======= Date Modified 16 Nov 2009 14:24:28 =======
It will be interesting to see (if it's ever possible to find out) what happens to her careers, both research and novel/blog writing, following this revelation! I also noted the bit about wanting something she could start immediately, required little to no training, and was cash in hand. There was also something about a job that left her time to do her other work. And the several hundred pounds an hour or whatever it was must have helped the choice. An odd logic but a rational thought process nonetheless! I don't think it will reflect well on her department at the time of her PhD though...

I too wondered about how her department would treat her now. The trouble is that academia is notoriously stuffy. So she went on the game for a bit! She made an awful lot of money (£300 an hour??????? omg!!!!) she completely her doctorate, she's presumably good at her job - good luck to her. As I said before, its certainly not a choice I'd want to make (but £300 an hour!!!!! shoes, handbags, printing paper, ink.....) but its a shame if it would negatively affect her career and the work she has put into getting where she is. We all know what its like to survive on bursaries and the like, some choose that path, others of us go slowly mad and develop a taste for baked beans ;-)

Has anyone read the Guardian today?

I quote:
'Among sex workers themselves there was little surprise that a well-educated woman like Magnanti had got into prostitution. "Loads of people who work in the sex industry are academics – education is a very expensive habit," said Catherine Stephens, an activist for the International Union of Sex Workers who has been a sex worker herself for 10 years. "At a brothel I worked in, I think I was the only one not doing a PhD."

The full version of the article is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/15/diary-london-callgirl-phd-student-brooke-magnanti

No comment :-(

This is all quite challenging stuff, actually. Should we be thinking "gosh, how awful - intelligent, middle-class women being forced to degrade themselves", or should we be asking if we're just projecting our own sexual hang-ups on to other people in assuming that prostitution is a dirty, disreputable thing to do?

Would being a gigolo count as prostitution?:$

Someone I knew funded her way through her fulltime masters by doing dominatrix work. She stopped when she wanted to, when she got a career-type job after finishing university. Definitely her choice.

Do you know, before the last day or so, I naively thought that the noble discipline of academia and the seedy underworld of vice were as far away as you could get from each other. How wrong I was...

If nothing else, at least stories like this might help in breaking down some of the popular stereotypes of sex workers.

I think every occupation is a choice, as long it IS a choice.

So,

(1) If it IS choice, anyone who makes comments of pity, compassion, and similar such is being rather unfair (in the city I came from, for instance, where sex work is 'illegal' the sex workers in it by choice feel more degraded by saviour 'policemen' who are rapists, and foreign journalists who make films on them with mournful background music on what a pitiful life they lead.

(2) However, this is also an industry where many are forced into things, girls trafficked, minors raped etc. That's what should be opposed. How? Again the instance from my city. The community of sex workers at that red light district have long waged an unsuccessful battle to make sex work legalised. They have an organisation that have led countless marches asking for their rights, their kids' rights etc. Why? they want the rights to form a trade union, prevent crime, prevent the trafficking of minors, go to court, enforce the use of condoms and so on.


Right now, they exist. Most by choice. But 'saved' occasionally by mournful media stories, rapist policemen, no laws, no rules, abusive and STD infected customers and the occassional filmmaker who wants to make films with snapshots from their sad lives and goes on to win an award...

This is a very small story from back home and i am interested in learning more of other (similar/diff) stories, relating or not to this specific blogger...

Let's not give the girl too much credit. Saying things like "forced to" is nonsense.

The moral of the story, according to her: "Prostitution is better than JSA"

That's what it comes down to. In the BBC news article she was quoted as saying she "stands by it all with pride". What's there to be proud of? There are far less educated people, in far less prosperous countries, who don't sink so low as to sell their bodies for money.

Pathetic. She doesn't even want our sympathy, she basically condones prostitution and will be laughing all the way to the bank (again) with her next book about it.

A perfect example of how a person can be educated and yet lack a basic moral education.