The author of long-running "secret diary of a call girl" blog Belle de Jour outs herself. Dr. Brooke Magnanti is a science blogger--and respected health researcher. And she really was a sex worker, for about a year and a half, while finishing her Ph.D. Takeaway lesson: Graduate school is expensive, yo. Takeaway debate: Is this good or bad for female scientists/science bloggers? It shouldn't matter at all. But does it?
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Well, she said she found it enjoyable, so I guess it was good for her at least.
Yeah, I should probably clarify that what I'm wondering about is more how the media reaction to this will affect other women in those fields, rather than whether Magnanti herself should or shouldn't have done something.
The experience was good for her, and it also seems to be a generally good thing for her to tell people who she is--she talks about not being able to go to her own book launch, and that kind of frustration would add up.
I've just already seen this spun as "see, science girls are worth objectifying, too!" And I find that a little annoying.
Maybe the science angle would have made the tv series more interesting. The fictionalized character's life was so boring!
Hey Deck, that's Billy Piper that you're dissin' on!
You shut your whore mouth!!!
"I've just already seen this spun as "see, science girls are worth objectifying, too!" And I find that a little annoying."
As a woman in science I can tell you that people don't need this story to start objectifying women. Objectifying women scientists has been going on for a long time and is common, just as it's a cultural norm to objectify women in all other social settings. I don't think this story will have much of an impact.
I'd be more concerned with the story's implication that prostitution is harmless and a low-risk way to make money. Dr. Magnanti seems to have been fortunate to have survived her call girl stint without contracting HIV or other STDs or experiencing violence or rape. Not everyone is so fortunate.
Of course they can be objectified! If the movies have taught me anything, female scientists are either bombshells or troglodytes. Sometimes the latter becomes the former with the removal of glasses.
Scientists prostitute themselves all the time, they just do it for Monsanto.
>If the movies have taught me anything, female scientists are either bombshells or troglodytes. Sometimes the latter becomes the former with the removal of glasses.
I actually possess the strange ability to figure out whether or not woman are attractive, even if they wear glasses.
That counts as a superpower, right?
Ideally, this should rather start the debate about the terrible financial conditions graduate students are faced with, not only in England but around the world. But alas, the sexy part will always be juicier. Who wants to be talking about poverty among students anyway?
I also ran out of money by the end of my PhD and if I didn't have a partner helping out, I'd probably end up doing the same.
@microMD
"People" didn't objectify her, the woman in question chose to objectify herself.
I agree with your comments regarding prostitution- doesn't seem a particularly safe way to earn some extra cash but perhaps that's part of the appeal.
Second on the "gee if fledgling scientists were adequately funded, maybe this wouldn't have been neccessary". Friend of a friend left her phd program 'cause doing phone sex was way more lucrative.
Everyone is, in fact, an object. We can see these objects every day on the street. She subjectified herself by giving her readers a glimpse of her point of view. Perhaps it was an objectification to turn her thoughts into a series of books that sit on shelves as objects. But perhaps she is bravely re-subjectified by the reader in his own mind?
Okay then, I've figured it out: every writer is a whore; only revoltingly ugly scientists produce credible research; and these kinds of conversations are pointless without first defining our concepts. But don't mind a dirty objectifier like me.
I would fairly strongly suspect(though I'd like to see some hard numbers one way or the other) that the risks of prostitution vary pretty markedly between the various economic strata in the business.
Much like many things in this puritically-inclined society, the "danger" in sex work stems (in no small part) from the irrational legal standpoint many socities feel compelled to take.
If anything comes from this story, hopefully it will be this: people understand sex work can be empowering and positive, as long as there is an informed decision being made, and that as an option it is not the only one.
I know many sex workers (work in a related field), and most are intelligent, capable and willing - and not just in the bedroom. They are also able to exert control and choice over who they see and why.
If we cleaned up the laws, and brought it out into the open a little more not only would those "trapped" have more of a choice without fear of judgement and retribution (from family, the law or professionally) but it might also have the flow on effect of creating a more healthy attitude towards sex and women in general.
I have nothing against people who choose sex work as a field, just feel frustration that many people in science have to scrape by to survive or leave the field.
And that many find it disempowering and negative compared to other fields. My own advisor was kind and supportive to me and her other charges, but I know many others who had pretty bad experiences.
I am a programmer, and THIS is my awesome new favorite quote:
"I [had a job] as a computer programmer, but I kept up with [prostitution] because it was so much more enjoyable."
- Dr. Brooke Magnanti
I hear you Dr. Magnanti... I really do...
This talk of objectification annoys me.
Having been a John myself I'll tell you that, at least for me, objectification (beyond finding her attractive) is not really what is going on.
I'm 23 and for the last 7 years I've struggled with depression, occasionally severe to the point of being life threatening but thankfully I've, on the whole, managed to lead a fairly normal life. Depression is not an attractive trait and it had been almost three years since I'd been with a with someone and for a multitude of reasons I was lonely and I was down. Really down, suicidally down.
I was visiting Amsterdam for the first time and a red light girl caught my eye. She noticed that she'd attracted my attention and, this was quite important for me, she beckoned me over. I wouldn't of been able to go through with it if she hadn't "invited" me. Action happened and, trying not to be crude, it was rather good. I left feeling brilliant, better than years of counciling and antidepressants has ever made me feel. I had gotten something I had very much needed and that wasn't actually the physical sex.
For me the experience was about being, for a lack of a better word, pampered. It was having someone, some real person with feelings and wants, who makes choices and has ideas that was willing, even enthusiastic, to make me feel good and give me pleasure for 30 minutes. Even if her enthusiasm was entirely acted the fact that she made that effort for me made me, as sad as it seems having just typed that, happy.
It was the ultimate service with a smile, hell, the service that I bought was the smile. And if I had never felt that she was a real person, if I had just thought that she was just some piece of ass or a pair of tits or whatever then it wouldn't of seemed like, at least for a moment, that someone gave a shit. And I suspect that many other lonely Johns are in the same situation, they want service with a smile, they want a real person, another human to want them to enjoy themselves, to feel pleasure, to, however fleetingly, feel happy.
Here's what Perry Farrel says about it... (audio NSFW)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkShVT8LFuM
Sex workers deserve respect. Assuming you're an American prude: they do a job you're not willing to, they brighten people's day, they provide a service for the real deity of the almighty buck, and they practically ooze kindness. Not me, I couldn't handle it, but I respect those who do.
Sex is a biological function among many others -- if most people sell their thoughts or their muscular exertion, why can some not sell this particular combination? Are we really more debased by prostitution than hard manual labour? Or by, as earlier posters have pointed out, intellectual prostitution in the form of corporate research money?
Legitimacy and respect are cultural constructs.
I would expect the media reaction would be quick and short-lived and no-one will remember in six months.
I would think that society in general thinks women in science are nerdy and unattainable or undesirable in general.
I don't see this as having any impact on myself personally and on my PhD.
I see what Dr. Magnanti did as problematic for other women. Women often tell how they get proposed to prostitute themselves in order to get a flat, a job or anything else. Now men proposing women in such a way have another argument for their assertion and women not wanting to trade their bodies for commodities (which I assume is a majority) are in need of justification.
10 out of 10 for Magnanti for courage, but also minus ten for disserving women's emancipation.
Benjamin
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's spokesman, spent some time as a "gigolo" when a young man, and wasn't alone, so it isn't just women.
Here the link to a 1980 interview where he spoke about it:
http://www.lizhodgkinson.com/liz_camp.htm