Spitzer, Dates, and Paying for... what?

I read these four articles (click 'Read more' to get to the links) and my mind sort of boggled. It's amazing how ambivalent, confused, and "double-standarded" westerners are about such things. But all in all, and I think it's hard to dispute, the underlying message is still the same: It's OK for men to pay for "the company" of a woman provided it is not an explicit this-for-that transaction, and if it is, the woman is the victim and the man the evil-doer. In other words, there always has to be this uncertainty about the outcome, and then it's OK.

This system allows a woman to bail on the whole thing-- ie, it's OK for her to be uncommitted to any form of payment for time and trouble while it's OK for a man to be.

But at no time in any of these articles is the fundamental assumption that men paying (or being expected in some way to pay) for a woman's company, with the implication being that the nature of the contact be at some point physical, ever questioned. I am reminded of what Robert Bly wrote in "Iron John", to paraphrase, that we are like fish raised in a polluted pond; we don't even know what clear water looks like, making it that much harder to measure progress at efforts to clean it up.

The whole thing just plain makes me ill. The articles:

Slate.com (Jurisprudence: The law, lawyers, and the court):
Why Is Prostitution Illegal?
'The case for making it against the law to buy sex begins with the premise that it's base and exploitative and demeaning to sex workers. Legalizing prostitution expands it, the argument goes, and also helps pimps, fails to protect women, and leads to more back-alley violence, not less.
...
In 1999, Sweden made it legal to sell sex but illegal to buy it—only the johns and the traffickers can be prosecuted. This is the only approach to prostitution that's based on "sex equality," argues University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon. It treats prostitution as a social evil but views the women who do it as the victims of sexual exploitation who "should not be victimized again by the state by being made into criminals," as MacKinnon put it to me in an e-mail. It's the men who use the women, she continued, who are "sexual predators" and should be punished as such.'

Sunday Times (UK):
The truth about toy boys

'For women like me – single, successful and of a certain age – the ideal dating partners aren’t the divorced-dad brigade, as everyone assumes. Who wants another embittered divorcé looking for a second mum for his kids? If you already have children (I have two) and your own money (I run a company with more than 100 employees), and you’re finally finding the time to enjoy yourself, you want someone who is looking for the same no-strings-attached fun as you. So boys in their twenties are perfect.
...
I set up a fake profile – not to entrap him, but just to see – and, sure enough, after a mere two days he made an approach.
...
Probably for all these reasons, my friends were sceptical at first. They presumed these boys would only be after money and/or sex and consequently mess me around.'

No mention of who pays for the date-- but notice that once finances are not a factor for the author in her equation, her 'priorities' seem to change quite rapidly.

MSN.com (Dating & Personals):
Who Pays for the Date?

'There are also women who tell me that when a man indicates to the woman that she should pay half the check, it’s a sign that he isn’t interested in her, and he’s just being practical...
...
Men are equally confused about how to handle the check. They often worry they’ll offend a woman by offering to pay the whole check, or worry that they’ll offend her by genuinely not being able to afford the whole check. ... Create your own set of rules about how to respond*.'

* Notice the man's opinion is irrelevant; it's all in her court.

MSN.com (Lifestyle: Men):
When It's Okay Not to Pay subtitle: "Women are better educated and likely to outlive you. And yes, you still have to pay—with these exceptions.*" | *Still, it doesn't hurt to offer.

'On your birthday or any other day celebrating you.

For a wedding gift for one of her friends, or the expenses accrued during said wedding.'

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But as for the current Spitzer case in particular, well, my opinion is that he who lives by the sword and dies by it has nothing to gripe about. It'd be one thing if he had had no long history of prosecuting hookers and johns, but he does. It's his hypocrisy that makes me feel no sympathy for him, not his paying for sex. After all, he has done so all his life, as has every heterosexual man who is not a celibate since who-knows-when, so why should it be any different before or after he assumes a public office?