Moral Confusion: Selling Virginity

Originally published 1/25/09, 4:22 PM.
There was a news article I saw on the CNN website that caught my attention. See
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/01/22/virginity.value/index.html?iref=newssearch. It seems that a 22 yr. old woman is auctioning "her virginity" over the internet and the latest bid is at 3.8 Million U.S. Dollars. Of course, the amount itself will gain attention from the curiousity of the general public; perhaps, so will the basic idea itself. I found myself, though, interested in this story for what it may indicate about human nature and the moral fabric of individuals. I was not surprised to find that the questions that were bothering me were not really addressed in what I read. In fact, more questions arose.

The basic underlying structure of what was being presented seemed contradictory to me. Here was a woman, 22 yrs old, who is stating that she was a virgin. What type of woman, in our modern world, would still be a virgin at 22? We would think that there must have been some moral reason for her to have made this decision. Now though, she was offering to have sex for money which would make her a prostitute. How does a woman who has a moral value to remain a virgin then decide to practice prostitution? And the fact that what she is now doing prostitution is something that she admits. In the article, she says that she knows that selling her virginity is an act of prostitution, that is why she is running the auction out of Nevada. If she had reasons to refrain from sexual behaviour up to know, how does she reconcile becoming a prostitute with her other moral perceptions?

It only gets stranger. It seems that she came up with this idea because she wants to raise money for graduate school in which she wants to study Family and Marriage Counselling. Doesn't it seem that what she is now doing challenges her ability to undertake her desired future profession? She also informed some of her previous boyfriends that they should not think that by undertaking this, she is now becoming promiscuous. No, just a prostitute. How does she understand sexual morality?

Now, of course, one might contend that this issue really has nothing to do with Torah, so why be bothered by it? The fact is that Torah connects to human nature. If God speaks to human beings through the Torah, understanding the frame of reference of the one receiving the communication is significant in understanding the full extent of the communication. I often find that people, in understanding Torah, have uni-dimensional views of human personality and human nature and the result is a simplistic view of Torah. The more that we recognize that the Torah speaks to a multitude of human personality types with variant frames of reference, the more we can see the full depth of the spectrum of Torah. That is why this case is so interesting to me. In attempting to understand the general guidelines of the Torah in sexual conduct with often apply certain perspectives on sexuality and natural morality. This woman would seem to defy these perspectives. She does not seem to fit into any stereotype. Maybe understanding this will open our minds to better understand the Torah perspective on these matters. We can have a clearer idea of the multi-dimensional nature of the Torah directives regarding human sexuality.

Rabbi Ben Hecht