In the last week the British press has been full of a story featuring John Whittingdale – a politician and member of the government – and a dominatrix who worked under the title Mistress Kate. Almost universally the coverage of it has been terrible and depressing. The facts seem fairly straightforward: They met via match.com in late 2013 and dated for six months. He allegedly had no idea what work she did until someone tried to sell the story in early 2014. When he found he broke off the relationship. In 2015 he was appointed to a more senior goverment position, one related to press regulation, and in 2016 the story broke in the newspapers.
The depressing element in most of the coverage (for example this) is how they objectify the woman involved. She is made to seem entirely ‘other’. Given they dated for 6 months, and attended a number of events together, they presumably had made a connection. Their meeting on a conventional dating site suggests it was just two people looking for a partner and a relationship. Yet in the articles she’s reduced to a purely sexual persona based on her job. She’s a chance for papers to list some titillating details about her dungeon or services while pointing at him for being so stupid as to date such a person. It’s taken as read that obviously he’d break off the relationship when he found out. Everyone involved, both him and the journalists, seem to treat her a non-person once her role as a sex-worker was revealed. It’s a horrible thing to see.
Even the more positive writers seem to miss the point. Articles like this and this use the story to make the point that seeing a dominatrix is a perfectly fine thing to do. Obviously I agree with that general point, but it once again objectifies the woman by equating her with her job. She’s a sex worker, and a pro-domme. Emphasis on work and pro. Maybe she’s kinky in her private life but maybe not. And if she is kinky at home, she might be a domme, a switch or a submissive. They met on match.com, not on fetlife and there’s no indication I’ve seen that they had a D/s relationship. It’s a bit like hearing somebody is dating a professional chef and exclaiming ‘Wow, you must really love food!’ Well perhaps the chef cooks at home and a passion for food is one of the elements that brought them together. But maybe they’ve many other things beside that in common, or perhaps the chef doesn’t like to cook at home, or it might just be a job to the chef. We can separate people from their professions in almost all other cases, yet not it seems when it comes to sex workers.
Given this post has been all about the unpleasant kind of objectification, let’s finish with something more cheerful. This is the sexy and more literal kind of objectification.
If you live in the UK, this sort of story, written in this sort of way will be familiar to you.
From time to time, newspapers use a news story to crowbar a Minister out of his or her position with claims that their is a conflict of interest between the Ministers government responsibility and their private life or previous interests.
In this case, the Press are fighting to prevent stricter regulation of what they do (Google ‘Hacked Off’ and you will see why) and the information about this Minister and a former girlfriend is being used to suggest that he has a conflict of interest. So, the lady’s profession has to be talked up and made to sound as wild as possible to support the contention that ‘he must have known’ or ‘his judgement is non-existent’ or he has a ‘vested interest in burying the story and supporting draconian restrictions about what the press should and should not report. This does say something about attitudes to whats is acceptable in the UK concerning the private life of people in the public eye (they should always have led a completely blameless life, right from the day they were born!) but I think it is more about using the Mistress Kate as a weapon.
Yes, I knew about the conflict of interest issue and the various claims about the press/BBC/government. I just couldn’t shoehorn it into this post without making it super long and distracting from the basic point.
And yes, you’re right, there’s obviously an agenda here. I also don’t really expect papers like the Daily Mail to offer quality or thoughtful journalism, but I was disappointed nobody seemed to be tackling the story with a bit more nuance and thought.
I think you could write the story by stating that obviously he found it embarrassing based on his reaction and that tabloids would obviously splash the story to embarrass him, and then use that to segue into the discussion on the conflict of interest (or lack of it). That still opens the question without starting from the assumption that it’s inherently wrong to date a sex worker. Alternatively you could pivot from his own embarrassment and reaction to ask why it was a problem and to talk about sex work as work and differentiate the person from their job. Sadly even the people with their heart theoretically in the right place (like Margaret Corvid) seemed to get that wrong.
So far he seems to have survived but I can’t imagine Cameron is looking too kindly on him about now.
-paltego
It felt a little like the media were going through the motions. With not that many big, ongoing stories, they felt obliged to feign shock. Compared to 20 years ago, though, it was all rather tame. No resignation, no talking heads giving opinions, no response from tr other parties. It is of mildest interest on a gossip level, so I’m not sure if we will ever get to it never in the public domain, but we’re a lot closer to that point.
He did seem to weather the storm. Some of the papers pushed follow-up stories, but to little effect. I think Cameron will probably think twice about giving a job in future however!
Obviously I don’t think anyone should ever have to resign over dating or hiring a sex worker of any kind. But he was such a dick about the whole thing I wouldn’t have minded seeing him get the boot.
-paltego