Male Bashing Won’t Fix Sex Trafficking
“It was near impossible to find enough men who didn’t buy sex,” the presenter said at the start. I found myself fidgeting in my chair. Really? Where the fuck where you looking pal?
This afternoon I found myself in a room full of women (okay there was one other man) talking about the difference between men who buy sex and those don’t. The presenter, a smug man who seemed to enjoy all this talk of sex and men behaving badly, was one of nine interviewers for the study “Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Don’t Buy Sex.” The study compared interviews with 100 pairs of men matched for their background, one of whom buys sex and the other who does not. The study results were given exclusively to Newsweek last summer and the resulting article, “The John Next Door,” created quite a stir.
I had been invited to the talk to:
“Please join us for coffee and conversation about the demand for trafficking in Massachusetts and elsewhere. If we are to eliminate demand for illegal commercial sex—and thus protect those women, children and some men who are trafficked to meet it—we must understand the attitudes, backgrounds, and behaviors that prevent some men but allow others to purchase another’s body.”
As the researcher explained his team’s methodology my stomach turned. At the same time the women around the table seemed to be leaning in. The researchers had put an ad in the local Metro paper asking for males willing to talk about their sexual practices. They screened over 600 calls. The interviews were conducted in South Station where each interviewee was supposed to look for the guy with the red folder who would conduct the questionnaire.
The researcher regaled us with anecdotes about being threatened, stories of men asking him if he wanted to meet in the restroom to have sex, and talked about the extent to which “men are conditioned at this point to want to talk about their sexual exploits.
If you put an ad in the Metro and pay guys $90 to come to South Station to talk about their sexual habits, yeah, you are going to attract 100% weirdos whether they admit to having bought sex or not was my thought.
Then I tried to regroup. To think about why I was there. I, too, abhor sex trafficking. I, too, understand that the average age a prostitute begins that life is 13. So what if I am in a room full of women talking about how to cure the problem by getting a better understanding of what drives male demand for the purchase of sex? Sure this makes sense, I tried to tell myself.
He finally got to the results of this pivotal study. Men who buy sex are more likely to have committed other crimes, they are more likely to commit rape, they need to engage in increasingly sadistic acts to satisfy their urges. Both men who buy sex and those who don’t understand that prostitutes are coerced into the life and underage children are involved. The key difference, according to the study, between those who buy sex and those who don’t is how these men first learned about sex. If you had sex education you are less likely to buy sex than if you learned about sex through pornography.
That’s it? That’s the big reveal? I thought to myself. Well, there goes that theory, since every teenage boy on the face of the planet learns about sex on the Internet at this point, whether or not they have a sex education class.
At that point I got up and left, partially because I had an appointment to get to. But partially because I was thoroughly disgusted with the do-good male bashing I had heard based on the flimsiest of science.
Nothing I heard had any bearing on the underlying causes of sex trafficking, on the use of porn and prostitution, and on the epidemic of misunderstanding surrounding sexuality in this country. What I saw was women talking about male sexuality based on interviews with a couple hundred men of questionable motivation sitting in a train station talking to earnest interviewers.
How about going to strip clubs and talking to guys (“Inside a Strip Club”)? Or interviewing high school and college boys about their perceptions? Or trying to get underneath the reasons for the male bashing that will never solve the problem.
The truth is that from what I have been able to gather from talking to men who do go to strip clubs and buy sex is that they are, at bottom, lonely. Maybe they are sick and sadistic. But just maybe there is something more complex than that.
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photo: bixentro / flickr
Had you noticed the reaction to the Newsweek piece when it was published, and what did you think about it? Didn’t the outcry make you think that maybe something was wrong? People have been sounding the alarms about the junk science and bad research when it comes to this issue and nobody seems to care until they are personally offended in some way. Yes, the whole thing is male-bashing. The entire “end demand” push is male-bashing, and Trouble with a capital T. What they say about it, that isn’t actually how it is. I’ve looked into the legislation in a… Read more »
http://villagevoicepimp.com/
Fifty one Attorney Generals aren’t wrong….and would not take public stances on this if sex trafficking weren’t happening de facto.
If you live in a city with a huge immigrant population, like here in NYC, you wouldn’t be debating this, or searching out the couple of people who post fictitious data on this topic as a means to discredit the validity of the issue.
Its the same in Ireland. The same organisation (Sisters of Charity) that rescued, read enslaved, Irish women for decades is still at work spreading exactly the same bile and worsening the life of the unfortunate women they happen to meet.
[Warning: severe self-righteousness follows.]
I have never slept with a prostitute (I HATE that stupid euphemism “sex worker”), and never will. Gee, what a hot lay that would be! Thank God for the uncle who molested her for a few years; I might not have had the privilege to get a bang for my bucks without him! And it really turns me on, that she want’s it (cash!) just as much as I do!
“Please join us for coffee and conversation about the demand for trafficking in Massachusetts and elsewhere. If we are to eliminate demand for illegal commercial sex—and thus protect those women, children and some men who are trafficked to meet it—we must understand the attitudes, backgrounds, and behaviors that prevent some men but allow others to purchase another’s body.”
“…and some men”? Wow. Reading that first paragraph puts me on edge.
It’s worth nothing that some folks have pointed out that the 13 year old average age number is based on some seriously flawed statistics: http://eminism.org/blog/entry/62
There is absolutely no evidence to support the wilder claims of anti-trafficking activists. The panic over sex trafficking is being used to crack down on consensual prostitution and salso to go after ilegal and irregular immigrants who are involved in sex work. Vanishingly few “trafficking victims” have been discovered during the crackdowns on commercial sex in Europe and the United States, but this hasn’t stopped alarmists like Melissa Farley from making wild claims. It should also be noted that some of Melissa’s colleagues in New Zealand are calling for her membership to be revoked by her professional association for irresponsible… Read more »
Now, there are some guys out there who are bizarre and that is one reason they got o prostitutes. They want to slap the girl, call her horrible names, pull her hair, etc. I’d say thats pretty sadistic. They know their wife or gf most likely wont like this so they go elsewhere. That is why PSE or porn star experience exists. It definitely is not all about the sex, otherwise men would not propose to sex workers. I wouldnt be surprised if many of the johns had small babies. Sometimes men feel lonely and uncared for when he has… Read more »
A blog that does a good job of disproving many of the wilder claims by anti-sex-traficking activists: http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/ Written by a former prostitute with daily and well researched posts. She knows what she’s talking about most of the time. Though personally I disagree with the notion that male-female relationships are fundamentally the same as prostitute-client relationship, along with other gender essentialist notions. Her beleif is that men fundamentally have a higher sex drive than women, and so men must “buy” sex in one form or another to make up the difference, this includes both within relationships and from professionals. She… Read more »
Dear Quantum, Men in general are hornier than women, and this in and of itself is not necessarily bad. Much of the sex and relationships segment is devoted to sex. This site itself talks a lot about how horny men are. I would say that dating nowadays isn’t really that different from prostitution. Most men are basically paying for sex, and they know they want get it unless they insert cash in some way shape, or form. Most men expect to pay their cash then take the girl home and have sex. They may be together for a bit then… Read more »
Alice, you say “dating nowadays isn’t really that different from prostitution.” Excuse me? You need to change both your outlook and the kind of men you are in contact with. They have led you to the impression that: “Most men are basically paying for sex, and they know they want get it unless they insert cash in some way shape, or form. Most men expect to pay their cash then take the girl home and have sex. They may be together for a bit then he moves on to the next woman, repeat cycle.” You describe (excuse the vulgarity) douche… Read more »
@Mr. Murphy, Nowhere did I say men dont fall in love. In fact, in a post on this very page, I say that men propose to sex workers meaning that they fell in love. I’ll even say that men do fall in love, they fall hard and fast. I would argue that most me Nice is the minority most men are douch bags. I have dealt with all kinds of men even so called nice guys. The truth is more I deal with men the less I respect them as a whole. And yes, for the most part dating is… Read more »
I am a college-educated woman who went into sex work as an adult doing sensual massage. Of the hundreds of men I have seen, only maybe two of them ever scared me to any degree by having poor social skills. I was never harmed, and I was never trafficked- I always work for myself. I have known more than 30 women, and at least six men, who are also independent sex workers. Most of them are good people who aren’t any more traumatized or irresponsible than sample populations from other professions would be. That “most girls start at 13” and… Read more »
The link is slightly out-of-date now, but whenever I hear about the horrors of sex trafficking, I do tend to think of things like this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails So, the premise that the authors of this study seemed to be working on (“buying sex” = “supporting evil sex trafficking”) was already flawed, and the conclusions drawn from the interviewees seemed to slant it even more. A waste of time for everyone involved, by the sounds of it. Like Luna, I’ll post an obligatory disclaimer: I’m sure sex trafficking is real, and that it is horrible for everyone involved, and some guys who… Read more »
I laughed reading the first couple of paragraphs wondering where the story was going. Would it call attention to the flawed methods of ‘research’ or try to uncover that while men are simpler than women, we do have a level of complexity to us.
Don’t men always pay for sex with a nice dinner, weekend away, or other gestures that use different forms of currency besides cash?
Not really, Mark, these days women have careers and their own money and contribute financially, fix dinners, split costs, that’s why we fought so hard for equal pay, access to education and careers So we could be with someone for the right reasons, be sexual with people we are attracted to instead of having to “repay” someone for a nice dinner or trip with sex.
Pathetic you feel your presence alone doesn’t suffice.
Valerie speaks for herself! I very much like dates with GENTLEMEN.
If a man asked me to pay for my half, I would pay then never talk to him again. *shrug*
I love to buy a nice girl (and by ‘nice’ I mean NICE-sweet, kind) dinner. It is NOT ‘payment’ for anything. If she wants to have sex later great, but if not, I’m cool with that. She can have a career, she can make more than I do (easy to do as of late, sadly) or she can just be a nice girl who has yet to find her niche. Lord, what cynicism.
Robert
Were you truly caught off guard by their conclusions? When you received the invitation, did it list the names of the researchers? What else would you expect from Melissa Farley?
I thought it might be bad but I really had not idea how faulty the method in which the research was conducted. The fact that Newsweek et al took it seriously is a joke.
Newsweek is a joke.