Spitzer Sex not Victimless: Women Pay High Price

By Kirby Sommers

The Spitzer sex scandal brought to the forefront an astonishing fact: Prostitution is not a victimless crime. Women involved in prostitution pay a much higher price than all of the money earned in the world’s oldest profession.

Little girls never dream of one day becoming a prostitute. A doctor, yes. A lawyer, yes. A whore, no. Demand produces supply. It’s not the other way around. Ashley Dupre, as many have argued, did not bring down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. She’s just one of many women lured into the business of sex for pay because of economic hardship. Had Dupre not been available, Spitzer would have settled for someone else that fateful night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.

Having interviewed several working girls here’s what I discovered.

Many women in the industry have been sexually abused or molested as children. Many women become drug addicts or alcoholics in order to work. One woman whose name I won’t use told me: “I was raped, became pregnant, and had no where to go. A woman told me this was a quick way for me to get money. It was terrifying. I’d never had a drink in my life, but on that first day, right after my morning coffee I downed a small bottle of vodka. I needed something to help get me there.”

Another woman who had been a successful Las Vegas showgirl said, “When my boyfriend found out our baby girl was born with multiple birth defects, he picked me up at the hospital and dropped me and the baby off at a friend’s place. Turns out his friend was a madam. My boyfriend told me this is where I would earn the money I needed to take care of my crippled kid. He left us there. That was 14 years ago.”

“I never wanted to be a human garbage receptacle,” a woman clearly high on something told me. “But this game, it’s a catch 22. I used to take drugs to get myself to work. Now I can’t stop working because I need the money to buy drugs. I don’t know how to get out. It’s like once in, never out.”

And yet another confessed: “It took all I had to drag myself out of that life. I worked hard at getting my self-esteem back. Then out of nowhere, months and months later, one of my wealthy johns tracked me down. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. The guy was seriously obsessed. Here was a married man, much like Eliot Spitzer with two little girls and he wouldn’t let me go. I had a fight with my boyfriend one day and went off to Central Park and there he was. I now know he was stalking me. Anyway, that day I became his mistress. And, you know, it wasn’t much different than having been a whore. Then I just stopped sleeping. I’ve been an insomniac ever since. He was always a reminder of a time in my life I wanted to forget.”

Sex sells.

On Monday when the New York Times broke the Spitzer sex story online, their servers crashed. Revenue for the paper went up an astonishing 60% with the salacious details driving up demand. Since then papers across the board have been selling, bloggers have been blogging, and tongues have been wagging. No other sexual scandal has received this kind of all consuming frenzy -- not even the Clinton-Lewinski scandal of 1998.

Everyone, it seems, wants the sordid details. Everyone, it seems, wants in on the cash.

The math.

Here it is folks, the real numbers behind Spitzer’s $1,000/hr encounter with a high priced call girl.

Time in the boudoir: 2 hours, 15 minutes = $2,225
Ashley Dupre’s cut = half or $ 1,112.50
Time it took to get from New York to Washington, DC = approximately 3 hours
Time it took to get back to New York from Washington, DC = approximately 3 hours
Time it took to get ready for “date” = approximately 1 hour
Travel time to and from train station(s) = approximately 45 minutes
Total of hours put in by Ashley Dupre = 10 hours
Amount of money made by Dupre on a per hourly rate = $112.50
Dollar value of a lifetime of emotional scars = ______ (you enter number here)

Sex does sell, but who wins? Not the prostitutes. There is a generalization that prostitution has no victims and is considered to be sex among consenting adults. Come on now, would a 22-year-old really have slept with 48-year-old George Fox, Spitzer’s alias because she wanted to?

Whatever else Ashley Dupre accomplishes in her life, it will always be foreshadowed by the fact she was Eliot Spitzer’s call girl. Even if she discovers a cure for the common cold any mention of her will bring back all the sordid details. Here’s the whore, have a look-see, the hawkers will hawk. The victim has been and always will be the prostitute herself.

2008 Copyright Kirby Sommers
http://kirbysommers.blogspot.com

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