The short story: Biologist Danielle N. Lee, who blogs at The Urban Scientist, gets a request from “Ofek,” an editor at “Biology Online” to write content there for free. She politely declines. The editor responds:

Because we don’t pay for blog entries?

Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?

Lee writes about the experience on The Urban Scientist; Scientific American takes the post down without notifying her.

There are plenty of angles to this story that deserve closer attention. For example:

• There’s “Ofek,” who deserves googleable public naming and shaming.
• There’s the commonness of Ofek’s self-entitled attitude among marketeering shits.
• There’s the acquiescence of science bloggers who enable Ofek’s self-entitled attitude by contributing voluntarily to a crappy content-aggregation site run by a bunch of semiliterates: people such as cartoonist Katie Mcissick (who, to her credit, has demanded her content’s removal), professor Fred Essig, Dr. Michael Joyner, microbiologist Frances Coates, and marine biologist Samantha Craven.
• There’s the sucker deal that the enablers have made, not merely blogging for free, but also not getting even a link out of the deal—the publication of their work mentions their names (and, in the case of the bloggers—Mcissick and Craven, their blogs) but links to nothing. ((This makes Ofek a liar as well, since he claims that “by writing and linking to us, you not only receive traffic from us, but it can have a direct effect on the traffic and rank of your blog, and that in turn has a direct effect on advertising revenue.” I do not like liars.))
• There’s Scientific American’s craven conduct in trying to wipe DNLee’s post instead of whacking Biology Online upside the head with a virtual 2-by-4. As Maryn McKenna writes:
  

  SciAm has silenced a blogger, implicitly criticized her, and explicitly not criticized a partner representative who abused one of their own people. These are not smart or moral actions, and they do not reflect well on a storied and respected brand.

I’m sure others will address all of those angles. I want to talk about the power we give the word “whore.”

To be clear, I’m not talking about the power that DNLee gives the word “whore.” Nor am I talking about the opprobrium that Ofek, Biology-Online, and its supporters (including Scientific American) deserve. I do not subscribe to the belief that the intent of the speaker is irrelevant; Ofek clearly intended the word as a sexist abusive epithet, especially in its contrast to the generally respected occupation of scientist:

Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?

But “whore” would, in a better world, be robbed of its power as an abusive epithet. It would have no more negative connotation than “nurse,” or “psychologist,” or “plumber.” ((And damn sure less than “marketer.”))

Are you an urban scientist or an urban plumber?

All of us—unless we are wholly reliant on others for our survival—exchange something others value for something we value. We exchange our time, our work, and our thought—little slices of our lives—which others value, for money, which represents value, and which we use to buy things—food, shelter, internet service—that we value.

And all of us, unless we are asexual or rapists, exchange something for sex. Buy you a drink? Dinner and a movie? The security of marriage? Some will reject this proposition out of distaste, ((“Sex is precious, and shouldn’t be bought or sold.”)) but to an observer of human behavior it’s glaringly obvious: even if it’s nothing more than pleasure for pleasure, consensual sex is a trade of value for value.

If we accept those two propositions, setting aside the emotional, ((“Well, I wouldn’t want to do it, so how can you?”)) moral, ((“It’s wrong because I say so.”)) patriarchal, ((“Womenfolk belong to menfolk, who have historically made the rules.”)) and begging-the-question ((“Prostitution harms society.” Okay, how?)) arguments, how do we rationally distinguish prostitution from any other exchange we make, either in the workplace or in the bedroom, so that the sex worker is different (less than a whole person) than the nurse?

Most of us aren’t making explicit exchanges of sex for value. If anything, that makes the sex worker’s transaction more transparent; surely that can’t be a bad thing. Anything a person has to sell, she should be able to sell to a willing buyer for agreed-upon terms, as long as the transaction doesn’t harm a third party.

It is a strange trade, that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift, hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale…. ((Thomas Carlyle, Lord Jeffrey, 1867. Incomplete, inadequately sourced, and mispunctuated versions of this quotation abound across the Internet. This, per Mencken’s New Dictionary of Quotations (1942), is correct. The end of the sentence is this: “…, will either blow out a pestilent scoundrel’s brains, or the scoundrel’s salutary sheriff’s officer’s (in a sense), as you please to choose for your guinea.”))

I’ve long thought that the trade of criminal-defense lawyer shares a good deal with that of sex worker. Neither is widely loved or well understood by the general public. Both generally involve ad hoc relationships with people whose need for us, if made public, would embarrass them. For both, confidentiality is paramount.

But there’s this monumental difference: criminal-defense lawyers aren’t getting raped, and are rarely getting murdered, for being criminal-defense lawyers. Sex workers are getting raped and murdered for being sex workers. The reason for this is the same as the reason that “whore” has its power to shock and offend: whore stigma. Acknowledge that people have the right to do with their bodies what they will, and sex work comes out from underground and into the light; allow sex work into the light and sex workers are no longer as vulnerable to those who would prey on them.

How do you get rid of stigma?

I sell my highest heavenly gift for money, cash on the barrelhead. I don’t need to love you, or even like you, to do it (though I’ll admit that makes the job easier). If you want a freebie, I’ve got no obligation to give it, and I’ll probably decline.

Metaphorically ((Which is, perhaps, the way that Ofek intended it)) I am a whore. I don’t claim that that makes me a literal whore, but it damn sure doesn’t make me any better than one. Maybe worse: while whores are just selling sex; I’m selling thought.

Can you claim to be any better?