
The New Prostitution Economy - pmcpinto
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/07/welcome-to-the-new-prostitution-economy
======
helipad
Putting the prostitution to one side, the underlying issues are particularly
concerning to me.

In this article, young people appear to have either large debt or expensive
taste. They're encouraged to attend college, but increasingly find that the
available jobs don't meet expectations. "Vanilla", low-paying employment.

The description of the young woman who learned how to present herself and even
how to do an elevator pitch sound like the exception, rather than the norm.
Not everyone is so ambitious. Instead, the article suggests that most young
people start doing this out of desperation.

Desperation for paying off increasing debt, desperation for not having been
taught or learned the skills necessary to have a non-vanilla, well-paying job,
desperation for not being able to have the life that seems so accessible
online today but only available to a few.

------
peterlk
I want to offer a different perspective. This article is more itsightful than
the comments tere suggest.

I have had multiple friends seriously consider this line of work, and some
undertake it. No one talks about it. It's very secretive, and somewhat
dangerous. It's not talked about with girlfriends at bars. It's not told to
mom and dad, but it is all around you.

I once had one of these friends approach mose to ask if she could invest in my
startup in cash because she had garbage bags of cash that she could no longer
legally deposit in her bank. That cash put her through college.

Many of their clients do have significant others, and many of those
significant others know what's going on. It's just "fun on the side". When
this article says "tech guys" it doesn't mean senior developers; it means
twenty-something VPs and CTOs.

~~~
ryandrake
> When this article says "tech guys" it doesn't mean senior developers; it
> means twenty-something VPs and CTOs.

Exactly. Funny how the phrase "tech guys" has morphed from programmers and
hackers (1990s) into VPs and senior execs (2010s). No programmers I know are
able to afford to spend $700/hr on anything, let alone something you can get
for free.

------
GVIrish
Sex is probably the highest demand human 'service' right behind food and
medical attention. It only stands to reason that the internet would enable
that demand to find people willing to be paid exorbitantly to perform sex
acts. Trying to stop that via legislation is just as, if not more futile than
trying to stop drug use through prohibition.

What is interesting and scary at the same time is what happens to
relationships and sexuality if all of a sudden anyone on both sides of the pay
for dating->sex equation can find what they're looking for? Does it make it
everyone more callous about sex knowing that it is a commodity with a free
market? Does it increase infidelity? Will it make people more accepting of and
open about sex? Does it create more angry and sexually-frustrated males
feeling like they're beaten out by people who can pay?

With the sugar daddy phenomenon it could create a source of modest wealth for
a some of these women. In several of these exposes some of the women were
using their sugar daddies to fund their business ideas or to pay for higher
education. And really, it's not prostitution in the legal sense.

I think there'll be a lot of surprising outcomes from this, some of the good,
some of them bad.

------
jacques_chester
This article, and the previous moral panic piece by the same author (Nancy Jo
Sales), really do remind me of Scott Templeton from _The Wire_.

Quotes that are too perfect, stereotypes that are too stereotypical, plus a
generous helping of "everyone is" quotes.

Mind you, accusing a journalist of outright fabrication is very serious.

What's more likely is that she was able to selectively form a narrative. Note
the total absence of independent statistics. No interviews with police,
independent researchers, other journalists, sociologists, economists. No
quotes from people who break the narrative, creating a total absence of any
alternative storyline.

~~~
Freak_NL
Astute observation. There have been more documentaries and stories about this
topic, and plenty of those seem plausible, but these often focus on webcamming
and catering to specific fetishes and interests. Those stories also seem much
more down to earth and less dreamlike.

Perhaps it was the 'jumbo-sized Danny DeVito's' that kinda broke the suspense
of disbelief.

~~~
DanBC
But this article is focussed on a very narrow niche market - not just
prostitution but sugar daddying.

------
bench_soup
>“If prostitution is really just physical labor, if it’s no different than
serving coffee or fixing a car, then why would we see rape as such a traumatic
thing? If there’s nothing different about sex, then what’s so bad about rape?”

That was my thought too, I found this story to be really depressing.

But I feel like the author is trying to present this as a general and wide-
adopted trend when it's probably quite marginal.

~~~
efaref
Well, forced-coffee-serving and forced-car-fixing also has a name: slavery.
That's pretty traumatic, too.

~~~
ebbv
That's a bit of a stretch. If you're forced to serve someone coffee one time
most people would agree that's messed up but not that big of a deal. If you're
forced to have sex once, you've been raped and that's a life shattering event.

~~~
djschnei
You're completely missing the point. The point isn't which is more life
shattering (no one is arguing that), the point is that our laws should protect
against coercion against one's body. Forced labor and rape are differing
levels of infringement on ones body. However, sex and labor are still products
of one's body and the individual has the right to do with their body as they
wish.

~~~
ebbv
Sorry but it's you who is missing the point here. Nobody's arguing about
whether we should be able to be forced to do anything. Everybody agrees that
we should not.

The point is that there's a difference between regular labor and sex.

~~~
imgabe
We may consider coerced sex to be more traumatic than coerced labor, but it's
a difference in degree, not in kind. The author is arguing "If sex is just
labor then it's ok to coerce people to do it" which is absurd. It's not ok to
coerce people to do labor or have sex.

~~~
ebbv
That's not really the point. That statement is being used to illustrate the
fact that sex is not "just labor." If it were "just labor" it wouldn't be any
more traumatic than being forced to make coffee or being forced to answer
phones. Which would also be traumatic, but not as traumatic as rape.

But whatever, clearly there's a group of people here on HN who are taking the
hard line "sex work is just labor" position and there's not going to be a
rational discussion here.

~~~
imgabe
Like I said, the difference is in degree, not kind. There's no reason two
things have to be exactly the same amount of traumatic in order to be
considered the same _kind_ of trauma.

Losing 10% of your net worth and losing 90% of your net worth are both
traumatic. One is more so because it's to a larger degree, but it's not an
entirely different thing, it's just a different amount. That's why we have
different punishments for petty theft and grand larceny. Not because they're
completely different crimes, but because they're different degrees of the same
crime.

------
tristor
I found the juxtaposition interesting in this article that one of the women
got into "sugaring" because she was tired of dating "immature frat bros" and
then found that many of her clients were lonely tech workers. At the risk of
stating something which is a bit cliched, I think that there was an
opportunity here missed where the woman could have legitimately dated a tech
worker who wasn't an "immature frat bro" without having to resort to
"sugaring". On the other hand, it doesn't speak highly of any of these men
that they consider it okay to sexually objectify women by paying for sex,
although I do understand their frustrations and loneliness when you're stuck
working so many hours its impossible to even try to date.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
I never got this "sexual objectification" thing. If it is sexual
objectification to pay for sex (assumed consensual), then surely it's
"intellectual/creative objectification" to contract someone to make a website,
right?

I mean, if it was something special about sex, we wouldn't need to qualify it
as sexual (prostitution is not 'sexual prostitution' or even 'sexual
slavery').

So what is it that is the problem with sexual objectification? It's not the
objectification proper since nobody is lamenting the objectification of
plumbers and painters or what not. And it's not like anybody cares about what
their feelings are like. Everyone seems to understand that it's a job.

So really, the aspect of sexual objectification people don't like is that they
believe no one should be allowed to sell sex. And my question is why? We sure
are allowed to sell food, either at the grocery or the restaurant. We're are
allowed to sell and rent living arrangements. Although it's uncommon, there's
even places charging for access to toilets.

So why is sex so special?

~~~
taxicabjesus
> So why is sex so special?

If only Rusty would have restored kuro5hin.org by now, I would link to my
diary titled "The difference between boys & girls"...

'Evolution' has decided that women get to choose who they have sex with. Women
have to be picky, men tend to take what they can get. Some women are much more
open to sex than others. Some women factor monetary considerations into their
decision process.

I once picked a woman up in the taxi from a cheap motel, and took her south
along I-17. When we drove past Cheetah's (a strip club), my passenger said,
"I've bet you've picked up a lot of ho's there." I protested that strippers
were just working. She'd had a lot more experience with strip clubs than I,
and she said something like "all strippers are ho's". Which I guess might be
true enough to be a truism.

I also had a stripper who'd been followed home and beaten up by some of the
clubs' patrons, probably because she wasn't available for the services they
wanted. (Edit: I had this woman a couple times. Sometimes she arranged for me
to pick her up again for her trip home, instead of calling the taxi company
for a random driver.)

------
Wilya
The article has the name of one particular website repeated fourteen times,
and it paints its marginal niche (sugar daddies) as something that everybody
is doing, and as something normal and empowering for women. And,
coincidentally, this website needs to attract women.

Everything about this screams "Bullshit marketing/PR piece". Is it only me?

~~~
mangeletti
That was absolutely my first thought. The article basically starts out with "
_everyone 's doing it_", then talks about how all the tech guys are taking
part, and even goes as far as explaining the value proposition of "
_...girlfriend experience, without having to deal with an actual girlfriend._
".

It reminds me of those " _Don 't buy <popular nutraceutical> until you read
this_" advertorials, which purportedly offer a critical look, but are actually
written by the nutraceutical company.

I've flagged the post. I recommend you do the same.

------
gyardley
In a truly 'new whatever economy' with minimal barriers to entry and no
middlemen, wouldn't the competition quickly reduce prices to subsistence
levels?

If these women are truly able to charge hundreds of dollars for their time,
I'm thinking this is _way_ more of a niche activity than the author's
implying.

~~~
lordnacho
I think 538 or one of those prominent economics blogs had an article about
this; they looked at prices before and after the pill and sexual liberation of
the 1960s, and concluded prices had collapsed. Basically they concluded that
supply and demand (the default explanation) was working.

If social attitudes change, and tech lends a hand by making it easier and
discreet, I don't see why the same dynamic wouldn't continue.

~~~
netsharc
Heh, Tinder where you have several "Like" buttons, each with a different price
tag...

------
anotherarray
"What happens in a future without work?"

We like to answer with "basic income" or "we'll create new jobs", but that's
not always the case.

Uberization of prostitution, surrogacy, professional cuddlers. That should
open our eyes.

------
nonce42
"... on sites like RentBoy, which was busted and shut down in 2015 by Homeland
Security for facilitating prostitution." \- am I the only one who finds this a
bizarre role for Homeland Security?

P.S. This sure feels like a PR piece:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

PS2: The article has lots of ads for luxury goods while describing women using
prostitution to buy these products: "She became a sugar baby in order to buy
luxury goods." I can't figure out if that is terrible ad placement or genius
ad placement. And there's a strange circularity where the article creates
demand for luxury goods (and sex), while simultaneously providing a solution
for how to obtain the luxury goods (and sex).

------
heroprotagonist
The most surprising thing in this piece was that Homeland Security is shutting
down sugar daddy websites for facilitating prostitution. I thought they were
only supposed to go after a different type of threat. This expansion of scope
is troublesome.

------
j_m_b
Prostitution is a fundamental natural right. Even animals do it
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals).

To try and ban such behavior is immoral. Look at the fruits of prohibition:

1\. Prostitutes can not rely on the police for protection. This leads many
women who practice this to be under the "administration" of a pimp.

2\. Because it is illegal, criminals are the ones who engage in the activity.
With little respect for the rule of law, other laws are ignored such as age of
consent, kidnapping, coercion, etc. This leads to literal human trafficking.

When I read comments about a lack of "reasonable regulatory framework", I
cringe. So what would this look like? A "reasonable" approach would be to have
all sex workers and their customers tested for STDs. How do we enforce that?
You get a certificate from a regulatory agency? How do we prevent that system
from being corrupted? How often should one get tested? Would the burden and
costs exceed that of engaging in "illegal" prostitution? There are lag times
from when STD is detectable and transmissible. It is not possible, even within
a regulatory framework, to prevent the transmission of STDs.

I much prefer a technological solution. If prostitution was legal, the need to
be informed about your clients would be addressed by competing interests. We
don't need a government agency telling us how to engage in the oldest and most
ancient of professions!

~~~
lordnacho
Also, if it becomes common, there's no reason to think the network of
infection would be connected in the current way. You might find a lot of
casual workers who are less connected, rather than a few with a lot of
connections.

------
FLUX-YOU
I'm actually jealous. That sounds like an interesting life.

~~~
Piskvorrr
"Interesting", as in, "may you live in interesting times"?

~~~
FLUX-YOU
Yeah. There are undoubtedly mortal risks with this lifestyle.

------
jcfrei
Banning prostitution is one of those silly policy mistakes that politicians
around the globe have committed regularly in the past. There should be no
place for morality in any modern legal framework. However prostitution still
lacks a reasonable regulatory framework in most countries (with some Swiss
cities being a notable exception).

~~~
hx87
> no place for morality in any modern legal framework

There's definitely a place for morality, but perhaps a better way to put it is
that there should be no place for any non-utilitarian morality in any legal
framework.

~~~
omalleyt
These thoughts scare me. Utilitarianism is far from perfect. For instance,
would we as a society designate 5% of women as lacking right to their own body
and allow any man to have them when he wishes? If the pleasure the men gained
is greater than the suffering of the women, utilitarians say yes. And even if
you say "No, because the suffering of the women will inevitably be greater,"
is that REALLY the reason that the action I stated above is wrong? Or is
it...that women have a moral right to their body that is not subject to the
whims of what is best for society

~~~
navait
What you are referring to are "Utility Monster" arguments. I've yet to see a
version of the Utility Monster that would actually happen in the real world.
The better ones involve a computer that rules the world and is given a metric
that seems good, but leads to bad consequences when it is maximized at the
expense of everything else. But we aren't ruled by such a computer - we're
still ruled by people.

> "No, because the suffering of the women will inevitably be greater" IMO,
> this is obviously true. Why wouldn't it be the real reason?

------
DelaneyM
This doesn't belong here.

I flinched when saw this headline, then cringed when I realized it wasn't just
a terribly inappropriate reference to the "gig economy".

I wish we could restrict discussion about sex work to those who have been
involved in it, or at least ensure their voices are included.

But I know this doesn't belong on hacker news. There's no tech, there's no
engineering impact, and it's a dangerous topic given the delicacy of gender
issues in a startup culture context.

~~~
dang
> _no tech, there 's no engineering impact, and it's a dangerous topic_

Those are not the criteria for whether something belongs on Hacker News. The
criterion is simply that a story be intellectually interesting.

This one is complex in that it has intellectually interesting aspects as well
as other aspects. But that's not uncommon.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
return0
This is the original sharing economy. It's terribly rigged for men, though.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> what I’m looking for in this transaction is not sexual satisfaction. Do you
like everyone at your job?

Obvious Jane says: no, but I'm also not expected to screw them.

------
MichaelBurge
Prostitution was historically outlawed because the part of the city where it
happened ended up being some run-down smelly area, where you'd catch a
venereal disease just by looking at it. I don't think anyone had a problem
with high-class prostitutes, but it's easier to ban X than to ban poor people
doing X. For example, it was only in 2009 that Rhode Island banned
prostitution; but they banned brothels long before then.

Historically, it looks like the prostitution ban was mostly pushed through by
this women's organization. They also did Prohibition, and this all happened
around the same time women got the right to vote and WWI.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance_Union)

I'm not sure how many of the historical reasons still apply: We're not in any
serious war, zoning laws and city codes seem like they'd be sufficient to
protect against slimy neighborhoods, there's been a 'safe sex' movement so
it'd be less likely that people would freely transmit diseases, and abusive
pimps don't seem as economically necessary.

Also, what's up with the VC that let a prostitute run up $60k on the tab. At
no level of wealth are you ever "too busy" to watch your money, and this guy's
job is to manage money.

~~~
jseliger
_Historically, it looks like the prostitution ban was mostly pushed through by
this women 's organization_

Interestingly, too, women on the whole used to vote more politically
conservative than men, while today they vote more politically liberal than
men: [http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21700425-europes-far-
ri...](http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21700425-europes-far-right-not-
such-hit-ladies-lefter-sex).

------
iandanforth
If you're on the fence as to whether prostitution should be legal, I suggest
listening to this articulate sex worker before you make up your mind.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/toni_mac_the_laws_that_sex_workers...](https://www.ted.com/talks/toni_mac_the_laws_that_sex_workers_really_want)

------
transfire
Please. They don't call it the "Oldest Profession" for no reason.

------
abpavel
$700/hr for dinner, parties, and fun? Sounds like a taunt...

------
kelukelugames
A prostitution ring was busted this year in my neighborhood. Most of the johns
arrested were tech workers.

Hmmmm...

~~~
umanwizard
Maybe most of the men with ample disposable income in your neighborhood are
sex workers?

~~~
gjm11
I'm pretty sure you mean "... are tech workers", not "... are sex workers".

~~~
umanwizard
Erm. Yup. Thanks :)

