Fran Langum of Blue Gal raises one of those points that frustrate the dickens out of transactional traditional-values types (emphasis mine)

I came across this LA Times article about a plastic made in China gadget which allows a woman to “fake” virginity, presumably on her wedding night. It’s got jockstraps-in-a-twist for the double-standard bearers of the right wing Islamic world.

And no where in the debate is the sense that women are supposed to enjoy themselves sexually either before or after marriage. We don’t hear from the female sex partners, to put the term most generically, of Ensign, Sanford, Vitter, and even Letterman as to whether or not they enjoyed the sex.

She said it here.

Well certainly not! The no-sex class paradigm’s Rule of Desire #1 says it’s simultaneously intolerable and inconceivable for a woman to have sexual desire. In a system where heterosexual sex is supposed to be transactional (i.e. men get sex and women get security, love, support, gifts, money, not getting beaten up, etc in exchange) it would be totally inconvenient if women enjoyed the actual sex part of sex! That would be like a dollar bill suddenly having a say in where it was spent.

(Sheesh, Cosmopolitan writers and editors get the Two Rules of Desire 100% right 100% of the time and they’re morons! So how hard can it be? But I digress…)

Twisting the knife on no-sex class cultural assumptions Blue Gal passes along the following little joke that’s made the rounds.

Q: What did the prostitute do for David Vitter that his wife wouldn’t?
A. Everything.

Ha. Ha-ha-ha! You see… he’d already done the wedding-ring transaction, see, and he’d gotten in trouble with her before about some sort of sexual peccadillos, see, which means that even if she had been interested in sex (which would be intolerable and inconceivable) she’d be off the hook for sex. Get it? See, and even if she was still on the hook she’d still withhold sex to punish him. Got it? No, see, prostitutes do things human women won’t because they’re paid to. Or, even better, because they’re coerced! Because, see, even prostitutes — and you know they’re all women! — wouldn’t do it if they either a) weren’t force into it or b) weren’t so greedy and avaricious they were willing to hold their noses and do it for mon… are you paying attention? This is serious! Because you won’t get that it’s funny!

Sheesh, Maxim writers and editors get jokes like that 100% right 100% of the time and they’re morons! So how hard can it be? But I digress…

Getting back to Fran’s original question, inside the dominant paradigm it’s in incredibly bad taste to ask whether Vitter’s, Letterman’s or anyone else’s partners enjoyed sex with them. Just identifying them as having had sex (marred or not, willingly or not, whether they enjoyed it or not) would rob them of the opportunity to use one of those plastic virginity things from China with male partner so he could at least pretend he was getting something of value. Even to suggest they might have enjoyed it would further reduce the exchange value of their sexuality. Inside the dominant paradigm to identify one of the partners at all could still (literally in some cultures) destroy her.

(Yes, outside the dominant paradigm there are matters of sexual harassment by employers, general and not just sexual rights to privacy, and whether there was choice in the matter. There’s also the little matter of professional stigma where career advancement based on merit can tarnished by assumptions about favoritism and/or compensation for sexual behavior. And outside it there’s even a perfectly non-controversial presumption that, y’know, to the extent they were grownups who decided to have sex then yeah, they probably enjoyed themselves. But inside it that’s just crazy talk.)

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There are a lot of other really good points in Fran’s post. She tackles some disturbing public perceptions about the agency of Britney Spears and her younger sister and of men who feel entitled to have sex with them. She raises the issue of what she calls the orgasm gap — the time, sometimes years, between when women first have intercourse and when they have their first (possibly non-solo) orgasms. Go check it out.

Debauchette responds to further “benevolent” dehumanization of sex workers.

“I’ll stop posting quotes from sex workers stating they have agency when folks stop telling them they don’t.” – spreadmagazine

This is my biggest pet peeve, the relentless assumption that anyone who chooses sex work, in any form, must be mentally handicapped, damaged, child-like, and otherwise incapable of making intelligent and fully rational decisions about their own lives. It’s such a fucking Rorschach response, these people who project their own anxieties and fears about sex and commerce and sexual commerce all over our bodies.

She said it here.

The Rorschach barb is actually pretty well taken because it applies equally well to uninformed sympathizers and detractors alike. A “libertarian” belief that anything between consenting adults isn’t just virtuous but rational income maximizing can be no less brutally detached than a serial predator’s, a conservative’s, or a paleo-feminist’s, or too many customer’s belief that prostitutes are necessarily sub-human thralls.

For that matter, because sex work is highly stratified, segmented, and because it’s illegal also adversarially information-opaque you probably want to be careful about Rorschach effects even if you’re reasonably well informed.

The barb about projection of anxieties is also pretty interesting. I had a minor ephiphany earlier today while reading about genuinely barbaric treatment of lowest-class sex workers in cultures where, well, lower-class all kinds of workers are treated barbarically. And because I’ve at least learned that when I have that reflex it’s a good idea to question whether they might also apply in non “barbaric” cultures like mine I wound up with the little epiphany that based on everything from “ladies auxiliaries” to “women’s work” to “feminine complaints” to daddy/daughter chastity pledges to door-holding to who can “legitimately” carry condoms our society’s assumptions about the subhumanity of “whores” isn’t really all that different from our nominally more affirmative but actually highly custodial attitudes towards “virgins” and “Madonnas.”