Who says they have low opinions of women? If bitches would just deign to fuck them, they wouldn’t have to pay for sex, but somehow it’s those assholes who shower every day and can hold actual conversations with women who end up getting all the free pussy.

Nah, the “schlub” thing is just to point out how venal the women are (and to salve the writer’s sense of injury at not being able to afford one).

Quibble: I’m not sure “mistress” is a good derogatory word here. “Paid lover” or “paid companion might be better”, because (afaik) “mistress” gets used to describe any woman to whom a man contributes financial support in a longtermish sexual relationship outside marriage, regardless of how consensual it is, and whether it would exist without that support. But perhaps I’m putting to polite a gloss on the word.

That was a really dumb, lazy article. The only source seems to have been this guy Hayes. Yes, I know writers have space to fill and sometimes you have to knock out stuff quickly, but honestly, what was the point?

Or vice versa. In some cases, though, it seems that it effectively turns into bigamy without benefit (inconvenience?) of marriage license. (Fer example, you read about people who support a mistress for 20+ years, pay for the education of her/their children, and so forth. My only close-at-hand experience is of an ex-cousin-in-law, who dropped his spouse of 20+ years when his mistress of 10 years or so got pregnant.) And of course “wife” can be a derogatory term when treated in the same transactional fashion.

Power can be sexy: google Henry Kissinger and Jill St. John, who dated him when he was Nixon’s eminence grise and she was a hot Hollywood star.

For a woman to be considered your girlfriend, she should, at bare minimum, be eager to be with you, not barely tolerating you to get at your money.

In before… oh hell, we all know what’s coming.

Would you care to put bounds on your oh-so-sweeping generalisation, Amanda?

Is a woman who only cares to date well-paid professionals a mistress, even if she herself is one?  Is she a mistress if she gets paid less than the guys she usually dates?  Is she a mistress if they pay more towards the couple as a whole than she does?

You’ve got a point, but I’ve known several “high maintenance” women who definitely made a potential bf’s income a factor in their choices, and I’d hesitate to call them “prostitutes”.  I’d also hesitate to characterise making a potential or current partner’s salary and job prospects a necessary condition of continuing in the relationship as “barely tolerating them to get at their money”...

I note the piece says a hell of a lot about the guys involved, but almost nothing about the women (which might be worth some sarcasm in itself).

If they only date guys who can keep them swimming in expensive stuff, I think mistress is a fair characterization.  That does seem a bit generic, though…Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that if they stop dating someone just because they are having some money issues, they are definitely mistresses.  I don’t think we’re talking guys who are out on the street. Zero money can be toxic to any relationship.  But these guys arn’t poor they just arn’t rich anymore.

PiaToR, The Deadly Shoe: Aren’t you both engaging in a bit of sophistry?  If the root of the exchange is “my company and sex for your money” then it’s prostitution and any distinctions made are subjective and class driven, not objectively descriptive.  “Tom Hagen” wasn’t any less of a gangster because he was a lawyer with one client; a different and more restrained kind of gangster he may have been, but a gangster he remained.  These so called “high end girlfriends” are pretty much just one-client prostitutes.

However, “one-client prostitutes” does not apply to women who don’t exact an economic price for their companionship but merely choose to limit their dating pool to rich and powerful men.  There already exists a technical term for women who have a seething contempt for male who isn’t a fiscal alpha:  a “Dowd”.

I’d bet those guys have uncool tastes in music and are unfamiliar with the Slow Food movement.

Bases covered!

My opinion of Jill St. John went down several thousand notches…

* WOW *

Can someone please direct me to Pandagon? I seem to be lost.

These highly stupid arguments reminds me of my last boyfriend. Such a gem, he pretty much called me a whore because he contributed more to our groceries and “eating out” than I did.

Of course, the fact that he made 50% more than I did was not a factor. No, not at all.

Asshole.

Oh, yeah, and I was also called a whore before that because I left my husband when “the money dried up”. Of course, the longer BORING version is that he dropped out of college because he was so lazy he didn’t want to go to class and he wanted to be a waiter without any health insurance for the rest of his life, mostly because it was hard work being anything more.

So, yeah, I’m a gold-digging whore by ya’ll’s standards and I’m proud of it.

PIATOR, yes I would consider any woman who’d break it off with her boyfriend when the pretty blue boxes failed to appear on a regular basis a “mistress” of sorts.  If you actually care about someone and want to be with them for who they are, their ability to keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed should not be such a big deal.

Concubine or courtesan would also work, though people don’t use those terms much anymore, especially to describe modern Western culture. 

Also, yeah, my understanding of the term mistress is that it refers to a sort of financial arrangement—usually when someone is simply having an affair with someone who is their financial equal or who they are not supporting in any way, that word is not used.

It’s hard for me to think of millionaires as being exploited.  I prefer to think of these women as providing a much needed service for, “a particular sort of schlub who was invisible to girls in high school but became a magnetic figure thanks to the magic of millions.”

The heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes what the heart wants is money.  The millionaires got theirs, and we shouldn’t be down on the women they fall in love with from wanting their share too.  Especially if we’re going to have a society that values the accumulation of wealth above all else.  If success is based on bank account balances we need to get used to potential lovers checking out the size of our stock portfolio before agreeing to date us.

Don’t treat money as if it’s the most important thing in the world and then expect someone to fall in love with you because you offer them sunshine and flowers. 

Aside from which, nobody forced these guys into a relationship.  They got beautiful women to be nice to them because they had money.  They should count their blessings.  At least they had money.  Millions of people don’t.  Billions, in fact, worldwide.  Everyday lately the bad news from Wall Street has been broadcast with poor unfortunate ex-billionaires wondering where their next yacht is coming from, but hardly anything is ever mentioned about the millions of kids who go to bed hungry at night or have no homes to live in because their parents are victims of the kind of trickle down economics that has been failing the world since we formed societies.

Which is just to say that I know the Official Feminist Position is that “money doesn’t matter”, but unfortunately I have to live in the Real World. When the man I’m dating makes 50% more than I, I expect him to chip in a little bit extra, especially in a long term serious relationship and especially when I have more (legitimate) short term expenses than he (school bills). When/If the shoe was on the other foot, I would expect to do the same.

And, yeah, when you’re dirt-poor, like I was when I was married, a lazy-ass idiot who throws away good parent-paid schooling because he likes doing shit-work for shit-money, you bet your ass I’m going to leave. Being rich may not guarantee a good marriage, but being poor isn’t nearly as romantic as it might sound.

I don’t know anything about the women in this article - maybe they are deserving bloggers who are so freaking perfect that they’ve decided they can command love AND money from their future lifemate, or maybe they are greedy LILITH THE CAPSLOCK DRAGONS who just want teh monies and hate the men they are dating. But calling them prosititutes is the least feminist thing I know, and so is falling into the mentality of the men who “own” them - you’ve bought into the idea that they are worthless, money-sucking whores. You know, just like my last boyfriend thought of me. But he’s, like, TOTALLY unbiased.

You’ve got a point, but I’ve known several “high maintenance” women who definitely made a potential bf’s income a factor in their choices, and I’d hesitate to call them “prostitutes”.

The word you’re looking for is “gold-digger.”  It’s a little tricky, because (as Faye says) it’s not that unusual for the man in the relationship to be making more money than the woman, sometimes a LOT more depending on the circumstances.

I think the difference between being broke and being a gold-digger is if you’re demanding (not just accepting, but demanding) expensive presents from the other party in exchange for your company.

It’s definitely closer to what a courtesan used to be (giving a man your exclusive company in exchange for payments and/or expensive presents) than a “regular” prostitute who has a list of clients.

Oh, and per Faye, when I say “If you actually care about someone and want to be with them for who they are, their ability to keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed should not be such a big deal,” I’m not talking about an egalitarian relationship with someone who has changed their path to pursue something that makes them fundamentally incompatible with their partner.

When it’s about an inability to deal with someone, that’s a different thing than just feeling pouty that you’re not going to be finding any ice under the Christmas tree this year.

Sorry to be touchy - and I want you to know that none of my rant was directed at you, Opop! - but I’m just so sick to the teeth of this ridiculous rooted-in-fantasy idea that Love Is All You Need, and that Good Women Don’t Leave Poor Men.

I’ve had one too many boyfriend decide that working is for the dogs and that, really, he wants to pursue a ‘career’ of picking at a guitar in the basement all day with a side business of reading comics on the john. And I’m sick to the teeth of the nonsense that, by gods, if I LOVED him, I’d support him in his soul-searching quest for fulfillment and if I don’t work 80 hours a week and starve with him, then I’m a WHORE, just like the rest of THEM.

No. Uh-uh. No.

Nowhere in this article do I see that ‘these women’ demanded Tiffany’s boxes every evening. The women are attractive, low-income women who are willing to “see” men who are ugly but wealthy. And, I’m sorry, but a little wealth can make an ugly man more acceptable. It means he works hard, invests wisely, and could potentially provide a good life to any children we have. Would it be purer, somehow, if I only went out with really HAWT guys, regardless of their income? (Although I’m rising pretty fast on the corporate ladder, maybe I can do that, and be ‘one of the guys’ now. Ugh.)

But I’m just a dirty gold-digger who wants a house, health insurance, and decent private schools for my hypothetical children.

Even if you were right, Amanda, so what?

Why all this hostility to sex workers? Why insist on calling these women by a derogatory term (prostitute / mistress) if they prefer to be called something kinder and gentler, like ‘girlfriend’?

I guess it must be nice to be ‘rich’ enough to blog for a living (which really is more luxurious than, you know, whoring), but, seriously, there are some shit-poor women out there and stripping and whoring for a living is a dark place to be.

I don’t know why these women feel the need to do what they are doing. But I know it’s not my place to judge them. I’m not going to get all white-middle-class outrage and insist on ‘calling a spade a dirty nasty sex worker’. Frankly, if I hadn’t had the help that I did to get my degree, I might be in that place, too.

Seriously, I think you need to question why you are lashing out at the women here, who are likely victims of society, rather than the assholes who are happy enough to buy and sell them like property. Poor menz.

In other words, my question is, why is the theme of this blog entry, “You’re a Prostitute, not a Girlfriend”, when it could be “You’re an Entitled Choad, not a Boyfriend”?

Not everything is an insult aimed directly at you. 

I’m more concerned about the insults you are leveling at the women in this article.

Like I said, I thought this was a feminist site, not a slut shaming orgy.

Amanda, I really don’t understand how you can possibly say that you aren’t insulting these women. You’re calling them prositutes based on a third-party assessment of whether or not they stay with their boyfriends for the money. Huh? Nowhere are any of these women quoted, but by god if the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend says that Angie is only with Dick for his money, then it must be true.

So let’s take the time to point out to Angie that she’s not a girlfriend, she’s a whore.

Right. Really feminist. As for my Real Life examples, that’s called ‘making an analogy’. Sorry if you don’t understand, but my point was that my own ex-boyfriend would probably also tell you I was a whore, but saying it doesn’t make it so. And yeah, he spent more on the relationship, but he also made more than I do… in the same why that these Wall Street execs make more than their stripper girlfriends. Thus, a connection to the topic at hand. It’s kind of tricky to grasp, but I know you can do it if you stop pulling a McCain (i.e. saying something stupid like, say, “these women are whores” and then defending it to the death rather than stopping to rethink).

Amanda, I’m ordinarily a fan of yours, but I’m sort of with Faye here.  This reads wrong.  Using words like “prostitute” and “mistress” as, effectively, terms of abuse is not terribly feminist of you.

I thought they were being used purely as descriptive terms. It’s the guys who are being got at for pretending that they have girlfriends when in reality they pay for sex.

Am I the only one who didn’t read Amanda’s use of the terms “prostitute”, “sex worker”, “mistress”, etc. as insults?

I know this stuff gets complicated because so many words for “sex worker” are used as stock insults for women.  So in a way, calling someone a prostitute isn’t just declaring that they exchange sex for money, it’s an insult against the woman in question’s character.  Which is all of a piece with wanting to come up with a cuddly euphemism to describe women who have sex for money, like “girlfriend”.  Though of course the logical conclusion there* is that a euphemism like that tars all women who are in relationships for fun or love or personal enjoyment, and not financial support, as ultimately also being whores.  Which I thought was Amanda’s point. 

This whole dialogue reminds me a lot of the time, not so long ago, when all unmarried women were considered potential prostitutes. 

* Which is, of course, what happened to the word “mistress”, which originally just meant “unmarried woman” and now is virtually never used that way.  See also the word “madam”.

Though I’ll say that the wording of the blurb in question is pretty ambiguous, and they really might just be talking about “high maintenance women” who are used to dating Power Broker types.  Women who run in those circles are probably seeing a lot of change on the horizon, where suddenly dating an exec at Lehman Brothers is a liability rather than a point of pride.  Sort of the Jet Set version of what happens when you date someone just because their band is successful, and then their new album tanks and they get dropped by their record label.  Which is more just shallow and vacuous than prostitutional. 

Although of course if the implication in that little blurb are that these women are falling on hard times because their sugar daddies can’t come through anymore, then, yes, that’s equivalent to being a high priced call-girl.

I didn’t really pick up on the implication that the women were falling on hard times because their “boyfriends,” can’t pick up the check anymore.  It just seemed to me that they were moving on to greener pastures.  If someone is staying with you for any reason, whether it’s love or money, they tend to move on when whatever it is they want out of the relationship diminishes past a certain point. 

I didn’t think Amanda’s references to sex workers were insulting taken in context of the article.  In hard times, like depressions or war, women are often forced into prostitution to survive.  The fault of their economic situation isn’t their own.  It could be argued, I suppose, that the difference in women taking rich lovers is different because they don’t need the money for survival but just to improve their already lavish lifestyles, but in an equal society, where women had just as much chance at making a fortune as men would there still be as much prostitution, as many call girls and “girlfriends?”

If you make a third the money that the person you’re dating makes is it prostitution to let them pay for a few extravagances, or even help you with the rent if you need it?  In an equal society there might be more equatable relationships, but we can’t say for sure because we don’t live in one.

I’m with Amanda and The Opopnax on this one.

And Faye, you are being a self-absorbed drama bully on this one. ...again You haul out your personal life every time you need it as a club to put somebody on the defensive, or can’t make your point, or accuse them of being bad feminists, or whatever.

Amanda’s points were fairly simple: that some women are with men for their money; the men delude themselves that this is affection when it is in fact a purely economic exchange of sex-for-money; this level of male delusion is worthy of mockery.  I don’t think that any of these points is objectively arguable.  You widened that point to include what is, to be fair, a fairly bog-standard case of economic imbalance, hauled in the fact that your ex bf was a douche, and used that as It’s nota club to go after Amanda on the ludicrous notion that she hated sex workers, that women who are with men who earn more than them are prostitutes, blah blah blah. 

It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve pulled this stunt.  It’s a fairly regular thing for you; I can recall the stunt being used on at least two separate threads. 

BTW, don’t look for any response from me to any response from you.  I told you before, I don’t engage with you because you argue in such bad faith.  I step in solely to defend Ms.  Marcotte (which is rather like defending a shotgun, but there you are) from such nasty and unfounded attacks.

If you make a third the money that the person you’re dating makes is it prostitution to let them pay for a few extravagances, or even help you with the rent if you need it?

I don’t think anyone in this thread is saying so.

For me the difference is this—if your partner’s situation changes such that they can’t give any more gifts and/or can’t help out with your expenses (NOT shared expenses, but YOUR expenses), do you leave? 

While I have to say I’m with Faye re wanting to date people who are successful in life and have similar standards to my own, and I’ll even go so far as to confess a certain degree of snobbery about the careers and lifestyles of the people I date, I can’t see myself ever dumping someone because they lost their job, or because they couldn’t shower me with affection in the form of swank outings or gifts. 

A lot of my hetero female friends date men who make a lot more money than they do.  There is an implicit assumption that these guys take them places they couldn’t afford to go on their own, have really nice apartments (and other big ticket assets that can be shared like a car or access to a country house), give them very generous gifts, etc.  They are economically better off due to their association with these men.  But I haven’t seen a single one of my friends stay with such a man despite her dislike of him due to the perks that come with a rich boyfriend, or dump such a man because he didn’t provide the expected perks.  And I’d probably think less of them as human beings if I saw any of them do something like that.

Opoponax, your friends are not the kind of women the article was discussing, at least not what I got from the article.  Dating someone with more money than you wasn’t really the issue.  I think, and I might have misunderstood, that the point was that the women being discussed in the article had relationships with the men solely, or at least mostly based on economics.  If love is the primary factor in a relationship then when the love goes the relationship usually goes as well.  It’s the same when money is the primary factor, when the money isn’t there anymore the relationship is strained.

I understand your point about not dropping someone you are dating because their finances fall, but I assume your relationships are based on friendship or love.  I didn’t get the idea that the women in the article based their decision on dating or not dating the men because they wanted to on either or those things.  It seemed that they made the decision on who to date, and how long to date them, based more on the person’s income.  The article seemed to be mainly from the male perspective anyway, which may have made it somewhat biased. 

Basically though, I believe that a person’s reason for dating or not dating another person is just as valid if it’s for money or love or security.  In a perfect world it wouldn’t be necessary for one person to depend on another person for any of the reasons except love and companionship, which are the only two reasons I’d have a relationship of any kind with another person that wasn’t based on a need to make a living, but that’s just me. 

I didn’t think anyone was saying what your question to me was about.  I was just trying to make the point that in an unequal society there are going to be inequalities in every aspect, even romance.

Well clearly, and unfortunately, the number of people who want to call women ‘prositutes’ based on the say-so of some choad who talked to their boyfriend once outnumbers the people who prefer to give these women respect, dignity, and the benefit of the doubt. Thus, I bow out of the argument and I bow to Amanda’s amazing psychic ability to tell which girlfriends of Wall Street execs are gold-digging sex workers and which ones are actual “girlfriends” in sense that they might care about the guy they are sleeping with. Thank god we have someone to keep it straight - it can be hard to tell sometimes.

I guess I just have to say how sad it is that even True Feminists can fall for the “Gold-Digging Girlfriend” strawmen that the Nice Guy Trolls bandy about so frequency… I guess it’s OK if the contrast you are making is “Thank God *I* am not _That Way_”.

You could remember that the women in this article are, you know, real people, with real motivations that you don’t have any way of knowing and understanding, and real emotions you are saying just don’t exist. You could remember that plenty of idiot guys have miscontrued your motivations in the past and there’s no reason to believe that this jackass knows the first thing about the women he is flippantly reducing to the “High Maintenance Eye Candy” category he’s invented. You could remember that, in general, feminism/humanism is about treating people as, you know, complex humans, not ridiculous stereotypes.

Or, you know, you can call them whores on the internet. Either way.

Didn’t mean to stomp on your fantasy, Piator.

No, dear, my fantasies usually involve Scarlett Johansson and a desert island.  But that’s really beside the point.

What do you have against sex workers, Piator?  Don’t you think they’re entitled to do their work?  I do.

I don’t have a problem with sex workers.

I just think you’re trying to apply strict theoretical categories to a far more iffy and amorphous real world. In the real world, money matters in relationships, both as a direct factor of attraction and as an indicator of personal worth. It’s not polite to say so, but it’s true.  And it matters to women (and men) who are not sex workers.

But it’s silly to suggest that someone who fires his “girlfriend” is using the word as anything but a euphemism for “mistress”.

Hmm.  You don’t see any distinction between “firing” someone and, as the article says, giving them up because you can’t afford them any more?

I was just thinking: another reason the writer and his source use “high-maintenance girlfriend” is that it’s an effective way to implicitly slam all the “low-maintenance girlfriend” types out there. otherwise known as normal women in relationships with men. Hookers all of them, just most for a lower price.

giving them up because you can’t afford them any more?

Does this happen? 

I feel like I’ve pretty much been around the block, but I’ve never heard of anyone having to do that.  Not when the relationship was built on mutual love, fun, emotional support, or other non-material standards.  I mean, even if you’re really broke, you can still find some sort of way to hang out, usually.

On the other hand, there is a point where sometimes you can’t afford a service you usually like to enjoy.  Like premium cable, a gym membership, expensive haircuts, regular massages, or heck, why not, a prostitute.  And those things are the first things you give up when money gets tight.

Hmm.  You don’t see any distinction between “firing” someone and, as the article says, giving them up because you can’t afford them any more?

Um. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the misfortune to be laid off, PIATOR, but that is word-for-word what my boss said to me when she, you know, FIRED me. So sue me if I think the “distinction” is a bit precious, at best, if not outright disingenuous.

Op:

It also depends on what kind of relationship it is. Some people are fun to be with when things are fun and there’s money to spend, but if you’re actually thrown on each other’s company and one of you is miserable, not so good…

Some people are fun to be with when things are fun and there’s money to spend, but if you’re actually thrown on each other’s company and one of you is miserable, not so good…

1.  That’s sort of what I meant when I said “Not when the relationship was built on mutual love, fun, emotional support, or other non-material standards.”  If someone is fun to go out to a fancy dinner with, they will probably also be fun to have a picnic with in the park.  Especially if you were the one paying for the fancy dinners.  Which is what’s implied in the notion of ‘firing your girlfriend because you can’t afford her anymore’.

2.  One person becoming miserable because they’re going through a financial tragedy, leading to strife that eventually spells the end of a relationship is not the same thing as “firing” your girlfriend because you can’t keep her up in the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed.

I guess I just have to say how sad it is that even True Feminists can fall for the “Gold-Digging Girlfriend” strawmen that the Nice Guy Trolls bandy about so frequency… I guess it’s OK if the contrast you are making is “Thank God *I* am not _That Way_”.

I think I’ve lost your point, Faye.  Are you arguing that prostitution doesn’t exist and no woman accepts money in exchange for sex?

I think Amanda’s point is that there are women who exchange sex for money for a living, and that the men who claim that said woman is their “girlfriend” are the ones causing the confusion between dating and prostitution.  If a woman is with you solely because you pay the rent on her apartment, pay her food bills, and buy her jewelry, she is not your “girlfriend.”  She is your employee. 

The real problem is that the choads calling their hired sex workers their “girlfriends” are the ones confusing the issue.  They don’t get into these “relationships” because they’re tricked into them by nasty women—they come to a business agreement about who does what and who pays what.  But by calling them their “girlfriends,” they lead less-wealthy choads like your exes into thinking that all relationships are based on an exchange of money.

giving them up because you can’t afford them any more?

Does this happen? 

I’m hoping not.  I have a pair of friends with money worries, and she’s “high maintenance” - they have spent a lot on her health and on the occasional trip back home.  I’d hate to see him give her up because he didn’t think he could afford to be with her any more.

</i>”Reading the article, perhaps mistress works—though that, in itself, has problems, because a mistress is normally the girlfriend of a man who is married to someone else”</i>

“Mistress” doesn’t work.  Traditionally a mistress was some one you were in love with and a wife was someone you married to produce a legal heir for the family inheritance

Sex with your husband/wife was part of your job, paid in farmland futures but still a basically financial transaction

A mistress was somebody you would have married if you: 1 had plenty of older brothers to take care of the family business, 2 were so poor that you (and your mistress) had no property to worry about or 3 fortunate enough to live in a modern industrial society where marrying for love was possible. 

The term “mistress” in no way connotes someone you sleep with for money

Think Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles

”Um. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the misfortune to be laid off, PIATOR, but that is word-for-word what my boss said to me when she, you know, FIRED me. So sue me if I think the “distinction” is a bit precious, at best, if not outright disingenuous. ”

Well, what?

At least you weren’t “right-sized”

I was RIFed once, at least it sounded cooler then what it was

”A lot of my hetero female friends date men who make a lot more money than they do.  There is an implicit assumption that these guys take them places they couldn’t afford to go on their own, have really nice apartments (and other big ticket assets that can be shared like a car or access to a country house), give them very generous gifts, etc.  They are economically better off due to their association with these men.  But I haven’t seen a single one of my friends stay with such a man despite her dislike of him due to the perks that come with a rich boyfriend, or dump such a man because he didn’t provide the expected perks.  And I’d probably think less of them as human beings if I saw any of them do something like that.”

I made a lot more money then my wife, but we still came from the same social class.  Yes, her income was restricted due to disability (diabetes and kidney transplant), but when we went out for dinner it was to the same kind of places her sisters and their husbands went to.  She could afford to pay occasionally, just not as often.

I think that if I was wealthy and took her to $500 a plate restaurants the income disparity would have bothered her.  I know if the situation was reversed I’d be a bit creeped out by it

“Mistress” doesn’t work.  Traditionally a mistress was some one you were in love with and a wife was someone you married to produce a legal heir for the family inheritance
Sex with your husband/wife was part of your job, paid in farmland futures but still a basically financial transaction

I think Amanda was using the term in its 20th/21st century sense.  Which very much means “a woman you ‘keep’ in return for a romantic relationship, sex, or just to have the right sort of arm candy”. 

I think that if I was wealthy and took her to $500 a plate restaurants the income disparity would have bothered her.  I know if the situation was reversed I’d be a bit creeped out by it

Most of the situations I know of like this are between people who grew up with roughly similar class backgrounds, and the sorts of privileges gained are not outrageously outside the woman’s own means or at least what she grew up with.  It’s not a waitress dating a millionaire, being taken on vacations to Tahiti.  More like someone who works for a nonprofit dating a Wall Street trader, being taken to his family’s house in Cape Cod for a long weekend.

While I have to say I’m with Faye re wanting to date people who are successful in life and have similar standards to my own, and I’ll even go so far as to confess a certain degree of snobbery about the careers and lifestyles of the people I date, I

The Opoponax,

Out of curiosity, what kinds of careers and lifestyles? Would this mean a strong preference for corporate lawyers and i-bankers over a less lucrative field like being an educational professional or lifestyles resembling more those of Robin Leech and Sex & The City Fame rather than a spartan room adorned with one or two bookshelves filled with books in a shared apartment?

Out of curiosity, what kinds of careers and lifestyles?

Hm.  To be really honest, people who occupy the same social universe as I do.  Which means I’d be equally unlikely to date either a corporate lawyer or a roughneck.  Most people I’ve dated post-college have been designers, writers, musicians/music industry types, and filmmakers/film industry types.  Oh, and grad students doing the academia thing.  Those are the circles I run in, so that’s not really that surprising.  I guess I just want to date people who have things in common with me, who are on my social wavelength.  Lifestyle-wise, it’s also more about “people like me” than luxe vs. trailer. 

On the other hand, I’ve had this kick lately that I want to date a doctor.  More for the feather in my cap than anything else, and also because that’s one of the few careers as demanding, schedule-wise, as my field is—they’d understand when I didn’t pull out of the office till 8pm.

To confess some of the snobbery: I draw the line at homelessness (or anything close to it, like couch surfing or living out of your car) and probably wouldn’t go out with someone who was chronically unemployed or, like Faye, had basically decided they’d rather just wait tables forever than finish college or try for anything better.  I’m more likely, however, to date someone with a crappy day job but some defining passion like art or music or teaching kids to garden or something.

.’ I think Amanda was using the term in its 20th/21st century sense.  Which very much means “a woman you ‘keep’ in return for a romantic relationship, sex, or just to have the right sort of arm candy”.’

It may just be a regional dialect thing, but even in 20/21 cen usage I’ve always heard “mistress” as “person you have a long term romantic relationship with some one you couldn’t marry for political/social reasons, frequently going back to before your rise to your current position of very high status” 

Defiantly not “arm candy”, as I usually think of some 60 year old politician with a 40 year old trophy wife and a 60 year old mistress

On the other hand, I’ve had this kick lately that I want to date a doctor.  More for the feather in my cap than anything else, and also because that’s one of the few careers as demanding, schedule-wise, as my field is—they’d understand when I didn’t pull out of the office till 8pm.

Had 3 MDs as roommates when I was living in the Greater Boston area. 

Best roommates to have as the ones IME tended to come home to crash after working ridiculously long shifts.  In fact, with the exceptions of the rare free weekend, I almost never saw them except when they came home in the morning after an overnight/extended shift as I was preparing for the upcoming workday at the startup/office.  As a result, they were quiet, considerate, and paid their share of the bills on time.  They were unfortunately correct in their warnings about fellow doctor friends/colleagues who tended to be a bit full of themselves for excelling enough to not only graduate from some of the best medical schools in the nation, but also to gain internships/residency in the Greater Boston area as that area seems to be considered the first choice place for most medical school graduates.

What I want to know is, if a woman who dumps a guy because he no longer has enough money to keep her in the exotic lifestyle she has been accustomed to is a prostitute, what do we call a man who dumps his wife or girlfriend when she is no longer super-hawt?

Like it or not, and personally I don’t like it, women are told at every turn in society that we *should* consider money an attractive feature of a man. My grandmother used to tell me “It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one”, which is bullshit, but she sincerely meant it as good advice.

When society tells men over and over and over that the woman they should want to date should be the one that’s so insanely beautiful no human being could naturally achieve it and it must mean she is modifying herself drastically, and when society tells women over and over that expensive presents prove men love them and men without money are unworthy of them, can we really blame women for being “high maintenance girlfriends?” (Which, BTW, is a term I always heard used in the emotional sense—the high maintenance girlfriend being the one who will burst into tears and storm home in a huff because you took her to a nice dinner for your anniversary but forgot to buy her an anniversary present, or bring her roses, or some other token to demonstrate that you are as obsessed with the dates of your relationship as she is.) A woman who dumps a man for not being rich any more is *exactly* the same as a man who dumps a woman for not being hot anymore, and it bothers me that we have a derogatory term to describe the one but not the other.

(I do not believe the majority of people dump their loved ones either for being no longer hot or for being no longer rich, BTW. This is kind of asshole behavior either way.)

Some of yez seem to only have friends in much more emotionally compelling relationships than I have. There are certainly couples I’ve known where the fun of the relationship was in going on fancy vacations, going to cool nightspots and expensive restaurants, consuming piles of alcohol and other mood-altering substances and so forth. Emotional connection secondary on both sides. In those cases it makes absolute sense (in a self-centered way) for one party to drop the other if monetary circumstances change.

What I want to know is, if a woman who dumps a guy because he no longer has enough money to keep her in the exotic lifestyle she has been accustomed to is a prostitute, what do we call a man who dumps his wife or girlfriend when she is no longer super-hawt?

Right now, we’re pretty much stuck with “asshole,” but there should definitely be a term.  Can we adapt “panderer” since that’s someone who procures people for sex?

Like it or not, and personally I don’t like it, women are told at every turn in society that we *should* consider money an attractive feature of a man.

A piece of advice that can be highly misleading considering the numerous male co-workers from upper/upper-middle class backgrounds who while outwardly well-off were wasting their money replacing their furniture/electronics every 3-6 months, calling me cheap for not conforming to their wasteful lifestyle, and then wondering why I wasn’t very sympathetic when they ended up in deep financial trouble because of their spendthrift ways.  From a more recent encounter with an older college classmate from an upper-middle class background, I am amazed at how most people I’ve met from such backgrounds have a poor concept of “needs” vs “wants” and then wonder how they got themselves into a financial hole. 

On the other hand, I knew of a fair number of down-to-earth friends and family acquaintances from wealthy homes who deliberately chose to live and dress well below their means and disassociate with others from their socio-economic class so they could avoid the BS that comes with apparent displays of wealth and so they could broaden their worldview.  Unless you were extremely close to them, they’d look and acted no differently from your ordinary working/middle class person on the street or budget conscious scholarship student in academia. 

Not to say that advice is all bad….though I’d emphasize looking more at how well they manage their personal finances so they minimize/eliminate any accumulated debt unless it cannot be avoided due to costs incurred for shelter, food, and other necessities of daily life.

Mnemosyne:  “Panderer” is good.  But wouldn’t “jerk”, “asshole” or “cobag” serve equally well?

By the way, count me in the column of people who don’t see “mistress” as having an economic component.  I’ve lost count of the number of history books I’ve read and most of them use “mistress” to mean either (a) a married man’s ongoing lover, without any economic parameters (ie: “The Chancellor’s mistress” could mean either a barmaid or Lady Moneybags l’Aristocrate); or (b) the lover of an unmarried man where it is understood that the woman in question cannot be a candidate for marriage by reason of her own already-married status or the need for the man in question to have a designated political/social spouse from a group to which the mistress does not belong.  Regarding the latter consider, say, Edward VII who had many lovers; I’ve seen the term “mistress” used to describe those who came along both before and after his marriage.

What word we use to describe the in-it-for-the-money-and-perks woman is hotly debated.  A “semi-pro”, perhaps?

Why all this hostility to sex workers? Why insist on calling these women by a derogatory term (prostitute / mistress) if they prefer to be called something kinder and gentler, like ‘girlfriend’?

Hey, as a former sex worker: Faye, spare me. Someone who is so attached to class status and in so much denial isn’t being “kinder and gentler” by using fluffy terms. (I mean, what do you call it: girlfriending?)

Not sticking around because a guy’s a slacker is quite a bit different than a pussy-for-cash transaction, no matter how nebulous the actual pussy-to-cash exchange rate might be.

mythago:  good to have the input of someone who has firsthand knowledge.

In your view is “prostitute” a suitably neutral word to describe somebody who provides sexual and companionship benefits in exchange for remuneration?  Is “mistress” better?  (I don’t think it is because of the potential for confusion detailed in my 11:52 a.m. post.)  Or is there a more accurate word?

What word we use to describe the in-it-for-the-money-and-perks woman is hotly debated.  A “semi-pro”, perhaps?

“Demimonde”.

A woman who dumps a man for not being rich any more is *exactly* the same as a man who dumps a woman for not being hot anymore, and it bothers me that we have a derogatory term to describe the one but not the other.

Thank you.  That’s a useful analogy.

This would, of course, place the men who were the subject of Amanda’s article in a similar position to women aging out of the culturally sanctioned “hottie zone”.

”What I want to know is, if a woman who dumps a guy because he no longer has enough money to keep her in the exotic lifestyle she has been accustomed to is a prostitute, what do we call a man who dumps his wife or girlfriend when she is no longer super-hawt?

How does Newt sound?
Sure, McCain did it too but John already has a slang meaning

”Pandagon’s an “American” site, but it’s good to have a sense of worldwide definitions when making “definitive” claims”

Just to clarify, my region is southern New England in the NYC media market

It’s not flattering to think that I sound like Bugs Bunny doing a JFK impression, but its probably not far from the truth