Suspicious DH wants to (or has?) visited a prostitute??!

[crossupton]

Question: I have become suspicious that DH may have visited a prostitute but have no proof and am now wondering if I'm just being paranoid?

Background
---

Family life: Have been married to DH for almost 5 years and have a DS who is nearly 4 years old. Very happy family life and we all get along very well with each other and our extended families.

Communication: DH and I are able to talk about everything. I don't even mind him watching porn and have watched the more sensual material with him. I think I'm very liberal and when he's away on extended trips I am fine with him self-pleasuring (sorry if that's too explicit?).

Sex life: Very good though maybe not as active or adventuress as it once was but I think that's normal as time goes on. We have very compatible sex drives and are well suited.

DH was away at a conference (does this often as he's an academic) and phoned me quite excitedly to tell me that a woman had tried to flirt with him at the hotel bar. His ego was inflated and we both had a little laugh about his attractiveness (all good natured).

Then about an hour later he phoned me up to say his colleague had told him that the woman flirting with him was actually a prostitute. He sounded both embarrassed and proud at the same time in the sense that he must look like he has a lot of money. Anyway, we both had a laugh about it.

Fast forward a few weeks and I'm on his laptop to quickly check my email but when I open it, it opens to the last page he browsed, which was a pornographic video called "Tonight's Girlfriend" which is about about a prostitute visiting a man in his hotel room.

I asked him about it and he said that ever since he'd met a real life one he'd started looking a videos for that sort of scenario. He was very open about it. We then, very casually, started talking about fantasies, and he asked me if one time I'd be wiling to role-play a prostitute for him.

Before his encounter at the hotel, I would've thought nothing of it and done it but now it's like he wants me to be the woman he met? I asked if he had ever visited a prostitute and he said that he had not but that when we was single he had thought about it. He has worked on a national sex project and says that he is referring only to those who consent, not the ones who are forced against their will to do it.

He then tells me that he has friends who've visited prostitutes but he wouldn't say who claiming that was not his secret to reveal. I asked if they were married friends and he said some were. I was a bit shocked because I know all his friends and all of them are good guys as far as I can tell.

And now I'm thinking that if he has friends who have visited prositiutes, and he's watching porn about it, and fantasing about it, does that mean that he has in the past, or wants to in the future, visit them?

I've put all this to him and he says I'm being paranoid and that if he was going to cheat he wouldn't be so open about it now would he? He has said that as it's worrying me that he wouldn't ask me to do the role-play and that he'd do his best to stop looking at that type of porn too but would let me know if he did.

He has twice told me that he has looked at that porn since but that he is trying to stop. He says he has no wish to ever cheat on me.

Sorry that this post is so long, I just wish I could stop thinking about this... maybe if he was being secretive I would feel less guilty about my suspicions but he's just so open about everything with me, it makes me feel silly.

[GarlicLeGrenouille]

When I made my living selling stuff (a media service), the occasional client would assume the right to have sex with me. One or two of them made it a condition of my getting the business. So I didn't take their business. There were plenty of bosses who would encourage, even threaten, sales execs to go along with this type of thing.

I used to deflect these arguments by saying that, if I was going to screw for money, I'd want cash not commission. My bosses understood I was saying "I sell media, not my body," but in fact the commission I gave up would have been more than an escort's rate.

When a boss insists a saleswoman puts out for clients, on pain of losing her job, is the boss behaving unethically? Is the client who requires it unethical?

If so, how are they more unethical than the punter who pays directly for the sex? He's only cutting out the middleman, isn't he?

[SauceForTheGander]

I'm not a troll. Report me if that's what you think.

[crossupton]

@SauceForTheGander: As I have mentioned before, I was a police officer and have dealt first hand with sex workers in a variety of different situations. I have attended and talked with various local and national sex worker organisations and initiatives. I am educated on the subject and none of this is hypothetical to me.

I don't understand the trolling here. I have very politely asked for the off-topic discussion to be taken to a new thread where it will be both on topic and encourage debate.

Yes, I would like this thread to stay on topic but am fast loosing hope.

[Offred]

I think it's a separate issue because you problem is crossing an infidelity boundary not crossing an integrity boundary isn't it?

[Offred]

Cross - sorry I do accept it is a little irrelevant to the resolution of your problem if dh and you do share the same views on sex workers and they are different to mine.

It is just hard not to respond! I should be working on an assignment anyway!

[SauceForTheGander]

Go on then - don't educate yourselves about the reality so you can get your kicks.

[crossupton]

@SauceForTheGander: This is irrelevant given that DH and I have the same views on sex-workers.

[Offred]

It's not the sex or that it is seedy to me. I have no objection to casual sex or one night stands etc. I don't think sex is seedy generally. It is the damage done to consent in terms of society and the individuals (workers and users) that is bad.

[Offred]

On a personal level I think that is a valid choice based on logical arguments and the reality of capitalism, for a lot of individual sex workers. It doesn't mean they are not being exploited by society or by the men who are paying for sex though.

I think a lot of workers are exploited under capitalism but exploitation of someone's body and sexual autonomy is worse than exploiting their labour. I think it has worse consequences for the women involved in the long term too.

[serenshiningstar]

We're not hijacking. For some people, the concept of prostitution is abhorrent and that would influence how they felt in your situation.

Offred, but why is that different to anybody working for a living? This intrigues me, because while I can understand the seedier aspects of prostitution are awful for people, I don't get why people making a choice to work in that particular field upsets others?

Anyway I shall leave it there as crossupton feels Her thread should be only about Her

[SauceForTheGander]

I'm with Serena. You can't ignore the ethics of prostitution in this discussion - or rather you shouldn't.

It's entitled and immature of your DH to get all excited about prostitution.

My DH would go down in my estimation irretrievably if he went on about this.

Perhaps spend some time reading what Rachel Moran has to say about punters & surviving prostitution.

[Offred]

Because sexual consent means you want to do whatever you do just because you want it, without being influenced or forced.

The money is an influence, sometimes represents force if the sex worker has to eat/pay rent. You may be thinking about what you'd be prepared to do in return for the money and what you can buy with it rather than what you want to do.

[crossupton]

@serenshiningstar: This is however off-topic. Surely it would be more productive to discuss the ethics of prostitution is a dedicated thread as opposed to hijacking this one.

[serenshiningstar]

I genuinely don't understand why the latter wouldn't be giving consent, though? Sorry!

Crossupton, sorry but I don't think you're in charge of the thread because you started it.

[Offred]

Not even that necessarily, they may not or they might, just that that is not the choice they are making; "what sexual activity do I want with this person" is a consent decision, "what sexual activity am I prepared to provide and how much should this cost" is not a consent decision. They are both choices and it is true that sometimes taking the money out of the equation a sex worker may have wanted to do exactly the same as what she did for money, but that is a coincidence, it is not usually the basis for the decision.

[crossupton]

@Offred: Please take this to another thread as it is off-topic here given that DH and I have the same views on this matter. It is an interesting debate I grant and even though I disagree with your point of view, I don't see it's relevance in this thread. I mean that in the nicest way possible :)

[Offred]

they aren't consenting to sex when* working as an escort

[serenshiningstar]

I think I see what you mean Offred, although you're probably right insofar as I'm not sure what you mean about consent, but do you mean they wouldn't consent to doing it if money wasn't involved?

[Offred]

They do what they are ok with in the context of them having agreed to provide a sexual service. I'm not arguing that they cannot exercise choice or have no control. I'm arguing that they are exercising choices but within the context of a monetary transaction and work which provides them their income. That this is not the same as consent and that the choices about what the worker will do will be influenced by that fact it is work.

[Offred]

They aren't consenting to sex working as an escort, they are choosing to do sex work. It might seem like a very subtle difference (or some might not see a difference at all) but I think it is a massive one. I think people who don't see a difference maybe don't really understand sexual consent which is why I think it is a problematic view.

[crossupton]

@Offred: I disagree, they say they will exchange a sexual service (not necessarily sex) in exchange for money but only on their terms. They therefore stay in control at all times and only do what they are OK with. Anyway, I think this discussion would be more appropriate in a different thread.

[Offred]

No it isn't that it is because you don't know what the client wants it is because you are being paid for a service which means your ability to consent is influenced by the exchange of money, which means it is not a free consent.

Same as in any job, you do what is required with you (within reason) even though it often crosses your boundaries of what you'd be prepared to do if you weren't being paid and you perhaps only challenge it if it is really, really bad.

It's a dangerous thing to extrapolate more widely to society that choice equals no exploitation anyway even without the consent issue, which to me makes sex work always exploitative.

To say that choice to do something means a person cannot be being exploited means you risk ignoring abusive relationships, including abusive intimate partners and abusive employers, and placing the blame/responsibility on the victim of the abuse for choosing to enter the relationship. You may give license to exploiters to do whatever they want to someone who has chosen to give some power to them.

It is possible to recognise and respect a person who has made a choice to enter the sex industry whilst condemning the sex industry as exploitative. I think what people have a problem with is seeing women who feel protective of their personal choice and who are strong and articulate and don't fit a stereotype of a cowed trafficked slave, talking about their choice in an empowered way. They struggle to deal with the clever, articulate and respectable woman in front of them and how that matches with their views of what exploitation is. They ultimately conclude that someone like her, with such empowerment as an individual and such a good personal argument about why it is worth it for her, couldn't be being exploited.

Yes, choosing to sell sex economically empowers some women because it gives them access to money they would not otherwise have had. But they sell their right to sexual empowerment/autonomy. Economic empowerment does not mean the industry is not exploitative or that it is objectively empowering or widely empowering in terms of society or women's position in society.

We're all being exploited for profit in any work we do given we live in a capitalist economy. I think exploiting someone's sexual autonomy is even worse.

[serenshiningstar]

That wold be fair enough if someone (say) worked as a receptionist in a massage parlour and was forced to participate but if someone is working as an escort they are consenting to sex, and if they don't want to, they really don't have to: it might not go down well, and most wouldn't as its money, but they could, they do have that choice.

[Offred]

I know. I'm saying they are choosing to work in the sex industry not giving effective consent to sex, which is what I find problematic.

[crossupton]

Correction: Ok, maybe not all pimps think of trafficking as wrong. I was just thinking of the ones I've encountered and then I thought of a seminar I went to with the stories about one woman pimp who had no problem with it. Shouldn't have generalised there.