Prostitution In Elizabeth Wurtzel's One Night Stand Life

Jessie struggled against her husband but like most abused wives, she was overpowered by him. Jessie was a twenty two year old woman who worked as a manicurist. For a year and a half she lived with an underworld character who beat her virtually every day, and who used force to have sex with her, she estimated, twenty to twenty five times over a four month period. Once in a while she resisted, but never successfully. “There was nothing I could do. If he wanted it, he wanted it. I fought him. I hit him. I scratched him. I kept saying, ‘No, no, I don’t want you’. I resisted to the point where I was just crazy and that was when he tied me up to get it,” (Finkelhor 1987). Many women like Jessie are raped and treated like prostitutes by their husbands. Like Jessie, many have struggled and have come to the realization that it is futile and have given up in entirety to resist the animalistic urges of their spouses. Is it rape if a wife doesn’t resist? Many people define rape more by the quality of struggle than the …show more content…
According to American journalist, feminist and writer Elizabeth Wurtzel in her memoir titled ‘One Night Stand Life’(2013):
“I believe women who are supported by men are prostitutes, that is that, and I am heartbroken to live through a time where Wall Street money means these women are not treated with due disdain”. This line of her memoir angered several feminist such as Kerry Cohen and Lynn Beisner because they expected a feminist to be more sympathetic to situation of women. Beisner stated that it is distressing to see a woman claiming to be a feminist turn all heterosexual relationships in which a woman does not earn a salary at least close to that of her partner into a simple sex for cash transaction, one in which a man has the reasonable quid pro quo (something for something) expectation of