The XX Factor: What women really think.

Rule Britannia

According to an article published in the London Times today, we Brits are now the most promiscuous nation in the world (of the western industrial nations, that is). In terms of one-night stands, total number of partners, and our "relaxed" attitude to casual sex, we beat Australia, the United States, Italy, and France. France! Where having extra-marital affairs is a favorite national pastime! If nothing else, at least now we might lose our reputation for being frigid and repressed.

In all seriousness though, Britain has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe as well as the highest teen STD infection rate in Europe (although both are significantly lower than here in the United States, where abstinence-only sex education doesn't seem to be helping much). Premature sex education in British schools (it can be taught to children as young as 4) has long been blamed for the epidemic, along with the inappropriate sexualization of children by toy manufacturers and the media. But here's a thought. In Britain, we also drink more than any other country in Europe (apart from Ireland and Finland, bizarrely), and our alcohol-related death rate has doubled since 1991. We've also, according to this reasonably insulting story in the New York Times, been causing havoc on summer vacations with our abhorrent, booze-soaked behavior. Could there be a correlation somewhere between the beer goggles and the newfound sluttiness?

The Dissociative Mood

What I liked about the Times article about the Patersons' affairs was this censorious observation by reporter Danny Hakim: "The admission is likely to be a distraction for the new governor at a difficult time." It's a classic instance of what I call the dissociative mood, a grammatical tone that is struck when something that should have been stated in the first person with an active verb ("I or we did something") is uttered in the third person with a passive verb ("something was done to someone, mistakes were made, the whole thing is a mystery to us"). This inflection, characterized by bat-your-eyelashes disingenuousness, is found largely in government statements, for obvious reasons, and in the media, especially when we in the media report the effects of our own reporting but leave ourselves out of the account.

So: Why is admitting to consensual extramarital affairs that have long since ended likely to distract from Paterson's gubernatorial agenda? Why, because we, the media-or perhaps I, Danny Hakim-mean to make it an issue! Who else gives a damn?

Speaking of which, did any of you who read Rick Hertzberg's comment in The New Yorker go and look up the Martha Nussbaum article he quotes, the one written from Belgium, in which she declares that Spitzer was hounded out of office by "quintessentially American" Puritanism and mean-spiritedness? If so, I'd love to hear what you think, especially about the part where she compared being a prostitute with being an opera singer (apparently, not so long ago, they weren't perceived as being very different). Being fairly Euro-trashy myself, I kinda agreed with her and her podium-bashing conclusion:

What should really trouble us about sex work? That it is sex that these women do, with many customers, should not in and of itself trouble us, from the point of view of legality, even if we personally don't share the woman's values. ... What should trouble us are things like this: The working conditions for most women in sex work are extremely unhealthy. They are exploited by pimps, and they enjoy little control over which clients they will accept. Police harass them and extort sexual favors from them. Some of these bad features (unhealthiness, little control) sex work shares with other job options for low-income women, such as factory work of many kinds. Other bad features (police extortion) are the natural result of illegality itself.

In general we should be worried about poverty and lack of education. We should be worried that women have too few decent employment options and too little health and safety regulation in those that they do have. And we should be worried if men force women to do things sexually that they do not want to do. All these things are worth worrying about, and it is these things that sensible nations do worry about. But the idea that we ought to penalize women with few choices by removing one of the ones they do have is grotesque, the unmistakable fruit of the all-too-American thought that women who choose to have sex with many men are tainted vile things who must be punished.

Eliot Spitzer's offense was an offense against his family. It was not an offense against the public. If he broke any laws, these are laws that never should have existed and that have been repudiated by sensible nations. The hue and cry that has ruined one of the nation's most committed political careers shows our country to itself in a very ugly light.

At Last, an Equal Opportunity Sex Scandal

Tricks of the Trade

Spitzer's Thorny Issues

Well, all gerbils aside, there are several thorny issues here. 

A male Slate contributor, who asked to remain nameless, wanted XX Factor to address whether it’s worse if your husband cheats with a prostitute or a nonprostitute. 

I’m not sure that question really gets to the point. The real point, I think, is that people hate hypocrisy. Or rather, we treat it like shit and masturbation and homelessness—it’s OK that it exists, we just don’t want to have to look at it. So I’m not sure this Spitzer thing is about sex or cheating or prostitution or spending money or even about breaking the law, so much as it is about lying, about presenting one image of yourself to the public (crime-fighting avenger!) while doing something very different in private (partaking in the very crimes one is fighting). In fact, Meghan, I think that Spitzer did not become interested in prostitutes because he was prosecuting sex rings, I think he prosecuted sex rings because he was interested in prostitutes. 

It’s like a pedophile who becomes a priest because he thinks it will help him stop.

"Things ... You Might Not Think Were Safe"

Meghan: And/but.

I'm with you that what we're talking about here is darker and deeper than any sea dingle. So I retract my earlier query about Spitzer's rationality, since clearly "reason" is not what's at issue. And I agree that someone's private sexual behavior/desires/fantasies have no necessary relationship to his/her public behavior, and "sketchy behavior in the bedroom doesn't necessarily correlate to deeper corruption in the courtroom or the city hall."

But here's what really bothers me about L'Affair Spitzer (and so far it's getting amazingly little media attention): Remember that little bit in the affidavit, in which the Feds recorded an exchange between two employees of Emperor's Club VIP—one apparently a sort of booker, and one the prostitute assigned to Spitzer? They have an conversation about whether "Client 9"—alleged to be Spitzer—is "difficult," and "Rachelle" comments that she's heard Client 9 will "ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe—you know—I mean that ... very basic things ..." To which "Kristen" responds, "'I have a way of dealing with that. ... I'd be like, listen dude, you really want the sex?' ... You know what I mean.'"

 A touch of bravado there—but what we glimpse, behind it, is a world in which the threat of sexual violence is omnipresent: Women are alone in hotel rooms with unpredictable, unknown men, who may demand things "you might not think are safe," or worse, and if a sex worker's "way of dealing with that" doesn't work, what immediate recourse does she have?

For obvious reasons, it's hard to get good stats on violence against sex workers, but this exchange reminds us that the world of high-end call girls isn't, in the end, all that far away from the violence of the streets. 

And that's what really bugs me about Spitzer. Not the adultery. Not the "crime" (I tend to think prostitution should probably be decriminalized, though I haven't thought it through completely yet). Not the fantasies, however dark they may have been.  But the creepy hints that somewhere, some more important line may have been crossed—that he treated these women whose bodies he bought in a way he knew no one ought to be treated—that fantasies about sex and power may have turned into abusive behavior that endangered real live human beings.

I'd Read That Novel

Meghan, I love that premise for a novel. Sudhir Venkatesh is about to publish a great piece in Slate laying out the different layers of the New York sex trade, which he has studied as a sociologist at Columbia. (I"ll post the link when it appears.) For the unintiated, which seems to include XX factor, it's helps clarify what men get from prostitutes that they don't get from afffairs. Beyond the simple (and yet so false) promise of averting entanglement that I think the Emperors' Club Web site offered before it got yanked.

For what it's worth, I agree with you that sex crimes like this one don't necessarily disqualify people from holding future public office, in part because the word "crime" seems just too harsh. And I also agree that Spitzer's case is different because of his record zealously prosecuting prosection rings—and also because of the allegations that he broke other laws by moving money around illegally. For this former, scourge-of-Wall-Street AG that is some whole level beyond irony. My favorite scandal fact, from NPR yesterday, is that Spitzer's deposits got picked up because banks now have powerful software for sniffing out the sort of cash bundling he was doing—because as AG, he told the banks to get it! More novel fodder.

The Broken-Window Theory of Sex

Ellen, you hit the nail on the head, like any good therapist ought to. Clearly, Spitzer liked hiring prostitutes, for whatever reason. Maybe it was that he couldn't find a sex partner who'd do what he wanted to do, or maybe it was that he liked the power dynamic of paying for sex. We won't really ever know. But this gets at the fundamental thing about sex that has been left out of a lot of the analysis of Spitzergate: Sex is basically irrational. What people need and want has nothing to do with what they think they should want or need. And how they behave in the bedroom has, for the most part, not all that much with how they would behave elsewhere in the world, if we're going to trust sex surveys. In other words, I don't buy that sex complies with any broken-window theory of moral probity: It seems to me sketchy behavior in the bedroom doesn't necessarily correlate to deeper corruption in the courtroom or the city hall.

Which raises a question about the idea that public servants should be held to a higher standard. That idea makes sense to me when it comes to things like paying nannies' Social Security tax or speeding. But isn't sex a different kind of realm? Spitzer's case is complicated by the hypocrisies inherent in his prosecution of a prostitute ring. But what if it weren't? Would that change how we feel? Is visiting a prostitute really so ethically wrong that he should never  be able to perform public service again? Like Judith, I tend to think no.

Meanwhile: Ihe ironist in me has been wondering if it was actually prosecuting the sex ring that made Spitzer want to visit high-end prostitutes in the first place ... I'm sure that's not the case, but it'd be a fun premise for a novel about political scandal.

Spitzer vs. Gerbils vs. Twinkies

More Psych 101

Re: Our speculation on what Spitzer was thinking. The New York Times has a story today about how Spitzer as governor supported sex-crime legislation to toughen penalties for the men patronizing prostitutes, a bill he signed, we now know, while he was in the frequent-patronizer program at Emperors' Club. This reminds me of a story I read years ago about men who were arrested having homosexual sex in a park, many of whom wore wedding rings and had baby carriers in the back seats of their cars. A sociologist who interviewed these men said most strenuously denied being gay. This was not about sex, they said, they definitely weren't gay—it was simply a matter of stress relief. I wonder if this level of self-delusion applies to Spitzer. I'm guessing that, yes, on one level he actually knew he was having sex, but that another part of him said this wasn't sex the way Bill Clinton tried to have sex with every female he saw, and this wasn't sex the way some guys emotionally betray their wives and get into affairs with women at the office. What he was doing was so totally cut off from the rest of his life that he could convince himself it was just something a "f--king steamroller" has to do sometimes to blow off, ah, steam.

Haven't These Dudes Heard of the Internet?

Judith, I also shared Dahlia's initial reaction—Spitzer's the governor of New York, and he can't find anyone willing to sleep with him for free?

I mean, fine, maybe he thought he was buying discretion by paying a prostitute so much money for sex. But what's with these guys? Haven't they heard of the Internet? How about, say, an anonymous personal ad? Craigslist? Nerve.com? Whatever?

I mean, could someone explain to me why it would be rational for Spitzer to spend a fortune on prostitutes instead of spending no money at all to hook up with some fun lovin' D.C. gal? Surely there must be some! And there would presumably be less risk of exposure (no traceable movement of funds; he can use a fake name; plus he can wear a Groucho Marx nose and glasses if he wants). Not to mention, it's not a crime, and the scandal, if it did come out, would have been far less bad.

How To Run a Call-Girl Service

Bill Clinton Didn't Pay for Sex. Jim McGreevey Didn't Pay for Sex.

How Hard Is It To Get Extramaritally Laid Anyhow??

Welcome to XX Factor Judith, and thanks for your thoughtful post.

My only quibble is with the assumption that Spitzer somehow had to pay for sex (pathetic), which then unspools the freight train of humiliations you’ve just described. Is it really all that hard for someone in high office to “to get extramaritally laid” as you put it, or is it exceptionally simple? I always assumed the latter. Can’t imagine Spitzer didn’t have heaps of women throwing themselves at him. I assumed he simply opted to pay for it (power). Raises a question about whether it’s “better” or “worse” to buy extramarital sex the way you’d buy new loafers. But judging from the way Silda looked just now at the press conference—I didn’t think it was possible for her to look more heartbroken and exhausted than she did 48 hours ago, but I was wrong—maybe that just doesn’t matter.

Read other posts from XX Factor bloggers on the prostitute vs. regular-old-affair dilemma.

Spitzer: Pathos, Not Power

In defense of Spitzer, I have to say that the great-man-abusing-power narrative does not seem apt in his case. In fact, it seems rather out-of-date. If you read the wiretaps closely, you'll discover that, as a consumer of sexual services, Spitzer was actually shockingly powerless. Client 9, the governor of New York State, had to make dozens of phone calls and multiple trips to an ATM machine over the course of three days just to get a single date with a prostitute.

How do I know this? From an abridged transcript of his exchanges with the escort service that ran as a sidebar on page 5 of the New York Times Metro section yesterday morning. I cannot for the life of me find it online; I suspect it only ran in the local edition. So let me summarize:

On Monday, Feb. 11, the booking agent at the Emperors' Club VIP asks a coworker to notify her when an overdue package arrives from Client 9, presumably a deposit of cash sent by mail. On Tuesday, Feb. 12, she calls Client 9 and tells him the package has not yet arrived. He reassures her that the address was the same as in the past, "no question about it." Ten minutes later she calls to say that they cannot proceed if the package does not arrive. The next day, Feb. 13, Client 9 calls the booking agent to tell her that he has reserved a room at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. An hour later she gets a text message telling her the package has arrived. She immediately calls him to suggest that when he sees the prostitute, Kristen, he give her extra cash upfront to avoid such problems in the future. They discuss his debt—$2,600—and he agrees to give Kristen an extra $1,000 toward future appointments. The booking agent urges him to give $1,500 instead. Client 9 agrees to go out and look for a bank. An hour later he calls the booking agent to tell her where Kristen should go in the hotel. The agent tells him again how much he owes her. He promises again to find a bank.

A few minutes later, the booking agent texts Kristen to ask her to text back when her "four hours" begins. Two and a half hours later, just past midnight on Feb. 14, Kristen leaves Spitzer's room.

This, my friends, is pathetic. It's practically an outrage. No one with less to lose would ever allow himself to be importuned and harassed by an employee of an escort service evincing such cavalier familiarity. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that she felt entitled to give Spitzer such a hard time precisely because he was the governor of New York State—because he was so blackmail-able. (Was he being blackmailed? The sums involved make you wonder. And his public anti-prostitution stand would only have added to his value as a mark.)

So I don't buy the thesis that he abused his power by seeking paid sex. Whatever you think about prostitution—I for one don't understand why's it illegal,rather than well-regulated, but that's not wholly relevant here—Spitzer's bumbling, embarrassing effort to buy himself some must stand as another example of how the private lives of public figures have become fearful, furtive, diminished affairs, denied all but the most conventional responses to the urgings of human desire. Not that Spitzer, when a prosecutor, didn't do his bit to make life more miserable for those vulnerable to being shamed by surveillance techniques and technology. But his situation now makes the larger point. Refuse to pity the powerful if you must, but don't think for a minute that running a government in the modern world makes it easier for one of them to get extramaritally laid.