Via Mark Kleiman, this very readable six-part series about a wealthy businessman and pillar of the community, Dick Dasen, who over the years paid “hundreds” of women to have sex with him. At first, he met the women through abusing his position as a volunteer credit counselor. Later, he quit doing the credit counseling and instead paid women who were already taking money for sex from him “referral fees” for finding new recruits.
Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be an especially tempting deal for young, female meth addicts.
At some point in the last few years, the appointments had gotten out of hand. Huge sums of money… estimated between $1 and $5 million total … were flowing out. Dasen told police that he had paid some women as much as $100,000. The women involved referred to themselves as “Dasen girls,”? and they recruited among their friends, taking payments of as much as $2,000 just for bringing in anyone new who was young, thin, reasonably good-looking, and down on their luck. Since methamphetamine is perhaps the greatest luck-destroyer on earth, many of the girls came into the circle by way of using the drug. So much of the cash flowed directly back into the methamphetamine trade, law enforcement officials say, that Kalispell, population 15,000, experienced a big-city style epidemic of addiction and all that goes with it — crime, domestic abuse and violent conflicts over drug deals and money.
Dasen used the money to play power-trips with the women. And it doesn’t appear that the women were able to use the money to improve their lives much:
Another part of the power, Jenna and Summer said, was to stop payment on the checks that were written to the women for sex. “You’d go to cash the check, and the bank teller would say there was no money in that account, and then you’d go call Dick, and he’d be out of town,”? Summer says, “and it would be right when you needed the money the most.”? And then they would wait, as long as it took, for him to call them back and tell them the money had been deposited to cover the check. “That’s how I finally lost my trailer,”? Jenna said. “The money didn’t come through in time, and they foreclosed on it.”?
There is little doubt that the flow of money, when it did come — and it usually did, eventually — was not the lifesaver that everyone imagined it would be. It seemed like just another trick, kind of like the meth they all bought with it, that seemed like it would make everything alright, but actually it just disappeared, wrecking your life in the process.
“I don’t know of anybody who did anything positive with the money,”? Connie said. Thousands and thousands of dollars went into local keno and poker machines, hours and hours spent sitting, high on meth, staring at the blinking lights, smoking.
The end result? Some of the women who came forward have been arrested for prostitution, or for recruiting. Dasin himself is facing a trial, and it’s possible he’ll be able to wiggle out with a slap on the wrist – it’s a safe bet that he’ll have the best legal defense available. The most serious charges involves sexual encounters with underage girls. Maybe Dasin will spend a long time inside a prison – I think he deserves it.
But what if Dasin had been smart enough to avoid involvement with underage girls? Then he’d be facing virtually no serious charges. That disturbs me. The power dynamic between a broke meth addict and a sober millionaire is like a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Woody Allen; taking advantage of that power dynamic to negotiate for sex is despicable. I’m not sure that the resulting sex in that situation is rape, but I can’t call it fully consensual, either. We call sex between an adult and a 14-year-old statutory rape because a 14-year-old is not able to genuinely consent to sex, even if she thinks she wants to. By that standard, can a meth addict be said to genuinely consent to prostitution?
On the other hand, at least one of Dasen’s “victims” would be pissed off by my view:
You know, everybody’s talking about Dick, how he gave us all this money and made us victims, like we can’t take any responsibility for ourselves. I don’t buy that. I’m a grown woman and I’m responsible for what I do, and for what I did with the money. You ask if I’m pro-Dick Dasen, and yes, I am. Dick for Mayor! I notice nobody is asking if just maybe Dick is a victim of all of us. How come nobody’s asking that?
So what kind of punishment should men like Dasen get?
The legal penalties for sex crimes with underage girls are fairly clear, and severe. But what should be the sanction, legal or otherwise, for enabling addiction, for feeding the meth economy, for taking advantage of weak, desperate people for your own gratification, for abusing a position of trust?
My instinct is that men like Dasen deserve whatever punishment the law can make stick. But I’m skeptical about how “victimless” crimes are enforced in real life; there’s a lot of evidence that the people arrested for such crimes are disproportionately non-white and poor. (That’s one reason I don’t favor handgun bans). Dasen’s story is making the news because a rich, white man being charged with these crimes is a novelty.
Plus, is it really practical to make “enabling” a crime? In law, I think people should be responsible mainly for their own acts, not for acts by others.
I don’t have answers. But anyone who (like me) favors drug legalization or prostitution decriminalization should be willing to think hard about this story. As the reporter asks, “what’s the lesson of a case in which a long series of ‘victimless’ crimes somehow resulted in a lot of victims?”
It sorta reminds me of “God Bless You, Mister Rosewater,” by Kurt Vonnegut. That is, if Elliott Rosewater had been a manipulative, power-hungry sexual predator.
Careful. You’ll end up thinking that women deserve special legal protections under the law, because they’re more vulnerable to this sort of thing than men are. And then you’ll have to get married and go to church and shake your fist at the hippies, like the rest of us conservatives.
There does seem to be a hole in our legal system that lets genuinely slimy SOBs like this guy walk, or get wrist-slapped. Frankly, it’s outrageous. Let’s strengthen the laws and put bastards like this guy in a deep hole for a long time.
As the reporter asks, “what’s the lesson of a case in which a long series of ‘victimless’ crimes somehow resulted in a lot of victims?”?
They’re victims because it’s a crime. If it wasn’t, they’d have to get licenses for being prostitutes, and the profession could be regulated, like it is in civilized countries. The same goes for the drugs.
I’m not making a libertarian argument about this, I’m making a utilitarian one. Drugss and prostitution, when illegal, result in distribution and commerce being controled by criminals. If we remove the crime, we remove who controls the distribution, and then the government ahs some say in how things can be sold and to whom.
Yeah, people will destroy themselves when they’re legal. Those are from the same group of people who’d do it if it was illegal. But in removing the criminality, we can treat them for a disease, not ruin thier lives through jail.
Robert is totaly wrong. Strengthening the laws against victimless crimes has never done any good. I don’t have to make that into an argument, history is as good an example as I need.
On the moral evolutionary scale, this Dasen character is somewhere between a fresh, hot, steaming pile of cowshit (infected with 0157:H7) and the smelly ooze found on the bottom of well-used Dumpsters. At the very least, there needs to be a list available to organizations that serve vulnerable constituencies so they know who has a proven record of ethical violations….something similar to the sex-offender lists that keep known sex-offenders from volunteering in schools. I mean, it looks like this guy got his start from volunteering as a credit counselor; my feeling is that he knew from the start this would put him in pole position to exploit vulnerable poor women.
Now, as for the woman who is unwilling to call herself a victim, I think that’s a good sign for her. Her attitude about responsibility means that she is probably ready to make that first step towards getting off the meth. I think her comment is less about him and more about her state of mind.
But I don’t understand something here…..if he paid “referral fees”, how is he invulnerable to charges of pimping? Or are there no laws against pimping there?
Yep, the conservative method of “protecting” women works so well, I don’t know why we questioned it. Clearly, rounding up prostitutes periodically for short stints in jail and then releasing them back to pimps has always protected women in the past–from jail and from pimps! Also, don’t forget the importance of guarding the chastity of middle and upper class women, so that demand for prostitutes skyrockets.
And let’s not forget about the sexual double-standard for men and women; the one that allows married women to like sex, but not “that” kind of sex…that’s what mistresses and prostitutes are for!
Whaddya wanna bet that during all this time, Dasen was taking “respectable” women, you know, those in his own social class, out on dates, while he was using prostitutes for the kinky stuff he liked on the side.
According to the article, he is married and an elder in his Lutheran Church and his business was called “Christian Credit Counseling”. But you could have guessed that I’m sure. I didn’t see any information on his political leanings, though.
The law is rarely a precise instrument. An anti-enabling law that made it illegal to facilitate drug addicts would only fall on poor people — usually the parents and partners of addicts. Recipe for disaster if you ask me.
This case is the best single scenario I have heard for the Swedish approach: decriminalize prostitution, while retaining criminal sanction for paying prostitutes.
One of the thing that’s not really explored in the series is Dasen’s apparently full- role in the exploitation of these women and their families. He made his money in the town’s transformation from a center of industrial and extractive employment to a low-wage service economy, and in addition to his credit counseling business, his finance company held the notes that constituted many of his victims’ money troubles. If his enterprises had paid decent wages, none of this (or less of it) might have happened. A sort of microcosm of pathological capitalism.
Couldn’t he be prosecuted for fraud and passing bad checks? I mean, if his checks to these women weren’t clearing, and he did this sort of thing routinely, I’d think he committed the sort of money-related crimes that can actually carry some heavy penalties.
How exactly would decriminalizing drugs or prostitution have changed anything in this situation. You still would have drug addicts doing anything to pay for their addiction, including selling themselves for sex.
The reality is that these women would have been vulnerable to this man regardless of whether drugs were legal or not. Meth is not that expensive and decriminalizing it isn’t going to change the economics of being a meth addict. So you still have people who will do anything to buy some more meth, including having sex in exchange for drugs or being paid so they can buy more.
Does making that sexual transaction legal prevent it from taking place? Does it change the economics of it?
Decriminalizing prostitution, “regulating” the prostitutes is all about making them safer and more accesible to the johns, not really about protecting the prostitutes themselves. No law will ever change the fact that prostitution, legal or not, is the most pernicious type of exploitation possible- sexual exploitation. Not rape, although prostitutes are frequently raped, but definitely about as unethical an act as a person can commit.
Soft treatment for johns, like the millionaire in the post, is probably the purest and maybe oldest form of sexism, when any objective examination of the morals of the the sex trade could only conclude that paying for it is worse than selling it. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz asked the question long ago- “Which is worse? She who sins for pay or he who pays for sin?” The answer is obvious.
Elena, a good number of my friends are, in fact, prostitutes in one end of the buisness or the other. I’ve found it to be true that in counrties where prostitution is legal, a reasonable number of prostitutes are relativley OK with what they do.
It’s in nations where it’s illegal that it becomes a criminal enterprise run by men who’re probably commiting plenty of other crimes as well.
Legalization does not make it perfect, it makes it more safe for the prostitutes as well as the customers.
Res: Ipsa: yes, making a transaction legal changes the economics of it. You can regulate how much the prostitute makes from a transaction, mandate STD testing, drug testing, and other things that make life safer for the prostitute.
I tend to prefer a harm reduction model, rather than one that will just push the process underground and into the hands of criminals. It’s not something i feel a need to debate, because anyone can go look up figures about what life is like in an area where criminals control prostitution and what it’s like in an area where it’s legal.
The total legalization of prostitution makes prostitutes safer. If you want it illegal because you think it’s moraly wrong, you’re going to be making sure that criminals are in control. People like Dick Dansen are created by prostitution being illegal in just the same way that cocaine being illegal made people like Manuel Noriega possible.
I would argue that where there are drug addicts, there will be a blackmarket for prostitution, even if it were legal. Those women didn’t have sex because they were trying to make money or even appease a pimp, from what I can tell. They were prostituting themselves because they were an addict. Legalization would not create a barrier for entry and they would be providing $10 handjobs in the alley even if there were legal brothels. Thus, legalization does nothing to help these women.
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Paul makes a very good point that is lost in all the debate about leaglizing prostitution and drugs–that it was Dasen’s active role in the maipulation of the local economy that set in motion the conditions for his “crimes”–and, frankly, is the true criminal act.
Think of it this way: from an economic perspective, sex work (including prostitution) is a kind of service industry work that seems to rise when there are dips in less intimate, legitimate service industries in an area.
Yet unlike other service industry jobs, a woman is not likely to put “escort” (a polite name for prostitute in many instances, and considered a legal occupation) or “exotic dancer” or “professional dominatrix” or “adult entertainer” on a resume that she might submit to the local Wal-Mart or for a button-down job in an office.
Whether it is legal or not, sex industry work carries a social stigma that legalization will not erase. The perception of sex for money is negative in the minds of most people, and changes in the law will not affect these long-held biases.
Subsequently, for most women, sex industry work is a worse dead-end career than fast food.
That is, unless she is of the middle or upper classes and can chalk up her forays into exotic dancing as youthful experimentation–and can put down that summer internship at the local youth center instead of her time at the local go-go rama.
Yet some feminists will argue that women have the right to engage in sex work and it is empowering. After all, women are gaining money and, in some instances, admiration from the transaction and are therefore gaining power.
That is how the woman above can say she thinks Dick (wow, what an apropos diminutive) is the “victim” and not herself. She gained from the transaction, and whether or not he manipulated her or the economic conditions of her situation is of little consequence.
But, if one does not have options, is sex work then economically empowering? If the choice to engage in sex work is otherwise curtailed, is the choice to do so then free and empowering?
That Dasen is charged with *any* crime in this case is, as you say, a novelty, since, from a capitalist and feminist perspective, there really were no crimes, or victims, at all–just happy empowerment for all involved.
Would legalization help these women? I can’t say, because that’s a hypothetical, but at least they’d be getting regular STD checkups under most systems of legalization. They’d also be safe if they went to the cops about an abusive john or pimp. If the drugs were legal, the wouldn’t have to go to a criminal to buy them, and couldn’t be blackmailed by one that if they reported him, they’d go to jail.
Again, on the harm reduction model, I don’t claim that it’s perfect, just better. So it becomes a question of what you’re looking for: accepting nothing other than perfection, with the alternative being the current system; or a model that seeks to reduce as much harm as it can while admiting that it can’t save everyone.
Which is it to be?
It’s hard to know what the answer is, but I am not sure legalizing drugs or prostitution is the answer. My sense is the people who suggest that are people who have spent little time with $20 prostitutes and hard-core addicts.
The problem, truthfully, is not the prostitution but the drugs. Were it not for the drugs, those women probably wouldn’t have been turning tricks. In fact, most prostitutes and sex workers wouldn’t be taking money for sex if it weren’t for addiction and the need to pay for an addiction. The stripper working her way through law school or the empowered sex worker is as much of a fantasy as Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman.”
So what to do about meth? Is decriminalizing meth going to erase the addicts and eliminate the black market for drugs? Are all those garage labs in Missouri and Arkansas going to shut down if it is legalized? No.
My reluctance to accept the fact that decriminalization is the answer is that I’ve known a lot of addicts whose “rock bottom” experience for starting recovery was getting busted or doing time. Sure they relapsed, but so do queer tweakers in NYC who try to come off meth.
I am not sure whether some of the people I have worked with would have gotten clean if they hadn’t been arrested or done time.
Legalization of prostitution (or meth for that matter) is pretty much irrelevant to what happened in Kalispell. Women who made sexual arrangements with one man in return for large (by their standards) chunks of money wouldn’t be registered as prostitutes any more than a girlfriend or common-law spouse who happened to receive much of her support from a man.
If not for the meth angle — if Dasen’s women had otherwise led unremarkable lives — would the case and people’s feelings about it be the same? Different in degree rather than kind?
Personally, I’d agree with nolo – if you’re going to engage in transactions that are, frankly, illegal, you should at least pay the fiddler* in a timely manner. I’d say attack the financial angle, and not just because it seems the only avenue available. Anyone else who’s been on the receiving end of fradulent business practice and continual check-bouncing by employers? That alone is plenty for me to get angry about.
(Of course, by taking illegal employment, these women probablyassumed they lost any legal right to complain about this (if they’d thought about it in the first place). That’s where legalization would make a difference; but I do wish someone would step in on these nitty-gritty money matters.)
In a sense, then, what they did is already legal. The money was part of ongoing relationships that were sexual. One problem with laws against prostitution is they are class-based. Poor women who exchange sex for money are whores. Upper class women who do it are mistresses or even trophy wives.
To tag onto what Amanda says and to comment to Josh Jasper, alot of middle-class women who enter into prostitution enter as escorts. The can easily claim their occupations as adult entertainer and rarely risk busts if they are either in an agency that is on the up and up or are quietly independent and regularly pay their taxes. Some agencies already require regular testing, or, in the case of independents, women get themselves to to clinics or have trade-frendly physicians where they test regularly.
When the money is good enough, and one is not living hand to mouth, there’s alot of incentive to keep oneself healthy.
And, at the level of well-paid escort, there is much incentive to not use heavy drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine, or heroin (although there are many pot-smokers and pot-smoking is see by some clients as an “enhancement” to the interaction).
The biggest problems in prostitution are mostly among working class, working-poor and poor women. Prostitution on the level of streetwalker is indeed a social class problem. Most streetwalkers have a higher risk of disease because, in some cases, johns will not pay them if they use condoms. They fear going to free clinics for testing, or don’t know where they are, or don’t think about disease factors. If they are drug addicts, they *certainly* aren’t going for any sort of testing anywhere.
It’s very sad, and I do not believe that any legalization would change any of that. There is an entire subculture around streetwalkers, as there is around escorts, that perpetuates certain ideas about condom use and about STD testing that might not be changed even if the law changes.
Subcultures are hard to change.
It’s hard to know what the answer is, but I am not sure legalizing drugs or prostitution is the answer. My sense is the people who suggest that are people who have spent little time with $20 prostitutes and hard-core addicts.
Well, you’d be wrong in my case. I have spent time with people who’ve been (are not now, thank goodness) hard core drug addicts and low cost prostitutes. I’ve *also* spent time in places where prostitution and drugs are far more tolerated.
Yes, there are still drug addicts and low end prostitutes who rent themselves for drug money. Nothing I can think of will solve that problem.
But here’s the difference: all of the prostitutes where it was legal worked for themselves, not for a criminal. The drug addicts in countries where it wa legal could get help easily, and with little stigma. Here, the oposite is true.
What I want is for thigns to get as good as we can get them. I know what works. I know it because I’ve seen it, and anyone who cares to pay attention can see it. If you’re not interested, or if there are other priorities, then that’s where we differ. My main priority is keeping the victims as safe as I can get them. Legalization is the only way I know of to improve things.
Any better ideas are welcome.
As for the meth labs, hell yes they’ll end up shut down. If it’s legal, only an idiot would buy from a criminal. Addicts are people, just like you and me. If we give them the chance to buy drugs in saftey, they will. No one enjoys buying from someone who might kill you if you look like a cop.
Tish G: subcultures do change slowly, but when I’ve been in a country where prostitution was legal, I saw a massive decline in streetwealkers. They weren’t totaly gone, but there were less of them. See, the johns also appreciate not dealing with a criminal as well, and will go to someone they know has had regular STD tests in favor of someone they know who hasn’t.
I don’t know what to tell people who don’t belive me other than head out to places where it’s legal and see what you can see. It’s not pretty, but it’s an improvement.
Res Ipsa asks:
How exactly would decriminalizing drugs or prostitution have changed anything in this situation
An end to drug prohibition would decrease or eliminate the violence that happens on the side. (“…violent conflicts over drug deals and money.”) Murderers could no longer dominate the market. Then you have the fact that people have started meth on the not unreasonable assumption that the authorities lied about it, the way they lied about pot. And oh yes, prohibition favors hard drugs — smart sellers try to reduce the size of contraband. Compare Prohibition-era moonshine with lite beer. (Okay, not the best battle cry in the world, but you see my point.) I don’t know how a change in sex prohibitions would affect the situation, because I don’t know exactly what I’d change. But I know that if I made the law, these women wouldn’t be in jail right now. And if they didn’t actually get help from the authorities, at least they’d know they could go to the cops without anyone demanding free service.
Josh–
You seem to like the “happy hooker” image and don’t seem any more willing than myself or others to look at the opposite side of the argument.
As for what goes on in other countries, I do not believe that our country, with its unique social structure and mores, should necessarily look to other countries for guidance on moral issues such as the legalization of prostitution (the differences between the U.S. and America was slightly more illuminated with all the discussions regarding the appointment of Pope Benedict XVI.)
I also don’t think that our country, with its unique social structure and mores would change all that much with the legalization of prostitution. Further, what may be considered is the effect of the legalization of prostitution on other social service sectors. Educational opportunities and funding for those opportunities might be curtailed if prostitution were considered a viable career choice for a young woman.
But consider the twisted logic of that: give tacit approval for a woman to sell her body–her most intimate physical and emotional being–because it is a good career choice.
In my mind, that is capitalisim at its worst and most dehumanizing. The idea that sex is “just sex” and nothing more denies the fact that men and women are wired differently when it comes to sex, and that many women who consider this line of work more than likely have a personal issue that motivates them to pursue sex work. (and that is *my* experience both in the sex industry and out of it.)
Gad! when will men stop thinking that sex work is all fun and games and the women who participate in it are just in it for the fun of sex? When it comes down to it, prostitution, and sex work overall, is acting. It is not real sex at all.
A more compassionate strategy for dealing with streetwalkers might be providing them with halfway house type of accommodatons that might function as permanent addressess. Johns would not be welcome (that would make it a brothel) but the “homes” would provide a permanent address that could function as information to put on an i.d. (many streetwalker/drug addicts do not have permanent addresses and are often busted for vagrancy).
yeah, sure….in a perfect world….
You seem to like the “happy hooker”? image and don’t seem any more willing than myself or others to look at the opposite side of the argument.
No, I don’t. Flat out not true. Any argument you take from that assumption is just not true. Did you miss the part where I said I know people who were, in fact, drug addicts and streetwalkers? I also do know people who were the happy hooker type. I know the whole spectrum, including the people in betweeen.
I’m willing to look at any idea that fixes things. If I have any evidence it does. What alternate solution are you providing?
In the meanwhile, stop trying to use a strawman argument by painting me to be some caricature. You have no idea who I am, who the people I know in the sex work industry are, and what the stories they have are.
Until I tell you, you’re just making things up in order to win points for the gallery. If that’s all this is to you, I’ll bow out. I don’t have conversations with people who treat me that way.
I’m sorry, but I have to quarrel with you here–says who? This notion that men are humpity dogs and women are moon-eyed romantics does no one any favors. I’ve had my share of sex for sex’s sake and I dare say that most men would speak highly of their emotional investment in their sexual relationships. It’s all-around insulting to both men and women.
Let’s strengthen the laws and put bastards like this guy in a deep hole for a long time.
Sure. Specifically, what laws shall we “strengthen,” and how would they enable us to put bastards like this away?
The idea that sex is “just sex”? and nothing more denies the fact that men and women are wired differently when it comes to sex,
Speak for yourself, Tish. Personally I’m not ‘wired that way,’ and as a young woman, I ran into hella trouble running on your assumptions.
Speaking of assumptions, don’t pretend you speak for sex workers if you’ve never been one.
Josh…not meant to paint you as a straw man, nor to paint you as a charicature. Perhaps you are giving my words more power than they have in the first place.
The reason I did not offer solutions has more to do with your insistance that because you knew the sex industry that you were positive you knew the correct solutions. As you so blasted me, I, too, can say that you do not know me, where I’ve been, the people I’ve known, etc. No one here was providing an opposing view to your firm opinon and I did not see anything wrong in providing another viewpoint on the issue from another person who knows the sex industry.
Think of it this way: two people can go to China and see two different things. That you may have gone to Hong Kong while I went to Bejing does not mean that your viewpoint of the place is superior to mine. We know different ends of it and have come to different conclusions about it, that’s all.
Yet, in general, there seems to be some reluctance to say that there is an another viewpoint to the idea of the legalization of prostitution. Are we all supposed to march in lock-step just because we are more left-thinking than right?
Frankly, I didn’t think wearing a brown shirt was part of all this.
(Be that as it may, I am quite puzzled by the point that began with “Until I tell you….” that’s a bit, um, domineering?? and doesn’t leave much room for gentelmanly debate)
As to proffering a solution, I do not believe that, in this country, there are any true solutions to the problem of prostitution. Acknowledging that it is a multi-layered problem, where the upper echelons are far better off than the lower is a way of acknowledging that the problem of prostitution is part of a larger schema of society and is socio-economic as well as moral. People in general need to see and understand that streetwalkers are part and parcel of a larger issue. Sex industry work, of which prostitution is part, is not particularly glamourous nor particularly rewarding, nor should it be posited as a valid career choice for women.
Until we can see the larger picture of sex work, a picture most people would deny because it seems to fly in the face of what most popular media would like us to believe about sex work, simply decriminalizing prostitution isn’t necessarily going to help the streetwalkers nor will it necessarily decrease crime in an area.
When the Numbers Game became the State Lottery, did it stop organized crime? When Off-Track Betting started, did it stop bookies?
(Nor will decriminalization help women who are part of the burgeoning white slave traffic from Eastern Europe and Mexico. We have white slavery laws, yet no one seems to want to enforce them.)
Amanda….my point is in reference to sex workers and sex work. Many men will use the argument that sex workers are in it because they like sex, when, in fact, that isn’t quite the case. Sex work is a form of acting, not a form of sex (as rape is a crime of power, not of sex.)
Yes, women have sex just for the heck of it and yes men can get all mooney-eyed at times, but the idea that women and men are exactly the same when it comes to sex (as many feminists have wanted us to believe) isn’t quite the case in all instances all the time.
And it is an argument that can be used as part of the “she was asking for it” defense.
I personally find the idea that men and women are equal in sexual thinking to be kind of insulting and reductivisitc. We aren’t–and there are indeed gray areas. That’s the marvel of human existence.
mythago….and never assumed someone has not worked in the sex industry if you’ve never seen their resume…
He was referring to you making assumptions about his experience or beliefs without any knowledge of either–just like you complain about mythago doing.
What are these “differences” you speak of? I don’t think you need to invoke an insulting stereotype in order to make the point that people come up with lame justifications. Most men are quite aware that sex workers are acting, and the few that deny it do so more to protect their fragile fantasy that the woman really likes them more than anything.
I’m not buying the whole, “Well of course you’ve had sex just for sex, but you did it a little less than a man would.” Says who? If that’s not the difference you’re referring to, please spell out what it is.
It seems pretty clear to me that the number of female prostitutes used by men versus the number of male prostitutes used by women shows there are obviously some major differences in the ways men and women view sex acts without emotion. What else could explain the severely lopsided gender distributions of prostitutes and tricks?
When a nation gets economically poorer, the women are forced into prostitution but the nation’s men are not. Prostitutes are made, not born, and it is men who make prostitutes of both the male and female kind, though much more the female kind.
Amanda, when I watch The Color Purple I’m quite aware Oprah and Whoopie are really doing just fine, but being a human being means I easily suspend my disbelief to get what I want from the movie. Don’t you cry at some movies even though you know it’s only actors acting?
Prostitution is less about sex than power, just as the adage about rape goes. Hugh Grant could get 10 free blow jobs by gorgeous women who aren’t his supermodel girlfriend every night, but they’ll never satisfy his desire for superiority like paying a brown-skinned drug addict street hooker to suck him off does. As a woman friend who helps prostitutes transition out in San Francisco once said, “Men don’t pull over on Capp Street because they want the sensation of their dick being sucked, they pull over because they want the sensation of degrading a woman, of her sucking his dick because he told her to do it.”
Just to clarify, I don’t think it’s possible to engage in sex acts without *any* emotion, but the masterbatory sex men engage in with prostitutes is qualitatively different from the sex they have with their wives and girlfriends. About 60% of tricks in the US are husbands and long-term boyfriends with steady access to that kind of emotional sex with their partners, but the emotions of dominance and superiority they seek with prostitutes are a whole other thing.
In March I attended a conference in Chicago where the following quotes from tricks taken from a very recent research comes from. Prostituted sex is far from ’emotionless’ for tricks:
“?She gives up the right to say ‘no’. I own her that time.”?
“Guys get off on controlling women. It is paid rape.”?
“You’re making them subservient.”?
“I think about getting even.”?
“Prostitution takes away a part of themselves they can’t get back.”?
“Sometimes I feel it’s wrong but I try to block that out.”?
“I’ve never tried to rescue a girl. You can get killed doing that.”?
piny….thanks for clairfying that. I really wasn’t sure.
I guess I just have a bit of difficulty when I hear someone claim to be the *only* expert on this or that. I’m willing to give props for the opinions gained from experience, but I like to know there is room for additional opinions, also gained from experience on a particular matter.
Amanda….I’m really not all that sure that many men understand that sex workers *are* acting. As sex work has become more mainstream, or in a strange way, accepted (I’m talking porn acting, dancing, posing for magazines, and pro-domming) there is a belief that all women who are doing it are doing it because they “love sex.”
Through conversations I’ve had with women who have worked for over 20 years in professional dominance (a form of sex work once considered the province of former escorts), I’ve learned that there are some practices that were once strictly performance and are now often inisisted upon being acted out *for real.* There were, and still are, certain codes of ethics and rules within that world and it was interesting to hear how so many pros were finding their job more difficult because of the demands from clients for more reality.
With regards to the other point you mentioned, that’s *definitely* not the difference I’m speaking of. It’s never a matter of a woman doing it “a little less than a man would”
(although I’ll admit I’m not sure what you mean by that). My concern is that women and men think their attitudes and ideas about sex are identical at all times because sex and sexuality are perceived as being merely gender constructs that can be easily socially manipulated.
I think we can gain clairty on how sex and sexuality is beyond gender constructs by generationally “comapring notes.” I have a friend in her 20’s who writes a wonderful blog about her sexual exploits. In a recent entry, I thought I was reading something from my own 20’s–roughly 20 years ago. I found it strange that the more things seemed to change–clothing, media, education–the more things such as the attitudes of both the young men and one of the young women, had stayed the same.
We grew up in completely different generations, with different influences, yet when it came to this particular sexual situation, the attitudes and outcomes where the same. It was freaky.
I also recently caught a tv broadcast where a 15 year old was stating that 15 year olds today were “more mature” than they were 10 years ago. Yet I succinctly remember similar arguments 10, even 20 years ago.
What has changed is media and the way childern are raised. What may not have changed is how human beings physiologically and psychologically mature. Some 15 year olds might be more mature because of family factors, yet there is part of them that is still 15 years old.
But this does not mean that we are locked into a biological determinism that is free of gender constructs. Not at all. We can make efforts to change ideas and attitudes about how we view the other gender, but the changes are often glacial and sometimes it is our biology rather than our socializtion that hangs us up and keeps us repeating history.
and never assumed someone has not worked in the sex industry if you’ve never seen their resume…
What sex worker puts that on her resumé?
We’ve beaten the pro/anti-legalization argument to death before, so I’m not going to turn the horse into smaller bits, but this just struck me as ridiculous:
Yes, women have sex just for the heck of it and yes men can get all mooney-eyed at times, but the idea that women and men are exactly the same when it comes to sex (as many feminists have wanted us to believe) isn’t quite the case in all instances all the time.
“Isn’t quite the case in all instances all the time” is meaningless because we’re talking about groups. Of course it’s not the case that any random woman and any random man have exactly the same feelings about, and reactions to, sex. That’s quite different than your original statement that men and women are “wired differently,” i.e. that all men and all women, save for perhaps a few weirdos, are biologically hard-coded to view and experience sex differently. Feminists decry that because it’s sexist bushwa.
Actually, there is an alternative explanation that we have ample evidence for–men, as a class, have more power than women. And one thing the powerful do to the powerless, historically speaking, is treat their bodies as objects to be bought, sold and used. Sexual slavery, for instance, is only one kind of slavery in this world.
If there are inherent differences, they probably don’t have near the effect on society that male entitlement does. If, by some miracle, everything reversed itself and women dominated men, prostitution would be a very different beast than it is now.
….there might not be a resume, but there may indeed be a blog profile–or a c.v. If there are curious ones, I think I’m hyperlinked :-)
one thing always boggles me, though, is the idea that everything that is one way in the world today might be somehow differnent/better if women ran the world. Having spent 3 years in a wonderful women’s higher education institution, I have seen the way women bully and exploit one another. Matriarchy does not hold a hedgemony on benovolence.
Josh…not meant to paint you as a straw man, nor to paint you as a charicature. Perhaps you are giving my words more power than they have in the first place.
You claimed that I thought something that was not true, and sued it to create an argument around. That is called a “straw man” argument. I can’t see how that wasn’t your intent, especialy when I made it pretty clear that the whole “pretty woman” thing wasn’t where I was coming from. This has nothing to do with me giving your words any power.
The reason I did not offer solutions has more to do with your insistance that because you knew the sex industry that you were positive you knew the correct solutions.
Actualy, I can show you statistics from countries where it’s legal. it has nothing to do with my own perceptions. That was the point I’d made. That criminalizing something puts it into the hands of criminals. De criminalizing takes it away.
Prohibition should be evidence enough of this.
Am I positive this is the correct solution? No. I welcome anyone to provide a better solution that saves more people than mine will. But I don’t like solutions that come based on moral disaprobation in stead of a harm reduction model.
Josh….
When it comes down to it, we have a different way of viewing the issue. It’s really as simple as that.
I still maintain that looking at other countries and how they have found some kind of a solution to the problem isn’t necessarily the greatest guideline for how we do things here.
Rather, we might want to consider the situation in various parts of Nevada, where prostitution is legal to some degree or another. We might also want to consider what various states consider acts of prostitution. Strangely, it’s quite varied from state to state–a factor that kind of muddies the legalization or de-criminalization arguments.
how prostitution laws vary from state to state also confuses alot of people on what exactly constitutes prostitution. This confusion may be what leads people to reduce prostitution to a “sex crime” rather than a crime done out of economic necessity.
Strangely, it’s quite varied from state to state
It varies from state to state, as does criminal law, but is it “quite varied”?
Actually, there is an alternative explanation that we have ample evidence for”“men, as a class, have more power than women.
Also, more money, and more social support for seeking no-strings sex.
I still maintain that looking at other countries and how they have found some kind of a solution to the problem isn’t necessarily the greatest guideline for how we do things here.
Rather, we might want to consider the situation in various parts of Nevada, where prostitution is legal to some degree or another. We might also want to consider what various states consider acts of prostitution. Strangely, it’s quite varied from state to state”“a factor that kind of muddies the legalization or de-criminalization arguments.
I think Nevada is a horrible example, because it’s set up so that only certain limited employers are in control. I agree on the patchwork of laws problem. I think a federal law decriminalizing it should be enacted, and we could leave the regulation up to the states, as long as they kept certain sensible rules.
It’s interesting that no one here seeems to know about the fairly large world of gay male prostitution. Sure, not too many heterosexual men are prostitutes with women as clients, but gay, bi, and even self identified heterosexuals are prostitutes for gay men.
Myth, I would see those as part of the power package. The way that Republicans suddenly tolerate drug use, prostitution, infidelity and homosexuality when it’s the upper class who does these things is indicative of that entire mindset.
“Actually, there is an alternative explanation that we have ample evidence for”“men, as a class, have more power than women.”
But there are many women who have power over many men and who don’t seek to sexually abuse disadvantaged men the way men of all classes, from very rich to very poor, seek out and sexually abuse vulnerable women and girls. It is entirely possible for six athletic teenaged girls to shove a mini baseball bat inside a mentally impaired boy’s rectum, but teen girls don’t seem to have nearly the will to commit such acts as teen boys. Women with a lot of money don’t travel alone to Thailand with the frequency single men with the same income do. I don’t know if it’s more nature or nurture that makes so many men look at a poverty-stricken, hurting woman and see not a human but a thing that can be made to let you shove objects in and out of its delicate body parts for drugs, money, food or shelter, I just know women don’t look at homeless, drug addicted men that way.
While I agree with you on “If there are inherent differences, they probably don’t have near the effect on society that male entitlement does.”, I don’t think you can really say with any certainty, “If, by some miracle, everything reversed itself and women dominated men, prostitution would be a very different beast than it is now.” if by that you mean women would exhibit the same propensity for sexual violence towards prostituted men that men currently brutalize sex working women with. If such a sci-fi fantasy were possible, I could be convinced some women might visit male prostitutes, but I don’t believe the tables would turn exactly and that women would exhibit the same phenomenally high levels of sexual torture, mental abuse and violence towards men.
As things stood last I knew the numbers, men commit 97% of sexual assaults and commit 90% of all violent crimes. Through all history, though many oppressed people have risen to battle against their aggressors, has an army entirely made of oppressed women ever risen as a group to physically free themselves from the men who held them down? I don’t know how much is nature and how much is nurture, and I don’t think it’s terrifically important to know, but I believe men’s propensity to violence is the characteristic that most distinguishes men from women in a species-wide sense, and I believe prostitution is both a literal system and codified expression of male violence.
myth….ah, using the old liberal male tactic of picking apart someone’s wording to make a point :-)
I could also say the laws against prostitution are strangely varied–as are many public morals laws, sometimes the basis of prostitution laws, are still on the books but not enforce.
For instance, in Boston, you’re not allowed to kiss your sweetie on a sunday. But I don’t think it’s a problem in New York.
In Massachusetts, if you brandish a wooden spoon in an attempt to “spank” someone, and a cop sees it, he can arrest you, even if the act is consensual. If you are wearing a strap-on in the process of doing it, you could get arrested for prostitution because, in Mass, if you are wearing a strap-on it is assumed you will penetrate someone with it (even if you’re just threatening it–oops! that could be assault too) and if you are penetrating someone who may have just paid you to spend time with him, well, then you are committing an act of prostitution.
In other states, you can penetrate someone with an inanimate object and get paid for it, and have it not be prostitution. In some states, whether you can advertise this or not varies from county to county. In other states, only the female receiving money for being penetrated becomes an act of prostitution. In the case of men who take money for being penetrated, the offense is not necessarily the taking of money inasmuch as it is a violation of sodomy laws.
The massive tangle between laws regarding who gets penetrated when, where, and with what, and if money is changing hands it, may make any broad-sweeping federal legislation difficult to implement.
Heck, if you can’t even buy a dildo in places like Alabama, Texas, or in Massachusetts (because you might use it for “self abuse”) without it being labled “for novelty purposes only,” it will take a great deal of discussion for us to come to any conclusions about prostitution.
And, with the recent unveiling of Senate Bill 51 (select Bill Number and enter S51), there might be some larger fish to fry on the federal level.
Samantha: What about the fact that many more men than women visit dominatrices? (I don’t even know the male form of “dominatrix.”) Men pay women to exploit sexual power over them. Doesn’t that show, despite everything you’ve said, that men actually want to take on the submissive role in the relationship?
No, women with power looks at such women and use them as nannies and housekeepers, paying them sub-standard wages and exploiting their powerlessness . In the cases of domestics being treated like slaves in the U.S., it is almost always women who have taken away the passports and visas and control the workplace.
That women don’t act out against men but choose women as their victims doesn’t make it any less noble.
Res Ipsa, you’re ignoring the double standard and the sexual exploitation of prostitution to make that comparison. Also, the complete and utter dehumanization.
I don’t see how a handful of tricks (themselves are not a majority of men) preferring to use their greater economic and social power to make prostitutes perform exactly the sex role men want them to do discounts everything I’ve said, or even anything I’ve said. The power never leaves the man’s hands because he has the money that controls everything, including the actions of the dominatrix. It’s still his game played by his rules.
Res Ipsa, we’re talking specifically about gendered sexuality and prostitution. I’m fully aware women can and do abuse power when they have it, but in the context of systemic sexual violence and prostitution there are exceptionally few women tricks coercing sex from either males or females or raping and murdering prostitutes. When women victimize other women (and men) it isn’t to satisfy their violent sexual urges through rape.
No, they use their economic power to maintain control over other women so that they have no competition.
I see your point about prostitution and agree. I do wonder, however, in the context of prostitution would you argue gay men are using systemic sexual violence when they use male hustlers and escorts?
Samantha: I’m curious to know where you get your knowledge of pro doms. Your comments on what life is like for them is different than mine.
Hestia and Josh–Samantha is right about professional dominants not having as much power as is believed to be.
Having been a pro-dom, and knowing many, the interactions are based strictly on what the client wants. That the “dominant” is “exploiting” them is an illusion. And, with the right equipment, the right stage (as in dungeon) the illusion can be so great that the man believes he is a “slave.”
But what true slave pays for the priviledge to be exploited–and exploited in a particular way that meets his sexual fantasies?
Some professional dominants, who are very good at making the performance very real, or have very good skills at a certain specialty like bondage, make good money and believe they have power over men. Some see it as a spiritual calling, some as a form of psychotherapy, still others as just good entertainment and a great way to take money away from “stupid men.”
The only key difference between prostitution and pro dominance is that sexual intercourse is, for most pros, prohibited. Professional dominance is considered in many circles a form of adult entertainment, like stripping, and if one likes the job and wants to continue, one does not allow sexual intercourse.
However, it is *always* his game by his rules and she has to meet his sexual fantasies but make it look like they are hers. Sometimes, though, if a domme/client relationship develops, as like with a therapist, the domme will be able to “intuit” what the client’s sexual fantasies might be–and there might even be transferrence. But, still, she doesn’t have true power over him, as he is always free to take his business elsewhere.
By that definition, every job in America is like prostitution since we are doing things because the clients wants us to do it.
Simple explanation for that, too. Every woman who has such power has men in her life with even more power that she can’t afford to offend by misbehaving in such a way.
I really don’t think women with enough money to spend on a male prostitute have men in their lives with more power than her threatening chastisement. We’re talking small amounts of money here, smaller still in the SE Asian prostitution market, and women vacationing in Thailand don’t use their money to make males submit themselves sexually despite the bargain prices on human lives.
Besides, your theory about retribution would have to also figure why, if women want to use male whores but don’t only because they’re afraid of the powerful men in their lives, do so many women take the risk of cheating? Because women do a lot of cheating on the men in their lives, but they don’t do a lot of economic coercion of underprivileged men into unwanted sex acts they would choose not to do if they only had the real option of saying no.
Res Ipsa: very true.
And, when you’ve had an ungrateful boss, doesn’t it feel like you’re being screwed? :-)
But, seriously, as I mentioned, professional dominance is considered, when it is on the up and up, to be adult entertainment and as such makes it a service industry job.
It is also considered a form of self-employment, and, if you have a good accountant, you can refer to yourself as a “consultant” or “counsellor” rather than an adult entertainer.
Funny thing…when I’ve sat with friends who are self-employed web designers and business consultants, and have shared business notes, we’ve had, at times, similar issues with overly-demanding clients.
And they’ve felt just as dis-empowered.
Sam, a woman with power isn’t as powerful as a man in power. Sexual misbehavior can disempower her quickly, in no small part because people believe that women *aren’t* like that, so if a woman uses a sexual service, she is unnatural. A monster. And so her power gets stripped away.
Declaring inherent traits to one sex tends to limit the behavior of people of that sex–you can’t be perceived as “unnatural”. I assure you, my straightforward sexual nature has gotten me treated like a freak, and I have since learned that my true sexual self, unlike a man’s, can only be revealed to people that have proven they aren’t sexist and close-minded.
To be less glib about it, I don’t think that my web design and business consulting friends deal with the same sorts of sex/power dynamics that I did as a pro-domme.
It’s dealing with these sorts of issues and male attitudes regarding pro-dominance–some quite similar to the kinds that Samantha listed in a previous post–that make the job very different from other forms of self-employment.
You haven’t adequately explained why women are willing to risk the misbehavior of cheating but not the misbehavior of forcing a poor person into sexual servitude.
Homeless men use homeless prostitutes, and no matter how poor a country gets the poor men always manage to have enough money to make whores out of poorer women. Feeling better, more powerful and more human than someone else, anyone else, for just a few minutes is worth whatever little money, drugs or food poor men have to attain the supreme emotional satisfaction of not being the lowest on the totem pole just for a while in their own heads.
Women who have no male partners and who have $100 (or drugs, or a place to stay the night, or food) for an evening’s entertainment could easily pick up a prostituting street teen and make a night of out of it. Women don’t do that. You say they probably genuinely want to make whores out of men but they’re afraid of the consequences, and I say women don’t get the same tingly kicks out of sexually humiliating and removing the human dignity from others like men do when they use whores.
I really don’t think women with enough money to spend on a male prostitute have men in their lives with more power than her threatening chastisement.
I am now picking my jaw up off the floor. Did you really mean what you just said?
And Tish, I’m really sorry if you think a debate is “male” because I disagree with your wording. See, I’m a lawyer, so when you make broad generalizations about laws, I tend to notice.
As long as I’m being hornswoggled, if you think sexism exists–I mean, really exists–then you can’t sit around wondering whether gosh, it might be nature after all. To ignore nurture at all is to pretend that we don’t live in a society where we are taught from birth that it’s men’s right to have access to women’s bodies, where women aren’t much supposed to like sex except to the degree it makes sex more interesting for men, and that women who are sexually assertive are targets.
Man, I need a softball! Easy–cheating is a behavior that elicits some social approval, if only with the person you’re cheating with. People understand why women cheat–but people think that a woman who pays for sex is a monster. Cheating can be excused away as reaching for human affection, but prostitution is understood as just sex.
Of course, the odd reality is that men who hire sex workers of any sort are reaching for that approval and affection more than they would admit. Gender roles for men make it hard for them to be soft and affectionate and some find it easier to buy that than actually put their reputation as a hardass on the line by seeking love with a real woman. Prostitutes who keep a regular clientele will tell you that a lot of men are more lonely than anything.
Like myth said, our gender roles dictate our behavior so much that what genuine biological differences that are there are unobservable under all the mental muckity-muck. Consider how many women almost never have orgasms, even though biologically, we can have a dozen in a row.
myth…
no, I don’t ignore nurture…but I do feel that at times there is more emphasis on nurture and a disregard of nature (although, with some of the wording of Seante Bill 51, nowadays saying that *anything* is nature is an invitation to a slippery slope).
As for the “male” comment, that was a bit of a joke, as I have noticed that some supposed liberal males, when confronted with a strong woman, will often do a p.c. sort of thing and pick one word out of the argument and focus on that word order to discredit the entire argument. (other women friends have noticed a similar pattern)
Petty, yes. Sexist, yes. That it is liberal males who do this sort of thing and should know better is, well, disappointing. But kind of shows that all the nurture and “feminist” thinking on their part is sometimes just lip service when their egos and testosterone are fully engaged.
I also feel, too, that some of the sexism that occurs cannot be contributed totally to “patriarchy,” but is nurtured by women. I have noticed over the years that in the feminist psychotherapeutic community that women’s propensities towards sadomasochism are considered conditions a woman must be cured of (while a man may be encouraged to explore his desires). This, then, is a case of women needing to control the sexual appetites and desires of other women, and guided by feminist thinking.
Also, what about women calling one another ‘slut’ and such? Is this *just* nurture–are women calling others this particular ephithet because men have approved of it and motivate it, or ist social competition for the alpha male and in conjunction with a natural pecking order propensity that exists among women?
It’s intertesting, Tish G’s discussion of the power dynamics between a client and a sex worker are exactly why I’ve never bought sex before. It’s because I can’t stand the idea of using someone as a mastubatory aid while they fake enjoying it. It’s repellent, and yeah, the powere dynamics are a problem as well.
The thing is, I know plenty of people in the sex work industry, and I also feel just as bad about tellign them that whet they’re doing is so bad it should be illegal. I think it’s insulting and demeaning to call them ‘broken’ or tell them that they’re somehow contributing to the problem of th degradation of women.
It’s the same with the people I know who’ve dealt drugs. I know they’re not robbing anyone, I know they’re not going to kill anyone, and I know they’re not selling to irresponsible people or children.
It’s be nice to get a good thread going on power dynamics in sex betwen men and women, but I’m not sure when that’ll happen. I think the perspectives here are facinating. It’s times like this that I miss academia.
I find that explanation implausible. I’m sure you heard about the case a few weeks ago where a man killed his wife after finding her cheating and only got sentenced to four months in jail. In Connecticut a few years ago a judge said he could no more sentence a man to jail for killing his cheating wife that he could order a man to jail for killing a gay person or a prostitute.
And have you seen daytime television lately? I ask this having just spent a week sick with a cold, and it seems all those talk shows and judge shows have an obession creating situations where groups rail condemnation on cheaters (also in ‘remaking’ perfectly normal women into fembots).
“but people think that a woman who pays for sex is a monster.”
I don’t think people think about women paying men for sex much at all. It’s not a regular part of our social environment.
Of the many things women are socially punished for, and precious few things aren’t on the list, I see no reason why tricking would get special condemnation that would make women especially unwilling to do it because I don’t think most people consider women renting men for sex when drawing up the usual short list of “things women shouldn’t do”.
“Cheating can be excused away as reaching for human affection, but prostitution is understood as just sex.”
You misunderstand it as just sex because you’re neither a prostitute nor a trick (in the usual sense), but according to the people actually involved with prostitution it is not ‘just sex’. I’ve explained on this blog in the past about how prostitutes report they feel about it and it’s not “just sex” to them. I gave examples above of what average tricks say and it’s not “just sex” to them. Do you believe most women think upon hearing their husbands and boyfriends have paid from the family income to use prostitutes, “It’s just sex?”
“Gender roles for men make it hard for them to be soft and affectionate and some find it easier to buy that than actually put their reputation as a hardass on the line by seeking love with a real woman.”
Sorry for the frankness, but what the hell are you talking about? Men, mostly married and long-term partnered men, pay prostitutes to buy softness and affection? From what do you draw such a specious, topsy turvy conclusion?
“?She gives up the right to say ‘no’. I own her that time.”?
“Guys get off on controlling women. It is paid rape.”?
“You’re making them subservient.”?
“I think about getting even.”?
“Prostitution takes away a part of themselves they can’t get back.”?
“Sometimes I feel it’s wrong but I try to block that out.”?
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com
Isn’t it possible that it can be both: sometimes about power and sometimes about sex???
I know it ruins the narrative to suggest that men seek out prostitutes because they want sex, not to play out some vioence/subservience psychodrama, but it seems that it could be both.
It’s not because we have predetereminded it’s not “natural”. Because it’s not common, we think women don’t do it and therefore women don’t do it. The cycle continues as such.
My main point, Samantha, is that men and women want the same things–sex, affection, variety, fantasy, whatever–but men, having social power, money, and social approval, are more likely to feel fine paying money for these things. Women know that the very idea of buying sex or affection freaks people out and will make them social pariahs, so they don’t do it. Nature doesn’t have to have any part of this to be true, so I don’t know why people get stuck on these, well, essentialist arguments.
Res Ipsa, I agree that, as with rape, it is the combined and often inseperable thrill of both power and sexual sensations that tricks seek. For a great rundown on the motivations of different kinds of tricks (users, sadists, necrophiles, child molestors, prostitution buffs) check out http://www.prostitutionrecovery.org/how_prostitution_works.html
I don’t think you’ve presented a good explanation, Amanda. We have predetermined a whole mess of things women aren’t supposed to do that they do in large numbers anyways, so why would this one thing be different? People still don’t really think men commonly rape the girl-children in their households and the widespread social disbelief hasn’t seemed to slow incest down like you claim social disbelief slows down women soliciting tricks.
If you look at romance novels or better, slash fiction, there’s not the same desire to inflict sex-based pain upon men that men exhibit in their fantasy fiction about women. Take out the money- for free, on their own time and their own dime, women have been creating erotic writings and a good number of these writings are sweet, romantic tales. Even the not-sweet stuff isn’t full of such things as Kirk pulling at Spock’s testicles with a pair of pliers as Sulu makes him gag on his cock until he vomits in convulsions then gets thrown out of the van (mmm, sexy).
But you’re sure, for reasons still mysterious, that women really do want to use pliers that way and shove things into men’s mouths until they vomit, it’s just not socially approved of like when men do it.
It’s almost a non-question in a world where women are trained to see everything from men’s POV, but I want to know why you consider men’s sadistic, exploitive and predatory sexuality to be the norm women naturally would gravitate to if only they were truly free from constraint? Has the normalization of violence against women, which includes prostitution, seeped down to such depths even in feminist minds that cheeky riot grrl exhortations of “Women can be as bad as men” is the model we’re working from instead of “Men can be as good as women”? (that’s rhetorical, but not the first one.)
Women’s less violent, less coercive, less predatory sexuality seems the more natural norm men would seek if not for toxic masculinity telling them to treat women like hunted animals. I wonder just how much man-made television watching, man-made book and magazine reading, man-made prostitution film watching it takes before a feminist woman sees the relatively small number of men around the world (and almost no women in the world) who pay to sexually abuse otherwise unwilling others as the norm and *not* doing so as a sexist aberration that will be “fixed” when women feel more comfortable economically coercing sex from men. How soon does prostitution become “just the way sex is” in the minds of patriarchy’s victims and what can be done to intevene before that gets hardwired as the truth despite everything in the world pointing to it being one more lie about women and sex to go along with the uncountable others.
Most of the comments here are ignoring the really big issues: poverty and wealth inequality. Whether prostitution is legal or illegal, big gaps in wealth make it both more widespread and more exploitative. The problem here is that the women were desperate for money, and the man had a lot of it.
Most of this man’s wealth came from various unethical (but unfortunately not illegal) business schemes, which had the side effect of impoverishing the communities in which he did business. So, the best policy to deal with this is to regulate business in such a way that unethical behavior is not rewarded, and to end the continuous transfer of wealth to the already-rich.
The situation is complicated by drug addiction, which exacerbated the womens’ poverty. But again, arguments over legalization tend to miss the point. (Pesonally, I support legalization, but I realize this won’t help addicts any more than the end of prohibition helped alcoholics.) The real issue is that drug addiction is a disease, and the best way to help drug addicts is through treatment. Unfortunately, the medical industry in the US is geared towards the rich. What’s needed is universal health care, including treatment for drug addiction.
will often do a p.c. sort of thing
Oh, great. We’ve reached the point in discourse where “P.C.” has stopped meaning even “shut up, liberal” and now stands for “generic insult for any discussion I don’t like.”
Also, what about women calling one another ‘slut’ and such? Is this *just* nurture”“are women calling others this particular ephithet because men have approved of it and motivate it, or ist social competition for the alpha male and in conjunction with a natural pecking order propensity that exists among women?
Why would calling one another ‘slut’ be competition for the alpha male? I really, truly do not understand your suggestion that this is ‘nature’.
If you look at romance novels or better, slash fiction, there’s not the same desire to inflict sex-based pain upon men that men exhibit in their fantasy fiction about women.
I don’t ever remember reading about pliers or vomit in a Penthouse Letters column, but I’ve seen plenty of “hurt/comfort” slash (some people claim that term is where ‘slash’ comes from).
Andy, I think most people have been ignoring it because we’re probably in the same groove on that topic.
Most of this man’s wealth came from various unethical (but unfortunately not illegal) business schemes
Writing checks when you know there are insufficient funds to pay the checks is illegal.
The literature student in me has an academic’s fascination with slash fiction, and the linguist in me knows the name comes from the slash between male pairings like Angel/Spike.
You’ve hit upon the reason both Penthouse and Screw filed for bankruptcy http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,61165,00.html
“You can see more on cable and satellite today than you could see in what I published in 1974,” Flynt said. “I honestly think Guccione and Al Goldstein were not aware of what kind of an effect technology was going to have on publishing.”
Women have a harder time than ever filing for bankruptcy, but wealthy pimp Al Goldstein gets to easily stage his comeback with a smaller office, a smaller freelance staff and new distributor to bring Screw back: “It’s going to be dirtier and filthier than ever.”
Andy, I pointed out that as nations get poorer the females, but not the males, have their bodies made into market-things. Poverty is an awful thing and eradicating it would go a long way in solving a lot of problems, but in generalizing the source of prostitution’s harms to non-gendered social ills you really miss the main point that prostitution is about male violence.
Drug addictions are devastating the lives of most prostitutes and according to some colleagues of mine in England drug addiction help is integral to any successful transition program. However, many prostitutes don’t get addicted to drugs until after experiencing the constant perforations of their bodies and psyches in prostitution, making their drug use a symptom of male violence. The other way around is saying women’s drug addiction makes men sexually abuse and exploit women when really they’re taking the same advantage of this vulnerable population they would any vulnerable population such as kids, war refugees, single moms, or homeless people who don’t use drugs. Heroin doesn’t rape prostitutes, pimps and tricks do.
I’m not sure I completely buy this. Driving by parking lots where day laborers gather tends to make me think that men suffer physically as “market things” in poverty as much as women do, if not more.
Well I’m still talking about gender, sexual violence and prostitution, but can I assume you’re not in a Third World nation?
In the USA there are jobs to exploited poor workers to do, but in the poorest countries females are forced into the sex industry while men often remain unemployed because there is nothing for them to do. 90% of global sweatshop labor is female, and trafficking for sex slavery is the fastest growing segment of organized crime (estimates I’ve seen put it about half of all trafficking). You can only sell a gun or drugs once, but a pretty girl can be sold over and over. In the brothels of India abortive sex selection is working in reverse because a girl born in a brothel is more profitable than a boy born in a brothel.
Here are the words of journalist and documentary-maker Ruchira Gupta from the all around excellent Satya Magazine. http://www.satyamag.com/jan05/gupta.html
“I was traveling in Nepal and I came across loads of villages that didn’t have women ages 14 to 45. So I began to ask, where are the girls? Some of the men smiled sheepishly and some would simply answer, “Don’t you know they are in Bombay?”? I came to find out that there was this whole sex trade: starting with the parent who was really poor, then on to the procurer, an uncle or a family friend who would pay the parent something like $30. There is the middle man in a packed city, the border guard who takes a payoff, the agent who takes the girls across the border to the people who then transport them to Bombay and on to the brothel madame, who buys the girls for $50 to $100. Then there are the landlords who own the brothels, the money-lenders and then finally the customers. This chain, literally a food chain with a never-ending supply, was making a fortune. The girls are as young as seven.”
I see a lot of horrifying things in this work, but one of the worst was a picture from a California farm where young girls, children mostly. were raped 20-30 times every day by immigrant men working the farm. It was a picture of a pale blue, closet-sized room with just three things in it: a bed, a teddy bear, and a roll of paper towels. Men used the girls just like toilets, like they were spending a few minutes emptying themselves into port-a-potties instead of the mouths, vaginas and anuses of enslaved kids. I can’t imagine how life for anyone could possibly be worse than that.
I was thinking more the U.S., not internationally, Samantha.
Amanda, I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d like for you, a woman of many words, to take a stab at answering “why you consider men’s sadistic, exploitive and predatory sexuality to be the norm women naturally would gravitate to if only they were truly free from constraint?”
I had half a mind to just let it go, but what you said about men paying whores for soft, affectionate sex they can’t get with their wives and girlfriends was so incredibly clueless I’d like more insight into what builds a myth like that in a mind like yours.
It hurts me to see a smart, engaged feminist like yourself put forth nonsense about how kind and cuddly men using prostitutes are, and it positively amazes me that despite all you know of the intricacies of gender oppression so you see in music, ads, politics, acadamia and medicine could be trumped by preposterous pollyanna public relations lies spread by pimps/pornographers.
If you don’t answer I’ll understand why, but without an attempt at answering we can’t begin to figure out a way to get past it.
While I’m not Amanda, I would point to two places that provide a perspective closer to that which Amanda suggested. The Austrialian documentary “Why Australian Men Pay For It” interviews a number of men who explain why they have sex with prostitutes. The documentary was inspired by the book by journalist Jacquelynne Bailey called “Conversations in a Brothel.”
Both give a sad depiction of why men use prostitutes, but the tales tend to be more about companionship and “sex” than about domination and violence. I found both quite eye-opening.
For someone accusing someone else of being Pollyannaish, you’re describing female sexuality in deeply problematic terms. Female sexuality under patriarchy is as unnaturally submissive and selfless as male sexuality is unnaturally dominant and selfish. Traditional female sexuality is not “kind,” “cuddly,” or “nurturing,” but pathologically other-directed. It makes no provision for pleasure, and it defines fulfillment in terms of male approval and affection. It’s not a more balanced, more normal sense of sexual self; it’s the masochistic inverse of a sadistic convention.
Also, why isn’t this–unwillingness to entertain or develop unapproved desires–as easily explained by social pressure as unwillingness to act on those desires?
I’ve not seen that documentary, Res Ipsa, thanks for pointing it out. A longtime sexual violence researcher recently completed a large, international study of johns where she changed tactics from previous years. Used to be she and her team culled info from arrested men in “john schools” but of course they modified their answers because they were already in trouble with the cops and weren’t looking for more. This time they placed ads in papers offering money to respondees in several countries and the preliminary results are where I got the quotes above from. The data is currently being analyzed and should be made public sometime later this year.
Piny, I know the script is for women to be submissive and nurturing and many fall into that, but just like most men aren’t rapists and sex predators just because the script says they should be, so do most women not give up all their sexual will to meet men’s desires. Again, rampant cheating, and I’ll spare you the long history of lesbianism.
I don’t believe women are equal agents in their sexual repression as men are in women’s sexual oppression. If a manager says he’ll pay a man $1 an hour to work on his farm and the employee accepts the illegal, immoral substandard wage offered, the two are not equally responsible because the power to define the terms of the situation was massively on one side.
I don’t think putting others before oneself is pathological behavior, I think the routine way too many men learn to manipulate and take advantage of women’s generosity and concern for the people around them is pathological.
But is work for low pay and little recognition something to be emulated? Neither of us is talking about assigning blame here. You’re saying that the way women behave is more natural–“seems the more natural norm men would seek”–than the way men behave under patriarchy. You’re saying that a system is profoundly imbalanced and deeply twisted, but you’re failing to acknowledge the warping effect of that imbalance on both sides of the power disparity.
It is certainly pathological when we’re talking about sexual desire and gratification. This isn’t mere generosity or egalitarianism, but total denial of one’s own needs–even a redefinition of one’s own needs as the gratification of someone else’s needs. You can’t applaud selfless impulses in women without acknowledging that the prevalence of those impulses is as much a product of misogyny as violent, predatory expressions of desire in men.
I absolutely believe that women would pay males for sex, and probably do pay males for sex. You just have to get past the idea that sex has to be pleasurable for the other person. Try to imagine it: sexual gratification, not neccesarily penile penetration, if you know what I mean, from a very young and compliant person who will never tell, never ask you for anything, never affect your education, job, marriage and who doesn’t even ask for gratification in return. The only thing is, if you were caught, it would be worse than for a man, especially in countries where men’s rage at unfaithful wives is indulged and they are allowed to kill them.
Men have had centuries, all of history, to get used to the idea of consequence-free sex from unfortunate prostitutes. They can fool themsleves that it’s a glamourous, acceptable career choice for the woman, or they can just dismiss her altogether. You can’t even blame them for not thinking about the needs and wants of the person they are sticking themselves into if they are only doing what they’ve been shown is acceptable . What if women got used to doing that? Try to imagine- a trip to Thailand, no or little risk of disease, and every fantasy fulfilled by actors who will never let on they aren’t turned on by you. There could be a bouncer nearby so you don’t feel threatened. You can see the allure.
But it still sucks for the prostitutes. You would never know what set of circumstances led to that young compliant person being there, acting for you and you probably wouldn’t want to know.
If women have by and large not “enjoyed” what prostitutes have to offer, it’s only because they have had to much to lose by doing so. As with rising infidelity rates of married women, I predict a swelling market in male prostitutes available for women, if there isn’t one already.
I don’t want to go on too much more into what’s ‘natural’ or not just because I know it’s mostly educated guesses and opinions.
That said, I don’t believe selflessness in people, women being part of people, is caused by misogyny or other oppressions. Humans naturally get along a lot better with each other than not else we wouldn’t be here, and this sociality is our greatest asset. More men willing to exploit the social contract (with women and other ‘inferiors’ especially) is largely the result of power differences and patriarchal inculcation.
Not preying on other people’s vulnerabilities is good; accepting poverty wages because you have to is bad. Both may reside on the “feminine” side of things in the gender binary, but that doesn’t mean their causes and effects are the same.
I think most men, like most people, are concerned about others more than not, but it’s usually directed towards other men more than women, as an anthropology essay I know only by title suggests “Let’s Go Get a Girl”?: American adolescent male social bonding.
I can’t say women wanting to please their sex partners sexually is a pathological result of misogyny or that men wanting to be pleased by their sex partner is pathological because I believe neither. Two people coming together for intimate sharing like that, giving pleasure to each other and taking pleasure from each other, isn’t bad in itself. It’s bad when one feels entitled to take more than they give- that’s the very definition of “to exploit”.
One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, XTC, contains the lyrics:
I won’t take from you what you can’t take from me
and I’ll leave nothing here that you can’t use upon your trip
I won’t take from you what you can’t take from me
and I’ll leave nothing here but love and milk aplenty for your tea
Elena, prostituted sex is not consequence free for men or anyone else because there is no such thing as risk-free sex. Hospitals take great care dealing with human fluids because of the high risks for transmission, women without hysterectomies face pregnancies, condoms can fail to stop AIDS even if used every time (they’re not), and condoms don’t stop gonorrhea or genital warts, a leading cause of cervical cancer. That’s the one-sentence health-only reasons, but there are tons of other reasons why prostituted sex can never be consequence free.
I think women don’t use prostitutes for the reasons most men don’t, because they want to have sex with people who want to have sex with them. IMO, that’s natural and normal and maybe that’s why it’s the preferred method among homo sapiens whose dominant mating style is categorized as serial monogamy.
I think I understand what Piny is describing, and I think there really is a pathological model of sexuality that is pushed upon women. To put it crudely, there’s a model of sexuality in which women are supposed to simply lay there, completely immobile and unresponsive, through intercourse.
That’s not a matter of being generous to your partner, or being kind, cuddly, or nurturing. It’s not simply letting your partner take the initiative. It’s a matter of completely denying that female sexuality exists at all, that women even have desires, much less the right to act upon them.
Samantha: I guess it is unreasonable to expect a blog discussions to take some things for granted, but of course there are consequences of prostitution and I never meant to imply that there aren’t. The point I was trying to make is that johns don’t perceive it that way, and also that I don’t think there is any hard-wired reason why men do this and women don’t. It’s really comes down to not giving a crapola about your sexual partner’s pleasure or circumstance, or health or well-being or freedom and there are whole cultures of people that teach men that this is a reasonable way to act. Just read Garcia-Marquez, who seems to think being a prostitute is the most romantic thing in the world.
I agree that most people need a connection for sex, and prostitution is a very ugly aberation. I just think that if all things were equal, many women would be just as slimy as many men when it comes to unethical sex.
To put it crudely, there’s a model of sexuality in which women are supposed to simply lay there, completely immobile and unresponsive, through intercourse.
Or a model in which they’re supposed to enjoy intercourse, but only as a function of pleasing their partners; orgasms for women are a sign that the man is technically skilled in bed, and of course women don’t have any desire to do anything other than what pleases their male partner.
Mythago, true. That’s the newer, updated version — more popular, and less overtly pathological — but still really awful.
The jury went to deliberations today and we are awaiting the verdict.
mythago wrote:
I’ve been reading hurt-comfort since the 1970’s – it predates slash (although not by much) and I would guess that half of it still is non-slash. To quote Camille Bacon-Smith, who did a study of fanfic in the 1980s’, “Unlike sadomasochistic fantasy material, hurt-comfort places the source of the injury outside of the dyad of sufferer and comforter…. At no point in any of the literature I have read does the sufferer enjoy or deliberately seek out pain.”
While there may now be fannish stories out there where the sexually tortured victim revels in it, I haven’t run across any written by a woman (printed fic was more female-dominated than ‘net fic is). Even if it’s an alternate universe and the other heroic character is one of the rapists, he generally rapes because it’s expected rather than because he enjoys it, and as the story progresses the rape victim teaches him to appreciate loving as equals. Authors who flat out state that they write male-with-male sex because they can’t imagine a man treating a woman as an equal, still have those two males learning to love with consideration, in a way our society often codes as female.
Completely off topic, but the term “slash” comes from the abbreviation “K/S” in fanzine directories like Forum (later Datazine), where editors advertised zines they were selling and solicited fic and art for zines they were publishing.
Samantha writes:
Prostitutes (male and female) are at higher risk with male customers, because they are in essence being injected with disease carrying fluids. Women are at a higher risk for some diseases because symptoms are hidden longer and because they are diseases men don’t suffer from (cervical cancer, chlamydia, etc.). It would not surprise me if far fewer women used prostitutes in a culture where they carried the power men do now for some innate reason.
Samantha wrote:
I agree. I think, at its best, sex reverses expectations – you give by receiving, and you receive by giving. I prefer to consider what sex might be if everyone was “human” rather than speculating on what it might be under a matriarchy as pathological as the system we live with now.
“Unlike sadomasochistic fantasy material, hurt-comfort places the source of the injury outside of the dyad of sufferer and comforter…. At no point in any of the literature I have read does the sufferer enjoy or deliberately seek out pain.”?
So it’s OK to have torture and suffering, just as long as nobody’s enjoying it? There are plenty of misogynistic porn stories with the same theme, so I don’t think that gives much support to the idea that women aren’t naturally drawn to a particular kind of sexually-violent fantasizing that men are.
Of course, I could just be flashing back to the lesbian BDSM ‘sex wars’ of the 80s.
It would not surprise me if far fewer women used prostitutes in a culture where they carried the power men do now for some innate reason.
It would surprise me; why wouldn’t they? It’s not as though we live in a world where, when women are given power, they uniquely fail to abuse it the way men do.
Cuddly sex they can’t get from their wives? WTF? What about all the guys who justify prostitution by saying, “Well, you have to pay for sex anyway.” Because they want sex, they want to pay for it, and the only human being they want to be concerned with is themselves. They go to prostitutes so they can avoid cuddly sex. They want to use a woman like she’s a toilet and then dismiss her when they’re done. These are the sort of guys who’d fit in the paradign of the homophobic/sexist guy we’re discussing elsewhere on Alas today. Sex is something they do to someone else, and that person takes all the fluid, all the karma, and they’re free of it. They think everyone else is their toilet.
Beats me why some people think that female writers are cuddly, either. There’s a truly scary fanfic phenom called rapefic which features women and girls writing gleefully about the rape of female characters. The female character is turned into a whining dog who begs and pleads, can’t fight it off, asks for it, then loves it. When it’s an adult woman acting out her hostility toward young girls who got the fictional guy she wanted, it can be well and truly frightening.
Shiloh wrote:
Oh, I have, I have. Trust me, there’s tons of it out there, and the vast majority of it is written by women (fandom is still an overwhelmingly female phenomenon, even in these newfangled internet days). In fact, there’s enough of it that at least one fanfic site I’m aware of requires the use of the abbreviation N/C->C (for “non-consensual to consensual,” ie – the sort of story where someone is raped but by the end of the experience is enjoying it) to be included somewhere in a story’s blurb to warn off those readers who are squicked or offended by that sort of rape fantasy pr0n. And like Ginmar said, there’s also the term “rapefic,” which refers to the entire, errr…ouvre of rape-based pornographic fanfic.
Tons of women get off on sickfic and non-con, and tons of women write it. The difference, IMO, lies more in the disparity of who, in the real world, is more often actually trying to turn those fantasies into reality . And I think that Mythago is right to suggest that that has a lot to do with who’s got the power. I also think that it’s got a lot to do with which particular violent rape fantasies we privilege as having some kind of bullshit “sociobiological reality” (talk about an oxymoron!), and which ones we encourage people to consider obviously nothing but minor provinces of the Land of Make-Believe.
mythago writes;
Because a lot of the women I know writing that sort of thing are trying to work through their own rapes. Whether this is the best way for them to go about it is a hotly debated topic – rape victims writing it arguing with rape victims who insisted that no one who’d been raped would write that sort of thing. I would argue that women in a culture where they are likely to be raped are approaching the theme from a different direction than men in a culture where they are not likely to be raped.
mythago writes;
I’m not arguing that women in a strongly matriarchal society wouold be sweetness and light. I am arguing that if there are innate differences between women and men, they’d most likely show in the area of sexuality, because that is where women and men are most physically different. A male client using a prostitute bears little of the risk of the activity; the woman carries all the risk of pregnancy and is more likely to get STDs. A female client using a male prostitute would carry the greater risk than he would, so there may be an innate, biological reason that women in power would not express that power sexually the same way men do.
While a lot of the differences between how men and women experience sex have been discredited – women do have a strong sex drive; women can not only orgasm but are multi-orgasmic, women need the “male” hormone testosterone and men the “female” hormone oxytocin in order to orgasm, etc. – there are still checmical-based differences in how men and women experience sex that are innate. Women’s higher level of estrogen interacts with oxytocin to make them more touch sensitive and the like.
ginmar wrote:
I’ve mostly seen it where it’s young girls punishing their contemporaries, but, yes, it’s a squick fest. Still, it’s women punishing women, women forcing a rival through a threat they both face, which may or may not translate directly to women sexually punishing men when the women are in power.
That does get me to speculating – a lot of prostitutes report that johns have gotten more abusive (in minor ways like “water sports”, not so much in terms of beatings), and going on historical documents more johns are now demanding a much greater variety of activities. If misogyny and homophobia are closely connected, does that mean that the more men feel threatened by homosexual rape, the more they feel driven to humiliate protitutes?
It’s possible. However, I think it’s probably more that the more men feel threatened by women, the more they feel driven to humiliate prostitutes. If forced to hazard a guess, mine would be that it’s women moving closer to civil equality that has led to the change, not gay rights.
Of course, I do see the two as intimately connected. Maybe the spectre of being “turned into a woman” by the dread butt-sex starts getting a whole lot scarier as the right to treat women like “women” (ie, chattel) is taken away.
Elkins wrote:
I suppose you’re right. In my experience, guys as a whole were far more fussed about “women taking over” in the 1970’s and ’80’s – the only guys I really “hear” saying that now are the MRAs – while they started fussing about guy rights stepping on their toes more recently, but that could just be an accident of my environment. Or it may be the majority of guys who felt the most strongly about women getting “too many rights” then are now quieter but more angry.
Er, that should have been “fussing about gay rights.” Although I’m sure there’s considerable overlap between gay rights and guy rights, they’re not quite the same thing.