The Whore or her Clients?

If prostitution is never all about the sex, then what does it say about the client? If he's paying for sex AND conversation? And for the delusion that he's paying for neither? And that the "escort" is so equally deluded that she cannot call herself what she really is? What a sad story, all around.

Dupre's father and brother have nothing to do with HER carrier choice.

Nor did she "bring down" Spitzer. HIS choices did that.

The whole thing is just people making excuses for what is their Personal Responsibility. And the media thinking there is a substantial story in this.

The interview I would like to see is the one after some public figure gets his block knocked off by the wronged spouse. Why these broads put on a brave face and suck it up is beyond me. Pound the slimeball into the ground. Don't waste the rights women gained in the last century by staying dependent for the image of ??????

I was going to comment on the fact that it seems every prostitute has to be portrayed as emotionally scarred somehow. Can't a well-adjusted (whatever that is) person become a prostitute too?

But now I think of it in a different way. Maybe the rule that our personal traumas determine our career choices is universal. Therefore I'd like to see in-depth reporting on how people's emotional development causes them to become garbage men and data-entry specialists. Why should prostitutes get all the press?

We all really, really need to rethink our attitudes towards sex. Honestly, why is prostitution judged so harshly? I think it's because we're still stuck in the same old-fashioned attitudes about sex that people had in Victorian times: sex is shameful and dirty and should never happen except to procreate, and then only reluctantly.

Why do we single out sex, of all our bodily functions, as the one that is somehow the most shameful? Why is it so wrong to have sex for money? If someone were being paid to take a crap, would we have such a problem? What about eating?

We in America often make the silent claim that we are so incredibly enlightened that we can't possibly be making moral judgments in error. I call bullshit. (And besides, for those of us who claim to be Christian, whatever happened to "Judge not, lest ye be judged"?)

the Q is easy to answer- to earn big bucks!

not because of her family, her father etc. but because this was a very high paid job. what choice did she have? work at a fastfood shop and earn a few bucks per hour?

she made good money and enjoyed the life style. lots of girls do it who have personal problems. it beats working in a factory for low pay.

whether you call it prostitution, or escort, or whoring, it's just the oldest, easiest way for a girl to earn a great deal of money fast.

Damnit.

I knew my job was basically whoring, but did you have to go and say it.

Hey, does anyone remember that Gordon Liddy claimed that the real reason why the Democrats' Watergate office was broken into was to steal the evidence in the Dems' possession that young GOP women were running a call girl ring that included Diane Sawyer?

This claim was even made in court on several occasions.

And how did the relationship between Obama and Ayers get so much attention while the relationship between McCain and Liddy got none?

OK, Liddy is a nut, but what if he were -- for the first time in his life -- telling the truth?

Just wondering,

ZWrite

but - in some important ways - like whom we would aspire to be if we were less terrified of sexuality, authenticity, choice, and of the controlling, judging, projected pathology of patriarchy that Ms. Sawyer got paid to execute.

Ashley’s psychodynamic narrative would be intellectually satisfying to Dr. Phil, is what she believed was expected of her, and just doesn’t work. Rather than explaining anything, the absence of the dad only points to the prohibited questions that might otherwise have provided insight: what was the quality of attachment and relationship with the parent (biomom)?; who else was around (mom’s boyfriends) and what did Ashley see (learn) from those relationships?; how did the dad’s betrayal affect the mom and how did the mom’s emotional response come across to Ashley?; how did Ashley weigh mom’s response against the fairy tale of marriage she learned as a child?; why did the brother need to bail out?

Absent experienced or witnessed abuse, what Ashley primarily experienced and introjected growing up was the pathology of marriage - that is, the predictable spirit- and growth-crushing consequences of patriarchy’s demand that women trust their well being, safety, and fulfillment to a socially-enforced legalistic/moralistic binding contract that trades their sexual freedom, identity, and self for escape from fear of social shame, the weapon Ms. Sawyer desperately and clumsily tried to wield.

Ashley seems to have learned something from her experiences, and that separates her from Ms. Sawyer and most women, who seem content to defend and embody patriarchy. Her profession is dangerous and in some ways maladaptive, yet she remains in control of her sexual behavior and commitments. She has diminished her life by forfeiting trust and constricting freedom in order to support herself financially, but she is not trapped in a fairy tale without a happy ending.

Just as Ms. Dupre was once the girl next door, so were the four prostitues in Ashley Dupre's home state of NJ who were found dead in an Atlantic City ditch two years ago.

The murders of Kim Raffo, 35, Molly Jean Dilts, 20, Barbara Breidor, 42, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23 remain unsolved.

ABC/Disney is still glamorizing prostitution and has made Ms. Dupre its "Pretty Woman" of 2008. Sad. Gross and sad.

There are countless role models worthy of a primetime interview. I met one yesterday; a woman who founded a non-profit to recycle durable medical equipment. She keeps used walkers, wheelchairs, leg braces and other items out of landfills and rehabs the equipment for those in need, like the 1 million in Ms. Dupre's home state without health insurance.