Tuesday, April 24, 2018

When Women Give It Away for Free


When you have gotten into the habit of giving it away for free, and someone comes along and offers to pay for what you have been giving away for free, you are going to be tempted. If you are not tempted, you should at least ask yourself why you have been giving it away for free.

Obviously, I am talking about sex. In particular, I am talking about women who give it away for free. They go on dates, they pay their own way, they have sex with their dates and they often do not want to see said dates again, unless for another hookup.

Aimee Lutkin described her own experiences in the New York dating scene for Jezebel:

A series of wasted evenings flash through my mind. Most women who have given dating men a shot have probably experienced what it’s like to date guys they’re not into, without a guarantee those guys will respect their boundaries or personhood, for whom they may have changed some aspect of themselves. And they probably had to cover their own drinks the whole freaking time.

Only a week before attending the summit, I was ranting to a friend about how many men message me on regular apps asking for what amounts to, in my mind, free sex work. They don’t want to spend money on a professional, but they also don’t want to invest the time and energy connecting to a regular date before asking for explicit sexual favors.

Back in the day men who followed the code of gentlemanly behavior would never have treated young women as sex workers who give it away for free. Wherever did they get the idea that they could? Wherever did they get the idea that they could get away with such rude, crude and lewd advances? Could it be that they have had success treating women like sex workers, and that many women consent to being used for sex?

Obviously, I did not recommend that they do it. I am old school. I believe that women who respect themselves do not give it away for free. Other forces in our culture have told women that giving it away for free makes them liberated. They are doing it to make an ideological point. They are compromising their dignity in order to advance what they think of as a cause.

To be fair, feminists promised women that once they became financially self-sufficient men would love them so much more because they would not be needy. It was a big lie. A lot of people bought it. A lot of young women sold themselves for nothing because they wanted to affirm its truth. It was still a colossal lie.

Aimee Lutkin continued:

In the past year, I’ve done a considerable amount of dating and I’m honestly exhausted. Dates are not only frequently disappointing, they’re also expensive—I always insist on paying for myself.

This being the case, she finds the prospect of becoming a Sugar Baby to be strangely enticing:

Well, after being introduced to the world of Sugaring, I may never do that again.

This tells us that giving it away for free makes you a cheap courtesan, one who expects nothing in return, who accepts that she is worth so little that she deserves to receive nothing in return, not even the price of dinner and a movie, certainly not a commitment.

Becoming a Sugar Baby changes the equation. The women who attended the Sugar Baby Summit were not aspiring concubines. They were aspiring entrepreneurs. They were willing to trade an occasional sexual favor— the kinds that they had been giving away for free— for financing and business connections. Compared with giving it away for free, it feels like a better deal.

I briefly attended a panel on the main stage called “Sugar For Entrepreneurs,” where both Babies and Daddies answer questions from moderator Alexis Germany, who hosts a podcast dedicated to the lifestyle called Let’s Talk Sugar, and is PR manager for Seeking Arrangements. A speaker asked audience members to raise their hands if they’re interested in starting their own businesses. Arms shoot up across the room. This was my first moment of surprise—the scope of the Sugar Baby ambition. I thought it stopped at cocktails and Louboutins, but some hopefuls want a Daddy to provide seed money for a whole company. Both a branding specialist and Baby, panelist Christina Friscia built her business with the assistance of her Daddy. She told the assembly it’s important to see your Daddy as a partner, not a wallet, and that frequently, older successful men have more to share than cash, like experience and connections. In a way, that sounds much harder to find than someone with money.

Of course, the first thought that pops into your dirty mind is this: if many women are willing to trade sex for professional advancement, how’s a man to know whether or not the women who work for him, who have not signed up with Seeking Arrangements, will make the same deal? He doesn't. That's the problem. Too many women seem to think that they can exchange sexual favors for career advancement and then they cannot understand why men do not treat them as respectable professionals.

What does a Sugar Daddy offer? At the least, he offers respect. Apparently, modern men, especially those who are woke, have been taught that it is bad to respect women:

Sugar Daddies are at least recognizing that what they’re asking for has value. Women’s time has value. Looking good costs money, far more money for women than men. If you want a woman who looks good to you, help her the fuck out with that. And if you can’t afford it? Then you better be a damn good listener! I’m usually paying to dye my hair in a salon, using fancy skin cream, and waxing my legs to be smooth to the touch just to sit across from some guy who could as easily be talking to a sack of potatoes, given the amount of interest he has in my responses.

Lutkin seems slightly turned off by the prospect of becoming a Sugar Baby. Or else, she feels the need to tell the world that she’s not that kind of girl. And yet, she gets the appeal:

Still, it clearly works for some people. I respect the Sugar Babies who figure out how to use the effort they put into finding love to a secondary purpose, whether it’s paying for college applications, travel, a new handbag, starting a business, or just finding someone who can afford to show them more of the world than a split bill at a dive bar. As one Sugar Baby told me, “I’d never had oysters until a Sugar Daddy introduced me to them. Now I order oysters for myself all the time.”

That’s it: oysters all the time! You’ve come a long way, baby!

11 comments:

Sam L. said...

This makes me glad I'm old and married.

MikeyParks said...

There's an old saying, "Never tear down a wall until you know why it was built." Back in the day, before the sexual revolution, good girls held on to their virginity until married, or at least seriously involved. This was because thousands of years ago mankind figured out that men were programmed to reproduce at any price and women would end up paying the tab if they didn't watch out. So there was a cultural wall keeping men from screwing any and every woman in sight. In the 60s we tore down that wall. Now we're finding out why it was built. But unfortunately it can't be rebuilt. The lesson is, try to look ahead to the possible ramifications of making major shifts in age-old social norms. They weren't necessarily invented by idiots.

Anonymous said...

I routinely google the images for the authors of
these types of articles.

I sincerely doubt Miss Lutkin could sell herself for
a cappuccino, much less a business startup.

Perhaps she's actually self-aware enough to realize
this, and that explains her saying it's not for her.

Ares Olympus said...

I recall in physicist Richard Feynman's book where he confesses his discovery in his 20s (1940s) that if he took a woman out for dinner, she could say no to sex afterwards, because she didn't promise him anything, but he learned if he was bold and asked up front, and apparently as a good looking young man, many women were willing to accept the offer.

So apparently "giving it away for free" is best avoided for transactional men and women. Ask for what you want upfront, and you can save yourself a lot of time. But as gentleman Trump shows, even if a woman offers it for free, even if she'll turn down payment, a grateful man still offers to pay her afterwards to show how special she is.

whitney said...

Women's rights and freedoms come in late-stage civilisation. Sparta, Rome, Baghdad in the tenth century and a few more that I know of and I'm sure many more than that that I don't. Everyone thinks that this is the first time women have gotten rights but that's only because when the civilisation collapses it then becomes unsafe for women to leave the house by themselves and all the gains are lost. I have no idea whether it's a cause or symptom. Probably doesn't matter

Ares Olympus said...

Mikey, I see your old saying here, by G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936).
https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

Deana said...

Sam -
My husband and I aren’t all that old but this stuff makes us feel like it. All of this seems like so much . . . work.

Marriage to the right person also is work but if good choices are made and both have similar goals and values, it seems like it gets easier.

I feel like we will never again return to anything like the way it was. Somehow a lot of people were convinced that they knew better than all who came before us.

Anonymous said...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbfpdfwV4AAJbZk.jpg

Anonymous said...

50 shades of pay

Anonymous said...

Mikey summarizes conservatism in that post.

Maybe our ancestors weren’t the troglodytes our enlightened brethren try to portray them as. Back when common sense was certainly more common.

The problem with womyn today is they want to do whatever they want, and want government (instead of a committed man) to protect them from all the downside risk. Our ancestors would justifiably have seen this as nuts.

Feminism is the chosen, uniting worldview of pissed off womyn.

And AO found a quote on the internet!!!

Anonymous said...

The truth is there isn’t enough government to mitigate all that downside risk. This is a reason for prudence. Yes, for prudes. That’s “the way it was.” Perhaps we’d see the wisdom in it if the keepers of our “kultur” weren’t so full of snark and snicker.