Why do men use prostitutes?

Almond Right,

You need money, you need your substance, someone says "have sex with me and I'll give you money and your substance".

In your mind at the time and their mind at the time it's win-win, But to the objective observer it's clearly coercion into sex, and therefore rape.

Paying anyone for sex is coercion, buying consent. How is that not also rape.

Me too.

I don't think anyone is surprised about the loyalty towards one's pimp. It's well documented. A form of Stockholm syndrome?

It's quite true that it is very informative reading the posts from Ophelia and Almond. But I don't think there is a woman alive who doesn't get it instantly. In a click.

Almost every woman experiences misogyny, albeit on a spectrum.

And when it ramps up to form the heartbreaking experiences of Almond and Ophelia, it's immediately recognisable to women who have never had that experience.

And all the more infuriating because even if you take out the perpetrators from the entire class of men, you are still left with a cohort who Just Don't Get It. Because they don't ever experience it on the lower end of the spectrum. Or anywhere on the bloody spectrum.

Almond and Ophelia. I also have rocks...

AlmondPearls and Ophelia I really want to give you a BIG HUG and smash any bloke, that ever touched you, in the face with a rock grr

Thank you Lang and everyone else for being so understanding. I think these boards are a place where ex ""workers"" can feel comfortable letting their guard down and talking about it, without fear of being judged or told they should support ""proper sex work"" (many libfems) etc.

Ophelia

Indeed. Someone I'd bitterly hated since secondary school (he spat at me before on one occasion) would regularly ring me (must have got my number from someone), telling me how he wants to pay for it and he'll have me, this and that. I would always just hang up. Until my dealer rang me and told me he was outside my hostel with him with something for me (more drugs). I gave in pretty quickly, although I hated every second of it. He didn't care if I enjoyed it at all.

Some men get off on the vulnerability/wearing you down. That's rape imo.

Some women don't just do it out of fear, some women do it out of some twisted sense of love and loyalty to whoever controls them (and they won't necessarily view it as controlling).

Sorry Almond there was a glitch in my computer which made me see only a small portion of this thread. Apologies if my post seemed out of nowhere.

Almond

You're brilliant. Thank you for sharing. Without your courage in doing so, the rest of us only have incomplete pictures about the dynamics of these situations.

Thanks everyone. I'm not in that situation now, thankfully. It was a bit of an outburst but threads about this always throw up a lot of emotional conflict for me.

I guess the thing I learned is that even when you say that you've consented, with all your might, it's simply not a case of 'well she said she consented so it's fine' because that ignores a lot of the context that prostitution happens in. Poverty, mental health issues, alcohol, drugs, grooming, abuse, coercion. My pimp made me think it was beneficial for me so that he could use the 'she agreed to it' line - "You like drugs, you don't have enough money, you enjoy sex... Why not combine the two? You have sex and you get more money and more drugs?" Oh yeah great idea!

I still have days where I feel he did nothing wrong and it was basically my idea.

A lot goes on 'behind the scenes' and a lot of women don't even realise they've been manipulated.

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet how a lot of men use prostitutes because their sexual perversions are so disgusting/self-centred/hard work/tedious/degrading, that no women would do it willingly, without financial incentive.

Some men love the power trip - getting someone to do exactly what they are told to satisfy their whims. It is very empowering for them. And likewise it is a freedom trip too. They are free to choose who they want, how they want, when they want, what they want and where they want. It is a completely unnatural set of circumstances males have, as a class, provided for themselves at the expense of women - women's preferences and desires are an irritating inconvenience and prostitution creates the workaround.

This situation is importantly is enabled by the created class of destitute or enslaved women thanks to structural financial inequality favouring their own male purchasing power.

*things not theifs

I learned quickly and very young that men are happy to have sex with a woman they don't like. Even a woman they despise and wish harm on but they think looks alright.

As a woman, I'm 99% sure that woman as a whole view sex differently, they need to like the person, to feel attracted to the personality and whole person, as well as the appearance of the sexual partner in order to enjoy sex with them

As a prostitute one of the hardest thief's was having sex with someone you don't like in the slightest, awful men who you know are cunts, and you know full well they don't like you at all they just fancy a shag

On top of that, fucking you is not enough, they demand you writhe around in uncontained ecstacy and orgasm on the very first touch otherwise they complain on your profile and you get no further business.

So I think these different attitude towards sex explains why men pay for sex with a stranger for orgasms and women accept sex from a stranger for money.

almond

Almond I am so sorry those men chose to harm you like that, you have shown incredible courage in just carrying on after those experiences.

The feelings you still have about your ex-pimp are entirely an understandable trauma response. Hope you’re doing ok now.

Almond- wht a brave and tragic post. So glad you're out of it. My dd is involved with an abusive man-your experience is an order of magnitude worse of course, but when you say you'd be sad if you heard he'd been arrested it resonates so much with what I've learned about her experience.

Almonds

Your post is heartbreaking. I'm glad you're out of it.

EamonnWright

It's not that women don't understand what you're saying. 'Be a bit more diplomatic about the way you talk about things and you might get more people on your side'.

It's that being diplomatic and nice clearly doesn't work.

See Almonds post for a microcosm if that.

Women know full well that being nice doesn't ever cut the mustard. With your target audience.

It would be fantastic, if it did. We could politely, logically show evidence and things would change.

Hey fucking presto.

Think about what you're saying. Feminism has a bad name, right? That is not because feminists aren't nice or friendly.

Because, it would be a piece of piss to be nice and friendly and bingo! change laws and attitudes.

What's not to like? Porn and prostitution is demeaning and degrading to women, please stop. Cheers. Job done.

It took FIFTEEN years for feminists to persuade Parliament to make rape within marriage illegal. It was only made illegal a mere 25 years ago.

Fifteen years of men being presented with logical, rational argument. Being asked to not treat women as subhuman, sex on demand machines.

Imagine, for one minute, all the meetings, committees, agendas, and minutes being typed that still ended up saying nah, rape is absolutely fine because it's our god given right to have sex whenever we want, despite the fact that we're forcing you.

You may truly believe that feminists will get more people on their side if they were nicer. You're absolutely right. Liberal feminism is a testament to that.

The trouble is, it's no longer feminism. And it no longer works.

Being nice may make more men agree with you, but only if what you're asking is very little and something that they don't mind giving up anyway.

Well if that's what you think then fair enough.

Empathy is not dependent on your life experience. You either possess it or you do not.

For example, I cannot directly identify with Almond's experiences but she does not have to personally tailor her recounting of them to trigger understanding in me.

Ignorance is no excuse, imo

I agree to an extent but I don't think telling people that helps, they will just throw their guard up so a different approach might be better. I tell my mates to imagine their daughter getting thrown about a port set by a few guys. You obviously shouldn't have to get someone to imagine someone close to them before they give a shit but everyone has their own ways.

For example my mother was peaktransed after I'd shown her stuff about children being given drugs at the drop of a hat and my father was regarding Bath University stopping research.

Does my father not care about children being given drugs? Of course he does, it's just that education and it's freedom is something I knew he would react to and he has since looked into it all.

People react to different things differently.

Sorry for using this thread as a fucking personal therapy session. I might have to NC now.

You know what, I think I regret my previous post. I still get defensive about prostitution and my ex-pimp. Apologies. My instinct is always to defend, but rationally I know it's not right. What happened to me wasn't right.

I remember being a bit 'wonky' and not all there after the effects of a ketamine binge were wearing off, and getting a call from my dealer asking me to come down and see him. I get in the car. There's two men in there I don't know. He starts driving and I'm still a bit wacked-out, I have absolutely no idea where we are going.
When we arrive, I'm taken into a house where there is another man I don't know. I'm offered cocaine and alcohol which I accept because I'm fucking anxious and drug-dependent. In the end, I was left with 3 men that I had never met in my life, while my dealer went home and left me there.

I had sex with all 3 of them. What did I get out of it? A quarter ounce of more ketamine and a chivalrous lift back to my hostel (that I lived in after being released from a psychiatric hospital).

I was 17 and these were all grown men.

This went in for a few months (I was one of the lucky ones and I know it). When I told my support worker, she moved me out of the area for my own safety. And what was my response to her? Calling her every name under the sun and crying my eyes out because I wanted to stay.

Why? Why would I want to stay in that situation? Because I'd known my dealer/pimp since I was just 14 years old and had fancied him ever since. We had a sexual relationship and I wanted to impress him, I wanted to make him happy and do what he wanted me to do. I wanted to be close to him, and the more entangled in the drugs and the sex I got, the closer I felt (the more times we had to talk/meet-up/be together).

Fucking pathetic.

And you know what? If I saw in the paper that this man had been arrested, I would be upset by it. Even sadder.

Ignorance is no excuse, imo

I also think people who use porn fall into that category

I would say most are ignorant more so. I know I was.

No, I said "other men who won't listen". Not all men. Just the ones who think prostitution is acceptable/inevitable even though they don't use prostitutes themselves

So certain people then? I know lots of women who think prostitution is fine. Where dies that leave us?

People on here very rarely caveat things like that. It's men and men only.