Apparently more medical students are turning to sex work to pay off their loans. Jamie Reidy isn’t surprised.
ABC News reported yesterday that there is a rise in medical students turning to sex work to pay for their educations:
Sex work among medical students is on the rise, claims a new editorial, published in the journal Student BMJ. The UK-based publication noted that students are likely seeking extreme measures to deal with their financial hardship.
One in 10 students knows of another who participated in prostitution to pay their medical student loans, according to the editorial.
See that? All those strippers really WERE paying for med school! How many wives wish they’d believed their ex-husbands now?
I wonder if most of the female med students/hookers end up pursuing a medical career in urology, maybe a sub-specialty in “ejaculatory issues”…
Photo courtesy of puroticorico
Academics at Swansea Uni have scored a £500k grant to look into how many students are sexworkers in Wales. This is PIMPING at its worst, with nasty shades of white slavery panic. Its fair to assume that some profiteer has their eye on a fat grant to ‘study’ the same among med students. Meanwhile sex workers don’t have proper access to safe workplaces or justice. Don’t collude with this stuff. If white middle class people want to help sex workers send money to the International Union of Sex Workers.
Hear hear, next thing you’ll hear of students being “resuced” from their dorm rooms.
When students resort to sex work to pay their education bills you know your education system is fundamentally broken
Tuition has gone up with inflation as with everything else, so I don’t think the education system is broken in that sense, and I don’t think this is why female students are doing sex work. Certain fields of study have always been very expensive and always will be. The mass access today to Internet, web cams, Skype etc… I’m sure explains this sex trade phenomenon, which wasn’t so proliferate before due to lack of Internet access. There’s also more child pornography and sex slavery — everybody has a computer and Internet now. What’s broken is people’s MORAL CODE. When that… Read more »
Is it a broken moral code or an evolution of a now outdated one?
Tuition has gone up with inflation as with everything else, so I don’t think the education system is broken in that sense, and I don’t think this is why female students are doing sex work. Certain fields of study have always been very expensive and always will be. The mass access today to Internet, web cams, Skype etc… I’m sure explains this sex trade phenomenon, which wasn’t so proliferate before due to lack of Internet access. There’s also more child pornography and sex slavery — everybody has a computer and Internet now. Wow, once again you’ve managed to make a… Read more »
“The internet hasn’t made sex work more prolific, but it has democratized it and resulted in less street walking and more selective work (either the type of work or the clients).” When things are free, this leads prolific…it’s a natural tendency to want free things and take advantage of it. And everybody knows that “dating” sites are free to create and post profiles, unlike traditional methods (ie. newspaper or working the street corner). There are sites today which never existed in the early days of Internet; today we have thousands of : hook-up sites, sugar daddy sites, Ashley Madison…sites like… Read more »
So you think women consider protitution based on how easy or hard it is to advertise? The women I know who’ve sold sex or considered selling sex have done so for one reason only: they needed the money. Having internet doesn’t make you need money any more or less.
Unless you have actual statistics showing a growth in the numbers of sex workers (and given how underground the whole thing is I don’t see how you could have) then you don’t actually know if the internet has had any impact whatsoever on the amount of women selling sex.
Those statistics exist too, but it’s apparent Michelle prefers her facts fabricated rather than derived.
Michelle, please for the love of all that is noodly. I understand that your reaction to these types of stories is moral outrage, but the proper outlet for that is to educate yourself, not spout off your invented theories as if they were true. Because you look disingenuous when you write things that are demonstrably not factual without couching it in language that suggests this is your supposition rather than demonstrable truth. For example, you cite the proliferation of these online sex sites as a reason for the decline of marriage. If you had done the most cursory research into… Read more »
Not to defend the indefensible Michelle, but while divorce rates have fallen, so have marriage rates…
That’s true, but her argument wasn’t “internet porn has led to declining marriage rates.” Maybe it has. To find out, I’d look at marriage rates in different states and the internet porn consumption in those states, running a linear regression of the two to see if there is a statistically significant correlation. Assuming there is, I might run a few other statistical models to see if there are any confounding variables, and maybe look at other markers (religious adherence, for example) that are better correlates. Or I’d find a study that has already done that. But I wouldn’t make up… Read more »
You have your methodology, she has hers. 😉
Let’s not forget that Facebook is cited for HALF of all divorces today.
Here is a link to this information:
http://www.huliq.com/10178/divorce-rates-rise-curiosity-and-facebook-major-culprits
Money and intimacy are losing their status as the top reasons for divorce in the U.S. Studies say Facebook is responsible for one in five divorces in the United States.
Don’t confuse anecdotes or polls of divorce solicitors for studies. Facebook is no more responsible for divorces today than high school reunions are for yesterday’s divorces. There is a difference between being “responsible for” and being “cited in” and the so called “studies” don’t make that distinction. And some of the quotes in the article you linked to are quite striking. Take this one for example: The problem is that marriages stay healthy with emotional availability and emotional intimacy. If a spouse is emotionally available to an internet friend, that likely weakens his or her emotional connection with the spouse.… Read more »
A couple broke up over facebook… yeah, that must have been a really strong relationship. If it hadn’t been for evil Mark Zuckerberg they’d totally still be together.
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/divorcing-hype-from-reality-in-facebook-stats-1046/
Next time try using Google first.
Which relates how, exactly?
Hmm…the link below says that it’s 1 in 5 of divorces is from Facebook. But half of all marriages end in divorce. I’m sure I read somewhere before, saying that half of divorces was from Facebook — depends on your source! Here is a statement from a divorce lawyer, wherein he says it’s up to half of all divorces: http://www.phoenixazdivorceattorney.com/2012/02/facebook-and-divorce.shtml By Michael Shew posted in Divorce on Saturday, February 18, 2012 In my practice I would say that about a third to a half of all divorces of marriages over ten years with couples 38 years old or older are… Read more »
“Quite often Facebook turns into a warzone as family and friends witness the slaughter and emotional damage caused by adultery and broken trust.”
And this is to do with facebook how?
If theres adultry and broken trust going on I humbly submit that facebook isn’t the problem.
Ahem. Educators take note…so sex work to support girls’ education should partially explain why girls are getting ahead of boys. LOL. Did anyone bother making this correlation? Men are the ones driving and supporting the sex trade, including this type of sex trade with students, so it’s ironic that they’re the same ones complaining boys’ education is falling behind girls’, and blaming teachers/feminists for this — oh so far from the truth! I don’t think MRAs have a right to complain about boys’ education falling behind nor how unfair how far ahead girls are with theirs, when at the same… Read more »
“Did anyone bother making this correlation?” Its not really a correlation worth making.1 in 10 people having heard of someone who sold sex is a pretty tiny percentage of the student body. It doesn’t go any distance towards explaining the third level gender gap. On top of that, the article doesn’t specify that the students are female, or that the clients are male, you’re just assuming that they are then making your assumptions jump through logical hoops to turn me, and all the other men here, into johns. There are gay prostitution sites out there, I don’t personally know any… Read more »
Oh noes!!!!
Women are freely choosing something that I don’t want them to choose!!!
OH NOES!!!!
THE HORROR!!!! THE HORROR!!!!
Please, kindly take a long walk and get over yourselves.
Just think, they don’t have to go into a meatgrinder like WWII (or Iraq of Afghanistan, to a significantly lesser degree) just to be able to get ahead. All I can do is roll my eyes…
Rant off.
Some thoughts. First, it says “sex work”, and we immediately jump to prostitution. I’d bet a far larger percentage who go into this become strippers rather than prostitutes. And while yes, it’s a degrading vocation, no one forces it. Hell, if I had a nice body and people willing to pay to see it, I might opt to be a stripper over flipping burgers or some other dead end job in order to support my education. Is it REALLY that much more degrading to dance on a stage and be viewed as an object than to dress up in a… Read more »
“I’d bet a far larger percentage who go into this become strippers rather than prostitutes”
Or those adult chatlines, but good point.
I’m not sure its necessarily true that they have other options, medical school in the US is pretty pricey, they could be flipping burgers for 10 years to pay it off.
I think they do have other options, or else how to the male students do it? There isn’t nearly the market for their sexual services that there is for young women’s. I’m sure it’s easier to dance on the pole or set up a web cam in your bedroom, and I’m sure it’s more lucrative. But even assuming it were the ONLY way to pay for a medical degree (which I doubt), it’s still a choice because a medical degree isn’t an absolute necessity. When I went to college, there were three careers I was interested in. I ended up… Read more »
“I think they do have other options, or else how to the male students do it? There isn’t nearly the market for their sexual services that there is for young women’s.” Well firstly, we don’t know that male students don’t. I used to work with a polish guy who told me about how his friend (male) escorted his way through college. Secondly, maybe lower income men simply don’t get to go to med school. Either way it hurts everyone when med schools are filled with the people who can afford it rather than the people who might be best at… Read more »
“Either way it hurts everyone when med schools are filled with the people who can afford it rather than the people who might be best at it.”
True, but that’s a different problem than the one we’re discussing. 😉
Is it? Prostitution is ultimately an economic phenomenon.
I’m not one of the belief that doing sex work for education is positive. But I don’t think the women that do sex work for education should be shunned either.
Isn’t it funny that women have come so far in getting college education only to resort to age old work to get there. 3 steps forward 2 steps back perhaps?
I don’t think it’s necessarily degrading for sex workers to pursue medical degrees. I understand that the commodification of health care has taken the shine off the profession, and it sure would be better if more options existed for pursuing higher education, but working within the system to effect change is a noble goal. Who knows, maybe one day, doctors/nurses will treated the same as any other profession.
I find it surprising that noone above has commented on the real scandal: Students are being impoverished. It doesn’t matter if a student is sucking c**k or working in a slaughterhouse part time (and the former is probably considerably less dangerous and emotionally harrowing than the latter). The point is that they’re desperate for money. I doubt that they’re risking their reputation in such a way to keep themselves supplied with beer. Medical degrees are called full time courses for a reason. I have no issue with students having a weekend job, I had one. I don’t even have any… Read more »
Here is a hard fact: A cute, non-fat 24 year old girl/medical student girl can make about as much after-tax money per hour sucking rich-business-man cock as her older self can make per hour chopping out the rotten body parts of decrepit , wrong smelling old people.. And she might well enjoy the former more than the later.
Jus trying to help…
I was in Med School a while ago. Some of my female classmates stripped and whored for tuition money. Everyone knew about it. The School said,”Whatever girls. Just do not embarrass the school-brand. Anything can be forgiven but that. BTW, nice tits…”
Should colleges be responsible for policing the actions and activities of their student body? Aren’t there whole government organisations to do that?
Colleges are there to provide learning, what students do to pay for that isn’t their concern unless they’re damaging the reputation of other students by association. I don’t see how colleges can be held responsible for this or be expected to prevent it from happening.
That is sad. Sex is treated as a commodity; buy, sell and trade. That’s abhorrent to hear medical students of all people are doing that. I wonder what other unethical things they are capable of doing once they are working in their field; sleep with their patients? This is not new. I’ve heard of “regular” students doing this to pay off student loans or pay towards their tuition — it’ s not uncommon. Sad. I think it’s disgraceful female students are doing that. They are just looking for fast cash and easy way. If you can’t afford it, then you… Read more »
Michelle… your lack of compassion is shocking. “That’s abhorrent to hear medical students of all people are doing that. Are medical students less subject to debt than, say, legal students? “I wonder what other unethical things they are capable of doing once they are working in their field; sleep with their patients?” Why is this unethical? They need money, someone offered it to them, and they took it. Having sex with someone won’t addict anyone to drugs or promote gang violence, at the very very worst they’re victimising themselves emotionally. I can’t see how this would encourage them to break… Read more »
You think these girls deserve MY compassion??? Insane. My compassion goes to their parents. And wow! That is an amazingly long reply — you sure have a vested interest in this topic and a huge proponent for prostitution. You know, medical students aren’t the only ones with debts, they’re nothing special! Billions of people are in debt, many in more debt than these girls — people have mortgages/foreclosures, car loans/liens; there are dental students with huge debts, students studying law, people with huge medical health bills etc. Normal people get normal jobs…ethical jobs…student jobs, like bartending / waitressing…which can be… Read more »
Ahh, and now we get to the REAL objection: ugly older men are getting to have sex with young girls, and Michelle doesn’t like that. SAD.
SAD, that came across as an objection to you. What makes you think I have any objections, if these girls want to do their “grandpas”? There are a lot of Morgan Freeman types seeking out young flesh, most of them are not rich, but they cough up enough money to get what they want from the girls. What a demoralizing way to pay for tuition and debt. That kind of lifestyle must turn them into sociopaths — become cold and unfeeling, because I imagine you gotta be pretty heartless to get through sex work with men whom you don’t care… Read more »
Its a long reply because it *is* an issue I have a great deal of interest in: I know several prostitutes and prodommes as well as women who have briefly used prostitution and pro-domming to pay the bills. It bothers me when people with no apparant experience of the issue stand up and make horrible assumptions about the nature of their character. These are my friends you’re talking about and they aren’t sociopaths.
One in ten “knows another” who did it? Doesn’t that just mean that they think they know, or that they’ve heard a rumor about someone? That’s hardly an epidemic.
So, really smart people are trying to raise a lot of money by working in the sex trade? Either our medical education system needs a lot of help or sex work is much more profitable than I have been led to believe.
Wouldn’t drug dealing or meth cooking be a much more obvious choice for doctors in training?
the medical education system doesn’t need help.
These aren’t damsels in distress, they’re adults who’ve gone into a line a work to pay the bills.
Exactly about the education system. I don’t hear of male medical students doing sex work, likely because there’s no demand. LOL.
Evidently, these girls are willing to sleep to get ahead, which means they will have no reservations doing this in their careers and other areas of their lives. NICE.
No… thats not evident at all. You have no idea what they’re like or how they live their lives.
I’m glad you find the issue so funny though, you might if you were in their shoes.
*mightn’t
Did you hear about the 15 year old Iranian girl, or Afganistanian, who was forced to marry a 31 year old man, and a few months into the marriage, him and his family forced the girl into prostitution? She resisted them with all her WILL, she refused to go into prostitution; they pulled her hair, pulled out her fingernails, starved her, assaulted and tortured her — yet she refused. She had a moral code, literally, of steel. They may have broken her mentally and physically, but her moral code did not break under that pressure and torture. She is a… Read more »
Link for this?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/01/02/afghan-teen-torture.html
That all sounds pretty terrible, but how does that show that women who choose to sell sex are bad people? Or unfit to be doctors?
At any rate, I don’t think such an occurance is in any way typical of men holding power (patriarchy). Prostitution is usually heavily criminalised by male dominated cultures and institutions.
You’re confusing a moral code with a refusal to do things she didn’t want to do. And you’re floating a red herring, the difference in situation between a girl literally forced into prostitution and one who CHOOSES some form of sex work (most likely stripping) are so great as to be unrecognizable. Yes, it’s terrible that story of the girl. It breaks my heart that such things happen. But throwing it in as a response to THIS is like commenting on a shortage of rice in one area with a comment about people starving in Africa. Yes, being without rice… Read more »