My last lady visitor left me a copy of Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner's 2009 book
Superfreakonomics for the chapter on sex work.I'd heard of it of course and seen discussions thereof but hadn't read the text. It still seems relevant despite, or maybe, because we are now four years further into the Great Recession. Or the Lesser Depression, whichever name you think most appropriate.
Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago of course (of course because nowhere is the abstraction "the market" worshipped more fervently) and Dubner is a journalist. They cite plenty of evidence that women make less money than men for the same work, excuse men from any blame of practicing discrimination in favor of themselves and then focuses on an occupation where women have (almost) no competition from men (not for most of the same customers anyway: sex work). High end Internet-based sex work. High end" in this case means fees in the three figures instead of the lower two figures and work done indoors and without "management".
"Much has been made of the Internet's awesome ability to "disintermediation" - to cut out the agent or middleman- in industries like travel, real estate, insurance and the sales of stocks and bonds. But it is hard to think of a market more naturally suited to disintermediation than high-end prostitution."
The drawback they note is that a self employed small businesswoman in the sex business "has no one but herself to screen potential clients and ensure they wouldn't beat her up or rip her off." The solution adopted by the single Chicago escort (originally from Texas) they focus on was:
"When a new client contacted her online,she wouldn't book an appointment until she had secured his real name and his work telephone number. Then she'd call the morning of their date, ostensibly just to say how excited she was to meet him."
"But the call also acknowledged she could reach him at will and, if something were to go wrong, she could storm his office." Assuming she survived the going wrong part, of course. That strategy creates a mutual vulnerability to offset the inherent vulnerability of working naked and alone with a stranger who is bigger and stronger than one's self.
The transplanted Texan was charging $300 an hour or $500 for two hours, in Chicago, before the Boy Geniuses of Wall Street Blew Up the World Economy, initially working 30 hours a week and then cutting back to 15 and making do with the resulting $200,000 a year. Interesting.
"Her price hikes revealed another surprise: the more she charged the less actual sex she was having. At $300 an hour , she was having a string of one hour appointments with each man wanting to get in as much action as he could. But charging $500 an hours he was often wined and dined-"a four hour dinner date that ends with a twenty minute sexual encounter" she "sa(id), even though I was the same girl, dressed the same and had the same conversations as when I charged $300."
Give all that the authors wonder out loud why more women don't chose this career. They are guys after all and this audible wondering brought them quite a bit of flak post publication. The beauty part of the chapter was what their poster girl for Internet sex work decided to do after a graceful retirement when she was still looking good. After trying selling real estate and finding the agency took half the money she decided to go back to college.
"She would build on everything she'd learned by running her own business and, if everything went well, apply this newfound knowledge to some profession that would pay an insanely high wage without relying on her own physical labor."
"Her chosen field of study? Economics, of course."
Super Hobby Freakonomics
