Op-Ed: Spitzer (aka Client 9), His Wife and “Kristin”

Contributed by Pamela Capalad

Situation: Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, caught with a hooker.

Immediate Consequences: Scandal. Ruined political career. Resignation. Endless op-ed columns written in an effort to explain the psychology that motivated Spitzer.

Collateral Consequences: Headlines one week later read “‘Client 9’ call-girl now online music star.” Known as “Kristen” on the wiretaps, Ashley Alexandra Dupré already has two hit internet singles and her MySpace page was viewed 2 million times in under 24 hours and 6 million times to date. Hustler and Penthouse have offered her magazine spreads. A 20-photo pictorial of her, scantily clad, has already run in the New York Post.

Why this matters: While many think that Ashley Alexandra Dupré “two to three weeks from now [is probably going to] be a very forgotten person,” others see it as a symptom of what’s wrong with society that this young lady will be in a position to exploit the media simply because she was exploited by a famous and powerful person. The particular way the media and the public have chosen to react to the scandal not only makes a further mockery of a deeply flawed political system, but glamorizes the global sex industry, an industry that has very little to do with $5000 call girls becoming overnight pop stars.

Indeed, even for the few girls whose time is worth thousands of dollars to the men who patronize “high-end” services like the Emperor’s VIP Club, life is not as glamorous as it seems. First, these women don’t take home most of this money, as the usual arrangement involves paying expenses first, then paying 10% to the booker, then splitting the rest with the agency, with the prostitute usually taking home less than 50% of the net payment. Additionally, many of these girls are drug and alcohol dependent, have suffered sexual and physical abuse in their past, and don’t know how they are going to pay next month’s rent. Being paid a high hourly rate doesn’t protect these women from violence either, and might even put them more at risk, as customers expect to “get what they pay for,” even if it means “doing things that you might think are, like, unsafe.”

Finally, the nature of creating artificial demand (how else could a man be convinced to pay $5000 for sex?) is such that “7 diamond” prostitutes don’t stay at the top of the pay-scale for long, and are constantly demoted as they are replaced by fresh faces. They certainly don’t get 10 good years of tax-free earning, health insurance and a 401k out of the bargain. Ms. Dupré, according to her MySpace page, typifies this dynamic.

More importantly, these expensive prostitutes represent a tiny fraction of those women, girls and boys who exchange sex for money every day, world-wide. Many are controlled by pimps who take most or all of their earnings, control them with drugs, physical and sexual violence, and place them at high risk of contracting diseases like HIV/AIDS. Many prostitutes in this country are homeless or living in poverty, forced to exchange as little as $10 or $15 per sex act, over which they have no control and constantly fear for their lives.

Indeed, for the most vulnerable victims of the sex industry, they never chose to be prostitutes, but were forced, coerced or exploited into sex work. As young children, they were kidnapped or lured away from their homes in developing countries, and trafficked across international borders or from rural to urban areas, where they are kept in slave-like conditions by traffickers who take all of their earnings, along with their documents, and allow them to be raped, beaten and infected with sexually transmitted diseases. Many die, alone and far from home. This is the ugly face of human trafficking for prostitution.

As the second-largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world today, sex trafficking “is one of the most lucrative sectors of the trade of people.” Women and girls are controlled by pimps who they cannot look in the eye, call by name, and require them to meet “a quota of money before she can go to sleep.” It is estimated that 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States each year and 200,000 American children are “at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry each year.”

Why would a governor who made his career crusading against Wall Street corruption, and, ironically enough, advocating for harsher sex-trafficking laws, choose to become a part of the corruption which he has devoted his career to fighting against?

Some may attribute his actions to hubris and arrogance; he did it because he thought he could get away with it, that as governor, he saw himself as above the law. While this particular case feels unique because of the details—the blatant hypocrisy of the governor’s actions, the possible use of public funds to finance the call girl’s expenses—it is essentially a case we have seen time and time again.

A man marries a strong, intelligent, powerful woman and cheats on her with a woman whom he can control and possess. Silda Wall Spitzer graduated from Harvard Law School and made twice as much money as her husband at once point. Hillary Clinton clearly has political aspirations of her own. From politics to Hollywood to big business, the story of a powerful man cheating on his accomplished wife with a prostitute, nanny, secretary, intern or other woman in a not-coincidentally inferior position is shockingly familiar.

The modern professional woman is the epitome of a woman who can take care of herself, who is, theoretically, equal to a man in the same position. She has only begun to see her full potential in the last few decades and has struggled to find a balance between her personal and professional life and has struggled to find men who are not threatened by her success.

The hooker is as old as the Bible. She is a woman who is paid to be completely submissive to her client. She exists today for the same reason she existed then. For some men, it’s to fulfill a sexual need. For most men, it’s to fulfill a power trip. Eliot Spitzer was no different. His power trip may have cost him his career, but Spitzer is just another name to add to the long list of men who have made the same costly decision.

The reason this case is special is because of the women. We see Ashley Alexandra Dupré displaying some hubris of her own. While Monica Lewinsky had to hide her face from the paparazzi, Dupré is considering offers to pose for men’s magazines as well as a rumored tell-all book deal. Fame and infamy have become synonymous and now it is the daughters, mothers, and wives of the men who perform the indiscretions who are compelled to hide their faces. It is the real victims of sex-traffickers who must suffer the real consequences of a society that glorifies this industry.

Perhaps this is why Silda Wall Spitzer stood by her husband that day. She refused to hide her face.