In prostitution, the relation of the sexes is reduced to its generic content because it is perfectly unambiguous and limited to the sensual act. It consists of that which any member of the species can perform and experience. The most diverse personalities can engage in it and all individual differences appear to be of no importance. Therefore, the economic counterpart of this relation is money, for it, too, is beyond all individual differences; it is at the species level of economic value, the representation of what is common to all.

XREF: This analysis parallels Marx's commodity fetishism and the abstraction of exchange value from use value — the author is applying economic abstraction logic to sexual relations.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 360