, vulnerable types of work which are really poorly compensated — in fact those are the ones that tend to be the “worst jobs” in more ways than one (stigma, poor pay, and danger / bodily peril) even though you’d think it would be the other way around. But most are not also criminalized. Once you cross a clear line into consent and some degree of choice and control over the situation — it seems to me like the goal ought to be improving choice, improving control, all of those things, for the workers.

    I also agree completely about the male sexual entitlement, of course. But there are plenty of assholes who feel entitled to services and goods and temporary relationships that they can buy, and we don’t necessarily say that the fact that they actually can buy them is wrong even though we agree that of course nobody has the “right” to always have that thing, whether it’s a lollipop, a dance partner, a drummer for your vanity band, or a SUV.

    As for the Swedish model — I really don’t know enough to be able to say, other than what the attorney I interviewed the other day had to say, that it often ends up being the workers who bear the burden of increased criminalization and having to go underground, added danger that comes with that, etc — even though the idea is to put that burden on the buyer. The buyer still has the money, the worker is still the one who needs to get paid, so I’m not sure it’s that simple to just shift the burden by putting all the criminal risk in the transaction on the buyer.

  45. I’m glad you don’t think that. But from experience, it follows for most women, that if they need to accept that being a john is the moral equivalent to not being one, then they have to accept that their boyfriends have done it in the past. That’s as far as I went, and I learned that you can’t squelch every inclination lest you be accused of being “sex negative”. But once you get into having to accept that they’ve done it in the past, visiting a prostitute is seen then as garden variety cheating, and then it’s easily argued that it’s less than cheating, because you paid her to go away.

    There’s a giant can of worms once you accept the man in your bed has a “right” to view some or all women as cunt dispensers instead of people, and that’s the elephant in the room when we talk about the exceptions around sex work—i.e. focus on happy hookers, male hooker, and dominatrixes to the exclusion of the vast majority of sex workers, who are women in it against their will, because the money is better than anything else they can command. And if your man has sex with such a woman, you come face to face with the fact that your man thinks that it’s just find to fuck someone against her will because poverty has overridden it.

  46. Having an affair does not impact your ability to be a good leader or to do your job well.

    There is a school of thought which posits that if a person is willing to violate the trust and promise to be faithful to their spouse…just how trustworthy are the promises s(he) makes to the constituents who are not as close relationally???

    Would someone be willing to dissect and pose points against this line of thinking?

  47. As far as I’m aware, I don’t know anyone who buys sex or wants to buy sex. Of course, this might just mean they don’t tell me.

    Um… No shit. Of course you know people who have bought sex. And, unless you live under a rock, of course you know people who’ve sold it too. I am sorry that you had bad experiences with someone, but this does not mean you’re entitled to pass judgment on everyone who buys sex across the board.

    Yet another judgmental discussion on Feministe about buying sex and sex workers that depresses the hell out of me.

  48. As for why selling sex is not a moral wrong but buying it is, to me, it’s a necessity argument. People need to make money using the skills that they have. People need to survive. And yes, I realize that some sex workers do quite well and are head and shoulders above simple survival — good on them. I don’t think that’s wrong, either. But no one has a necessity to purchase sex. And there is something about the power imbalance and the (albeit temporary) ownership aspect of another person’s body that bothers me about buying sex. Again, this is a personal moral thing and I’m going to have a really hard time explaining it — and I’m content to admit that it’s perhaps not a consistent or entirely logical position — but I would not be with a man who felt entitled to buy sex. No way.

    Jill–I’ll say it’s inconsistent. I mean… If no one ever bought sex again, then all of the people whose rights you’re defending to sell it would just go out of business. Those who are trafficked into the business and those who enter it of their own free well, those who want to get out and those who want to stay. How would you respond to these consequences? I know it’s purely hypothetical and maybe a moot point, but since I do think our morality ought to be consistent with what we want to happen in the world… Do you want everyone to stop buying sex regardless of the economic consequences to sex workers?

    As far as your point that you would never be with someone who bought sex, well… There are lots of personal reasons that would preclude me from being with someone too. But these reasons tend to be based on my preferences and the sorts of things that I look for in a partner. I would never suggest that my personal preferences feed into any sort of Universal Morality Tale such as: “Buying sex is morally wrong.”

    Finally, there seem to be some separate threads going on here. First, some people think Spitzer was morally wrong to engage in shady financial dealings. Second, some want to argue that it’s always wrong to buy sex, and, third, others want to shame Spitzer for the “betrayal” of his family. While I’m definitely on board on corruption, I’m really uncomfortable with the moralism informing the last two positions. On the second position, I don’t agree that it’s always morally wrong to buy sex. On the third, I think the alleged betrayal is between Spitzer and his family, and our high-minded feelings of concern are unfounded, patronizing, and probably unwanted. It strikes me as disingenuous, politically motivated concern, and I don’t want any part of it.

  50. Um… No shit. Of course you know people who have bought sex. And, unless you live under a rock, of course you know people who’ve sold it too. I am sorry that you had bad experiences with someone, but this does not mean you’re entitled to pass judgment on everyone who buys sex across the board.

    Just FYI, I think you’re confusing or combining something I wrote with something Amanda wrote.

    I’m going to close my posts on this thread by saying that I think there’s a big difference between evaluating the moral choices of individuals operating in the messed-up world we live in and trying to decide whether something like “economic exchanges involving sex” are universally bad. If you want to put forward the idea that most people who buy sex are doing so in a way that reinforces unjust power dynamics based on wealth and gender and abuse of women, I really don’t think you need a categorical imperative declaring the core of that immoral — the world has already rotted the rest of that apple for you. The real reason, for me at least, to look at what’s going on in the middle of all that and whether it’s “inherently wrong” or not is to try and talk about what kind of long-term outcomes we want to move towards. Maybe not as long-term as something like “the end of all patriarchy” — but then, this is where some of the stuff Thomas said does kind of convince me that perhaps those things are not so easily disentangled.

  51. Um… No shit. Of course you know people who have bought sex. And, unless you live under a rock, of course you know people who’ve sold it too. I am sorry that you had bad experiences with someone, but this does not mean you’re entitled to pass judgment on everyone who buys sex across the board.

    Oooops again. I confused two people here. The first part is a response to Holly’s quote about not knowing any sex workers or buyers.

    The second part (“I”m sorry about your bad experiences”) is a response to Amanda. I confused the two of you in reading this thread quickly.

    So, I should have just ended with my point (to Holly) that, of course, everyone knows people who have bought and sold sex. But given the moralistic tone of some of your discussion, it makes sense that these people would not have voluntarily shared this information with you.

  52. it seems pretty clear, whatever you think about the morality of the sex industry, that legal codes are not going to solve all the problems with prostitution. just making prostitution legal doesn’t mean that all of a sudden selling sex will lose all of its stigma and the women suffering under its current state will come forward and take action on their own behalf. domestic violence victims, sexual assault victims, coercion victims like the poor woman who was manipulated by her immigration officer all don’t come forward to report acts of violence against them because of this stigma. of course, removing the legal obstacles to healthy sex work would improve some women’s lives. but the things that really will improve the sex industry, it seems to me, are the things we talk about on this blog all the time: fighting the idea that women who act outside of classic gender roles somehow invite disrespect and bad treatment. and introducing capitalist/consumer ideas about ‘getting what you pay for’ to the equation are often going to make it even tougher for women selling sex to ask for the respect they deserve as people. unfair? of course. but i think it’s true.

    if we didn’t live in a patriarchy, sex work would be different, and that would be great. unfortunately, we do live in a patriarchy, and it seems to me that even women who do sex work purely on their own terms would suffer from negative attitudes toward sexually liberated women and toward prostitutes. so, i’ve been surprised to see such a strong distinction drawn between prostitutes in a strong bargaining position and those who are coerced, as if those who don’t have to engage in prostitution don’t suffer from sexism, ever…. the attitudes that lead to women performing sex work in unhealthy situations affect us all negatively in varying degrees, no matter what our relationship to sex work.

    as always, the patriarchy ruins everything ….

  53. “the man in your bed has a “right” to view some or all women as cunt dispensers instead of people, ”

    gads, that was charming…

    You want to know something about people who buy sex? They’re all different. Just like the people who sell it. Some are assholes, some are kind of regular guys, and some are pretty cool people overall.

    Spitzer broke laws he swore to uphold and in part built his career and reputation on busting prostitutes, then hired them. There is the problem.

  54. I’m opposed to the buying of sex. I ain’t fer it, I’m agin’ it, and that’s that.

    And I’m agin seeing prostitutes who have no other way of earning money starve because we decide to criminalize the transactions, a la Sweden.

    I’m not talking about white college students boosting their already considerable income by engaging in sex work.

    My thoughts always turn to prostitutes that I’ve actually met, trans women of color. They’re trying to survive in a world that hates them because they’re poor, black, women, and trans all at the same time. No-one will hire them. It’s prostitution or starvation for them.

    All the moralizing in the world isn’t going to help these folks until we address the racism, classism, sexism, and transmisogyny that is keeping them down.

    Yes, I think that men who pay for sex are ethically odious, but prostitutes are humans who have a right to do what they *need* to in order to survive, ffs.

    And your “non-cognitive”-ness sounds like an excuse to take political positions without thinking about them, brushing off those who dare to question you, and shutting down all discussion. Xtian fundamentalists do that all the time.

    Regarding the topic of the OP, I’m pissed for two reasons: (1) He violated the trust of his wife, which means that once again a woman got shafted; and (2):

    Spitzer broke laws he swore to uphold and in part built his career and reputation on busting prostitutes, then hired them. There is the problem.

    Yes, RE, exactly.

  55. Yes, I think that men who pay for sex are ethically odious, but prostitutes are humans who have a right to do what they *need* to in order to survive, ffs.

    I don’t think anyone posting here would disagree with you on that.

    but the things that really will improve the sex industry, it seems to me, are the things we talk about on this blog all the time: fighting the idea that women who act outside of classic gender roles somehow invite disrespect and bad treatment.

    Prostitution IS a “classic gender role” for women. World’s oldest profession, blah blah blah. Having to trade sex for economic survival is the classic feminine condition.

    Do you want everyone to stop buying sex regardless of the economic consequences to sex workers?

    I’m sorry, are you suggesting that johns buy sex altruistically, for the benefit of the sex workers who would otherwise starve? Because it kind of sounds like you are.

    Once you strong arm women into conceding that buying sex could conceivably be morally right, it appears the next step is to demand that women “understand” that male partners have to visit prostitutes on occasion, it appears.

    Indeed, and if you do not buy the screeds about the Uncontrollable Male Need to visit prostitutes, or even if you would not tolerate this behaviour in your personal life, you are told that you are “moralistic.”

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