Women who sell their virginity and the news media who love them

Every now and then a young woman makes headlines for wanting to sell her virginity to the highest bidder.
Most recently, Elizabeth Raine, a 28-year-old medical school student, put her virginity up for auction. The current high bid is $550,000. Bidding closes on May 7.
To get around U.S. laws prohibiting prostitution, the paid sex act will take place in Australia, where it is legal, according to the Huffington Post.
Raine has a website, a Twitter feed and a blog called Musings of a Virgin Whore.
There have been other high-profile cases of women auctioning their virginity. But many were never consummated.
Update (May 17, 2014): Raine canceled the auction after receiving few legitimate bids, according to the Daily Mail.
Last year, a 21-year-old Brazilian woman, Catarina Migliorini, tried to auction her virginity. But the deal never happened and she felt exploited by the man handling the auction, according to the Huffington Post.
In 2008, a 22-year-old San Diego woman named Natalie Dylan put her virginity up for auction. She wrote on the Daily Beast in 2009 that the bidding reached $3.8 million. Reports later surfaced that the whole thing may have been a hoax, the Mirror reported.
Other young ladies who have made headlines for auctioning their virginity include an 18-year-old Russian woman Shatuniha and an 18-year-old Romanian woman Alina Percea.
Shatuniha reportedly got about $28,000 for her cherry in October 2013, the Mirror and Huffington Post reported. Percea banked about $13,000 for her deflowering in May 2009, the Daily Mail reported.
A Wikipedia entry on “virginity auction” lists 15 newsworthy cases. It says seven were not completed and two were likely hoaxes. Of the rest, two were reportedly completed, three unconfirmed and one (Raine) is in progress.
These cases raise some interesting questions: Why is having sex with a female virgin considered to be such a valuable commodity? Who are these men who place such a high price on it? Why is the media so fascinated with these stories, even though most appear to be hoaxes or publicity stunts?
Well, I can answer the last one. Sex sells. News articles on women who auction off their virginity are titillating and attract attention, especially if there are sexy photos.

Photos: Elizabeth Raine (top) and Shatuniha. 

Prostitution cases frequently a waste of law enforcement resources

Last week, Alexis Wright, a Zumba instructor and part-time hooker who plied both trades out of her Kennebunk, Maine, dance studio, was sentenced to 10 months in jail on charges related to prostitution and state tax evasion.
The media covered the heck out of the story because it involves sex and Wright, 30, is an attractive woman.
Prostitution, when between consenting adults, should not be something cops and courts are concerned with. Sexual slavery, human trafficking and child prostitution should be targets for law enforcement.
As with marijuana dealing, prostitution needs to be taken out of the shadows, legalized, regulated and taxed. U.S. state and federal governments don’t need to play morality police.
Having Wright, a single mother, sit in jail isn’t going to improve the world. The streets aren’t any safer with her behind bars. As for the charges that Wright evaded taxes and defrauded the state to receive welfare, she absolutely needs to make good and settle up. She was ordered to pay $58,000 in restitution. (See articles by U.S. News and World Report and the Daily Mail.)
Or, consider the media coverage of three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton, who admitted in December to working as a high-priced escort for the prior year.
Once again, attractive woman plus sex equals popular news story. The fact that she was a public figure with lots of available photos helped the story even more. (See articles by the Daily Mail, the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post and Radar Online, which even had a photo slideshow.)
Then, there’s the case of hockey mom madam Anna Gristina, who ran a call girl service in New York that was broken up last year. Her partner in crime was gorgeous glamour girl Jaynie Mae Baker. (See articles by the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Christian Post and the Daily Caller.)
Last year, porn actress Nichole Heiress was arrested in northeast Ohio for soliciting sex on the classified website BackPage.com. (See articles by NewsNet 5 in Cleveland and Xbiz.)
Personally I don’t see much of a difference between getting paid to perform sex on camera or off camera. It’s the same thing, although the former is considered protected speech under the First Amendment.
Somehow this reminds me of a joke Johnny Carson used to tell about an indecent proposal.
On “The Tonight Show,” Carson told the story of a wealthy man who was entranced by a beautiful woman at a social function. He introduced himself, made her aware of his wealth, and asked her if she would have sex with him for one million dollars.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said the lady.
“Well, would you do it for one dollar?” replied the man.
The woman was shocked and offended. “What kind of woman do you think I am?” she responded.
“We’ve established that,” the man said. “Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
(Note: Quote Investigator has traced the humorous story back to 1937.)
A website called WhatsYourPrice.com blurs the line between online dating and prostitution.
Members of the service are divided into two groups: “the generous” (men) and “the attractive” (women), the Huffington Post reported.

“Attractive users are invited to create profiles on the site, featuring all the basic information you’d find on most dating networks, as well as the amount of money they’d accept for someone to go on a date with them. The generous, meanwhile, can browse through these profiles, and make offers to any attractive users that catch their eye. Once an offer is made, the attractive member can choose to accept it, reject it, or come up with a different price.”

The service is not prostitution because the men are bidding on first dates, not sex, the company told Gawker.
That may be true. But even massage parlors only advertise giving massages.

Photos: Jennifer Love Hewitt, star of “The Client List,” a show about a single mother who becomes a prostitute to make ends meet.

The argument for legalizing prostitution

Occasionally I air my libertarian views on controversial subjects on Tech-media-tainment. I did so recently when I wrote about efforts to legalize marijuana.
I come down on the side of personal choice and freedom on many issues. And just as freedom of speech means having to allow speech you disagree with, personal freedom means accepting other lifestyle choices.
Debates about legalizing prostitution, a.k.a. the world’s oldest profession, have been going on for ages. Politicians rarely touch the issue because they worry about offending voters, especially religious constituents.
But the topic of legalizing prostitution seems to be coming up more and more online these days.
Last week, an Ontario court struck down key provisions in Canada’s prostitution laws in a case that could set a precedent for the country, according to the Associated Press.
“Prostitution itself is not illegal in Canada, but the court struck down three provisions that criminalized most aspects of it,” the AP stated. “Communicating for the purposes of prostitution, pimping and operating a brothel were decriminalized under the court’s ruling.”
Internet classifieds service Craigslist shut down its adult services section last month under pressure from several vocal politicians. A number of columnists and pundits have used the episode to point out that criminalizing prostitution is not something the government should be involved in.
“Consensual sex between adults, whether or not money changes hands, is beyond the proper scope of government,” an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times said.
Legalizing prostitution would make it safer for the women who choose such a professional, a column on Bnet.com argued. As a legal business, it could be taxed and monitored for abuses (such as human trafficking and child exploitation).
Some have noted that prostitution is on the rise because of the poor economy and high unemployment.
Last spring, a registered nurse and divorced mother of four from Chappaqua, N.Y., was arrested and charged with prostitution after an undercover police officer saw a Craigslist ad she allegedly posted offering sex for money, according to NBC New York.
This isn’t the sort of thing I believe police and courts should be spending taxpayer money on.

Other interesting articles:

Prostitution can have a place in society (Las Vegas Sun; Oct. 4, 2010)

Five myths about prostitution (Washington Post; Sept. 12, 2010)

The Stats Behind Prostitution (Visual Academy, 2010)

Thoughts From a Former Craigslist Sex Worker (Huffington Post; Sept. 7, 2010)

The Family Prostitute (LA Weekly; Sept. 2, 2010)

Photos: Posters of movies that depict prostitution – “Belle de Jour” (1967) and “The Girlfriend Experience” (2009).

Chicago cops should lay off the hookers

The sheriff of Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, recently got a lot of press for announcing plans to sue Craigslist for allegedly being a major source of prostitution.
With Chicago a contender for murder capital of the nation, it’s amazing that our cops are wasting their time trying to make a dent in the “world’s oldest profession.” Gang violence, street robberies, burglaries, fraud and other crimes should be much more pressing concerns.
Prostitution is not a crime that makes people afraid to walk the streets at night. I happen to believe that prostitution should be legalized, regulated and taxed. No amount of enforcement is going to stop it.
The benefits of regulating prostitution include controlling the spread of HIV, protecting women who choose this line of work from violence, getting help for women with drug abuse problems, and getting tax revenue from an underground-economy business.
However distasteful to many Americans, prostitution is something that’s always going to be here. Right now, it’s hiding in plain sight in massage parlors and ads for escorts. A look at Craigslist’s “erotic services” section makes it pretty clear there is more going on than private dancers and platonic dates for hire.
Craigslist, the Web’s biggest publication of classified advertisements, promised in November to begin cracking down on ads for prostitution after coming under fire by several state attorneys general.
As it should, the San Francisco-based company says it’s working with law enforcement agencies to combat human trafficking and child exploitation on its site. Both serious crimes.
Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart’s move to sue Craigslist is a misuse of taxpayer money. Cook County has the highest sales tax rate in the country, thanks in part to threats of layoffs at the sheriff’s department that could affect public safety. Surely, those cops can put that money to better use.
Cook County last year doubled its county sales tax to 1.75%, which raised the overall sales tax in Chicago to 10.25%. The rates in New York and Los Angeles are below 8.5%.
In January, Cook County sheriff’s police lured to Chicago a 37-year-old Las Vegas woman advertising escort services and arrested her for prostitution. They scored big headlines because they said the woman, Charlie Sunn (pictured above), was charging $500-an-hour, the most they’d seen in two years of stings.
I consider myself something of a pragmatic libertarian. I believe that government should be fiscally conservative and focus on the things that matter most. It also should stay out of people’s personal lives as much as possible and leave the moral issues for religion.

22-year-old woman auctions off her virginity

A 22-year-old woman is auctioning off her virginity to help pay for her graduate studies. Cue the outrage.
The woman, using the pseudonym Natalie Dylan for safety reasons, is working with a legal brothel in Nevada to sell her virginity. Bidding through the Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nev., has reached $250,000, according to news reports.
Natalie sounds like a pretty enterprising young woman and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that she’ll be branded a whore for her one-night stand.
Religious groups will condemn her actions, while libertarians will applaud it.
The monetary value of her virginity shows how rare and prized it is for adult women. Well, at least for the attractive ones. That’s because so many consenting adults lost their virginity when they were minors.
It also says a lot about the men bidding for such a prize. It shows that they believe that virginity is special and perhaps sacred. Maybe they like the idea that since it’s the woman’s first time, she won’t know if he’s a lousy lover or not.
Dylan, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Ashley Dupré (the high-priced call girl who brought down New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer), seems to want almost a “Pretty Woman”-like experience.
Dylan’s profile at the Bunny Ranch Web site says, “Natalie wants her first time to be a combination of a great time with a good connection and a financial agreement the she is happy with.”
In other words, Richard Gere, not Jason Alexander.
She says she won’t necessarily give up her virginity to the highest bidder. She is seeking other qualities from her first lover.
“I’m looking for intelligence and an overall nice person,” she told CBS 13 in Sacramento, Calif. Dylan is a graduate of Sacramento State University. She now hopes to get a master's degree in family and marriage counseling and be a psychologist.
But let’s face it, the money is the main thing here.
“It’s a capitalistic society and I want to capitalize on this,” she said.
Oh, by the way, she says she’s already taken a polygraph test to prove her virginal status, and also is willing to undergo a medical exam.