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2007-12-17 09:31:27
More and more young men are choosing to visit prostitutes. One writer asks them
why
Clare Spurrell
There are lots of whorehouses in Macau, Tom confided to me under his breath in
a crowded bar in Islington one Thursday night. It was my first time in Hong
Kong and I remember getting a ferry to one of the brothels where there was a
madam and a security guard. On that occasion I didn t have full sex with the
girl, but all my friends did.
Tom was 23 when he jetted out to Hong Kong to visit friends in 2001, but even
then he was no stranger to brothels: it was the fourth time that he had sought
the services of a prostitute. He is the sort of young man of whom most mothers
would approve, a 29-year-old teacher who is good-looking, well educated and
respectful. Yet on his worldwide travels he has paid for sex in several
countries, including Australia, the Netherlands and Thailand.
The stereotypical John who uses prostitutes is a middle-aged, empty soul whom
you might spot slinking around red-light districts in an outsized mac and
stained trousers. The uncomfortable truth, though, is that most men who pay for
sex are just regular guys colleagues, brothers, fathers, sons and lovers.
Volumes of research have been published on trends among sex workers across the
globe studies on drug use, on the spread of STDs, on the impact of
prostitution on society. Yet as a study published in the British Medical
Journal in 2005 pointed out, far less is known about the men who pay for sex .
That study found that the proportion of British men who reported paying for
heterosexual sex had increased from 5.6 per cent in 1990 to 9 per cent in 2000.
Of these, the largest group were in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, living
in London and either single or divorced.
I realised that, as a single woman in her late twenties living in London, I am
surrounded by this demographic. And given that a small but significant
proportion of the men identified in the study were apparently upstanding types
who slept with prostitutes in secret, I decided to see if I could persuade a
few of them to confess.
It took some digging and a fair amount of tongue-loosening lager but I
found that in some cases the kind of man whom I d be happy to take to tea with
my mother was also the type capable of paying for sex.
Meet Sam, a 30-year-old Cambridge-educated business consultant. He is well
spoken, well educated and was brought up a strict Roman Catholic. This did not,
however, prevent him from making his way through the red-light district in
Amsterdam in search of sex.
She wasn t trashy, she was the classic Swedish type, he insists, describing
the woman he chose from one of the windows (I have seen these shop-window women
myself and know that some of them look pretty intimidating). It was such a
strange thing for me to do quite out of character but I wouldn t say that
physically there was much difference from sex with a girlfriend.
It is difficult for a woman to understand what it is that a prostitute can
offer these perfectly attractive men that a free sexual encounter be it a
one-night-stand or in a relationship cannot. In an age when women are more
sexually liberated and strings-free sex is a greater possibility than it ever
was before, why are more and more young men choosing sex with a pro?
Disconcertingly, the men to whom I spoke suggested that lack of any emotional
obligation is one of the most appealing attributes of paying for sex. It s
just a case of getting something out of the way, says Tom, who after his fifth
(and, at the time of writing, final) encounter described how he felt a very
cold reaction, very emotionless you ve lost that pent-up aggression and you
just want to get out of there.
I have felt more guilt after one-nightstands than I have felt after going to a
prostitute, says Sam. As long as prostitution is done in a legal and
consensual way, there is almost more honesty in it than in picking up a girl in
a bar, where you are toying with people s emotions and giving false impressions
in order to get something physical.
In the real world that is, the world where sex stems from boy-meets-girl
rather than boy-pays-girl there are always emotional obligations attached, no
matter how casual the liaison. Neither Sam nor Tom is an emotional vandal, the
sort of man who swaggers blithely through women s lives with a philosophy of
love em and leave em.
They see themselves as the good guys, the ones who don t want to lie, cheat and
make promises that they can t (or won t) keep to have sex. So, with what seems
perverse logic, they sleep with prostitutes instead.
With a prostitute you both know what you re doing it for, says Tom. She s
doing it for the money, you re doing it for sex. I ve had guilty feelings
[after visiting a prostitute] but never the same as I ve had with a one-night
stand.
Only one thing guarantees this understanding: money. When a man visits a
prostitute, the mere act of handing over cash for services removes, in his
mind, all emotional obligations to her.
Money displaces the emotions. It frees you from that bond, that
responsibility, explains Sam. The distance you get from exchanging cash for
sex means that afterwards you don t contemplate the impact on the prostitute.
It is that distance emotional, cultural, social that makes paying for sex
appealing to the young punter. Most prostitutes are women far removed from his
normal life she is not in his clique, he will never see her again, maybe she
doesn t come from the same culture as him or even speak the same language. The
BMJ study revealed that this is why in the past five years most men who paid
for sex were more likely to do so when they were abroad.
In the UK, prostitution itself is not illegal. But many of the acts surrounding
it are, including soliciting, pimping and kerb-crawling, which makes it almost
impossible for most full-time prostitutes to operate safely. Forced
underground, as UK prostitution is, it is perhaps not surprising that 95 per
cent of UK prostitutes are thought to be addicted to drugs, and why many men
prefer to go abroad to pay for sex.
Even so, there has been an increase in the availability of paid-for sex in
Britain as well as abroad. The researchers pointed to an increasingly large
and diverse sex industry and suggested that more men are using the services it
offers because of a wider cultural acceptance of prostitution.
If prostitution was once a dirty and rarely acknowledged secret, it certainly
isn t now. Rap singers have been mainlining the MTV generation (glued to such
television shows as Pimp My Ride) with their self-aggrandising yarns of hos
and pimps for long enough for even the outraged to have become somewhat
inured.
Sacha Baron Cohen s character Borat arrived at the Leicester Square premiere of
his new film flanked by a harem of actresses dressed as Kazakh ladies of the
night , and greeted the crowd with good evening, gentlemen and prostitutes .
Barely an eyebrow was raised.
Some sex workers themselves have even gone mainstream . The unidentified
London call girl Belle De Jour attracted 15,000 visitors to her blog every day,
and landed herself a book deal into the bargain.
As well as providing Belle de Jour with a route to lucrative notoriety, the
internet has also revolutionised the whole sex trade.
The sex industry is more visible and accessible. Anyone with a computer or a
WAP phone can find sex workers, read reviews about them or meet them in clubs,
says Dr Helen Ward, of Imperial College London, co-author of the BMJ study.
Paying for sex has become one of many options in addition to casual sex, short
or long-term relationships, or marriage, continues Dr Ward. Some men seem to
find it attractive to have sex without emotional commitment, while others just
like the excitement of paid-for sex. I hope that by showing how common this is
we can start to demystify commercial sex.
If, as the BMJ study suggested, the proportion of men visiting prostitutes
almost doubled in the ten years from 1990, it seems fair to assume that by 2010
that figure will have risen again.
The cold truth is that many men today, regardless of how eligible, rich and
dashing they may be, don t go to prostitutes because they can t get laid. They
go because, frankly, it s an easier way of getting laid.
So, would I mind if my future husband admitted that in his past he had spent
weekends in Amsterdam and Prague seeing prostitutes before we met? Probably.
But again, is it really any worse than picking up a girl in a bar and lying his
way into her pants simply because he was horny? Having been that girl, now I m
not entirely sure.