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Forced crossing
An involuntary traveler across the gender line -- and the first man who went under the knife to become a woman.
By Pam Rosenthal
[02/24/00]

Reviews
"Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market" by Walter Johnson
A historian plunges deep into the ugly business of buying and selling slaves.
By Matthew DeBord
[02/24/00]

Ivory Tower
Priceline U.
Make me an offer: At eCollegebid.org, students name their price for tuition. You may get a cut-rate deal -- at a no-name school.
By Brian Braiker
[02/23/00]

Reviews
"Scar Vegas and Other Stories" by Tom Paine
In an amazing debut, a fired-up writer takes aim at dumb American swaggerers and corporate greed.
By Maria Russo
[02/23/00]

Dear Mr. Blue
The man of my dreams
Emboldened by his declaration of love, I asked him about "the future." I wasn't banking on his honest answer.
By Garrison Keillor
[02/22/00]

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The emperor's new shows For Rupert Murdoch, being a media mogul means never having to say you're sorry. By Sean Elder "South Park" creator Trey Parker I'm a real multimillionaire and I'm cute. Why didn't they pick me?" By Carina Chocano

After "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" I was also offended for my gender. But after years of life experience, I was equally offended by its members. I knew the evil patriarchy hadn't forced the female contestants to enter this humiliating contest, or forced millions of women to watch. (The show actually got higher ratings among women than men.) If women were willing to sell themselves on national television, and other women were entertained by it, we hadn't come very far from the gender primitivism of my childhood, when both my parents took it for granted that sex was a good that men would, or should, pay for, and one that women could either "give away" or, well, not exactly sell, but obtain full value for bestowing.

After 40 years of feminism, many women still expect men to show their intentions, and devotion, by paying for dates and presents, and still evaluate them as future providers for a family. Men still complain of "wasting money" taking women out to dinner who don't want to have sex with them. They still mutter, "When push comes to shove, we pay all the time, whether it's prostitution or dating." Girls still grow up thinking of work as an option, while boys know it as a necessity.

Conventional wisdom would have it that women have to think hard about their future spouses' earnings because of the earnings gap. In 1998 the median income for all females in the labor force was 73 percent of male income ($25,862 to $35,345). For college graduates 25 and older, the gap is wider, with women earning only 71 percent of what men make ($35,408 to $49,982).

But what if, rather than being hapless victims of the earnings gap, women allow it to continue, in part in order to choose their bed partners based on their incomes? What if (most) women enjoy earning less than men, because we have eroticized being on the short end of the stick? What if women, like men, effectively pay for sex -- with lower earnings?

My theory is that men have by and large eroticized freedom, while women have eroticized its absence. It's not that lower female earnings lead women to evaluate men based on their earning power -- it's that women want to maintain male financial dominance, so they make sure they earn less then men. And it's not that men are willing to support women (and their children) because they are committed to them -- it's because men believe they are buying the freedom to leave that they will (for a while at least) foot the bills. This applies to prostitution, where men pay for the freedom of closing the door on the selves they show, and to family life, where all too many men are able to walk away from supporting their children.

Next page | The slippery slope between sending flowers and paying for sex