Although a degree from Duke looks pretty good, law is one of the most competitive job markets right now. The most recent numbers (pg. 7) show unemployment among recent law school graduates to be 8.1%.

This is partly due to the recession, but also to the fact that the legal services industry has reached saturation, with no where else to go. While the American Bar Association estimates about 440,000 new law graduates by 2020, the BLS jobs report estimates only 74,800 law-related jobs will be created by 2022.

The overproduction of young lawyers is actually a serious issue facing the American Bar Association, considering many of these jobless lawyers will probably be looking at six-figure mountains of debt. In which case, well played miss Knox..

Top Ten Over-Producing States

While Knox is certainly free to align herself with whatever political party she may choose, it’s important to point out that she would not be considered Republican by many standards.

Political platforms fluctuate each election but, in general, Republicans are characterized by:

• Free-market economics – no regulation on industry and primacy of the individual.
• Fiscal conservative – minimize public (government) spending and privatize everything possible.
• Social conservative – good ol' family values, sexual discretion, etc.

Social conservativism is an obvious sticking point here, but there are also issues with her lobbying for improving the rights of sex workers, as this would require government intervention and regulation of private industry. Also, if the government invested a bit more in post-secondary education, Knox may have had more choices in financing her education.

This sentence lacks clarity due to the fact her “work” isn’t specified. Her work as a pornstar? Her work as an amateur publicist?

By definition, her work as a pornstar doesn’t resemble a political act in the slightest. At least it didn’t begin as a political act. It appeared to be a clear cut economic decision made easier by the fact that she enjoyed her work and has had pleasurable experiences. There is simply nothing political about secretly getting paid for sex on the weekends.

However, since being revealed, Knox has made it a point to frame the dialogue in a political manner. There’s a good chance that if she hadn’t given an interview to Duke’s newspaper after being outed, this would not have made headlines. In that sense, she has clearly made it into a political act by focusing on the political implications of sex work and lobbying – to a very limited extent – to affect change.

One shouldn’t expect much rigor within the intellectual confines of Playboy but – again – this reduces the issue to the point of being unrecognizable.

A few issues with this statement:

1. Believing individuals have a fundamental right to do with their bodies as they please has nothing to do with actively supporting what they do with their bodies.
2. Issues arise when one individual’s personal freedom encroaches on another’s personal freedom, i.e. what if it’s true that pornography promotes violence against women?
3. There are any number of ways to take personal responsibility for one’s education, economic situation, etc., and only a very small portion include sex work.

The reaction to Knox’s story was inappropriate at best, and abusive at worst. However, calling the reaction a double standard undermines the real issues that may be at play here.

A double standard would mean applying two different sets of principles to the same situation, or making inconsistent value judgments. In this case, certain parts of society have made the value judgement that those who sell sex as a product are less desired as social peers. Since Knox commodifies her sexual product, she is considered less desirable as a social peer. Pretty clear cut…

The real issues have nothing to do with society’s double standards, but rather how society views pornography/sexuality and what sort of value judgments that produces.

In strictly economic terms, the decision to do pornography is fairly straightforward. Women have a certain resource which men are willing to pay a high price for. Essentially, there is no difference in getting paid for that resource than getting paid for being a math whiz.

In this sense, it becomes clear that the reaction to this story was driven by cultural norms. For example, despite the number of students who attend schools that cost $60,000+ to attend, it seems to be relatively rare for students to work in the porn industry to pay for school.

However, based on Lauren’s experience, maybe it’s time to examine whether cultural norms match up with social and economic realities.

The “Madonna-whore complex” originated with Freud, and was a condition in which a man feels anxiety when it comes to women.
To reduce this anxiety, he thus places them in either the “Madonna” category, which is made up of women he admires and loves, or the “whore” category, which is made up of women he finds sexually attractive and thus despises (Freud, 1912). However, contemporary psychologists have had trouble finding much empirical support for Freud’s theories.

Contemporary models – such as social exchange theory – suggest a much simpler answer in economic terms:

• Men ultimately benefit from an increased supply of sex, as they disproportionately report gaining status among their peer cohorts (other men) for having casual sex, while women report no gains in status. (source: x)
• Social exchange theorists have emphasized that social rewards tend to lose value as they are given out more widely. Thus, women have incentive to maintain the high value of her sexual favors by distributing them only sparingly (source: x; page 355).
• According to the social exchange model and simple supply and demand theory, mate selection competition among women would focus on sexual allure (i.e. demand) and how widely her sexual resources had been distributed (i.e. supply).

Again, men may support the virgin-whore dichotomy in many ways, but according to the social exchange theory and recent research in support of that theory, women have a larger role in local sexual practices.