I ran across an article in the Philadelphia Daily News titled “Spitzer’s call girl makes a point” which was written by Jenice Armstrong, a Daily News Columnist, and dated September 9, 2009.
She started by mentioning some comments made by Ashley Dupré (who had been the high-priced escort whose assignations with Elliot Spitzer had gotten him bounced out of politics — and into ignominy — when these became public).
In effect, Ashley defended her own participation by using the standard female refrain which so many women tend to use when they’re caught doing something tawdry: they point to other women who did something just as bad (or, even better, who had done something even worse).
It’s a bit like the way courts used to determine whether something was pornographic: does it violate “contemporary community standards”?
Ms. Dupré defended herself thusly:
“… many women target guys with money and use them to get these things. They toy with them, flirt, go on dates, have sex and then drop hints about that new dress at the store down the street or being short on rent money - and the guys deliver it. This is a dishonest relationship.”
She continues:
“Some women … dive into relationships with wealthy guys who they don’t love or even find attractive, but they stay in it because they have a nice home, a car and spending money — they would rather stay in an unfulfilling or loveless relationship than lose that security. This, too, is a dishonest relationship.”
Hear that, ladies?
Her implication is “at least I have honest relationships, where there are no phony pretenses about love … he gave me what I wanted and I gave him what he wanted”.
And she’s right. When it comes to women trading their favors for money, women are extremely sensitive to the topic, because the difference between “whore” behavior and normal dating behavior is not black and white. Either way, for example, the guy almost always ends up having to pay. And either way, he’ll look for sex in return (how many guys do you know who date women with whom they do not want to have sex?).
“…
the biggest difference between prostitution and dating may be the fact that, in prostitution, the guy ends up getting what he had paid for
…”
Oddly enough, the biggest difference between prostitution and dating may be the fact that, in prostitution, the guy ends up getting what he had paid for. Whereas, in dating, he often doesn’t. And from a guy’s standpoint, giving — but not then getting in return — is a dishonest relationship.
Ms. Armstrong does not dispute Ms. Dupré’s point. She admits that this sort of thing happens. In fact, she even adds a few more examples of it. But she insists that the women she knows aren’t like that.
That’s also a standard female refrain when another woman does something tawdry: insist that “my friends are not that way”. And, since birds of a feather flock together, that also creates the implication that “I’m not that way either”.
According to Ms. Armstrong:
“The vast majority of the women I know stand on their own two feet to earn their money, rather than getting it the way Dupré did.”
And she could be right about that.
Why might that be? I certainly don’t know any of her friends and acquaintances, of course, but I’m reminded of some odd philosophy that the priest used to give us in one of my religion classes when I was in high school: “Proper behavior in the absence of the opportunity to misbehave does not constitute virtue.”
What he meant was that we didn’t get to claim the moral high ground for never having been in bed with women because
(a) we were only fourteen;
(b) we were nerds who had no game;
(c) we had no cars and little spending money; and
(d) we went to an all-boys high school so there were no women around for us to hit on anyway.
For us, our celibacy reflected the lack of opportunity, not exemplary moral fiber.
“…
For us, our celibacy reflected the lack of opportunity, not exemplary moral fiber
…”
It wasn’t that we chose not to get laid, it was that we were unable to get laid. If we could have, we would have. But we couldn’t … so we didn’t.
I suspect that there is a similar dynamic at work for gold diggers. If only 5% of guys are really well-off financially, for example, then most women are not going to end up with one of them. It’s not a matter of morals … it’s a matter of supply and demand.
Could it be that many women who would otherwise have taken the Ashley Dupré glide-path (if they had been hotter looking) don’t because they don’t have the looks or the game to succeed with the hottest (and therefore the most demanding) guys?
And might they then misconstrue that “lack of opportunity” (which resulted in their settling for an average guy rather than a high-earning guy) as evidencing their own exemplary personal virtue?
That’d be my guess.
Stay tuned,
-Mack Doppler
