When -- if ever -- is it unethical to hire?

[Will]

Assuming that both you and the escort of are legal age, in your opinion is it unethical for you to hire an escort if you have another, continuing, professional relationship with him?

 

This question responds to the thread regarding a review of Scott Adler. The client claims to be the professor of a course in which the escort is presently enrolled as a student. Speaking as someone who has plenty of professional experience in this area, I can say that I think it is seriously unethical for a professor to have sex, under any circumstances, with a student who is or will be enrolled in his/her class. That would apply to any academic administrator who, like a professor, is in a relationship of power over the student, including a student who is also an escort.

 

Nor are professors and other academic professionals the only ones who might think about this question. Would it be ethical for a physician to have sex with a patient? Would it be ethical for a lawyer to have sex with a client? What if the student/patient/client were also a sexual professional and the professor/physician/attorney pays for the professional services, just as the escort pays his professor/physician/attorney? If it's wrong to hire him or her, is it also wrong to hire a student/patient/client to cut the grass, to wash your car, or to drive you to the airport?

 

Let me make it clear that my concern is the client's ethical position, not the escort's.

[btmstudnyc]

Very good question...Id love to know...since I keep having sex...with my physician, dermatologist, painter, masseur and anyone else who'll let me. I always wonder if I'm taunting them and their ethics. I feel bad...until I get their dick in my mouth.

 

 

Jim

[+ deej]

The acid test is bartering a position of power/influence for sexual (or other) favors.

 

If you hire from an ad with no picture and the guy who shows up is your neighbor's kid, it's not unethical to continue. It's the same thing if you're a physician and the guy who shows up is a patient, etc. In other words, you're not intentionally using your position/power to get something you might not otherwise.

 

However, if you're a lawyer and you refuse to take a case until he puts out, you've crossed the line.

 

HooBoy faces this question all the time. He uses an alias when hiring (as do I) to keep questions of ethics at bay. Most of the guys I've hired have no idea I'm in any way connected with this site to avoid questions of ethics.

 

Discussions of ethics here will go on forever, careening from hypotheical to hypothetical. Our one concrete case here, the Professor, doesn't have an ethical leg to stand on. He recognized an escort "off the clock", used a non-published method for contacting him, and then discussed bartering grades for sex. I'll never be convinced there's a shred of ethics in that deal.

 

Unfortunately, when it comes to sex most men think with the wrong head.

[Guest 7Zach]

this thread will go on forever, and there will be no consensus.

 

quick points - under the professional rules for therapists, lawyers, doctors, none of these are allowed to have sex with their patients or clients. all can be censored and lose their licenses. regarding professors, same is true with their students, except here the penalty is loss of tenure/teaching position.

 

in terms of the escort situation, the same rules would apply with the overlapping relationships. however, because of the inherent nature of the relationship involving money, people will believe whatever they want. i guess it's sorta like buying pot, clearly illegal, and hence people don't care about any rules or ethics concerning it.

 

finally, the power issue is somewhat different than that of sex with a boss or someone in power. there is a charge for the escort, so one can argue that the power issue is flipped on its head - the one being paid is in the position of power. i don't buy that argument. any doubts can be dispelled by the case of jason in boston - look how bad it was just in the escort client situation - and then magnify that had they worked together or had another sort of professional relationship.

 

i'm with will completely on this one - people go to any of the groups mentioned because they need something - legal advice, physical exam, counseling for problems, or education. the put trust in that individual, so there exists a relationship that is inherently one of soliciting aid or help. and i think using such relationship as the springboard for sex contradicts any help or advise given. period. the professor's using campus email, or whatever, was taking advantage of the situation to me, regardless of how the escort viewed it. after all, he is supposed to know better.

[Prime Muscle]

I'm guessing if you have to ask yourself the question as to whether or not something is ethical -- it's probally not. How's the old saying go? If you have to ask how much something cost, you probally can't afford it. Ethics is the same concept. And everyone will have a different answer.

 

Wow, I'm getting deep. I may hurt myself.

[Will]

Ethically, I fully agree with you and Deej. Fully. But of course moral questions are rarely, if ever, "absolute yes" or "absolute no." It's the very nature of moral questions to be perpetually important and therefore never static. I don't expect consensus, but I do hope for considered opinions.

 

Thus, whether it's legal for a psychotherapist to sleep with a client isn't really my question. It's the moral rightness or wrongness of the behavior that interests me, regardless of the behavior's status under the law.

 

But you are mistaken, as I understand you, regarding professors. Professors, of course, are subject to the laws of the state in which they reside. That means that if they have sex with someone of consensual age, it is legal, period. They cannot be fired on those grounds alone.

 

Technically, you can still be a lawyer or a doctor without being licensed to practice. (I'm sure there are office jobs for lawyers and doctors.) But for a teaching, academic professor, losing tenure is the same as being fired -- fired, at least, from the institution that granted the tenure in the first place. Of course, it's possible to move on, and most professors who lose tenure do, in fact, move on. Some of them, like some priests, even move on to other teaching positions.

 

Legislating the sexual behavior of faculty and staff with regards to students, however, is a very, very different thing. The deed itself is rarely enough, unless there is a legally binding a priori document saying so. Otherwise, the student (or other offended party) must bring a Sexual Offense Accusation to the institution's appropriate officers; then hearings take place; and only after the institution has determined that indeed the professor or other institutional officer had engaged in a form of sexual imposition or harrassment can dismissal follow.

 

Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, and if there is an ACLU or AAUP lawyer reading this, I hope he'll respond if I've got my facts wrong. But I'm pretty sure that what I've just sketched in broad terms is the general norm, at least in private institutions. In public colleges and universities, where the legislature has oversight, there may be different rules.

[Will]

Deej, you raise a very interesting point that I hadn't considered. When I posed the question in the first place, I had in mind that the dual identity of the escort-as-client was already known to the man hiring him. However, if he did not know, and the escort shows up turning out to be someone he already knows, that's a different situation. However, even there I think that an ethical person will step aside from the sexual behavior in some cases. Among those are the professor and student. I suppose it would also be not out of the realm of possibility that it would be the professor -- not the student -- who turned out to be the escort, and then we'd have some very interesting ethical fish to fry indeed!

[+ Charlie]

I have a very personal take on this subject, having once been involved in a somewhat similar situation. When I was a student many years ago, it was common in my small college town, to cruise in the library men's room. The standard operating procedure was to go into a stall, wait for someone to enter an adjoining stall, and then slowly inch one's foot over till it touched the other guy's foot. Naturally, both feet would be moving toward one another if the other person was interested (this may intrigue you sexual historians out there). One day I went through this little dance, and when we both emerged, I found myself confronting one of my professors. I was not the least bit attracted to him, but had no idea how to extricate myself, and ended up having sex at his home, although I was so turned off that I could barely perform. We also had a little conversation about my grade in the course afterwards--luckily, I already had an A average and it was near the end of the term, and my final grade stayed the same, even though I declined to get together again with him sexually.

 

Whether money is exchanged or not, the professor (or boss or whatever) in such a case has an unfair advantage, and I believe that he should probably not have sex with his student, at least not at that time. If the student is still interested in doing it at some future date, after the relationship has changed, for money or for free, then they should go ahead. I found the actions of the profesor in the review truly reprehensible because of the uneven relationship between them and the fact that the student was recruited through special knowledge that the professor used in an opportunistic manner.

[+ glutes]

I had a High School teacher who use to bring to his home weekly to give me a blow job when his wife wasn´t there. Felt good, nothing was ever said about my grades - I just wound up with A´s all the time.

Who´s lacking moral here?

[Rick Munroe]

>I had a High School teacher who use to bring to his home

>weekly to give me a blow job when his wife wasn´t there.

 

No fair...I was always waiting for something like that to happen to me. The closest I ever got was the Driver's Ed teacher placing his hand on my thigh & telling me to "just relax." I was rock-hard but too nervous about parallel parking to do anything about it.

[CT Dick]

>But you are mistaken, as I understand you, regarding

>professors. Professors, of course, are subject to the laws

>of the state in which they reside. That means that if they

>have sex with someone of consensual age, it is legal,

>period. They cannot be fired on those grounds alone.

 

Professors and teachers are also subject to the code of ethics of their hiring authority. Most educational institutions/school systems have a blanket ban on teacher-student sex regardless of the age.

 

Deej is right: the issue is one of power AND the fact that the escort is empowered by accepting money does reverse the roles.

 

Nonetheless, this is a fine point of logic that most ethics panels would not entertain. It's just not worth it.

 

Dick

 

Dick

[guyinsf]

How I wish my senior English teacher would have given me this opportunity, at least after I graduated! He was so handsome -- the first adult male I had a total crush on. I followed him around like a puppy. My friends finally had to confront me so I stopped making a fool of myself (I came out to all of them in 10th grade). Still, one of my classmates (a female) and I did our best to flirt with our teacher throughout the year, and we taunted him with the prospect of having a slumber party at his house to celebrate our graduations. (The things we put that guy through!) I was actually fantasizing about him recently when I moved and came across my yearbook. Maybe he'll be present at my 25th reunion and will be more "receptive."

 

Back to the topic: I don't believe that a teacher should hire an escort who is currently one of his students. A former student is a different matter. It might not be wise, however, depending on how public the teacher wants to make his hiring activities.

[bluenix]

>How I wish my senior English teacher would have given me

>this opportunity, at least after I graduated! He was so

>handsome -- the first adult male I had a total crush on. I

>followed him around like a puppy.

 

If I may be forgiven for digressing from a digression, you made me think for the first time in decades of my first crush -- my redneck, born-again second cousin. I thought my affection for him was purely spiritual, and so did he, until my hard-on gave me away.

 

Excrutiating then, funny now.

 

I LIKE getting older.

[+ deej]

You're right, Will.

 

I re-read what I wrote before coffee this morning and it falls short.

 

There are some situations where it is absolutely correct to stand down and chalk it up to fate. Sometimes you need to admit "this isn't right".

 

The gray areas are infinite, though.

 

That's what makes it such a great topic for discussion.

[Guest fukamarine]

And Speaking of Ethics........

 

Any lawyer, professor or doctor etc. who seriously contemplates having sex with a client, student or patient etc., had better convince himself that his soon to be sexual partner's personal ethic's are above reproach.

 

Think of the opportunity for blackmail that would exist if the chosen partner turned out to be an opportunist who realised that exposure could cost the other his job.

 

I would not like to be in his shoes, big time!

 

fukamarine

[Guest newawlens]

There's no issue of misuse of power when there is no attempt by the teacher to compel the student to do something he wouldn't otherwise do. But there is another issue, and it's the same one that applies in the case of a doctor and patient or a lawyer and client. There's no way the teacher, doctor or lawyer can preserve the objectivity he needs to do his duty by the student, patient or client if he is having sex with the guy at the same time.

[Guest luv2luv]

With the variety of escorts available he had to pick one of his own students. Was it love at first sight or strictly what escorts are usually first hired for? They both need their heads examined. always, Joey

[BgMstr4u]

Most professions now have ethical policies which forbid sexual interaction of any sort between the professional and the people s/he has a professional relationship with, including not only students/clients/parishioners/patients etc., but also co-workers, particularly co-workers who are supervised, evaluated or subordinate in any way. This issue is one which in most professions have undergone a profound transformation in the last few years. When I started out in my profession thirty years ago, there was a good deal of leeway, and when ethical dilemmas about relationships arose they were usually resolved through the goodwill of the people involved. Today, in most professions there is less than zero leeway for personal judgment. If the question arises in your mind, the answer is almost always, do not do it.

 

Any professional or business person who bends this rule, even if the other person involved urges him or her to do so and assures one not to worry, is running the terrible risk of professional suicide. The number of people who change their minds and press on with some claim or other is not small.

 

Not only that, but there is the not-insignificant issue of the legality of prostitution. The members of this board have made up their minds and formed a community of sorts which accepts prostitution and looks forward to a time when a more enlightened attitude on this subject prevails, but that has not yet happened. This has its ethical dimensions as well, when a lawyer, or any other professional person, indeed, anyone subject to the law and presenting a persona of integrity to the public in professional life, breaks the law to hire an escort.

 

This is not simply a North American issue. There is a splendid recent novel by J.M. Coetzee, a South African writer who currently teaches at the U. of Chicago, called Disgrace, which hangs on just this issue. It won the 1999 Booker Prize.