••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT292 •••
Here’s a question from an anonymous 22-year-old lady from Boston:
I am a bisexual young lady who has just moved to Boston. As is unremarkable for someone of my generation and sexual appetite, I have an online dating profile on OKCupid.
To put it bluntly, I fulfil societal standards of beauty. I modelled for some years. I get asked out on this website multiple times a day – and usually decline because of disinterest (more often then not because a lot of men here fetishise my race).
Here’s the kicker. I am a dedicated to animal welfare and also the promotion of sex education – in a land where the Republicans have slapped their sexually suppressed balls all over the school system.
Answer me this: should I start accepting dates from people I’d usually be disinterested in if the man/woman sends me a screenshot of a donation to the ASPCA/Planned Parenthood? e.g. ’50 bucks to support birth control for poor women, and let’s go for drinks!’
I am a broke graduate without much money to support these organisations myself, but I can help in other ways than volunteering, right? Does this count as prostitution?
What do you reckon, readers? Would our anonymous hottie exchanging her company for charitable donations be smart altruistic leverage of the current situation, or would the people paying for the dates merely think they’re getting an escort for an unusually good price? Express your opinions in the comments (£10 to Marie Curie Cancer Care per comment).
At the very least, if she does do this, the questioneer would be guaranteed to be featured in an article on Jezebel. They can’t get enough of dating experiment stories.
Answer Me This! Podcast 
July 9, 2014 at 1:59 am |
What an interesting position. My view is that you would not be a prostitute, but that your date would be a john. They’re paying for sex, but you’re not receiving payment for sex. (Unless you make them donate in your name so that you get the tax receipt — but as a student, charitable donation receipts aren’t likely a huge financial incentive.)
May I suggest that you consider moving to Canada? We love smart, interesting, compassionate people up here. And we’re about to decriminalize prostitution any day now. I gather that the Supreme Court’s 1-year deadline is about to expire, so that regardless of what OKCupid says, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Not to mention that when you do find Mr./Mrs. Right, their gender won’t be an impediment to marriage. Plus, while we do have conservatives up here slapping their testes in places they don’t belong, they’re nothing near as repugnant as a Republican gonads.
Darcy
PS – I did, dutifully, make the requisite contribution to Marie Curie. Thank goodness no sex changed hands.
July 3, 2014 at 9:50 pm |
As someone who did on-line dating for about three years, I’d really advise against this. It’s nice that you want to support good causes but this really isn’t the way. What’ll you’ll be doing in practice is messing people about. Think of it from the other perspective: if someone you wanted to meet up with made you jump through even more hoops (because on-line dating is difficult enough for men as it is, believe me), with an added financial penalty, how would that reflect on them to you?
Also, you might want to look at the terms and conditions of OkC as I am pretty sure they don’t allow any kind of financial activity through profiles.