WHAT IF JEFF GANNON HAD BEEN A WOMAN?

The American female prostitute conjures up images of knob jobs, street corners, crack, victimization, Julia Roberts saved from oblivion by her Prince Charming, blackmailers, extortionists, weak and immoral johns and disease.

The American gay male prostitute conjures up images of prowess, entertainment, stepping stone to a career, political heroes, cultural icons and respectable arm ornaments at fund-raising galas.

How many gay men have turned an overnight rentboy into a long term boyfriend?  How many straight men have done the same with a female prostitute?  Reality check for you fairy tale followers:  Pretty Woman was a work of fantasy and fiction.

It would be all too easy to attribute this disparity in perception to sexism, but it cuts much deeper than that.  It speaks to a very profound psycho-sexual and cultural difference between gay male culture and the mainstream, a difference that I suspect makes most gay men more than a little jittery about same sex marriage as an ideal--perhaps as an option for those who feel the need to pursue a heterosexual lifestyle choice model--but certainly not the ultimate relationship and personal goal as marriage is positioned for heterosexuals.  A goal, we might note, fewer and fewer Americans are achieving.

Perhaps few "case studies" better exemplify the disparity in perception and reaction to the male whore vs the female whore than the tale of Jeff Gannon.  For those of you who don't recall the name: Mr. Gannon was a very successful fetish gay escort who was discovered to be in the employ of the Oval Office as a fake reporter planted at White House press briefings, asking skewed administration-friendly questions.  It was also noted that he had behind the scene access to Karl Rove and George W. Bush and was in and out of the White House dozens of times, often outside the watchful eye of the Secret Service.

The media viewed this as an amusing matter and assumed nothing about frequent late night visits to the Oval Office by a gay male escort.  I think it's safe to assume that had Jeff Gannon been Judy Gannon, a female prostitute under the same circumstances, the nation would have been in an uproar and Karl Rove and George W. Bush would be picking turnips in Texas.

The ubiquitous and profoundly influential role of the gay male prostitute in American culture is a subject that deserves much more scrutiny and consideration.  It should pose many more questions and generate considerably more discussion in the mainstream media and among pundits.  Instead the politics of the gay male prostitute is just there, regularly rearing it's rather prominent head at odd times and in so many diverse way.  I'm fascinated by two questions in particular and the real lack of examination of both.  The first, of course, is why the male prostitute plays such a prominent role in our culture and the second is why we don't really examine that role with a serious in-depth discussion.

I can think of few other topics that are so out of line with Evangelical, puritanical, Red State America and yet so rarely examined or challenged.  Not that it doesn't make the press but the treatment ranges from tongue in cheek to outright amusement and even general indifference.

You would think that a ship of state manned by a hunky crew of man whores would be of more general concern to those who closely guard the American moral compass.

Our most prominent openly gay politician, Barney Frank ran a male escort business out of his Washington townhouse.  Voters collectively shrugged it off and moved on. 

Fetish prostitute Jeff Gannon befriended Karl Rove and George W. Bush, became an administration plant at White House Press Briefings and made regular "visits" to the White House over a rather long period of time.  An amusing tidbit but not a scandal. Had it been a female prostitute planted as a fake reporter by Karl Rove and a female prostitute making regular visits to the Oval Office, one can easily imagine a very different public. media and congressional reactions.

Celebrity fashion designer Marc Jacobs  has publicly enjoyed a two-year long on again/off again relationship with bare-backing rentboy.com regular Jason Preston.  Mr. Preston and his substantial money maker have made it into the prestigious Fashion & Style pages of The New York Times.  Nobody bats an eyelash--except for Mr. Preston.

Muscle and military porn queen Matt Sanchez (aka Rod Majors) went from gay whoredom to conservative stardom, a celebrated guest on Ann Coulter's arm at conservative Republican events.  Imagine Mitt Romney accompanied by an openly female prostitute at GOP fundraiser.  If you dare.

The Tina Brown of gay publishing, Neal Bolton, the straight, bi, gay (depending on the day and sales pitch)  editor of resurrected gay vanity magazine, Genre, has signed up with celebrity man whore and pornographer Michael Lucas to take it up the ass for pay to prove his gayness and whore himself for Genre publicity.  Bolton believes that prostitution will give  him the street creds that he so desperately craves.  Again, imagine a female publisher doing the same.  Makes a very different feeling in our gut, doesn't it?

Oh, and for you sexologists who will now be jumping up and down and screaming that porn stars and whores are two very different creatures in sex industry parlance, I say the invention of film did not draw a status or moral line between taking money for sexual performance in private or on video. I place Anna Nicole Smith in evidence.  Even with a marriage license, a whore is a whore. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.  Kudos to Anna Nicole, a job well done--even if she was outsmarted by gay man whores in the end. 

Meth dealer and happy ending specialist Mike Jones became a celebrated national hero when he brought down the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard.

 

Mike, along with prostitutes and porn stars Ryan Idol, Jeff Stryker, Gus Mattox and Frederick Ford went on to pursue acting and singing careers.  The celebrity of gay male whoredom opened doors for future "legitimate" careers. In fact, it is not uncommon within the gay community to portray these prostitutes turned "rock stars" and stage actors as the Renaissance men of gay culture.  Again, with the possible exception of Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Ritchie, celebrating your career as a whore is not a customary stepping stone to legitimate careers for women.

Recently, a debate has made its way around the gay press and blogosphere over Argentina's entry into the Mr. Gay International competition, a competition that claims to mix beauty and brains in an attempt to change gay stereotypes.  Yes, the pretentious organizers of this silly event would have you believe that celebrating an abs obsessed gay man with a college degree will end homophobia and stereotyping.

What stereotype are we talking about, I wonder?  The stereotype that even smart gay men are self-obsessed and consummate queens of vanity and sexuality?  And in the thick of this discussion is the gay male prostitute and porn star, Mr. Argentina.  Other nations are represented by college graduates, lawyers and accountants--who spend most of their days in the gym.

How dare a male whore compete against naked doctors, lawyers and college professors?  Is that how we want our community represented?

Mr. Gay asks the compelling question who is the better gay, the naked porn star or the naked med student?  Who better represents us?  The naked ass and abs backed by a college degrees or naked ass and abs backed by a stable of porn titles?

Who came up with the idiotic notion that beauty pageants represent our community in any way, shape manner or form?  Miss America?  If you want to poke fun at the pretentiousness and shallowness of the Mr. Gay organizers, you're on solid ground.  But in the real world the notion that flesh-peddling is a crusade against homophobia is simply ridiculous but does shed some illuminating light on the queer status of gay prostitution.  Miss America found with her legs over her head and a couple of Benjamins clenched in her teeth would be run out of Atlantic City, likely tarred and feathered.  Mr. Gay, on the other hand, legs over head, Benjamins in teeth is perceived to be a valid icon of gay liberation and gay rights.

In fact, the gay male prostitute and porn star plays a much more influential and profound role in gay culture and even mainstream culture than an Amsterdam whorehouse full of gay college graduates.  How can we pretend otherwise?

The husband of a leading gay New York politician was a prostitute for many years, a fact well known to the gay community but completely ignored during a recent major statewide political campaign.  If newly elected Governor Spitzer's wife had been an ex-prostitute?  Would that have been quietly overlooked?

A recent contestant on Dancing With The Stars won his place in the competition thanks  to a "compromising" relationship with a major Hollywood closeted male movie star.  No one questioned it and even the gossip journalists ignored it much in the way they pretend this particular movie star is just one of America's most persistently long term eligible bachelors.  The perennial bachelor; now there's a quaint old stereotype from the bad old days and yet still alive and well in cutting edge Hollywood.

Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, I'm not making a moral judgment on the role of the male whore in American culture and politics, I'm posing the fascinating question as to why the male whore is so widely accepted and mostly unquestioned.  Rather than a subject of scandal, he's a source of mild amusement and even somewhat heroic.  He's celebrated for his prowess rather than his promiscuity.  While the female whore is held in contempt by "polite society", the male whore attends White House press briefing and conservative Republican fundraisers.

Is homophobia trumped by sexism?  Is this a de facto double standard that unites liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, gays and straights?  Male escorts are a prominent and well-integrated element within the gay community; that's not news.  My first gay best friend, a vice president with a major public relations firm was not ashamed or particularly embarrassed by the fact that he supplemented his income during college through escorting.  I count a number of former and current escorts among my friends and neighbors, including some time ago, Jason Preston.  And lord knows I've made no secret of the fact that I've often enjoyed the company of a few male escorts over the course of my life.  I've also never quite understood why a marriage license makes prostitution respectable; the assumption, I suppose is that the document confirms that the relationship is based on love not money--which is why straight men don't mind wives who make more money then they do (my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek.)

And, perhaps, if I'm criticizing anyone in this scenario, it's a sexist society that gives men who sell it a free pass while it condemns and marginalizes women who sell it.  It's also rather obvious that a man compromises much less than a women when he engages in for-pay sex.  After all, men can satisfy themselves with a slab of raw liver, warm apple pies and vacuum cleaners.  Women have that emotional thing going on.  Perhaps society is simply recognizing that important gender differential, understanding that a female prostitute compromises much more of herself than does a male.  Furthermore, when prostitution is used as a currency for the acquisition and manipulation of power it becomes just another one of the tools men use, but when a woman goes down that road, she's a ho.

Comments

[DCS]

You mention that Barney Frank ran an escort service out of his townhouse in DC. Actually, he was living with an escort who was running calls out of Barney's apartment. Barney did not know what was going on.

[KnuttyBud]

There is one significant difference between males and females in the business. Women are perceived to be selling submission and compliance, while men are perceived to be selling strength and power. They are considered to be the most virile amongst the virile . There are a lot less 'sissy' male prostitutes; at least in the the US.
Madonna was an exception simply because she flipped that script.

[Will]

Fascinating article with much to mull over. Personally, I do think that sexism trumps homophobia.

[DCS]

This posting and the flurry of blogging about another hustler (or more properly called, "Social Consultant") has attracted my attention. Having worked in and around the culture some thirty years ago in DC I am all too familiar with the players. Not all hustlers are "enabling the closet environment." Some provide a service to other out gay men who want to "order out" for the evening and not have to worry about the awkward "I'll call you later - goodbye." Too many people get caught up in the label and stereotyping.

There is a great joke from way back: An old man is walking along the beach in Miami and sees a gorgeous blonde. He walks up to the blonde and says "If I gave you $1,000,000 would you have sex with me?

The Blonde says of course! Then the old man asks "if I gave you $5 would you have sex with me?"

Indigent the blonde replies "No!! What do you think I am?" The man replies - "We've established what you are, we are now working on a price!"

There is a great book out by the way "Strapped for Cash". Not mine but fun reading Strapped for Cash: A History of American.
http://www.amazon.com/Strapped-Cash-History-American-Hustler/dp/155583731X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196181182&sr=8-2