Men who buy sex, who they buy and what they know

[allthequeensmen]

Threads relating to strip clubs and the sex industry always seem to attract a lot of attention on here so I thought some of you might be interested in this study:

www.eaves4women.co.uk/Documents/Recent_Reports/Men%20Who%20Buy%20Sex.pdf

Did you read the whole thread YRC??

Cos prostitution involves rape, abuse, violence, sex with some of the most vulnerable people in society including children.

I don't need to read the whole thread (although I did), I know plenty about prostitution. You don't need to worry I'm not some sneaky interloper who is trying to derail.

Other jobs are also harmful. I'm not saying I am defending prostitution, but I am just wondering why people think it is so much worse than other jobs.

Bleh, I know that I'm not explaining myself well. Yes I know it involves rape, it involves children, it involves all sorts of things like that that are obviously awful.

But if it DIDN'T, if it was an industry like any other, would people still feel the same about it? Is there something worse about selling your body for sex that selling your body to a mine or a factory or a classroom?

Before you all jump on me, I am pondering rather than saying this is my opinion.

Right, so being raped several times a day in any way equates to someone not enjoying their job because it has become too physically taxing? Bloody hell!

YRC - I guess my most simplistic answer to your question would be that mechanics are not routinely raped, abused, trafficked, have their passports taken away and forced to work. They are not, as part of their daily work, degraded and humiliated and frightened.

Really, I did say that wasn't my opinion. I was just pondering. Remind me not to bother in future.

I did also say if it didn't involve those things ie if it was something that women did entirely voluntarily, but obviously no-one is up for discussing that.

And honestly, do you wonder that young people are not interested in learning about feminism? When every time someone asks a question that is not rooted in feminist doctrine they're ridiculed? I studied women's studies at university, these were the kinds of questions we were asking. It is not so completely ridiculous to ponder it, so please don't act like it is.

YRC, it is only not ridiculous to ponder it, if you don't think women are really as human as men.

Seriously, imagine sitting in a classroom and debating whether men would choose to offer their arses to anyone who came along with money and as long as they are not beaten up, threatened, hurt or frightened, why would anyone not do it?

Apart from the fact that you simply cannot separate prostitution from the abuse that goes with it. The sort of men who can't see anything wrong with paying a woman to allow him to penetrate her body, are the sort of men who don't consider women really human, so by definition, they have extremely abusive attitudes to women and are more likely to beat them up, rape them, humiliate them etc.

I'm sorry if you think that answer is ridculing you, it's not meant to; it's just pointing out the bleedin' obvious. It's not seen as bleedin' obvious by wider society, because women are still having to fight to be seen as fully human and the idea that you know, they might want to have some bodily integrity and dignity and have a RIGHT to have that, is still a really revolutionary concept.

And also, the confines of that debate, are sticking to why women do it; when what is more important, is why men do it - ie feel entitled to stick their cock into a woman who doesn't want their cock in her and only endures it for money. It is much more valuable to discuss the men and their behaviour.

(I would like to add to the recollections of that Irish prostitute that I used to attend after school extra revision classes that were held close to one of Dublin's red light districts on the south side, near Mount Street bridge/Grand Canal. The trade there consisted mostly of outdoor solicitation, so lots of kerb crawling. To get from the location of the classes to the bus stop for the bus home meant walking down two streets and being propositioned about every 50 yards by leering men in cars, sometimes alone and sometimes in groups. I used to walk with two friends for safety, carrying our bags of books and the fact that we were very obviously minors seemed to attract rather than repel them.)

I agree 100% that the big question is why men do it.

How is it 'feminist doctrine' to assume women are human beings? I learned that at home, in school and in church.

CarmenElectra, I do not understand how you can possibly come up with the things you say ('they love it') when even the punters themselves knew in their hearts that what they were doing was coarsening and brutalising themselves, never mind the effect they were having on the women.

I would suggest that the examination of why women do it, the rationalisations beginning with the notion that this is a service they are happy to offer, and the lack of study into why men do it reflect massive social cognitive dissonance on the question of prostitution.

'But if it DIDN'T, if it was an industry like any other, would people still feel the same about it? Is there something worse about selling your body for sex that selling your body to a mine or a factory or a classroom?'

I think it would probably differ in the way that, even if it were socially acceptable to most to sell your body, people would probably not be keen on a profession where their DP/DW/DH's could go and be unfaithful.

So you honestly think that I don't think women are as human as men BasilRathbone? That's really not true at all. I like to think about why I oppose things, rather than just blindly follow what I'm supposed to think. Like I said, we discussed this at university, it's not as if I have no idea what I'm talking about, we were ENCOURAGED to think about it.

Also I think you're wrong to say that men who use prostitutes think women are less than human. I think men who use prostitutes think prostitutes are less than human. They seem to be very good at separating prostitutes from women.

They probably aren't, in general, that fantastic at being nice to women either.

The thing is, saying "if it were an industry like any other" is just pie in the sky stuff.

It's like arguing that "if the moon were made of green cheese - no really, just suspend your disbelief for a minute and go with the premise - how would that affect the tides?"

There is simply no point in discussing that. The moon is not made of cheese, green or otherwise. Prostitution is not an industry like any other. It never will be. Any more than selling your kidney will be. It is an industry that only exists because of men's systematic oppression of women. It's really that simple. In a society where women and men were valued equally, had equal status and equal sharing of all the world's resources, there would be no prostitution and if there were, then it would be an industry like any other, because nobody would ever do it under duress. But if you want to play a "let's imagine prostitution as a job like any other" game, then you need to imagine it outside of patriarchy - because within patriarchy, it is never going to be a job like any other.

But the thing IS BasilRathbone plenty plenty plenty of men (and women) DO think of it as any other industry, don't they? So it is worth discussing from that angle.

Beyond that, it is worth discussing because it's worth seeing what it is that you're actually opposed to.

"So you honestly think that I don't think women are as human as men BasilRathbone?"

No YRC I don't and that's not what I said. I was using the pronoun "you" to mean "one".

The very fact that johns separate women who are prostituted, off from women who aren't, shows that they don't consider women as human. They consider us whore's or madonnas, not real, rounded, people.

Again, I don't want to be the defender of men, but I think most people are quite good at separating huge sections of society off into easily digestible stereotypes. I don't think that men have the exclusive rights to this and I don't think that all men who use prostitutes necessarily see all women as madonnas and whores.

The argument would be far easier if they did, but I just don't think human beings are that simple.

But people only think of it as yet another industry YRC, because they are used to having women's humanity downgraded.

If there were an industry which suddenly sprung up tomorrow, which consisted of boys and young men from abusive backgrounds, being trafficked and coerced into allowing older, richer, more powerful men to penetrate their bodies when they didn't want them to, but didn't have enough self-esteem and options to find something else to do, people would be absolutely horrified. They wouldn't talk about the boys who do it willingly, they wouldn't be willing to overlook the fact that most of them are damaged.

Because men are human. They really matter. Cruelty to them, is horrible. It can't be made less cruel, by making the punters wear condoms or putting them in clean rooms and making laws that say the older men who control them, aren't allowed to beat them up.

The thing is BasilRathbone, you and I might know the reality of prostitution but the vast majority of people don't. The vast majority of people think that the women want to do it or aren't bothered by it. I don't think people think about the levels of abuse that go on. It's not about overlooking so much as people just not realising because they can't relate to it at all.

But why do you think the vast majority of people don't know?

It's because the media choose not to tell us. And the politicians, who do know, choose not to discuss it and make laws about it.

Because it is not a priority to talk about, to educate society about, to get horrified about, in the way that journalists do want to educate us about other human rights abuses. Because it is only poor women and they don't matter.

YRC, even the punters in the study knew it wasn't an industry like any other. Those who thought of it as a job similar to the ones they had only of far lower status could at least see for themselves the issue of status.

The underlying belief they held in common was the mindset that 'people', neither men nor 'nice girls' (gf, wife and mother material) have nothing in common with prostitutes. The ability to separate groups into stereotypes that will serve the need to rationalise abuse is what also leads to war, rape in war, holocaust, economic exploitation, slavery -- how can it be possible to accept this sort of warped thinking in one area (rationalisation of prostitution) and reject it elsewhere?

The punters actually know more about the cruelty and exploitation of the industry, than most of the rest of us.

They are well aware of it.

What does that say about them?

If it were an industry like any other, then the punters would be able to imagine themselves doing it, just as I can imagine working at a till in Tesco.

They can't, because as far as they're concerned, it's done by a specific "type" of woman, one cut off from the rest of humanity.

As Matha says, there's really no difference between their dehumanisation of the women they abuse, and that of any other group of people who committed human rights atrocities on unfortunate groups. If they thought of these women as real people, just like them, their work colleagues and their friends, they would not be able to use them as wank-socks.

The men in the study were well aware of the abuse. They just didn't give a shit. This shocked me as I'd always assumed they were buying into the happy hooker myth.