The 3.8 Million Dollar Snatch

Surfing around the blogosphere, I see a plethora of different opinions on everything in the news media. That being the case, I read an article that was penned with regard to Natalie Dylan. To refresh the memories of those who keep up with absurd news stories, Natalie Dylan is the young woman who is auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder. At this point her virgin sniz is fetching a bidding price of about 3.8 million dollars. She says this whole thing started as a sociological experiment. In her own words:

They say you should value having sex for the first time. That’s why I’m auctioning my virginity online–and the bidding is up to $3.8 million.

When I put my virginity up for auction in September, it was in part a sociological experiment–I wanted to study the public’s response. Now it seems that the tables have turned, and the public is studying me.

I’m a 22-year-old woman who recently earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies, and soon I’ll be entering a Masters Degree program in Marriage and Family Therapy. During the time in between, in addition to my regular 9-to-5, I’ve been exploring my upcoming thesis project: the value of virginity. To be more specific, I’ve put my own virginity up for auction on the Moonlight Bunny Ranch website, and I recently received my highest bid so far: a cool $3.8 million.

…This all started long before September. In fact, it started in college, where my eyes were opened by my Women’s Studies professors and fellow classmates. I came to understand the role of “woman” spanning culture and time. At the university level, I was given permission to think differently and form a moral code of my own design. College opened my eyes.

Like most little girls, I was raised to believe that virginity is a sacred gift a woman should reserve for just the right man. But college taught me that this concept is just a tool to keep the status quo intact. Deflowering is historically oppressive–early European marriages began with a dowry, in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth. Dads were basically their daughters’ pimps.

When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

Now, most folks in the right-of-center blogosphere are appalled by this.  I, however, am not nearly as shocked.  What do you expect?  She has a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies.  That’s the kind of degree that’s not really worth the paper it’s printed on. Undergraduates who major in Women’s Studies do so because they want to get a degree that they won’t need to work terribly hard to achieve.  This is why when an employer looks at the resume of a Women’s Studies graduate, they look at it as though it were written in crayon.

Is Natalie Dylan a prostitute?  Of course she is.  With a degree in Women’s Studies, that’s all she’s really qualified to do.  Although in reality, she’s not even qualified to do that. She’s a virgin.  She has no experience. The only thing I find shocking in this whole sordid affair is that some schlep is willing to drop $3.8 million to hit that.  I personally wouldn’t go higher than $500.

I have to hand it to Natalie Dylan though.  She’s going to make $3.8 million for putting out once.  She won’t even be a good lay, really, and she’ll get $3.8 million for it.  She won’t have to work another day in her life, which is a good thing for her.  There’s not much demand in the job market for Women’s Studies graduates.

Not what you think.

Last night I was in one of my grad school classes and the word “libertarian” came up to describe a liberal attitude and liberal policies concerning language education.  One of my classmates appeared to be confused by the correlation between “liberal” and “libertarian,” and said something to the effect that libertarians are not liberal.  At this point I cringed a little and made a less-than-subtle noise.  This was partly due to the fact that definitions of “liberal” and “conservative” have been so radically altered in the American political landscape, they no longer have any definite meanings.  The little noise I made drew the attention of my classmate, so I simply said “Another discussion for another time.”

My graduate studies are in the field of Curriculum and Instruction, and I’ve learned to be very careful about espousing my political philosophy in the presence of my classmates and instructors.  This last summer I had a professor who was not shy about deriding libertarian ideas and those who support them.  In following semesters I could not help but notice a strong bias in favor of statist ideologies among both the faculty and students.  This bias was not nearly as prevalent in my undergraduate studies in the field of Chemistry.  This is probably because the College of Education is very closely affiliated with the state department of education, and is inextricably tied into ideas of social engineering and “social justice.”  In addition, many of the students are graduates with liberal arts degrees, and many college liberal arts departments pursue an agenda that is in keeping with socialist ideologies.  When studying science or engineering, ideas surrounding politics or social issues are seldom addressed due to their lack of relevance in these disciplines.

My aforementioned classmate equated libertarianism with conservatism.  She told me after class that her father once identified himself as a Republican but later changed to Libertarian out of dissidence with the Republican Party’s alliances with evangelical religious organizations.  It is in part because of the similarities between lip service Republicans give to the ideas of liberty and libertarian ideals that libertarians are often branded “conservative.”  However, libertarianism is more accurately described as classic liberalism,  which should not be confused with the “liberalism” that is discussed in the political discourse of today.

The “liberalism” of today is far from being a liberal ideology.  It emphasizes greater centralized government control over almost every aspect of a citizen’s life.  It emphasizes the government controlling and regulating wealth and status in a fashion not dissimilar to the caste system of feudal Europe.  “Liberalism” as it stands today is responsible for curtailing private property rights, ludicrous taxation of everything under the sun, removing the means for the citizenry to defend themselves, and countless other legislative measures taken “for our own good.”  In the current political climate, “liberalism” equates to a form of coercive government that resembles a benevolent collective dictatorship.  However, regardless of the perceived benevolence of a “liberal” dictatorship, it is far from the true definition of liberal.  Libertarian now describes liberalism in the aftermath of socialists hijacking the word “liberal.”