Mr. J, a Former Professor Series – Entry 26: Symbolic Prostitution, Transactional Intimacy, or Just a “Loan”?
A forensic breakdown of a scene a former professor swore wasn’t prostitution
Public Note published by Pat Johnston (captured June 14, 2025; archived prior to deletion)
“Waitress, not a dancer.”
“She can’t be seen with a foreigner outside of company time.”
“She came over at 5am after her shift.”
“She let herself be vulnerable.”
“Money changed hands.”
“She called it a loan.”
“She didn’t fuck like a whore. I didn’t fuck like a John.”
She came at 5am, after her shift.
Not to rest. Not to reunite. But to “sneak in” a hotel where her bar wouldn’t see her. She and her sister booked a decoy room — a tactic known far too well in nightlife ecosystems:
“client visits,” off-the-record.
He writes,
“Some money changed hands. She called it a loan. We both knew I’d never ask for it back.”
This line is the hinge: legal ambiguity wrapped in social clarity. A gesture cloaked as generosity, but unmistakably sitting in the territory of transactional sex — even when no one names it that.
“She didn’t fuck like a whore. I didn’t fuck like a John.”
But what is that if not a subconscious admission?
The harder someone tries to prove “this wasn’t prostitution,” the clearer the anxiety about how closely it resembles it.
In forensic terms, this is a textbook example of what scholars might call symbolic prostitution:
Emotional justification for a material exchange
Denial of sex work labels despite structural markers of sex-for-money logic
Secrecy, late-night rendezvous, money, and emotional vulnerability — all tied in one moment.
Was she a sex worker?
Perhaps not in identity.
But in that night’s architecture, her actions mimicked the logic of sex work — while his writing mimics the logic of denial.
He said it wasn’t prostitution — but he couldn’t stop writing about the price tag.
Why a Professor Sleeping with Someone Is Not “Just Personal”
When a professor — especially one in the humanities, ethics, or gender studies — becomes romantically or sexually involved with someone significantly younger, poorer, or less institutionally protected, the issue is never just personal.
It becomes a question of ethics, narrative power, and institutional accountability.
“He didn’t pay for sex.”
“She said it was a loan.”
“He only gave her money after she slept with him.”
These aren’t just fragments of a personal story. They are the anatomy of symbolic prostitution — where the transaction is denied, but its structure remains intact.
Even more disturbing is when the same individual proceeds to write about the encounter — publicly, poetically, performatively — casting himself as the thoughtful foreigner, and the woman as a blend of mystery, hunger, and need. A character, not a human.
This isn’t just sex.
This is academic voyeurism, wrapped in metaphor, polished by credentials.
A Psychologist’s Ethical Position Is Not Optional
Although he was not formally positioned within a humanities or gender studies faculty, the individual in question taught and published within the domains of psychology and neuroscience — fields that inherently intersect with ethics, emotional behavior, and social power.
Psychologists are not neutral technicians. They are granted public legitimacy to analyze trauma, interpret human behavior, and speak on sensitive topics such as manipulation, dependency, and exploitation. As such, they carry an elevated duty of care, particularly when their academic authority is later used in personal or symbolic narratives involving money, power, and vulnerability.
If a former educator in psychology:
Writes suggestive content about emotional and financial entanglement,
Frames it with clinical language or veiled rationalizations,
Publicly denies harm while repeating symbolic depictions of trauma,
…then they are not just writing creatively.
They are deploying their psychological literacy to reframe and legitimize behavior that borders on emotional exploitation and symbolic coercion.
Whether or not the individual belongs to a “gender studies” department is irrelevant.
The issue is not their title.
It is their professional proximity to power, vulnerability, and trauma — and how that proximity is weaponized in post-academic expression.
In that light, any poetry or narrative written by such a figure should not be interpreted in isolation, but assessed through the lens of academic accountability and behavioral ethics.
Professors are not just private citizens.
They are:
Educators of ethics, expected to uphold the values they teach.
Representatives of their institutions, whose behavior reflects on public trust.
Power holders, especially in contexts involving migration, language, and class gaps.
To claim that “money changed hands” but it wasn’t transactional, or that “she let herself be vulnerable,” then publicly reframe her as part of your creative process — is to exploit power while denying it.
That’s not literature.
That’s structural harm in verse.
Disclaimer (Visual Material):
All images included in this piece are illustrative and selected for their symbolic relevance to the themes analyzed — such as voyeurism, transactional intimacy, and narrative power.
They do not depict any real individuals referenced in this article.
Their use is critical and analytical, not personal or sexual, and serves to underscore the structural and rhetorical mechanisms discussed throughout the essay.
Image Credit:
Photo by Alexis Magnone | Sinitta Leunen | Mak via Unsplash
Photo cover by kevin turcios via Unsplash
Read the full series
- Entry 1: The Man Who Taught Me Ethics by Failing All of Them
- Entry 2: The Disappearance of the Public Poet
- Entry 3: The Hanging Tree Case Study
- Entry 4: Hidden Like Accountability
- Entry 5: The Collapse of Assumptions
- Entry 6: The Ethics of a Tinder Bio
- Entry 7: How He Ate Told Me Everything
- Entry 8: What Makes a Scholar Dangerous
- Entry 9: Fragment of Life, Fragment of Accountability
- Entry 10: Anatomy of Disappointment
- Entry 11: Legal Defense Challenges: A Framing Statement
- Entry 12: Six Years After Ronell – What Academia Still Doesn’t Get
- Entry 13: QUT and The Man Who Raped Me
- Entry 14: Why Sarcasm Toward Institutions Can Backfire
- Entry 15: P*ssy or Toxic Masculinity?
- Entry 16: Who is Your Favorite Comedian?
- Entry 17: And What is Your Favorite Song?
- Entry 18: Grant Proposal — Narrative Ethics as Survivor-Led Forensics
- Entry 19: The Coward Behind the Clone
- Entry 20: [URGENT HIRE] CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST
- Entry 21: [URGENT] Legal Counsel Needed for Complex Reputation Rehabilitation
- Entry 22: YOU’RE AN ABUSER. STOP CONTACTING ME
- Entry 23: Seeking Counsel for a Fallen Academic
- Entry 24: Internal Legal-PR Briefing
- Entry 25: For Journalists – Legal & Ethical Clearance Summary
- Entry 26: Symbolic Prostitution, Transactional Intimacy, or Just a “Loan”? (you are here)
- Entry 28: Why He Simply Cannot Shut Up
- Entry 29: Forensic Commentary on “LARGE Language Muddle”
- Entry 30: Don’t Just Threaten My Future. Because I’m Going To Archive Your Present
- Entry 31: Open Letter to the Person Who Tried to Break Me with Defamation
- Entry 32: Defamation, Harassment, Doxxing Class 101
- Entry 33: Confidential Crisis Recovery Proposal
- Entry 34: Forensic Behavioral-Somatic Report
- Entry 35: Forensic Commentary on the Tattoos
- Entry 36: QUT and the Abuser They Once Had
- Entry 38: When Poetry Becomes Revenge Porn
- Entry 40: A Man Built for Applause, Not Accountability
- Entry 41: Neurobehavioral Addendum
- Entry 43: Why Does It Sound Like a War Metaphor?
- Entry 44: Forensic Commentary on Racialized and Fetishizing Language in “Hidden Like Rice”
- Entry 45: Public Misuse of Former Academic Affiliation
- Entry 46: The Two Things That Didn’t Leave a Bad Impression
- Entry 47: When Affection is Just an Alibi (A Bundy-Inspired Reflection)
- Entry 48: Humbert, Lolita, and the Fetish of Fragility
- Entry 49: The Fetish of Smallness as Symbolic Violence
- Entry 50: Motif Risk Analysis
- Entry 52: Can an Abuser Be a Good Father?
- Entry 53: Who Protects the Children?
- Entry 54: From Blackmail to Children
- Reflection: The Miscalculation
(More entries coming soon)
→ [Back to Start: Introducing Mr. J, a Former Professor Series]
© 2025 Linh Ng. All rights reserved.
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