the teenager who sold her virginity to the highest bidder to fund her further education

[pottycock]

I can't decide whether this is very sad or quite enterprising. A bit of both I think.

What did amaze me is that a medical professional endorsed her virginity at a press conference!

story here - warning, it's in the DM!

FBG, I remember that too, she was British and a lesbian wasn't she???

Tatt, it might come from women themselves reinfoircing the cultural idea that women are the gatekeepers of sex - that it has to remain a limiting resource or ot cheapens the price for all women. Just a thought...

I dunno. But it is to some men just as size really does matter to a lot of women. Should we condemn it just because of that? Because it might be 'unfair' to the other sex who aren't virgins (and gave theirs away to a chump who never called them again) or men who aren't well endowed and spend their lives feeling inferior because of it?

That's just life. Tough titty, as they say.

If virginity is a big thing to the man, but the women is not really bothered then surely the women is exploiting the man by selling it to him!

Obviously I think it's terrible that her virginity was purchased for cash.

But her health was purchased for cash too - he could have had any number of sexually transmitted diseases including incurable ones like HIV or HepC.

I think it's highly unlikely that the safe sex message hadn't reached this girl so the only conclusion left is that she felt she couldn't say no to sex without a condom

Proper prostitutes who do this professionally do not have sex without condoms.

lol at 'proper' prostitites

I know

You know what I mean.

tattifer on Tue 12-May-09 23:45:01
"women have been doing this for CENTURIES."

and it wasn't until the advent of judeo-christian beliefs that it was a problem for anyone!"

erhmmm... as a Classicist I see very few indications that prostitutes were viewed with any kind of respect by say the ancient Romans. People would certainly have a problem with it if it happened in their own family. And professional whores were usually treated very disrespectfully.

The difference that Judaeo-Christianity made was the exotic view that everybody- even a slave or a person of low social status - has a soul and is of value in the eyes of the Christian God.

The Romans didn't believe that slaves or working class women mattered at all. So naturally they didn't have a problem with them being prostitutes; any more than they had a problem with a slave being flogged to death by his owner. Slaves and ex-slaves were there to fulfill the needs of the upper classes. Not a problem at all.

If the current case was only about a man's sexual needs and a woman's power to supply them- why is her virginity a saleable commodity?

Vittoria - you may well be right. It would be too simple to say that in days before women get the right to own property etc etc (waits for dit to deliberately misinterpret or oversimplify) but of course culturally that wasn't the case. Very sweeping I know, women have had power and lost it in diferrent places different times etc.

My comments about the church come from the fact that my culture (average british but hesitate to make claims for anyone else) is built somewhat stolidly on the moral whys and wherefores of the church. The very fact that women are seen historically and culturally as the fairer, the weaker sex etc etc stems from the church.

It didn't ride roughshod over existing cultures, it was a clever political beast that adapted belief systems and sol them as its own, taking care to alienate previously powerful and often female based doctrines/roles. Start at the beginning - one mother goddess and seven naughty sons... becomes one god and seven days to make the world!

"The Romans didn't believe that slaves...mattered"

Cory I was looking at it from the moral condemnation point of view. The church has a stance on prostitution based on morals, not class.

Yes mrs Jammi, I think you're spot on. The "morally outraged" have a good run with this one unfortunately. i wish my soul was squeaky clean likes theirs must be to be so quick to condemn

Laurie - I wish it were true that all sex workers used protection, but a lot of the girls in care I work with, are offered an extra twenty quid for not using condoms. When they're desperate, they do, do it.

but Tattifer, there are very negative things said about the morality of prostitutes in ancient Rome

I think Romans thought it was equally immoral to sell your body- just that immorality in the lower orders didn't matter so much except insofar as it impacts on the lives of the people who do matter

(no equal condemnation of men who take advantage of course)

but if you see slaves as mere objects to fulfill their needs, then obviously you aren't going to care about any moral damage ensuing to them

that is not in itself proof that you don't believe moral damage happens as a result of prostitution

a better clue is how people reacted to similar behaviour among the people they thought did matter

and there is every sign that they reacted with moral outrage

Cory I'm not a classicist my studies so I wouldn't know the ins and outs of the culture of the time.

I have an uneasy feeling that the attitudes towards women and sex get too tangled up in moral outrage and people don't stop to think where this comes from.

From our 21st century viewpoint we've forgotten that the relationships between men and women are based on a need for survival. Millenia may have changed the methods of survival and warped the message somewhat but the hardwiring is still in place behind everything we do.

I don't know much about the Kalahari bushmen, but I bet prostitution is not an issue!

I suppose that giving sex for favours is probably fairly well ingrained in primate behaviour

there are some monkey sequences in David Attenborough's films that certainly seem to show this

otoh it also seems connected with patriarchal structures and control over females by dominant males (at least among the monkeys)

on the more human level, it seems to me that a girl who is setting a special price on her virginity (as opposed to just sex) is sending some sort of message about the desirability of female virginity- and consequently devaluing female sexuality

presumably the implication is that she would have less to sell if she was no longer a virgin?

sounds very patriarchal to me, and the fact that she is able to exploit it to her gain doesn't make it less patriarchal

That's a bit of a circualr argument there Cory.

But actually thats pretty much the norm for here

Cory - you're right, she's attaching a particular value to virginity as opposed to just selling sex. She's tapping into a niche market that's for sure. Not sure if she's devaluing anything in particular though.

Yes, the market she's tapping into (curiously enough in commercial environment we'd refer to it as exploiting a market) is firmly based in a society built on patriarchal structures and belief systems.

I think there are two (and probably many more) strands to this complex discussion, but it is very hard to knit them together.

That sex is an arena from exploitation isn't up for challenge, but that all sexual exchanges of this kind are exploitation is just not tenable.

I know it's part of femninist discourse, but it sometimes seems to me that reiterating and defending the discourse over understanding women and their choices, trade offs and the give and take between men and women is lost in the rush to over simplify and condemn.

Just for interest - a similar story, but some very different circumstances. Apologies - DM again.

Story here

Better marketing? Hotter product?!

• crouches down and waits for gunfire -