Prostitutes - Are Women in Denial About Who Uses Them?

[CKDexterHaven]

I've seen some threads on Mumsnet where a woman is concerned about her husband or partner going on an all-male trip to Thailand or Las Vegas or Prague or Amsterdam. As soon as someone raises the issue of prostitution they are shouted down and told they are jumping to conclusions. Is the issue of nice, middle-class husbands using prostitutes something to which women are willingly blind?

There are millions of prostituted women and girls in the world, and, of course, men and boys too. The slow advancements in women's lives in the developed world mean that women in their thousands are trafficked from East to Western Europe, from South to North America, from Africa to Southern Europe and from Asia to Australia and the rest of the world just to meet demand. It stands to reason that there must be a lot more clients than prostitutes. The ratio must be akin to hairdressers and their clients. So where are the men? And who are they?

I've read interviews with exited prostitutes who say most of their clients were 'normal', often married, middle-class men. I've heard prostitutes say the best time to work is not a Friday or Saturday night but first thing on a Monday morning when mid-life crisis guys who hate their jobs treat themselves before going back to work. But in my lifetime I've only ever met two men who've admitted to using prostitutes. One was very drunk and bragged to his friends, the other one was an 'edgy' mature student who thought it wasn't exploitative because the prostitute was older than him and, therefore, somehow in control of the situation. That's it, two men.

When I was growing up in the 80s and early 90s porn was sold in dodgy shops, stripping happened in sleazy men's clubs and prostitution was virtually invisible to anyone who didn't live in a red-light area. Even the most handmaideny of handmaidens I knew felt these things were degrading to men and women. Now that porn is a click away and lap-dancing clubs are in every town centre most women seem to have redefined these things as 'empowering' rather than confront the fact that men they know enjoy dehumanising women who need money. Prostitution is also a lot more visible and, although this has been redefined as an empowering career choice for women, women still seem sensitive to the idea of men they know using prostitutes. Why is this? Is it just the question of tangible cheating or are women not as ok with 'sex work' for women as they say they are?

AF I am more of a lurker on here but do post occasionally. Plus I can't sleep so I'm on here.

Yes there are times when I feel like I want to leave but I still want the laws changed in support of our safety, not to criminalise the clients.

And how many men are going to admit it if they did have sex with a prostituted woman as a young man, and regret it now?

To be practical about it for feminists, I would venture that the small but significant minority of men who do this are the the end of a wedge of male entitlement. And that is certainly something we can make a difference to, in terms of what we will tolerate in our personal relationships, and how we bring up our sons.

None of that means we are responsible for policing it, but if you don't want to be a bystander, I think that as women, that is how we can make a difference if we don't want to feel powerless.

*the thin end of the wedge (correcting typo)

Yes, we have chatted on several occasions before, Migsy

Strangely though, never on "gardening" or "politics" or "the litter tray" or "baby names" or "style and beauty" or any other of the delights that MN can offer on a sleepless night

did someone alert you to this this thread, Migsy and if they did would you admit to it ?

Migsy, are you by any chance the "sex worker" who wrote that blog post about not enjoying "sex work", but being involved in "sex work" organisations? If memory serves me right the Sex Workers Open University?

Not sure about this comment:

but I am also certain that migsy has been on other threads, isn't in a great situation and would like to exit.

There is also another poster with quite a similar name (who has a "sex worker" blog elsewhere) and just comes onto any thread of this topic to shout at us.

Back to the OP, it never ceases to amaze me that in a industry that is completely driven by male demand, men are so frequently rendered invisible.

Men using prostitution is so often painted as the fault of wives/partners, violence against prostituted women is somehow the fault of feminists, now according to the OP, women are now somehow in denial of men using prostitutes - as if these poor, sorry, men are obviously in need and somehow neglected and ignored by women.

No I've never heard of the sex workers open university. But I'm off to have a Google now.

I just post on subjects I feel passionately about and gardening isn't one of them.

And I've never been shouty or mega pro prostitution, in every thread I've just told the truth and reiterated the need for more safety in the industry.

migsymoo - You would be better linking in with SPACE International and Rachel Moran.

I have also been on other threads/sites discussing the kind of extreme porn that has now become mainstream. I've been listening to people like Gail Dines and Catherine MacKinnon who've done the research on how this kind of porn is now the most downloaded and viewed kind of porn but if you say this to the women defending porn and calling it harmless you get completely shouted down. Even though the industry websites themselves show that extreme porn is now the mainstream you get told that it is niche, a minority interest, not really representative of porn and definitely not the sort that my nice Nigel watches. Gail Dines demonstrates that there is a difference in the kind of hardcore porn men watch with their partners and the porn they watch on their own. But is it cognitive dissonance again? If women don't think nice Nigels are watching it, who do they think is watching it? I'm really tired of being told by other women that this kind of porn is rare and only viewed by weirdos.

Wow, cranking it up now, aren't you?

No, I definitely don't think men use prostitutes because they are neglected or ignored by other women. I think men who use prostitutes are rapists with wallets instead of knives. I think it is a hate thing rather than a sex thing. I just think that women have massive, massive cognitive dissonance about the numbers of men and the kinds of men using prostitutes.

If you want to challenge the idea of men going on stag parties to use prostitutes in Thailand or Prague you get accused of making massive, nasty assumptions about men who go to these places. In the same way, if you want to argue against porn you get shouted down for even suggesting that 'everyday' men watch the stuff which is basically extreme filmed abuse because the nice men we know would never watch that kind of stuff, even though the figures would suggest otherwise.

BOFSter

So you think gonzo porn isn't watched by nice Nigels and really is niche and marginal and atypical? If men don't watch this stuff why is there a huge market for it and why is that market being pushed into becoming more and more extreme? Is it possible that a product only consumed by a fringe element of men would become the mainstream in the market and the top-selling products would only be bought by an group of outliers?

And isn't this the reason why writers such as Gail Dines and Andrea Dworkin are routinely vilified even among feminists because they force women to look at uncomfortable truths about men?

What is 'extreme' or unextreme porn?

Honestly, neither most anecdotal experience (which you can take or leave as authentic-yet-dismissed testimony of women it affects, or decide to go for the Not-My-Nigel stuff and disbelieve), nor any of the research which attempts to be objective, which supports your view that THEY ARE EVERYWHERE AMONG US.

They might be hard to spot, and they might not be wearing dirty macs, but a) if you sincerely believe your significant other would have no truck with this stuff, or b) you had no idea but subsequently found out you misjudged the guy, it is nobody's fault but the man's who does it.

There is nothing kind or genuinely supportive of women to attempt to command that they mistrust their own judgement, or blame them if they get it wrong. It's pure scaremongering, and pretty disrespectful.

In the case of porn I think it is pretty common. In the case of prostitution I don't think they are 'everywhere among us' but I think it is a lot, lot more common than we imagine. I'm not trying to scaremonger but I'm just tired of the pro-porn people arguing 'That kind of porn is really rare. You're wrong to frame your argument around the kind of porn that only a few men want to watch', when it is now the mainstream. In the same way I don't think we can do anything to challenge prostitution without accepting how normalised it has become and it isn't some fringe activity taboo to all but a few men.

This thread has helped me clarify something in my mind. The odds are we all know men maybe family members, maybe colleagues, neighbours, friends, who have used prostitutes, but if we even raise this idea, even in the abstract without naming specific men, other women turn on us and shut us down. We must never speak of it. Even feminists must never speak of it. Women silence each other on this issue and that is part of how the men stay invisible.

But I don't think men do routinely participate in prostitution: it is a fringe activity.

The porn thing is a fair way down the scale, I'd say, and while I'd agree that more extreme stuff has been mainstreamed (and I find that worrying and disturbing), I still think that the blokes of my generation in healthy respectful relationships would find the leap from their memories of wanking to the lingerie section of the Littlewoods catalogue to 'Anal Cumsluts Go Wild' to be a bridge too far, and it's not really likely that a bloke who has long grown out of a habit of furtive masturbation will suddenly take up that sort of internet entertainment, any more than he'd be likely to start swapping Minecraft codes.

So much as I dislike the proliferation of misogynistic internet pornography, I still don't assume it's a given that mature men I'd give the time of day are racking up their credit cards in an obsessive fit of priapism. It just isn't the case.

This seems a really odd board to be having this argument on because I would very much suspect that it is those that regularly post on this board that are also the ones who are suggesting that 'Nigel' and his gang jetting off to Thailand or getting drunk in Amsterdam are quite possibly going to be up to rather more than might be suspected.

None the less plenty of people visit Amsterdam because it is a fun place to visit (I enjoyed a few days there with dh, dd and ds and the red light district wasn't on any of our itineraries) and most men do not regularly abuse prostitutes or watch violent porn. Growing numbers do, and that's a big problem, but that doesn't mean every man should be considered an abusive shit.

Of course there are 'nice' men who do horrible things, including rape and abuse women, they are just very good at hiding that side of themselves. It's not because women are somehow colluding or deluding themselves, it's because they are very good at hiding that side of themselves because generally it's not socially acceptable to broadcast that you are a misogynist, abusive shit.

That's the nub of it, nooka.

"Women silence each other on this issue and that is part of how the men stay invisible."

So just by disagreeing with you on a forum, I am somehow subjugating women? Don't think so.

Denial? Not sure. AFAIK in most of the western world 5% of men at least once in the last month, another 5% in the last year and up to another 10% at least once during their lifetime (made up of 5% who have already done so and an assumption that a further 5% will do so some time in their future). Cant google up a ref though, lies damn lies and statistics and all that, its just figures that seemed to gel for me through doing a lot of reading and it would probably vary between countries quite a good deal.

So are you suggesting that because my dh went to Las Vegas recently, he used prostitutes?

Because you couldn't be more wrong.

I know men do use prostitutes, but your op seems to imply that men holiday-ing alone, or with male friends, to any of those cities must be doing it for the prostitution.

Quite a huge generalisation.

perhaps what makes it a touchy subject is that posts worded like your seems to imply that every man uses them at any opportunity.