When is gold digging prostitution?

In My Humble Opinion
21

For most people I know, straight or gay, this simply means my salary + my SO’s salary = more of a down payment on a home. But maybe that’s just 'cause so many women I know are supporting their hubbies through college/indie band-dom/struggling arts career.

But what would the male equivalent be? If man puts too much importance on looks or specific sex acts when it comes to choosing a bride, is he a quasi-john? (Is there even an almost-insulting term for this? Sigh.)

22

A sex act isn’t a service? So strippers, or lap dancers, or performers in live sex shows or pornography are actually prostitutes?

23

We do ???

24

Yes, a sex act is a service. So all prostitutes are merchants. But not all people who sell goods or services sell sex acts, so not all merchants are prostitutes, and not all people are prostitutes.

Dancing around naked is not a sex act. There’s a difference between being paid to have sex on camera and being paid to have sex with someone. I don`t know anyone who says there’s a stark bold distinction that nobody could ever interpret differently.

But the point is that we’re not all prostitutes just because we sell goods and services.

25

Doesn’t sound like the young woman in the OP had to do much digging. Given the setting, she must have been surprised the guy even made the offer.

I don’t see a great difference in spirit between this kind of “kept woman” relationship and prostitution, since he was directly giving her money. But under the letter of the law I think they’re in the clear. There’s nothing illegal about giving your girlfriend/mistress gifts or taking her along on vacation, nor is it against the law to help another person out with their rent. The allowance arrangement kept even the cash payments from being a specific exchange of money for sex, as she was presumably getting the same amount of money each month regardless of how often they had sex or which specific acts she was willing to perform.

26
  1. Gotta agree with Fuzzy Dunlop’s general idea, prostitute is *a specific subset *of merchant. Heck, it’s itself a specific subset within that merchant class that has been recently dubbed “sex workers”. Let’s not miss the forest for the trees, he’s responding to the earlier phrasing by sunacres that sounded like everyone who trades for money is somehow being prostituted. Such a broad interpretation deprives the word of meaning -everyone **trades **and sometimes the trade available (or the trade being done) is not the one you’d prefer, but throwing the term “prostitution” around for any other transaction muddles up meanings. (But that’s another peeve of mine: not every instance of thankless work you’d rather not do but you have no choice about makes you a slave, not every instance of getting economic benefit for an action other people perform for free makes you a whore or mercenary. Indeed, why are people stuck in jobs because the rent needs paying called “wage slaves” instead of “wage whores”? After all, they’re gettign paid for the work!)
    As has been mentioned, the subject tht started the thread is what distinguishes golddigging from prostitution, and if you with to take the next step, what distinguishes it from “marrying well”. Whether it is a difference of nature or of degree, of substance or of form, our society’s culture DOES make, or claim to make, a distinction, so some of us are discussing what makes for the distinction. In my discussion, I posited that the distinction in this culture is made at the point of direct commoditization of the sex act in exchange for fungible monetary benefit.

Now, whether that is an artificial distinction or a distinction w/o a difference or a valid distinction and if in your, or my, or his or her or their opinion it’s all the same thing and should all be subject to the same oprobium or lack thereof… is yet another discussion.
2. Economic consideration in choosing mates IS a reality, but it is NOT “prostitution” and neither is it an absolute universal. It has its origin in a basic evolutionary survival mechanism, you want the mate with access to the resources to help feed you and any potential offspring. At some point you move up in the Maslow scale and either begin choosing a mate with access to resources that improve your standard of living, or begin choosing a mate fully independently of economic impact. But you still will do well as a general rule of thumb to avoid hooking up with a profiglate deadbead who’ll wipe out your credit…

27

A relationship is supposed to be mutually beneficial. That means different things to different people. Some people are perfectly content to enter into the wealthy benefactor / kept trophy wife relationship. I know a guy who broke up with a perfectly nice, attractive girl because he has it in his head he is going be a ‘player’ until he settles in on some trophy. I also know wealthy guys who come from family money who basically don’t date anymore because they are sick of women who want nothing but their money.

There are a couple of things that rub people the wrong way in the typical gold digger scenario. First, it is often dishonest. The woman is more akin to a con artist than a prostitute, pretending to be something she isn’t in order to get what she wants.

On the other side, there is an imbalance of power. For the girl in the OP, how long do you think until her “benefactor” starts using his wealth as a form of control once she is addicted to the lifestyle.

28

Like I said, quibbling.

29

You haven’t offered any support for why you distinguish sex as a good or service from any/every other. Care to?

30

One of the hardest things about becoming an adult is admitting this to yourself. It takes some guts, believe it or not. Probably because a lot of people (i.e. men) want to believe they are inherently attractive because of their character, personality, etc. Not saying those aren’t factors, but they are just several of many, many factors, and not the overriding influences many wish they were. I think laziness has something to do with it; going out and making money takes work, whereas if someone just likes you for you, you don’t have to DO anything. Women have the same type of thinking around their looks/weight.

31

Even though the discussion so far has been implicitly about women marrying wealthier men, the concept works in all directions.

But I do think that there is a difference between a prostitute and a husband/wife, it’s just that I think that the reaction of “well, because there’s a transaction involved it’s bad!” is misguided, because there’s no reason why sex for money must in and of itself be a worse thing than sex for other reasons.

I agree with this. Dishonesty is bad. If she is feigning love in order to secure various things, and the man thinks he is getting love but is actually not, than there’s a big problem there. In the linked story in the OP, all the major points seemed to be on the up and up.

32

It doesn’t matter.

The definition of “prostitute” (n) is:

  1. One who solicits and accepts payment for sex acts.
  2. One who sells one’s abilities, talent, or name for an unworthy purpose.
    Even if you want to assign the act of selling sex as morally neutral, then the technical definition is still someone who accepts payment for sex. Merchants who sell other goods and services, like meat, bread or candlesticks, for example, are not, by definition, prostitutes. They are butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
    And one of the big reasons people find prostitution distasteful is that most people find it distasteful to provide sexual acts (which is generally regarded as an intimate act with someone who, if you don’t care about, are at least attracted to) for a perfect stranger in exchange for cash.
33

I don’t think it’s prostitution. There is a relationship here of sorts. A woman can have a relationship with a man for a lot of different reasons: love, physical attraction, fear of loneliness, social pressure, wanting a family. Having a relationship because a man has a lot of money and is willing to spend some of it on you may not be the best basis for a relationship, but it is a reason.

34

Another thing about prostitutes (or Gold Diggers). As long as there is money in the equation, you can’t trust anything they say or do as genuine. Similar thing with strippers, waitresses, salespeople or any service workers. As long as the financial motivaters are there, you never know.

For example, in my 20s, I worked for a dot-com consulting firm in Boston during the height of the bubble. There was a restuarant in the building and the waitresses used to be on us like white on rice. Now I have to assume part of it was the fact that we were in there every night eating or starting every happy hour in the bar. But I also have to assume a lot of these girls were looking to snag what they thought was going to be a dot-com millionare. Or at the very least they were just looking for big tips.

35

As msmith537 has already said, sex is distinguished from other goods and services by the existence of the word prostitute, which is defined to mean the sale of sex - and not other goods or services. If we didn’t have that word, we wouldn’t have a convenient way of communicating the distinction between selling sex and selling any other good or service. Luckily we do, and we know that words mean specific things. So we know that when someone talks about a prostitute, they mean someone who performs sex acts for money. You can’t define prostitute to mean the sale of any good or service because we already have a word for someone who sells goods and services and it’s not prostitute. The distinction is for clarity.

I really wasn’t even making a point about gold diggers, wives, or prostitutes. I just read that we’re allegedly all prostitutes because we sell things and I thought it was an awful case of Humpty Dumptyism.

36

He misspelled “appreciation”. Easy to do - they’re right next to each other on the keyboard.

37

Prostitutes also have a relationship of sorts with their customers. It just often last less time and is more direct. Some prostitutes’ relationships with their customers morphs from “hooker / John” to “sugar baby / sugar daddy”.

38

I think what was implied there was society’s disdain for women who are sexually promiscuous. They get labeled as a slut/skank/ho, while a guy who goes through a lot of women is a player or a ladies man.

39

I disagree with this point, they are being paid to have sex. The fact that the person paying, usually, isn’t the same one they are having sex with is irrelevant. I don’t happen to think there is anything wrong with either one except that in most of the US the second one is usually illegal. I personally don’t think either one should be illegal.

There was an MTV special (I know, I was young.) about sex. It had a segment about a young woman who was going to do her first porn sex scene. They interviewed her before hand, then she went and did her thing. Then they interviewed her afterwards also. I don’t want to say she looked like she was going to cry but she certainly didn’t seem as sure of herself as before she went in. When the interviewer, I want to say Tabitha Soren, asked her what it was like the womans response was something along the lines of “It was like having sex with a stranger for money.”

I will have to look for the clip. I’m sure it’s on YouTube somewhere.

40

Actually my point was that there’s NOT a stark difference. I think you actually agree with my point since you made the same one with the aid of a useful example. Clearly there’s a difference between pornography and prostitution - if nothing else one is legal and that in itself is a difference. I can see why you might assume I meant there absolutely is a moral or psychological difference between them, except that my second sentence I said that there’s not much indisputable contrast.