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

I really don't think that it's about people not caring about women so much as people thinking that we have reached a point where women have completely free choice.

Now you and I might know that's not true, but I don't think most people do. Look at the number of women on here who are happy to say they're not feminists. In my opinion that has nothing to do with not caring about women's issues, I don't think you'd find many women here who'd say they don't.

I suppose with prostitution people accept it because sex, for most people, is something pleasurable. It's hard to square that with fear and abuse.

I'm not talking about the men who buy sex from prostitutes by the way, I'm talking about the general population.

Yes, I expected a bit more self-delusion PlentyofPubes.

They only pretend to believe the happy hooker myth, when they talk to normal people who have bought into that myth and they don't want those people, to grasp just what vile specimens of humanity they're talking to.

'I really don't think that it's about people not caring about women ...

... so much as people thinking that we have reached a point where women have completely free choice.'

(1) It's not about not caring -- you're right there. It's about not actually seeing prostitutes as humans. You can't care about a sub human as much as you could care about a fully fledged one, like yourself, or your mother, or people you would not pay to fuck.

(2) Again, cognitive dissonance. This rationalisation is nothing new. We have not evolved. The sort of baseline inequality between the sexes that makes it possible for men to think this way has not changed since the start of recorded history.

Yes I don't disagree with you there YRC.

The media is constantly telling us that we're all equal now. The inequality is so normalised that it's unseen and when you say that we're actually not all equal, most people are pretty baffled.

The men who run the media, have a vested interest in ensuring that we buy the idea that we're all equal now. If women think that this is as good as it gets, they keep their privilege, don't they

When you look at something like "Girls Run The World" by Beyonce, you really know that people are actually buying that we are equal. Not even just equal - in charge.

It is pretty bloody depressing.

But I disagree that they don't not care about women.

I think they can be in such successful denial about equality and free choice, precisely because it's only women who make this choice (on the whole).

As soon as you start seeing women as equally valuable to men, you start questioning why they would make these so-called free choices.

It's not that people consciously don't care about women - they don't realise that they don't care because these people are women - they are more likely to accept really unlikely arguments about why women would make these choices, which they would not accept if it were men being talked about. Same as with rape - no one would ever seriously contend that a man has been raped because he drank too much. And yet people who are otherwise decent, humane poeple, who believe in equality (or think they do) do think this sort of crap about owmen.

I don't know BasilRathbone, when I was at university, there were a series of rapes on men. Really horrible cases. They weren't taken seriously AT ALL, everyone thought it was a massive joke.

That's why I sometimes find this stuff about society only caring about men a bit hard to believe. That plus the fact that most people couldn't give a fuck about anything except themselves. I mean, most of the population can't even be arsed voting, so I hardly think they're going to be up in arms about the abuse of women OR men.

yellow I really don't think that it's about people not caring about women so much as people thinking that we have reached a point where women have completely free choice.

I agree with this entirely when aimed at the general population. I say that because it is what I believed was the case for many sex workers until I started reading about the background to the porn industry, prostitutes, abuse etc. Mainly from reading MN if I am honest.

It is not a world I have, thankfully, come across. It is not something I have any experience of, but because the media is so so so sexualised it seemed to me there wasn't a big step from a centre spread in Nuts for example and Belle de Jour type hookers.

I was terribly wrong (although who knows what issues lie behind the girls stripping off) and it isn't all clean and girls getting "empowered" by taking their clothes off. And don't get me started on Beyonce. Or Rhiannan.

I also think that men in the general population also think how I did, not because they want to necessarily to ease any consciences but because they believe, like I did, what they have been sold in popular culture.

I linked way upthread to an article on the Swedish model and how public opinion has changed. I think that is the way to go forward, to make people aware of the facts, to make people realise the levels of abuse we are dealing with, the backgrounds of the girls both trafficked or "choosing" sex work. And then work on there being a social stigma attached to using sex workers. Peer pressure is often a hugely important thing, look at drink driving for example.

A friend of mine buys sex. He is a bit socially clumsy, lives alone , in his late forties. He has Chrones disease and can lose control of his bowels when stressed or excited, and has not been able to form long lasting relationships.

Every few months he pays for warmth, female company, usually masturbation and some skin to skin contact. His sex-worker is a married woman in her late fifties who has been doing this for years, has four kids, and has a group of other women friends who also do part -time sex-work.

This is not to excuse or deny trafficking and all the violence that goes with it, but there is another side to this.

ok, off you go, condemn away.

There is no other side.

It's the same side as usual - men's god-given entitlement to female space, time and energy and use of our bodies.

But BasilRathbone do you honestly think it's as simple as that and that there's no nuance? Couldn't men also argue that women want the same from men? Because they do.

I think when you say things are so black and white it makes it really easy for people to just dismiss arguments out of hand.

If rape of men were to be taken seriously then rape of women would have to be taken seriously. If rape of men could be taken seriously, then the impact of rape on women, and men's responsibility for that, would have to be taken seriously. When it is possible to blame women for being raped by men it also becomes possible, and not just possible but absolutely necessary to laugh at men who have been raped, and laugh at the idea of men hurting others.

Taking a long hard look at what men do to others because of their sense of entitlement is avoided, because that sense of entitlement is what keeps men in a position of power. Society stops short of dealing with the elephant in the room, even to the extent of the sort of denial and mental gynmastics involved in turning brutal rape of men themselves into a joke.

Criminalising rape within marriage was a major step in chipping away at the idea of male entitlement, and it only happened during my lifetime. We are really only at the beginning of our journey towards being accepted as equal.

then why don't those "warm buxom friendly 50yo women" give their handjobs for free ?

if they wanted to, they would

Yes YRC, I do.

It really is as simple as that, for me.

Of course in individual circumstances, there are nuances - but the fact remains, that this man feels that he is entitled to use a female who would not allow him to use her body if he didn't pay her money. If she was prepared to do it for free, it would be a completely different relationship.

There is not much talk about disabled women who hire well-oiled young escorts to go down on them because they want human contact is there. I guess that's because women don't feel they are entitled to expect a man to sexually service them for money.

Matha yes about male rape.

Thanks for that post, it's clarified something for me.

but why aren't they free to charge for it too? Their time, their bodies.

I wont try to compare it to doing any other job or activity for free when it could earn money, but where is the line drawn about what is an acceptable activity for a woman to do for money if it can be shown that other women elsewhere are damaged by similar activities/jobs?

Is it because it's sex per se, is it so totally wrapped up in the other experiences of women that it cannot be allowed/excused as a cash transaction?

No exclusions, no excuses?

that's right, buck

IMO, there are no excuses for men paying women to perform services who otherwise wouldn't (same for the other way around, before you ask)

Better close Tesco right now, then.

And again, let's pretend working at a till in Tesco is the same as being penetrated by someone else you don't want penetrating you.

Look, if men sold their services at the same rate as women did, if there were no inequality, no rape, no 90% of the earth's property being owned by men, it wouldn't be an issue.

But we live in the real world, where violence against women is a real, everyday fact of life and where our bodily integrity is constantly under attack.

That is the context of prostitution. It cannot be separated from the society, culture and history that it comes from.

I didn't say it was the same. I said it was a service that wouldn't be provided without pay.

The ideas that women really want men penetrating them for money and it's no different from any other job are (1) mutually exclusive and (2) so obviously rationalisations created by the male imagination it really surprises me that women buy it.

I mean come on -- how do you explain 'the girlfriend experience'?

But plenty of women DO do it for free. And plenty of people go to jobs that they would not otherwise do for money.

I have sex for free. I would not go to my civil service job if they did not pay me.

Right

So how do we get from me being happy with those 2 statements to "I only have sex for money and wouldn't do it if they didn't pay me" being essentially the same thing?

Sex work is incomparable with any other type of work because no other work involves exchange of bodily fluid and regular violence as a hazard of the job. Or additional payment for exposing yourself to life threatening/limiting illnesses. Or the majority of the workforce being victims or incest/domestic abuse/rape/psycological damage.