Natalie Dylan is the pseudonym of a 22-year-old student from San Diego, California, who rose to fame in September 2008, when she announced on the Howard Stern Show that she would auction off her virginity online, and that the act would be consummated at the Moonlite BunnyRanch in Nevada.

What makes a woman want to have sex? Is it physical attraction? Love? Loneliness? Jealousy? Boredom? Painful menstrual cramps?


Many women interviewed were having sex purely because they wanted the experience.

It turns out that woman have sex for all of these reasons and more, and that their choices are not arbitrary; there may be evolutionary explanations at work.

Psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss, both professors at the University of Texas at Austin, decided that the topic of "why women have sex" deserved a book of its own. They've woven scientific research together with a slew of women's voices in their new collaborative work, "Why Women Have Sex," published September 29 by Times Books.


"We do bring in men occasionally by way of contrast, but we wanted to focus exclusively on women so that the complexity of women's sexual psychology was not given the short shrift, so to speak," said Buss, a leading evolutionary psychologist.

The authors conducted a study from June 2006 to April 2009 that asked women whether they had ever had sex for one of 237 reasons, all of which had emerged in a previous study. About 1,000 women contributed their perspectives.

Motivation

A recent women's studies graduate from Sacramento State, Dylan planned to use the money to finance a Master's degree in family and marriage therapy.
Dylan was inspired by her sister Avia, 23, who financed her own degree course working as a prostitute in the Moonlite Bunnyranch[4] for just three weeks and earning several thousand dollars. She was 19 then.[1] However, Dylan asserts that "sister definitely didn't pressure [her] into doing this."[4]
In an interview she stated "I feel empowered because I am being pro-choice with my body."[5] In a blog post, she described her motivation as follows:
“ Deflowering is historically oppressive—early European marriages began with a dowry, in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth. Dads were basically their daughters’ pimps.
When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.[6]
”

Process

Dylan retained the right to choose the winner of the auction regardless of who is the highest bidder.[5] She also admitted that she's still concerned about the prospect of spending a night with a stranger. As such, and according to plan, she has been getting to know the men who are bidding and having email conversations with them.[1]
Dennis Hof, the owner of the brothel, is to receive half of the winning bid.[3]

Response

According to Dylan, more than 10,000 bidders have contacted her with an offer:
“
I've had such a range of messages, from weirdos who say they love me, to those who get really graphically sexual about what they want to do to me.
I'm also getting lots of polite requests from rich businessmen.
I get some men who are obviously looking for a girlfriend but I try and make it clear that this is a one-night-only offer.
”
In September, bids of up to $243,000 were reported. Since then, she appeared in a number of media, including The Tyra Banks Show on September 30, 2008, and had her story covered by several mainstream media by January 2009. With the increasing interest, the highest bid had reached, as of January 15, 2009, $3.7 million,[8] offered by a 39 year old Australian real-estate businessman. The purchaser has since had to back out, due to his wife's dissatisfaction, and Dylan has launched a new campaign to sell her virginity.

Criticism

Since she launched the auction, Dylan has faced a steady stream of criticism from women and allegations from men over the validity of her virginity claims.[9] She said she is prepared to undergo a medical hymen examination to prove her chastity and has already passed two lie detector tests.[1] She also said "I am a sexual person and I've had sexual encounters - both casual and with a boyfriend. But I've abstained from sexual intercourse."

Some religious legal groups are objecting to the sexual sale, saying they are concerned that its influence may reach beyond the borders of Nevada, where prostitution is legal. However, according to specialists, there is no basis for the federal government to stop the auction. "It's a First Amendment issue. You can advertise goods or services that are illegal where they're advertised but legal where they're performed."


Value of virginity

While the Bunny Ranch website describes Dylan's virginity as a "priceless and rare commodity", some find that its rarity may be debatable.[8] Still, several thousand bidders have come forth to "put a price tag on Dylan's purity",[8] which even despite the historically recent decrease of virginity's value as a virtue in the western culture, is a demonstration of the influence of demand in the price of a scarce commodity.
Dylan herself reveals she is shocked "that men will pay so much for someone's virginity, which isn't even prized so highly anymore", and proposes her explanation for the success of the auction so far: "I think it's become some kind of competition between all these men."
In September 2008, a German sex auction site reported that a student named Alina Percea had auctioned off her virginity for €6,650. In 2004, Rosie Reid, a lesbian 18 year old student in England sold her virginity online for £8,400.