The Law of Unintended Consequences

Perhaps no better term summarizes our flawed analysis of life than the Law of Unintended Consequences. How often we make confident choices in life only to be confronted days, even years, later by unanticipated results. The feminist movement of the late 60s and early 70s demanded women’s equality, particularly sexual equality. And through their bra-burnings and assorted protests, they were wildly successful with regards to sexual liberation.

Enter The Law of Unintended Consequences.

What nobody anticipated as a result of this sexual freedom is that women would become viewed as sexual commodities. Worse still is that women would treat themselves as commodities.

Today’s New York Daily News features a story in its Gossip section about shock jock Howard Stern. (http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/09/09/2008-09-09_howard_stern_in_virgin_territory.html) Always looking to up the ante of guests willing to demoralize themselves for 15 minutes of fame, Stern today will auction off the virginity of a 22-year-old San Diego girl. Apparently, this girl has decided that prostituting herself will be a lucrative way for her to pay-off her student loans.

Oh, excuse me. Paying off debt? That is a different story. I thought she was doing it merely as a backdoor means of becoming a reality star. How fiscally responsible of her.
"We live in a capitalist society," she tells us. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?"
And there you go. Once you cheapen sexuality as this society has, you turn it into a commodity that can be bartered like any other good or service. The reason for selling it becomes irrelevant.

How proud her parents must be. An event in a woman’s life that a dinosaur like me believes should be special is warped into a financial transaction.

Wonderful.



Donald Tremblay