Those poor bruised male egos

Here’s the background: on Friday, the Huffington Post’s Amitai Etzioni wrote a short piece criticizing Toni Bentley for a sensationalistic review for a sensationalistic book, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, which front-paged the NY Times. Apparently the book’s premise, which Bentley puts forward without question, is that all sex is sex for money. Etzioni points out that sex workers are usually victimized by their pimps, while sex between equal partners can strengthen the bonds of a relationship which has far more benefits than lusty animal comfort.

That’s not the interesting part. The book’s premise (as reported by Etzioni) is extreme and easily dismantled. The interesting part is the firestorm of male fury Etzioni’s brief article elicited.

Here’s the mirror image of the stereotypical man-hating lesbian:

men are very straightforward. want sex, it’s clear, but they must negotiate a duplicitous world of females who force them through a financial gauntlet in which the man pays for EVERYTHING, e.g. dinner, jewelry, transportation costs to have any hope of having sex. often the men are blatantly used, then coyly dumped at the end of this splurge. saw this repeatedly in college and was amazed by what straight men had to go through.

The responses aren’t all like that. While most of the replies are an uber-polarized back-and-forth fight over the evils of prostitution versus the sterling dignity and psychological health of the American sex worker, there is a delightful sprinkling of angry men.

women fear prostitutes because they cant use sex as leverage any more.

Right on. If men can get sex by paying for it, the ability of women to use sex to manipulate men into doing what they want is sharply reduced. That makes them view prostitutes as a threat to their barganing power.

Meanwhile back in the real world, a guy who takes a girl out for a walk in the park and a picnic lunch is FAR less likely to have sex that night than a guy who spends a lot of money.

Come to think of it, on our first date I fixed my future wife a fabulous dinner and all I got for it was a kiss. Should I have sprung for Chez Panisse?

That last fellow’s comment sparked these replies: “Your comments call into serious doubt your ability for intimacy,” and “why would you or anybody else want to have sex with the kind of woman who would be more likely to do that with you after having had some cash spent on her?”

Poster seattle music, chief defender of sex-in-marriage and critic of prostitution, writes

What planet do you inhabit, where women seeking love, sex and intimacy are *really* just hookers seeking stuff, money and things?

It must be a very shallow, sad, emotionally bankrupt place.

Just when we’re thinking the conversation has turned well reasoned, we find

It’s far better to have a relationship with a woman, have a few children, but never marry that woman. A marriage certificate is like a weapon for women; They use it to wield power. Marriage is a lottery ticket or insurance for women. It is their security blanket in case they separate from a man, so that the man supports them and pays them half their wealth.

I know better than to get married. I have heard many horror stories from my friends and have read too many bad stories about men who lost everything through a divorce.

Well, if a woman has 10 million dollars and she’s not a cheapskate, I would reconsider marriage. Hahahahahahaha

the historically inaccurate,

What’s new since the first caveman got the babe because he had straw on his cave floor and some freshly killed dinosaur meat?

and the truly nutty,

I submit that if George Sodini, who was so twisted up by years of sexual rejection that he turned to murder, had started to see sex workers instead of buying idiotic books about how to seduce younger women, then his victims might be alive today. Sex workers can provide an approximation of intimacy to the lonely and the rejected, without which outcasts are more likely to become rapists and killers.

What I think? It’s all true. There are victimized prostitutes who are kidnapped into the business as children and held in a state of addiction by their pimps, and there are noble sex workers who would make Gandhi appear selfish. There are women who calculate what they’ll put out as a function of the expense of the restaurant, and there are women who base such decisions on a man’s endearing qualities. There are marriages in which the woman is no more than a rent-a-womb, and marriages where sex is (part of) the glue that holds the couple together.

What do you think?

In any case, if you want to experience the spectacle of moral absolutism from both ends of the spectrum, treat yourself to four pages of discussion over at Huff Post. You’ll have fun. Really.

D.