I recently read a news article on the bust of a massage parlors in the United States. The bust netted 2 women at the end of middle-age who are alleged to have committed the hellish crime of making a few guys blow their loads. In the comments section a poster defended the existence of such services for “the ugly overweight guys who visit them, because they can’t get sex any other way”. While I fully believe that prostitution should be legal, I take issue with that assertion that the only men who would pay for sex are desperate unattractive men.
That is demonstrably false simply by referring to the litany of powerful and attractive men who have admitted to or been accused of visiting prostitutes in recent years: Actors Hugh Grant, Charlie Sheen, US Representative Anthony Weiner, billionaire Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, business giants and aristocracy from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, countless attorneys and doctors in every country, and the list goes on and on. This is not to say that what any of them do in their lives is right. I list them simply to show that many rich, famous, successful and even good looking guys pay to play, at least sometimes.
Why guys pay for sex
When a judge asked Charlie Sheen why he would pay for sex in open court, he famous quipped: “I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.”
Funny, bold, and perhaps true enough. What better way to ensure casual sex on your own terms? But there are many reasons men visit prostitutes.
Here’s what a prostitute in a legal brothel in Australia has to say:
We get a lot of guys who have a little quirk or fantasy that they can’t act out with their wives or girlfriends so they come to us.
The biggest fantasy is still lesbians. Men want as many girls in the room as they can afford.
Sydney can be a really stressed-out place and we mostly cater to guys that only need to be seeking a naked woman to do it for them.
Harmless enough it seems.
The oldest profession in the world
And in fact there’s every indication that far from being “harmful to society,” the exchange of sexual services for financial gain is an integral part of economies the world over, and always has been.
It’s not for nothing that the United Nations recommends decriminalization of prostitution as a weapon in the fight against AIDS. It’s easier to check on things when they are out in the open. Driving things underground only makes them more dangerous.
Until we are all free enough from the artificial constraints we impose upon ourselves for various reasons to simply approach each other for sexual pleasure on the basis of mutual attraction, prostitution is going to be around in one form or another. Better to have it where we can see it than driven to the darkest ends of the earth. And in the meantime, let’s stop pretending that only the worst of the worst guys in the world would ever drop twenty bucks for a blowjob.
