One positive side effect

They don’t call it the World’s Oldest Profession for nothing.

Just ask Randolph College professor Mara Amster, whose academic work has made her an expert on prostitution in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Like most of this Web-connected world, she watched the recent downward spiral of New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, “outed” by a wire tap as one of the favorite clients of pricey call girl Alexandra Dupre. And to Amster, it all sounded so familiar.

“Things really haven’t changed all that much,” she said. “The time period I worked with is so different, but yet so similar (to Spitzer’s case).”

Her first book was titled “Texts on Prostitution,” an anthology of writings by “women of the night” in Shakespeare’s time. She is currently at work on “The Purchase of Pleasure,” a look at the economics of prostitution down through the ages.

“The writings that remained from the 1600s and 1700s tended to be about the high end of prostitution,” Amster said. “A lot of these women were courtesans in places like Venice.”

Courtesans could sing and write poetry and, like the employees of today’s “escort services,” were adept at clever and stimulating (so to speak) conversation.

I haven’t heard whether or not Alexandra Dupre writes poetry, but you can find a link to some music she recently recorded. Whatever her talents, Spitzer reportedly paid over $4,000 for an hour of her time.
I hope she at least gave him a CD.

Lynchburg, of course, had its own notorious red light district throughout much of the 20th century. The party ended with a fatal shooting in the parlor of one of the Fourth Street “houses,” and rumors persist that there was a prominent politician upstairs at the time, who had to make a hasty retreat when the police showed up.

Meanwhile, our popular culture is full of prostitute stereotypes — most of them, from Amster’s perspectives, mythical.

She is careful, however, to draw a line of demarcation between call girls of the Dupre variety and the unfortunate young women forced into the “sex trade” against their will.

“It’s obviously a very hard life for a lot of women in that situation,” she said. “But at the same time, others make a lot of money.”

Like Vivian Ward, Julia Roberts’ character in “Pretty Woman.” But all Vivian really wanted was to find the right guy (Richard Gere, in this case), who would rescue her from her life of sin and make an “honest woman” out of her.

“I don’t think it’s like that in real life,” Amster said. “At least, not most of the time.”

Certainly, it doesn’t seem at the moment like 22-year-old Alexandra Dupre has any interest in being rescued.

Based on the writings that she included in her first book, Amster concluded that the power in these age-old interactions — at least at the higher professional level — really rested with the woman, not the man.

“I read an article on the Spitzer case that said women were still victims in this circumstance, no matter how much money they made. I’m not sure that’s really the case.”

Prostitution was legal in England until 1540, Amster said, with a curious caveat attached.

“If a woman was a prostitute,” she said, “she wasn’t allowed to have a lover of her own.”

Of course, it’s all very complicated. If a woman (or a man, I guess I’d have to add) offers sex in return for, say, payment of back rent, is that prostitution? And how about the skin magazines that were falling over each other to pay Dupre to pose nude for them? (Playgirl, incidentally, made an offer to Spitzer).

Mara Amster isn’t making any value judgements, either way. She’s just a researcher.

However you may feel about it, though, she sees the Spitzer case as having at least one positive side benefit.

“It forces us to talk about things we usually don’t,” she said.