In the ultimate conflation of the virgin-whore dichotomy, a 22-year-old Sacramento State grad named Natalie Dylan has put her virginity up for auction. The transaction is taking place through a legal brothel in Nevada, which advertises Dylan’s virginity as a “priceless and rare commodity.” And by “priceless” they actually just mean expensive — the highest bid is reported at $3.8 million. Dylan was first publicized on the Howard Stern Show, and the story has since been picked up by CNN and other major news outlets.

The response indicates that virginity is distinctly captivating to both bidders and bystanders. Dylan cites her BA in Women’s Studies as her inspiration. Since she chose to use her feminist wisdom this way, I wonder if many women of my generation might be missing the point.

In a recent blog post, Dylan explained the convoluted line of reasoning that led her to make this offer. Since virgins used to be married off in exchange for dowries in “early Europe,” she says, the logical step toward empowerment is that virgins pimp themselves out in the 21st century. She posits that this might be the beginning of a new trend, and thinks that selling her virginity follows feminism in that it earns money, which in turn equals power. Never mind that her view of virgin history is narrow and simplistic, not to mention a tad outdated as an application to today’s world. What is really sad about this is that instead of choosing to explode the idealization of female virginity as a vestige of a patriarchal society, Dylan takes the opportunistic road. She would rather perpetuate it with a get-rich-quick scheme than redefine virginity on her own terms.

Dylan is not the only one profiting from virginity. Plenty of people already profit from the idealization of virginity — selling purity rings and other chastity memorabilia, along with a message to abstain from sex in the name of God. One website even sells “Virginity Vouchers” so people can literally be card-carrying virgins for the low price of 75 cents! The general idea is that women’s virginity is a sacred gift, and men’s virginity is, well, important too, we guess. Those who believe in a Virgin Mother (read: a virgin non-virgin) are now selling the same goods as a virgin prostitute — granted, in very different ways. Dylan is selling virginity in the form of an experience, through prostitution, and abstinence groups are selling it as an ideal, by promoting virginity as a sacred gift. But putting monetary value and ideological regulations on an intimate interaction strips it of authenticity. Virginity should not be quality-controlled.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I cannot talk about a virginity industry without pointing out the horror of such a phrase. Something is wrong when virginity — and sex — are being sold, especially when a gender divide defines who is buying and who is selling. The fact that specifically women’s virginity has been commodified is a red flag in our supposedly post-feminist society. Where are the male virgins? To answer my question, I looked on craigslist. I got the idea from Dylan herself, who hinted that the beginnings of a virginity market could be found there. And sure enough, plenty of virgins advertise in the personals. But they are all men who are trying desperately to give away their, uh, maidenhood. They might just as well have put their virginity in the Free Stuff section. And so we have a gender quandary: male virginity is either worthless or unmarketable, while female virginity can make as much as $3.8 million.

“Marketable” is the operative word here. Women’s virginity is evidently susceptible to mystification, what you might call “other”-ing. This makes it easier to peddle it, but also ignores the woman’s point of view on sexuality and desire. A man who pays to have sex with a virgin is responding to his own ideal of Virginity, which has nothing to do with the woman herself (and likely nothing to do with any real woman at all). The hymen, in fact, is acknowledged by doctors to be so variable from woman to woman that it provides no indication of virginity. It is more real in the collective mind than on the body. Notice there has never been a phantom body part that “proves” male virginity. To buy and sell virginity means subscribing to some mythical definition of virginity loss, and there is a much stronger one for women than for men.

Like all of us children of the women’s liberation movement, Dylan benefits from living in a society that is more conscious of women’s rights than before. Unlike our baby-boomer mothers, we grow up imagining our lives as uninhibited by sex discrimination. But as much work as past generations have done to remove gender barriers, our generation has a responsibility to continue the legacy of change that gave us freedom through birth control, abortion rights and truer perceptions of women and gender. With the last presidential election, we may have narrowly escaped the revocation of our right to an abortion. It is a right that drastically impacts our freedom to make decisions about sex. Virginity loss is incidental to sexuality as a whole, just as the hymen is incidental to the formation of a woman’s body. Each is made important only because of the social value attached to it. “Virgin” literally describes an obvious state of being — everyone is born one. Unfortunately, it is often used as a means of sexual regulation that perpetuates gender inequality. The novelty of Dylan’s auction can obscure some basic truths: choosing exploitation doesn’t mean you’re not being exploited, and being female does not make you a feminist.