The reasons why many men pay for sex are revealed in the interviews that make up a major new piece of researchBut another of the interviewees left me feeling concerned. Darren was young, good-looking and bright; I asked him how often he thought the women he paid enjoyed the sex. “I don’t want them to get any pleasure,” he told me. “I am paying for it and it is her job to give me pleasure. If she enjoys it I would feel cheated.” I asked if he felt prostitutes were different to other women. “The fact that they’re prepared to do that job where others won’t, even when they’re skint, means there’s some capability inside them that permits them to do it and not be disgusted,” he said. He seemed full of a festering, potentially explosive misogyny.
When asked what would end prostitution, one interviewee laughed and said, “Kill all the girls.” Paul told me that it would take “all the men to be locked up”. But most of them told the researchers that they would be easily deterred if the current laws were implemented. Fines, public exposure, employers being informed, being issued with an Asbo or the risk of a criminal record would stop most of the men from continuing to pay for sex. Discovering the women were trafficked, pimped or otherwise coerced would appear not to be so effective. Almost half said they believed that most women in prostitution are victims of pimps (“the pimp does the psychological raping of the woman,” explained one). But they still continued to visit them.
This is the reason that people focus on the “agency” of prostitutes rather than the actions of men. This is the ugliness they don’t want you to see. Nobody wants you to ask why men pay women for sex, because the answer is frightening. So instead, they force us to keep asking why women become prostitutes. Men’s anonymity and freedom from judgement in this situation is the real problem, not women’s choices. Open your eyes, name the problem. Men hate women.
Why men use prostitutes
Published
Celtyradfem 