The madonna/whore treatment is a time-honored tradition – and as with many traditions, it’s worn out but somehow always being reinvented. On one hand, women are revered for being pure and nurturing, models of good morals and all that – but on the other hand, women are revered for being muses made up solely of sexual energy. This duality of course has led to another time-honored tradition: married men who respect their wives as the mothers of their children and are afraid to get real (and real dirty) with them, while they keep mistresses for the fun and dirty stuff on the side. This isn’t news.
But these days, the Madonna/Whore complex has gotten ever more tangled and bizzarro. Many women strive to reach some balance between the two – while many others say a big fat fuck you and try to color outside of those limited and dichotomous lines. Though being sexually empowered is held in high esteem, the actual manifestations of sexual empowerment for women are frequently met with disapproval.
This past week my heart was heavy thinking about Deborah Jean Palfrey, the notorious “DC Madam,” who was found dead by her own hand on her mother’s property in Florida. When I heard the news, I put my hand on my heart – a melodramatic gesture when put into words, but I was definitely heartbroken. Last year Palfrey was thrust into the spotlight as the madam of Pamela Martin and Associates, a Washington, DC based escort agency that serviced men in the upper echelons of society. Quite a media circus erupted when the names of some of her clients were revealed to the public. One such man, Randall Tobias, stepped down from his position in government; another, a US Senator from Louisiana named David Vitter, remains at his job; hundreds to thousands of other men sweat bullets when her client lists were made publicly available. Two weeks after being found guilty of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and racketeering, Palfrey killed herself.
Though I don’t like to use this word over-zealously to apply to the experiences of sex workers, I do believe that Palfrey was victimized because of her choice of profession – she profited from her and other women’s sexualities, and that was her downfall. But the thing was, she wasn’t exploited by the work itself, but rather by the US justice system and the ever vicious mainstream media. Though this is in many ways an extreme example of what happens to women on the “whore” side of the backslash, it’s also revealing. The men she dealt with walked away relatively unscathed but Palfrey herself paid the ultimate price. Despite having fought back loudly and defiantly, she seems to have felt that she was out of options. Our society’s twisted sexual mores certainly played a major role in Palfrey’s demise.
There are also other ways to be slutty – take the example of Kerry Cohen. Though she’s now written two books, I just discovered Kerry Cohen this week via Jezebel, where the degree of her sluttiness is questioned. Both of Cohen’s books are memoirs titled Easy and Loose Girl - they are tales of sluttiness and salvation, though as the bloggers at Jezebel note the sluttiness isn’t particularly extreme. The salvation is one of self esteem, not religious conversion. Cohen’s work confronts the shame of sluttiness and it’s motivating forces – and the internet shit-slinging that has resulted has ranged from amusing to hateful. For the ladies at Jezebel, Cohen’s sluttiness is unremarkable, not worthy of a book contract. But for the editors at women’s magazine Marie Claire, where Cohen was also featured, Cohen is a “sex addict” – a term with which Cohen does not identify.
For Palfrey, Cohen, and many other women who live more private lives, slut shaming is a powerful weapon of the media, and it has outstepped the bounds of enforcing societal norms and morals. Though women who live by their sexual wits are often thoroughly punished through a variety of channels, women like Kerry Cohen are also punished for a strange mix of being too madonna-like and too whore-like. Though I don’t like to end on a totally down note, it seems increasingly impossible to escape from the madonna/whore complex and slut shaming if you are a woman who speaks out about sexuality, no matter what the message. Though it’s a frustrating battle, I have some hope that if women keep stepping forward and speaking out, their actual messages will start getting through. Media spin (often the cringe-worthy kind) is inevitable, but silence is an entirely avoidable affliction.
