A 21-year-old woman is auctioning off her virginity to help her family. Katherine Stone has been learning the ropes at one of Nevada’s licensed brothels called “The Kit Kat Ranch”, where she has been living since May. She does not provide sexual services to the clients, but only entertains then while they are waiting to ‘pick’. Stone decided to auction off her virginity and bids have reportedly reached $400,000 so far. The reason that led her to put her chastity up for sale was that her family had lost everything in 2014 from a fire that destroyed her uninsured house. “For a time, my parents were actually living at the burned-down house,” Stone told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “It was really hard to actually get back on your feet after everything.” Last summer, she said, she came across the story of Natalie Dylan, a woman who reportedly tried to auction her virginity in 2008 to pay for college. Dylan had orchestrated the online auction through Dennis Hof, a Nevada businessman who owns seven brothels in the state.
So Stone looked up Hof, found his email address and sent him a note. Then she waited. Hof said that he couldn’t remember exactly when Stone’s email arrived, but that he frequently receives emails from women who make similar requests. “I get three or four a month, minimum, wanting to sell their virginity,” he said. “So virginity’s a real complicated phenomenon, if you will.” Stone relocated to Nevada in May, around the time the Kit Kat Ranch reopened after a major renovation.
“I had no clue what to expect,” she said. “I’ve been nervous since I even came up with the idea to do this.” The other women quickly embraced her, she said, and they frequently hang out together when not working. Stone was assigned a “big sister” named “GI Jen,” who acts as her mentor in the house. Stone is not the first woman to try to auction off her virginity. Recently a college student in Russia reportedly put her virginity up for auction on an escort site to raise tuition money, according to the Daily Mail.
Everyone I met has their reason for working in a brothel. Learn what Katherine’s is, tonight. #ThisIsLife 10PM CNN pic.twitter.com/I37FkgMdvl
— lisaling (@lisaling) October 23, 2016
