Yep, times are getting harder. But things have been harder than in America in most other countries of the world for quite a while -- believe me, giving your virtue for food or transportation in my native Brazil has been going on for quite a while now. And not only for girls; boys also get to sell theirs to get ahead.

I suppose the conclusion is that we'll always have to do what we have to do to get by.

From the headline, you'd thing the woman was actually trawling a gas station with her car ready to be filled up (get your mind out of the gutter). However:

Angela Eversole, 34, was nabbed last weekend during a police stakeout at a Days Inn, where she allegedly trysted with customer. Nowak admitted paying for Eversole's services, in part, with a $100 Speedway gas card.

So basically, it was a run-of-the-mill prostitution case where the woman accepted a gas card as part of her payment. Considering that gas is an everyday commodity and that it would have been easy to spend $100 on it even at 1999 prices, there's no more story here than there is in someone paying a prostitute with jewelry.

And again, the story I posted in an earlier thread about the artist at Auschwitz who traded her art (She painted the guards' wives.) for breath is more disturbing to me than the woman who rents her vulva for gas. Why is the vulva extra-specialer than any other body part that we women rent for gas and groceries? This is ideology that intersects with the Right, which also believes that sex is extra-specialer.

I actually have to go sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day and do work for someone else. If only I could just have sex instead!

The shock of the headline comes from the idea that only as a last resort would someone have to stoop to something as lowly and immoral as trading sex for money or goods. Times must bad - there's absolutely no other way to make money than to have sex. Maybe that's just the easiest way. Some people just like sex.

What's the usual rate?

This reminds of a truck with a sign on the back window with a message to hitchhikers: Gas, Ass, or Grass. It was a truck from Florida but seen in the Bay area.

Ms. Shukert, I'm assuming your editors have told you writers to not respond in these threads, but perhaps, in another of your essays/articles, you can address what I perceive as Broadsheet's systemic pearl clutching about sex. Now, you wrote what you wrote, employing various intimate centers of your brain, and you'll likely buy gas with some of the earnings. Just as female carpenters will apply their biceps, eyes, and brains to build structures today and they'll buy gas with their earnings.

So, why does renting one's vulva, instead of one's brain or biceps, have you and the rest of the Broadsheeters, taking the vapors?

Now, I know that the sex business can put one in the same room with dangerous sleazeballs. Is that your concern? Or is crotch more important than other parts of a woman? Is the crotch the essence? If so, that's soooo reductive and therefore anti-feminist as it constricts, rather than liberates. It also seems a sex negative position.

this poor woman no troll Speedway gas station in search for full nozzle. She go for Days Inn with john and get offer of $100 in plus unleaded as part of professional fee.

And if sex for gas is no enough for ruin reputation, Ms Angela get charge with do business with no license too!

Unfortunate, no live Svutlana in Kentucky. Is it possible for have Kentucky license for most old profession?

Didn't think so.

In Finland, gas is currently around 1.60e/l (~9,4US$/gallon). So stop whining, please.

I would put forth the proposition that any "virtue' ceased to exist long before the sale or trade at the point of purchase. But more importantly; was that regular or premium?

This was widespread in Russia during the economic collapse of the 90s.

The title would have been more accurate if it had read

So it's come to this: Sex for money

It's really been a slow week, huh?

Why not sex for cash?

Why not sex for food, water, medicine, settlement of legal bills, plastic surgery, job promotion, or just plain fun?

Obviously there are a lot of frightening metaphors in sex-for-gas, but the real concern is her safety. I hope she used condoms.

Becoming desperate might be inevitable, but no one should be careless.

"Why not sex for food, water, medicine, settlement of legal bills, plastic surgery, job promotion, or just plain fun?"

That's capitalism!

And communism!

And socialism!

That's life.

Oh, good Lord; don't tell John McCain!