A client once told me about his son’s frustration with his senior prom date. Apparently, the boy spent a lot of money on renting a nice tux, a limo, flowers and dinner. The lucky young lady didn’t even have the courtesy to give the boy a blowjob for all this effort, much less sex (presumably in the back of the limo or a cheap hotel). Both the boy and his father were flabbergasted by the lack of sexual remuneration from the girl – especially after all that money had been spent on her!

You can probably guess what I was thinking, even though I didn’t say it. That’s right — if the boy wanted to pay for sex, why the hell did he ask a high school classmate on a romantic date? Why didn’t he just hire someone? There are women who do that sort of thing, you know. (Although I don’t know how many would want to attend prom with an 18-year-old.)

What would have happened to the girl if she had given in and had sex with her prom date? A boy with this kind of mentality probably wouldn’t have been discreet about it. He would think of her as a slut, as easy. If he’d connected his spending of money with her sexual availability, he’d call her a whore. Since he was pissed about spending money and not getting any, I’m sure this would be an easy connection for him to have made. And, I’m betting, if she’d enjoyed their sex and actively participated, he probably would call her a whore anyway. All teenage boys know that a woman’s level of whoreishness is linked in direct proportion to her sexual pleasure.

Many men never lose this perspective.

I was called a slut and whore in high school for various reasons, partly because the words did not make me ashamed as they were intended to. Those slurs failed to bother me mostly because I knew full well I was a virgin (and not the Catholic/Christian Right kind either), but also because I wondered why an easy woman was such a bad thing to be when it was obvious teenage boys obsessed about sex. Why verbally beat the hand that feeds you? (Or any other body part that does anything else for you.)

In college, I gleefully put notches on my belt, yet I don’t recall hearing those words said to my face (except by an angry boyfriend). Maybe because there were girls more promiscuous than I? Maybe no one cared? Maybe guys matured a bit?

I heard slut and whore a lot while stripping, sometimes in reference to my co-workers, sometimes in reference to myself, sometimes in bitter reference to women in general. I got offended, but only because I was getting sick and tired of hearing the words. I may’ve acted wanton, and not so well as other girls, but at the end of the night I went home to the same man. Most of my co-workers did too. The wild, whorish, easy women of Dallas strip clubs at the end of a long night – worn makeup, tired feet and aching backs, persistent coughs, blue jeans/t-shirts, never satisfied with the wad of bills in our pockets, hoping to avoid being followed by someone from the club.

One would expect being an escort would invite these sort of responses. I’m still amused and confused by the number of e-mails (and a few phone calls) in which I was called slut. I always resisted the urge to write these men back and tell them that if they were going to call names, they should use a dictionary first. Technically speaking, I was not a slut as an escort. I had one boyfriend at a time (and only two of them during that time).

I was occasionally called whore. It never upset me because it was truth (that’s not how I refer to myself, but it was more appropriate than calling me a slut). What upset me was the reasoning behind its use. All that anger toward half the population of the planet. It is a sad and upsetting thing to witness.

At this point in my life, I’m truly tired of those two words. Men who use them have no creativity, no understanding and have not really spent time with a woman. Or maybe they’ve only spent time with women in very limited settings — situations in which they’ve expected something in return – perhaps starting with their first date or their prom?

Perhaps I’m delusional, but few of my clients ever seemed to view me as anything other than Amanda. They may’ve had their own impressions before they met me, but once met, I was a person to them and they to me.

Are the men who pay for female company the only ones who are set free from having to use the words slut and whore in a pejorative sense? Is there no bitterness because a whore is really the great equalizer, not money?