CARNAL NATION

After taking so long to fade out of the headlines, the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal is beginning to make a reappearance. Kristin Davis, the madam who arranged Spitzer's meetings with Ashley Alexandra Dupré, has just released a tell-all memoir, The Manhattan Madam. Davis really does intend to tell all with her book. Her site includes a quiz about whether or not she should publish her list of over 10,000 client names. On The Daily Beast, former sex worker and author Tracy Quan looks at Davis's potential breach of client confidentiality and poses the question to several other madams and escorts: should Davis publish the names? Is it a breach of sex work ethics? The first madam that Quan asks, Natalie McLennan, is unambiguous, and representative of most of the others: "'Hide it, of course! Destroy it!' she says. 'Why destroy everybody's life? Does she feel abused? Were they bad to her?'" Quan seems to come down on McLennan's side, but also seems ambivalent, considering that times have changed and so too, the ethics may have changed: "Underlying this quandary is yet another ideal—a universe where madams, call girls, and escorts can afford to comport themselves like spiced-up saints. After being hit with federal charges, mammoth legal fees, and having your assets frozen, can our ideals (and our discretion) survive unchanged? Virtue at such times starts to look more like a privilege than an obligation, and 21st-century America is not Belle Epoque Paris, however much some escort sites might try to evoke the latter."

[this item was edited on 4/11 to correct attribution to the The Daily Beast]