Anonymous British Sex Blogger Reveals Herself: She’s A Ph.D.

After six years of successfully, improbably preserved anonymity, British sex blogger and former prostitute Belle de Jour has revealed her true identity: she’s Brooke Magnanti, a cancer researcher with a Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science.

The British media sometimes tends towards alarmism on issues that even vaguely smack of sexual morality (see: that one photo of the drunk girl with her underwear around her ankles). How is it taking the news? 

The (British) Times published India Knight‘s fascinating exclusive yesterday, which reveals, among other tidbits, that Magnanti really did work as a prostitute for 14 months, that her all-woman team of colleagues at the hospital where she works have known for a month and been supportive, but that she still has to tell her mother, and that “an ex-boyfriend with a big mouth” played a role in her decision to out herself now. It also tells her account of how she became a prostitute:

“I was looking at this cheque. It wasn’t even the total of my rent; it was a quarter of it or something, some stupidly low amount like £120. I thought, ‘But once I deposit this cheque, I’ll still need money for next month.’ And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t borrow this money knowing that I couldn’t pay it back and that I’d need more pretty much straightaway. And that was when I started to think: what can I do that I can start doing straightaway, that doesn’t require a great deal of training or investment to get started, that’s cash in hand and that leaves me spare time to do my work in?”

I don’t know that prostitution would necessarily be one’s first choice, I say. Starbucks? Waitressing? Bar work? Bunking down on a friend’s floor? Yeah, you could work behind a bar. But how many hours would you have to do just to pay your rent? I couldn’t even get an overdraft at that point, though of course once I started depositing so much cash they offered me a mortgage, about three months later! And I wasn’t prepared to borrow from friends or family. To be honest, the writing-up of a thesis takes up so much of your time and so much of your energy.”

(Update: she told her mother, who she says is “fully supportive” and “‘not one to judge.’”)

As (Mediaite site designer) Rex Sorgatz points out, Belle de Jour’s blog never became quite the phenomenon in the US that it is in the UK, and so the response to the news thus far has come primarily from British outlets. The zingiest stateside one-liner, by the way, has to be Foster Kamer‘s headline, ”Anonymous Call Girl Author Belle de Jour Outed as ‘Slutty Scientist’ Costume Incarnate.”

The traditional outlets beat the tabloids to the punch on this one, so most of what’s come out so far has been fact-based, restrained, and, if not entirely sex-positive, sex neutral. India Knight had been a critic of Belle de Jour for glamorizing prostitution, but while her exclusive doesn’t let Magnanti off the hook, she strikes a balance. The BBC largely reports through quotes from the Times piece and press statements; The Guardian takes the interesting tack of responding with a sympathetic column by an outed sex blogger, Zoe Margolis.

Once they play catch-up, the British tabloid response of the next few days (months?) should be something. Already, the “ex-boyfriend with a big mouth” seems poised to make a comeback; apparently, he is an Army officer about to be deployed to Afghanistan, and wants Magnanti back. The Sun has already eagerly coined “net tart.” The restraint and lack of judgment displayed both in the first round of media reports and by the people in Magnanti’s life really are remarkable, but when the tabloids enter the picture, odds are things will get a lot muddier.

(h/t Fimoculous)

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