Cake

"When contemporary women become manfully successful as CEOs, surgeons, or airline pilots, everyone by the Taliban is like to cheer them on.  But when they professionally take off their clothes, reveal their clitorises and vulvas, and enable orgasms for money, there's a universal gasp of consternation." We couldn't agree more.  Why do women get cheered using other people in the business world for profit but get berated for making money using their own bodies?  

Along with discussing the merits of prostitution, the author acknowledges that it may not be a dream job for every woman in the field.  This is true, of course, as any job has examples of the empowered and the enslaved.   But if we were to truly support all people's rights get paid for work they enjoy, would we see a blurring between the public and private worlds we count on for structure and stability? Aphrodite claims "Whore will be part of the movement toward a truly egalitarian, sincerely pluralistic, far less judgemental American spirit."  Like we've always said - women's sexual freedom paves the way to a whole lot more.

But the part of the message back-peddles from a future where women are truly free-to-be.  "As whores begin to reclaim their role as the primordial priestess and the culture begins to perceive it, their advancement will be one of the a host of indications of feminine principles pervading the world and feminine principles healing Mother Earth.  A prostitute is a comfort station, she's a relief, an oasis on men's battlefields - and a true whore knows to be proud of it."  Wait a minute now!  Way to put a women in her place while men keep fighting the proud male fight!  If selling sex must rely of feminine stereotypes, is it not also stifling?

I'm no mother earth, and I'm certainly not an oasis.  Then again I'm not a working grrrl either.   But I do want to explore my own personal sexual freedom as well the possibilities that someone else can be the sexual calm to my storm.  Just another day caught in the Virgin / Whore dichotomy. Sigh....

This post is based only on excerpts publishing in Harpers (August 2007).  More to come after digesting the whole trilogy!