CARNAL NATION

In the wake of George Sodini's murderous attack on a women's aerobics class, the notion of sexual frustration has taken on an ominous cast. Sodini's celibacy became the stuff of legend once his personal history came to light. Scarcely a single article about the man has been published without highlighting the length of years he'd gone without a girlfriend and without sex—which was precisely Sodini's intention. He wrote the narrative for his crime before he'd even committed it, leaving behind a trail of journals and videos blaming girls for rejecting him and making his life so wretched that he had to strike out against innocent women.

It's inherently problematic, of course, to let someone capable of such a horrific act do his own diagnosing. And promoting Sodini's complaints so widely may only embolden others who think they might further some misogynistic agenda should they wreck similar havoc, perhaps teaching women a lesson that they shouldn't be so uppity as to decline dates from or ignore strangers. (It's the Internet, so I'd be lying if I said I was surprised that several blog comments lauded Sodini a "hero.") Yet clearly a lack of intimacy haunted Sodini every day of his life, and his complaints about sex are so intense that many speculated the entire tragedy could have been avoided if he'd just visited a prostitute.

Suggesting that George Sodini's shooting spree could have been avoided if he went to a prostitute rests upon the belief (very popular among high school males, if memory serves) that when a woman denies or doesn't offer a man sexual release, there are dramatic consequences to the subsequent lack of orgasm. If coming were enough to keep Sodini sane and law-abiding, then masturbation would have done the trick.It's an interesting proposition, one that says much more about how we tend to think about sex and emotional suffering than about any real solution (should such a solution exist) to homicidal impulses like Sodini's. This suggestion rests upon the belief (very popular among high school males, if memory serves) that when a woman denies or doesn't offer a man sexual release, there are dramatic consequences to the subsequent lack of orgasm. If coming were enough to keep Sodini sane and law-abiding, then masturbation would have done the trick. But the reasoning goes that only physical contact with a female would have sufficed.

Touch does have healing properties, and it doesn't need to be sexual in order to have a positive effect, but our cultural obsession with sex and the constraints of masculinity mean that sensual interaction is the most approved type of touch for men to seek out. Although some scoff at the idea that prostitutes can create an environment intimate enough to address loneliness and alienation, or claim that such an experience could never be satisfying because of the knowledge that money was involved, receiving the touch of another human being—especially if you haven't felt touch in years—is powerful regardless of the circumstance.

Quite a few sex workers advertise themselves as healers (particularly those who are part of the modern hetaera movement or who offer "tantric" sessions) and it's not uncommon for a prostitute to have a background in massage therapy. Furthermore, sex surrogates consider themselves therapists rather than sex workers in spite of the fact that they offer sexual contact, because they enter into sex with the express purpose of a therapeutic outcome. Prostitutes frequently tell researchers they act as a therapist, and even that their experience in sex work has encouraged them to take an academic interest in psychology.