What kind of men use prostitutes?

[Snugglepalace]

Dh has an outside job which involves spending time on various roads within towns and villages.
A couple of weeks ago he was working on a street in our local town. An everyday street with semi detached homes.
After a day or so Dh and his work colleagues noticed one particular house had a lot of 'visitors'. All the visitors were well dressed men arriving in nice cars. It averaged around 4 men per hour!
At lunchtime a car pulled up (the driver had pizzas) and the door was opened,there was an older woman in the hallway and several younger looking women loitering in the hallway also.

Dh and workmates are convinced it was a brothel. Over the weeks that they were working there they would glare at the men going in and said some of them looked very embarrassed once they realised they had been noticed, one even parked in a nearby supermarket and tried to get in the back way.
I know these things go on but what got me was the thought that surely, several, if not most of these men must have (oblivious?!) partners etc.

Sex as a transaction is problematic. Sex as a gift, freely and mutually given isn't. Those involved give and get qualitatively similar outcomes.

So swapping sex for money, security, intimacy or affection are all problematic to an extent, just to different degrees. Some of those things are ok if they are a minor part of the overall relationship, but only if it's a genuinely two way street- I.e. Both partners enjoy the intimacy and affection involved in sex, rather than one person craving affection and the other craving sex. Two people giving sex out of love, affection, friendship, respect etc- less potential for problems, less potential for hurt.

People see a variety of things as exploitative when both/all partners aren't responding in kind. The important bit here is responding in kind, rather than swapping/trading/transacting. It's fundamentally an act that is not about not about entitlement or contracts, but about free choice at the moment of choice.

For example, A regularly has sex with B. B is in love with A. A is not in love with B, and knows they won't fall in love with B, but it's a convenient way to get regular sex. Many people would see the asymmetry in that situation as problematic.

A and B regularly have sex. They aren't in love but enjoy sex with one another. Many people don't have a problem with that because it is symmetrical. As soon as it might become asymmetrical it becomes more problematic. And it often does e.g. one of the friends in a FWB situation falls for the other and suddenly something fun becomes hurtful and problematic. Many people don't believe in FWB just because there is a chance that it can become asymmetrical.

People speak about the emotional strain having sex purely to conceive can bring if it feels forced or artificial. This demonstrates how it can be difficult to have sex for any reason other than enthusiasm for sex with that person at that moment, however shared or pleasant the end goal might be.

Men who have sex with protitutes are men who don't mind exploiting other people. Being exploitative is not a good character trait in most people's eyes.

And people who freely and knowingly choose to enter into sexual relations with people who are in marriages/relationships- also not a good trait in many people's eyes.

I'm trying to get straight in my head about what difference prostitution makes. OK, for women forced into it by addiction or straight kidnap, obviously bad thing, goes without saying. But I don't think it's necessarily damaging for everyone, surely you have to accept some women are happy to work in it like Brazen and Queen, say. I'm not convinced you can't buy consent either, why not? There's lots of reasons for wanting to sh*g someone, and I'm not sure them giving you a big pile of money is any worse than any other. I've certainly had jobs I've hated, theactual worst were not manual ones but ones where I had to use my brain to think about things I really didn't want to think - not bad things, but boring, repetitive. I used to think prostitution was better, because the need to earn a living would only put an unwanted thing in my body and not my brain.
What I don't like about prostitution/pornography/much of working life is that the people at the party are men and younger women. Men, who get to use their buying power to look at/touch/fuck bodies they wouldn't otherwise get to. Young women, who get more money that they otherwise would. It's about what's good for them. Older women, and kids, - nah, forget it. As per.
So, is it better for anybody to live in a society like that, where a lot of the love and resources are not going to mothers (generally older women) and their children, but to men and young women. I think this damages children because it damages relations between their parents and diverts resources. What I'm not sure about is, do I just think that because I'm a now ancient woman? Or is there a type of society which would just be ideal for men, and one that would be ideal for women - can they be the same one?

What kind of men use prostitutes? Well, shadowy ones because ime they are not keen on identifying themselves! Two have relatively believably told me they haven't, one because he said he was too embarrassed to and the other because- even if he thought it was OK which he said he didn't - he didn't like the thought that they might show they didn't fancy him.

Hmm, of course it's not better for anyone to live in a society where most of the love and resources goes to men and young women. Who won't have 'earned' it by contributing as much as those older women (and presumably men who do not feel 'entitled' to sexual gratification at a cost).
I imagine an ideal society for women would be one in which everyone were treated with dignity and respect, this should be the same for men but from this thread it appears many men would not find this ideal at all.

Oh, and I'm not an ancient woman commenting

Bumdiebum, the unwanted things in my brain I got from enduring and being a sort of paid-sponge soaking up all the attitudes of clients and their desire to pick me apart and demean me , those unwanted things took longer to go away than the physical

Bumdie every time you think to yourself 'prositution is ok, really...' Read this ^^

It's not civilised and it's not feminist. It's vile and demeaning in every way possible.

havesome thanks for posting. Very refreshing to have an honest view of the job. I hope things work out for you
I'm very depressed that we have a society where thats the only option for women and yet we have to pretend they love it! Fuck that

I don't think prostitution diverts resources and love away from older women and children.

It is simply one way an entitled man may choose to spend 'his' money.

Male entitlement to jobs, status, work, money etc is the issue.

bumdie

The way that I came to understand that it is not consent in the true format, was when I read an analogy that went like this;

If a woman is approached by a man and asked for sex, and she says no, she has not given her consent. If he then produces a gun and holds it to her head, and asks again, and she says yes, is that consent?

If you swap the gun for money and have 2 half starving dc's in the background, is that consent?

In both cases she hasn't consented to have sex with you of her own violation. She has consented, with an element of force/coercion/zero choice.

have I'm so sorry that you endured any of that.

offred you are strong. I've been here a long time and read many of your wise, articulate posts. I hope that you do not get to the point that that is your only option. Best wishes.

Thanks for that analogy, sass

Iirc there is evidence from Germany, where prostitution is legalised, that incidence a of sexual assault and rape increase in the area around brothels etc.

So even if you think that namalts would have a horrible view of women whatever, and prostitution has nothing to do with cultivating it, the fact is that people aren't just making private choices that have nothing to do with anyone else. Actually, the activity of prostitution puts all women and girls in danger, from punters and their ilk. Have you walked through a red light district? They are manifestly hostile areas to walk through as a woman.

So actually, I don't think people should be free to make all their choosey choices when those choices mean that me and my daughter are subject to hostility, harassment and an increased risk of sexual assault because of them.

Also wrt the ides that this will always happen and oldest profession bullshit. Prostitution depends on economic and structural inequality. It's completely conceivable that it won't happen, under conditions of social equality. How many posh boys with family money are sucking dick for a living? That tells us everything we need to know about the role of class and economics in this.

Well yes that's one of the failings of legalising sex work. It increases the danger to women by legally sanctioning the entitlement. It acts as a cover for trafficking, which increases, the sex workers themselves have not benefitted from the postulated theory that they will get 'better legal protection'...

Trouble is once legalised governments have a financial interest in looking the other way re the increased problems as the country becomes a sex tourism destination and sex work becomes a contributer to GDP in a way it wasn't before.

". It's completely conceivable that it won't happen, under conditions of social equality. How many posh boys with family money are sucking dick for a living? That tells us everything we need to know about the role of class and economics in this."

Yes.

I've read the full thread and agree with most re: the happy hookers do not represent the majority and seem to speak over them in an "but i'm alright" sense. I also agree that the most privileged end of the wedge should not be the one doing the influencing re: policymaking.

I wanted to contribute what I know about a guy who used to use prostitutes regularly. I know him well. The study posted on the first few pages describes him perfectly. His first sexual experience was at 16. He is not from the UK, but a country in Europe with a comparatively pretty shoddy view of women. He was "in the care of" (as much as you can be at 16) an adult (think camp counsellor, sports coach etc) who thought it was time for him to lose his virginity and had bought him a prostitute. The adult told him his parents consented to this all happening, and so he used the prostitute. All very sleazy and not at all okay to my mind. Since then his experiences were mostly with prostitutes, a few other women also.

He mostly explained his use of prostitutes by saying that his country glamorised this at the top level - drug use, buying many young beautiful women and cultivating this rich playboy image was the epitome of masculine success (guess which European country...), his low self esteem and self image meant that conquest (albeit with escorts) made him feel powerful and assauged his low self image. This coupled with drug abuse, using porn and intrusive sexual thoughts meant he frequented sex workers more and more and more, despite being in a relationship. It was about conquest, filling some kind of emptiness. (In his mind) and being able to tick off categories of women like a to do list

To my mind, it was about the following things

1. he had a fetishised, objectified view of women - especially racially. Women were porn categories, submissive asian, dominant bbw, and ticking off all these categories made him feel powerful, masculine. In fact it didn't satisfy him apparently and made him feel grubby, but for whatever reason he didn't stop. But the idea was that all this sex with all these women was meant to fulfil him, so he kept going. I don't know, like heroin.

2. he had a skewed view of sex from porn, society and his early experiences. Ideas about rape and sex in general were from decades ago. Not surprisingly since most of the men I met from this country had some shockingly chauvinistic, misogynistic things to say.

3. he had a belief/delusion that his youth maybe meant that these women wanted him and preferred him over older less attractive men. He didn't think payment was coercive, or the women he (indiscriminately) bought were underage or trafficked.

4. despite being in a relationship, he felt like he still needed to have sex with a lot of different women, and rather than it being about individal women and intimate experience, it was about curiosities, fetishes and labels.

Make of it what you will. I find it pretty hard to respect and quite scummy and deluded. And naive, and misguided. I feel like the exhaustive efforts of women (myself included) around him to teach respect and understand the grossness of this mindset had less of an effect on him stopping using prostitutes, and the larger effect was about the costs it was bringing to his life. His view on women still seems to be skewed but less so.

He is a perfectly charming and outgoing man. Not outwardly sleazy, alpha or laddish. He's under 30 and attractive. In the end there's no specific type of man - it's entirely based on their view on women and sex.

So perhaps the type of man is "misogynists".

I'm a man who pays for sex on a regular enough basis. I had a scroll through this, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions.

1. Not all men who pay for sex are married. I'm single. The men OP described may also be single.
2. Men who pay for sex generally don't see it as being degrading, and degradation/humiliation generally isn't a turn on for men. We just view it as intimacy with another person.
3. Men who pay for sex don't believe they are "entitled" to it. The word "entitled" would suggest that men are owed sex in some way, so then the encounter would be on the client's terms alone... when in fact, this isn't the case, because everything that happens is completely on the sex worker's terms. The sex worker dictates the price for the session, she decides what services are provided, she can refuse services, and she can end the session. So it's the opposite of entitlement!
4. Sex work is dangerous for sex workers, but it can also be dangerous for clients. There are countless stories of clients being beaten up and forced to surrender large sums of money.
5. Sex work doesn't happen because of sexism. About a third of sex workers are men. If I was gay (and my circumstances were generally the same as they are now), then I would definitely be paying men for sex instead. If this was an issue of sexism, then you wouldn't see so many men paying other men for sex; the only reason why demand for women is higher is because 90%+ of men are heterosexual.
6. Almost all sex workers insist on condoms, so the risk of STIs is very low.

Most importantly, I think sex workers and their clients should be left in peace. I have very strong liberal perspectives, so I believe that the state has no place in the bedroom, and that private actions between adults are private. Some European countries have vast numbers of brothels, and to my knowledge, it's not depriving women of relationships in those places. So really, it's mostly harmless.

I'm a man who pays for sex on a regular enough basis. I had a scroll through this, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions.

1. Not all men who pay for sex are married. I'm single. The men OP described may also be single.
2. Men who pay for sex generally don't see it as being degrading, and degradation/humiliation generally isn't a turn on for men. We just view it as intimacy with another person.
3. Men who pay for sex don't believe they are "entitled" to it. The word "entitled" would suggest that men are owed sex in some way, so then the encounter would be on the client's terms alone... when in fact, this isn't the case, because everything that happens is completely on the sex worker's terms. The sex worker dictates the price for the session, she decides what services are provided, she can refuse services, and she can end the session. So it's the opposite of entitlement!
4. Sex work is dangerous for sex workers, but it can also be dangerous for clients. There are countless stories of clients being beaten up and forced to surrender large sums of money.
5. Sex work doesn't happen because of sexism. About a third of sex workers are men. If I was gay (and my circumstances were generally the same as they are now), then I would definitely be paying men for sex instead. If this was an issue of sexism, then you wouldn't see so many men paying other men for sex; the only reason why demand for women is higher is because 90%+ of men are heterosexual.
6. Almost all sex workers insist on condoms, so the risk of STIs is very low.

Most importantly, I think sex workers and their clients should be left in peace. I have very strong liberal perspectives, so I believe that the state has no place in the bedroom, and that private actions between adults are private. Some European countries have vast numbers of brothels, and to my knowledge, it's not depriving women of relationships in those places. So really, it's mostly harmless.

I'm a man who pays for sex on a regular enough basis. I had a scroll through this, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions.

1. Not all men who pay for sex are married. I'm single. The men OP described may also be single.
2. Men who pay for sex generally don't see it as being degrading, and degradation/humiliation generally isn't a turn on for men. We just view it as intimacy with another person.
3. Men who pay for sex don't believe they are "entitled" to it. The word "entitled" would suggest that men are owed sex in some way, so then the encounter would be on the client's terms alone... when in fact, this isn't the case, because everything that happens is completely on the sex worker's terms. The sex worker dictates the price for the session, she decides what services are provided, she can refuse services, and she can end the session. So it's the opposite of entitlement!
4. Sex work is dangerous for sex workers, but it can also be dangerous for clients. There are countless stories of clients being beaten up and forced to surrender large sums of money.
5. Sex work doesn't happen because of sexism. About a third of sex workers are men. If I was gay (and my circumstances were generally the same as they are now), then I would definitely be paying men for sex instead. If this was an issue of sexism, then you wouldn't see so many men paying other men for sex; the only reason why demand for women is higher is because 90%+ of men are heterosexual.
6. Almost all sex workers insist on condoms, so the risk of STIs is very low.

Most importantly, I think sex workers and their clients should be left in peace. I have very strong liberal perspectives, so I believe that the state has no place in the bedroom, and that private actions between adults are private. Some European countries have vast numbers of brothels, and to my knowledge, it's not depriving women of relationships in those places. So really, it's mostly harmless.

I'm a man who pays for sex on a regular enough basis. I had a scroll through this, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions.

1. Not all men who pay for sex are married. I'm single. The men OP described may also be single.
2. Men who pay for sex generally don't see it as being degrading, and degradation/humiliation generally isn't a turn on for men. We just view it as intimacy with another person.
3. Men who pay for sex don't believe they are "entitled" to it. The word "entitled" would suggest that men are owed sex in some way, so then the encounter would be on the client's terms alone... when in fact, this isn't the case, because everything that happens is completely on the sex worker's terms. The sex worker dictates the price for the session, she decides what services are provided, she can refuse services, and she can end the session. So it's the opposite of entitlement!
4. Sex work is dangerous for sex workers, but it can also be dangerous for clients. There are countless stories of clients being beaten up and forced to surrender large sums of money.
5. Sex work doesn't happen because of sexism. About a third of sex workers are men. If I was gay (and my circumstances were generally the same as they are now), then I would definitely be paying men for sex instead. If this was an issue of sexism, then you wouldn't see so many men paying other men for sex; the only reason why demand for women is higher is because 90%+ of men are heterosexual.
6. Almost all sex workers insist on condoms, so the risk of STIs is very low.

Most importantly, I think sex workers and their clients should be left in peace. I have very strong liberal perspectives, so I believe that the state has no place in the bedroom, and that private actions between adults are private. Some European countries have vast numbers of brothels, and to my knowledge, it's not depriving women of relationships in those places. So really, it's mostly harmless.

Apologies for the multiple posts; there was a delay on my browser and it seems to have posted multiple times by mistake.

So, as Fauchelevent says, the type of man is "misogynist" as your self centred post clearly shows.

I've never considered myself a misogynist. The comments were attempting to understand men who pay for sex... and I am a man who pays for sex... so I offered my perspectives. That's not self-centred.

I doubt you're ever going to understand the misogyny in your world view, or the entitled nature of your beliefs.

As previously explained, everything that happens during the session happens on the sex worker's terms, not my terms, The sex worker chooses the price for the session, lists the services she does and doesn't offer, can refuse services to me on a whim, and can end the session whenever she wants. Rather than being entitled, I am merely paying for the privilege.