In “Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor,” Wendy Chapkis remarks that “[d]iscussions of sex—commercial and otherwise—necessarily reveal both victimization and agency, exploitation and engaged complicity[.]”[1]Sex, for pleasure and/or for pay, cannot be easily defined or categorized as either empowering or oppressive. The conventional narrative of prostitute-as-victim, who must be liberated and “uplifted” into “respectability” by feminists and the prostitution abolitionists, fails to account for women’s lived realities. Whether sex workers or bank tellers, women’s lives are complex, and any attempt to reduce this complexity into simplistic respectable/deviant categories will only be harmful to the women involved.
As a young woman who came into feminism after the legendary Sex Wars, I find the anti-sex work/pornography contingent completely misguided and offensive; although I appreciate the groundbreaking positions of the radical feminists, and their courage in speaking out, I am angry that a small number of women presented themselves as the authority capable of setting the agenda for the feminist movement as a whole. Combining feminism with sexual puritanism and policing intimate sexual activities is not radical at all. My instinctual relationship to feminism is sex-positive, more along the lines of Patrick Califia, Jessica Yee, Merri Lisa Johnson or Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha than Dworkin or MacKinnon. I believe in a feminism that supports my contradictions and my choices, growing and changing to accommodate me instead of holding me accountable to a brittle party line of “acceptable” feminist behaviour. And yet, I am still ambivalent about Natalie Dylan’s 2008 decision to sell her virginity on the internet.
Natalie Dylan is a 22-year-old feminist, with a B.A. in Women’s Studies. Dylan has chosen to ally herself with Nevada’s Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel in order to auction off her virginity (which, to my understanding, is defined as “penis in vagina” vaginal intercourse). In addition to raising money for graduate school, Dylan is engaging in a feminist social experiment, a cultural commentary on the arbitrary importance placed on virginity within a patriarchal society.[2] Dylan says,
Deflowering is historically oppressive—early European marriages began with a dowry, in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth. Dads were basically their daughters’ pimps. When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? . . . I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.[3]
Dylan’s experiment is paying off; the highest bid she has received is $3.8 million dollars. Although her feminist reasoning is insightful and valid, the “capitalist feminism” she proposes raises many questions. Is she truly doing this for sociological reasons, or is she advertising the Bunny Ranch? Does Dylan’s academic feminist background—a source she credits for her current understanding of virginity as a social construct—legitimize her choice to sell sexual services? Is there a moral difference between doing sex work for economic necessity vs. for social study? And why does Dylan’s motivation even matter?
Dylan’s decision has generated a lot of discussion in the blogosphere. Renee at Womanist Musings argues that “[t]here is a difference between choosing prostitution because you need the money, versus wanting the money.”[4] Melanie at Feminist Fatale calls it a “cultural statement” that “speaks volumes about the relationship between the mass media, culture and women’s sexuality,” speaking favourably of the fact that Dylan’s project touches on issues of the distribution of power and women’s options in society.[5] Another blog, titled Nonrhotic, argues that Dylan’s argument of feminism-as-clever-capitalism is “boundless greed being whitewashed as feminism” that ultimately cheapens the feminist cause.[6] Underlying this critique is the idea that there is such a thing as the ideal feminist, a wholesome yet powerful figure who embodies all the political goals of the feminist project—and that this figure is not a sex worker. Because Dylan does not conform to traditional image of a feminist (because she is openly sexual, soliciting advances from men, poses in “objectifying” photographs and selling sex), she is seen as somehow polluting the feminist cause, at the same time as she herself seeks to advance it.
The Natalie Dylan controversy can be further complicated by examining the role that class plays in the way that she presents herself, and is perceived. Dylan is university educated, and credits this experience with the development of her feminist consciousness. Dylan says that pursuing a Women’s Studies degree “[gave her] permission to think differently and form a moral code of [her] own design. College opened [her] eyes.”[7] From this argument, it follows that Dylan’s university experience enabled the sociological/feminist project that she is pursuing; without her Women’s Studies degree and associated upper-class credibility, her act of selling sex would no longer be noteworthy. Dylan’s virginity is an attractive product because she is the “Virgin” and not the “Whore.” By charging $3.8 million dollars for one night of sex, Dylan further reinforces this classed and racialized division, re-emphasizing the fact that “Whores” (professional sex workers as well as non-virgins in general) are comparatively worthless. Although Dylan, a feminist, is analyzing these proceedings through a feminist lens, the result is not groundbreaking: women’s worth is once again relegated to their sexuality, and women who have had previous sexual experience are less (economically) valuable than those who are sexually “pure.”
Wendy Chapkis interviews Gloria Lockett, who speaks of the racialized, classed division within the sex worker’s rights movement. COYOTE, Lockett says, is “so white,” and this dynamic excludes the needs of sex workers of colour who are more often targeted for prosecution by police.[8] The sex worker movement, Lockett argues, is dominated by call girls, who are often in the public eye because they work indoors and are more comfortable interacting with the media.[9] Even within the sex work activist community itself, certain comparatively privileged individuals are positioned as the public face of the movement, silencing those who do not conform. Building a movement of solidarity across lines of race and class is a huge and daunting task. Still, it is necessary to recognize that all too often the public spokespeople for minority movements tend to be the most “conventionally acceptable,” either because they are upper class, or white, or conventionally educated. Natalie Dylan does not position herself as a sex worker; she does not ally herself with COYOTE or any other sex work organizations. Instead, she interprets feminism in a very individual way, and uses the logic of “my body, my choice” to gain individual economic empowerment. Although I don’t think that there is anything “bad” or “wrong” about her approach—it’s true that her body is her own—I would love to see her examine her own privilege, and question why her body is worth so much when the bodies of other sex workers are perceived to be worth so little.
1. Wendy Chapkis, Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 23.
2. Natalie Dylan, “Why I’m Selling My Virginity,” The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-23/why-im-selling-my-virginity/ (accessed November 19, 2009).
4. Renee, “Virginity For Sale, Natalie Dylan’s Off to Grad School,” Womanist Muslings, http://www.womanist-musings.com/2008/09/virginity-for-sale.html (accessed November 19, 2009).
5. Melanie, “Selling Virginity,” Feminist Fatale, http://feministfatale.com/?tag=natalie-dylan (accessed November 19, 2009).
6. “The Natalie Dylan Story : Post-rationalizations of a feminist prostitute,” Nonrhotic, http://nonrhotic.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/the-natalie-dylan-story-post-rationalizations-of-a-feminist-prostitute/ (accessed November 19, 2009).
7. Natalie Dylan, “Why I’m Selling My Virginity,” The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-23/why-im-selling-my-virginity/ (accessed November 19, 2009).
8. Wendy Chapkis, Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 21.
