Why do men use prostitutes?

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
[b]I don't think that is a very useful comment Fidel.[/b]

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Why is that, in your expert opinion? And it's not a comment, it's a question. I think sometimes more than one question is required in a thorough treatment of a topic worthy of discussion. It's like asking why do men die of a certain affliction at higher rates in Northern Ontario than anywhere else in the province? Is it just men, or are women affected similarly? And if not, then why not? "Prostitutes" always have a gender and a socioeconomic status and a personal background among a wide range of other attributes and life experiences. I'm not interested in why people desire and seek out sex. I know all about the birds and bees long time now.

Dana Larsen asked: "Consider a man who pays a sex-trade worker to dominate him and sexually humiliate him, but with no actual sexual contact. Does this count as a "man who uses prostitutes"? Do you think the reasons this person would hire a prostitute are the same or different as a man who hires a sex-trade worker for a different kind of experience? What about a man who hires a prostitute to dominate him and use a strap-on to penetrate him and give him sexual pleasure that way? Is he also "using a prostitute" in the same sense as a man who hires a prostitute for a more conventional sexual experience?"

Of course it is and he does. The buyer of "sexual services" gets to define scenarios and uses the person he prostitutes whichever way he has money to pay for.
Carol Pateman, author of [b]The Sexual Contract[/b] and an advocate of Guaranteed Income, points out the significant proportion of clients who ask women to masturbate them, something almost all of them could do themselves. She concludes that it is not "sexual services" that clients seek but "the sexual use of a woman for a given period. If not, why would they enter the market and pay for hand relief?"

There may be mental issues involved for some buyers of S-M scenarios, but in fact, a number of formerly prostituted women have described most buyers of these arrangements as men of power (e.g. cops, politicians) whose thrill was to vicariously experience of how (their) power impacts others. These women often said they felt dragged down to these men’s levels of cynicism by being thus manipulated into a position of pseudo-power.

Dana also writes: "I think a broader perspective would reveal that people hire sex-trade workers for a wide variety of reasons. I agree that some people who hire prostitutes are people who hate women and seek to degrade and harm them."

One can look at the feelings and intentions of the people who use women in prostitution (which include no only johns, but also pimps, parlour/agency owners, traffickers, indirect profiteers – hotel owners, advertisers, credit card empires -, politicians and industry lackeys in general) – a necessarily self-centered perspective.

But personal psychology, biases and intentionality aren’t the only keys to the reasons involved, nor even the main ones IMO. Johns need not explictly have "Cueball"'s caricatural "desire to exploit women" to do so and be understood as doing so.

It seems to me that, as "jas" pointed out, to really answer the thread question, we have to foreground the dynamic and net effect of a [b]system[/b], where most buyers aren’t "perverts" but common well-adjusted participants in an overarching commercial/political machinery (that almost always ensures their impunity).

Is this system misogynist for using women (and feminized men and youths) in this manner? I think we can agree it is.

[ 30 September 2007: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

Yes, another chink in the armour of that "wide spectrum of human behavior."

Men who consume pornography and use prostitutes: normal lusty guys with a healthy sex-drive.

Pedophiles: sick fucks.

Please respond to the above links in a new thread as I have to close this one for length.