[lbo-talk] money and s*x

[B.]

Sheen is one example. keep in mind this is a guy who used to be one the hunks of Hollywood, regardless of whatever sort of deformed caricature he's turned into now. You know, the star of "Platoon," when he was hot stuff. The Hollywood Madame, Heidi Fleiss, was there for a reason. Sheen wasn't her only client; I just picked him casually and off the top of my head.

And yet I am sure we agree on this, from Karl Marx:

"The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. " 

(From: <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm>)

My original point, however, was that men (or anyone) pay for sex - er, "labor time" - not for the experience, but because it is contractually concretized as having a definite beginning and a definite, cleanly-delineated END, which I think many men (and/or women?) crave as much as they do the actual sex. That is, being able to wash one's hands of the experience wholly and finally once it's done. Unlike with casual, non-paid, pick-someone-up-at-a-bar type sex, which tends to lead to complicated and messy social/interpersonal problems.

-B.

Dennis Claxton wrote:

"Charlie Sheen is either a misogynist or an asshole, so I'm not sure if he could have any 'gal' he wanted.  Unless you mean he could have anyone he wanted because he's got money.  In that case the argument gets circular, no?"