Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (44 page)

partner” (41%); and “I am shy and awkward when trying to meet women”

(41%). All the remaining items were endorsed by at least 19% of respondents.

Although the most frequently endorsed item (Table 10.3) would seem to best explain men’s reasons for sex with prostitutes, the “woman who likes to get nasty” is not explicitly defined as a prostitute. Still, this item, in conjunction with the second most endorsed item, “I am excited by the idea of approaching a prostitute,” supports the idea that one of the attractions of sex with a prostitute is that it is illicit or risky. According to a customer interviewed by Holzman and Pines, part of the attraction was the “element of risk . . . the gambling element.”35 A number of other responses to both sets of questions suggest that prostitution is seen by customers as simply a convenient, quick, easy way for men to get sex, and without the effort of a relationship.

Table 10.4 reports responses to the two “reasons” questions asked of the 2007 sample. The most frequently endorsed reason for seeking prostitutes was that is a “quick and easy” way to get sex (44%). Forty-seven percent identified this as their main reason for having sex with prostitutes. The second most popular reason was “don’t have to worry about a relationship” and the third was that “they will do things sexually that other women won’t do.” Almost 20% selected “other”; however, over half of these responses constituted excuses or denials claiming that the respondent had not had sex with a prostitute or was not seeking sex at the time of arrest.

These responses seem to suggest a “commodified” perspective toward sexuality, in which sex is analogous to a consumer product rather than an
248

PROSTITUTES’ CUSTOMERS: MOTIVES AND MISCONCEPTIONS

aspect of intimate relationships. The desire to “have a variety of sexual partners,” the need to “be in control during sex,” and the urge to “have sex immediately when I am aroused” also point to this kind of self-focused sexuality. The idea of shopping for a sex partner with particular physical attributes, such as hair color, body type, or ethnicity—which is precisely what some customers seek—also reflects a conception of sex as a commodity rather than as part of an intimate relationship.

Wanting a kind of sex different than what one’s regular partner wants (41%) or believing that prostitutes will “do things sexually that other women won’t do” supports the idea that some men seek out prostitutes because they can do things with them that other women might find unpleasant or unacceptable. Liking “rough hard sex” (19%) may be not only a sexual preference but also a reflection of a desire to dominate women during sex.

The data also suggest that some men pay for sex because they have difficulty establishing a conventional relationship. Forty-one percent said that they were “shy and awkward” when trying to meet women, 24% felt unattractive physically, and 23% had “difficulty meeting women who were not nude dancers or prostitutes.” For some of these men, patronizing prostitutes may be an attempt not only to have sex, but also to establish an intimate relationship with a woman. Jordan describes one very shy client who felt desperately alone and eventually fell in love with a prostitute. When she quit working, he was disappointed. Although he continued to visit prostitutes, he claimed, “It’s not sexual relief that I go for—it’s to relieve some loneliness that I feel.”36 These responses indicate that, for some clients, frequenting a prostitute may be a way of establishing an intimate connection with a woman.

Further support for all these motives is found in the fact that each item was more likely to be endorsed by repeat users than first-time offenders. (For all but two of these items a chi-squared test of independence indicated significance at the p <. 05 level.) Repeat users were more than twice as likely as first-timers to report that they had difficulty meeting women who were not prostitutes or nude dancers and were also more likely to say that they were shy and awkward when trying to meet women. A commodified approach to sexuality—that is, an interest in variety, control, and immediate satisfaction—

is also more evident among the repeat users.

Motives for buying sex differ according to social class, as indicated here by respondents’ education level. College graduates were more likely than non-graduates to indicate an interest in sexual variety and excitement, to want sexual acts different from those their regular partners offered, to want a variety of sexual partners, and to feel excited by the idea of seeking a
249

MARTIN A. MONTO

prostitute. Non-college graduates were more likely to report difficulty meeting women, awkwardness, and feeling physically unattractive. Some of these men may buy sex from prostitutes because of their inability to form conventional relationships with women. Additionally, non-college graduates were more likely than college graduates to say they wanted to be in control during sex. Prostitution may be one way in which they gain some control in their encounters with women. In sum, clients’ social class backgrounds make a difference in their reasons for buying sex.

Married clients were more likely than unmarried men to report wanting a different kind of sex than their regular partners. Among unmarried men this may reflect the lack of a regular sexual partner. A married man who has a sense of entitlement to sex may see patronizing a prostitute as justifiable should the wife not meet his perceived sexual needs. Unmarried clients were more likely to report shyness, a liking for rough sex, and a desire to avoid the responsibilities of conventional relationships—all of which could limit their success in forming conventional relationships.

C O N C L U S I O N

The act of approaching a prostitute is a product of many factors. These are likely to include the availability of prostitutes, knowledge of where to find them, access to sufficient money to pay them, risk of being caught or of contracting disease, and ease of securing services. While these practical issues may be important in influencing whether a man
seeks
prostitutes, they tell us little about the needs that the man is trying to fill through prostitution. This chapter sheds light on these motivations.

There is no single or simple reason men patronize prostitutes. Even the conventional notion that “they go for sex” falls short, as some men visit prostitutes in an effort to experience emotional intimacy, and many men who want sex do not patronize prostitutes. Rather, seeking the services of a prostitute appears to reflect a number of motivations, including an attraction to the illicit nature of the encounter, a desire for varieties of sex that may not be provided by regular partners, defining sex as a commodity, and a lack of interest in or access to conventional relationships. All of the influences are more pronounced among repeat users than among first-timers. Motivations appear to differ depending on the class backgrounds of the men, with college graduates more likely to seek the excitement of illicit sex, and non-graduates more likely to report difficulty in forming conventional relationships.

Additionally, married men were more likely to be seeking sexual behaviors
250

PROSTITUTES’ CUSTOMERS: MOTIVES AND MISCONCEPTIONS

they could not experience with their wives, and unmarried men were more likely to avoid conventional relationships or report difficulty in securing them.

Few men were motivated by the most destructive reasons for patronizing prostitutes—because of a desire for rough sex or because one holds beliefs conducive to rape.

The growing research focusing on customers beginning in the 1990s has shed greater light on this once hidden population. We now have much more insight into their motives and characteristics. Clearly, there are many motives for seeking prostitutes and many variables that predict whether a motivated individual will follow through with behavior. Perhaps most striking is how unsurprising the findings are. If one were to ask a college class to describe the 10 most common reasons why men pursue prostitutes, as I have done many times, the responses would line up pretty well with the findings described here. Although there are many misconceptions regarding prostitution, customers’ motives are not among them. While we may never know the distinctive circumstances that led Eliot Spitzer into liaisons with prostitutes, we can be fairly certain that some of his motivations are the same as those described here.

Most of the respondents in my study were arrested on the street. Yet, increasingly, sexual services are advertised and negotiated over the Internet.

While this is likely to reduce street prostitution and thus make researchers’

contact with street-based prostitutes and customers more difficult, it may make it easier to contact customers who patronize indoor workers and can be accessed online. Future research on patrons of web-based prostitution, organized indoor prostitution establishments, and male prostitutes will be especially helpful. Also in need of future study are the situational predictors that explain why some men but not others choose prostitutes as a means of meeting their sexual or emotional desires. After all, many men sometimes “feel awkward and shy when trying to meet a woman,” “want a different kind of sex than their regular partner” provides, or “get excited about the idea of approaching a prostitute.” Interviews comparing clients to non-clients are needed to explore how socialization regarding sexuality and masculinity leads some men to consider prostitution as an option.

N OTE S

Research for this chapter was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Justice (Grant 97-IJ-CX-0033). I thank Norma Hotaling, co-founder of San Francisco’s First Offender Prostitution Program for access to most of the men
251

MARTIN A. MONTO

in my sample. I also thank Steve Garcia and Holly Pierce for their excellent research assistance.

1. Federal Complaint against Mark Brenner, Cecil Suwal, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, Tanya Hollander, 2008. http://www.npr.org/documents/2008/

mar/dojfull.pdf.

2. Priscilla Alexander, “Prostitution: A Difficult Issue for Feminists,” in Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, eds.,
Sex Work: Writings by
Women in the Sex Industry
, Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1987; Martin Monto,

“Female Prostitution, Customers, and Violence,”
Violence Against Women
10 (2004): 160–188.

3. Martin Monto, “Holding Men Accountable for Prostitution: The Unique Approach of the Sexual Exploitation Education Project,”
Violence Against
Women
4 (1998): 505–517.

4. Martin Monto,
Focusing on the Clients of Street Prostitutes: A Creative
Approach to Reducing Violence Against Women
, NIJ Final Report, National Institute of Justice, 1999. http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/grants/

182860.pdf ; Monto, “Female Prostitution.”

5. Jeanna Bryner, “Why Power and Prostitution Go Together,”
Live Science,
2008 http://www.livescience.com/health/080311-spitzer-hypocrisy.html; Sam Janus, Barbara Bess, and Carol Saltus,
A Sexual Profile of Men in Power
, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977.

6. Harold Holzman and Sharon Pines, “Buying Sex: The Phenomenology of Being a John,”
Deviant Behavior
4 (1982): 89–116; Jan Jordan, “User Pays: Why Men Buy Sex,”
Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
30 (1997): 55–71; Julia O’Connell Davidson, “The Sex Tourist, The Expatriate, His Ex-Wife, and Her ‘Other’,”
Sexualities
4

(2001): 5–24; Julia O’Connell Davidson,
Prostitution, Power, and Freedom
, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998; Elizabeth Plumridge, Jane Chetwynd, Anna Reed, and Sandra Gifford, “Discourses of Emotionality in Commercial Sex: The Missing Client Voice,”
Feminism
and Psychology
7 (1997): 165–181.

7. Robert Michael, John Gagnon, Edward Laumann, and Gina Kolata,
Sex
in America: A Definitive Survey
, Boston: Little, Brown, 1994; National Opinion Research Center,
General Social Survey, 1972
–
2000: Cumulative
Codebook
, Chicago: NORC, 2001.

8. Roger Kern,
Where’s the Action: Criminal Motivations Among Prostitute
Clients
, Ph.D. dissertation: Vanderbilt University, 2000; Martin Monto,

“Competing Definitions of Prostitution: Insights from Two Studies of Male Customers,” presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, 2001.

252

PROSTITUTES’ CUSTOMERS: MOTIVES AND MISCONCEPTIONS

9. Alfred Kinsey, Wendell Pomeroy, and Clyde Martin,
Sexual Behavior in
the Human Male
, Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1948.

10. Harold Benjamin and R. E. L. Masters,
Prostitution and Morality
, New York: Julian Press, 1964.

11. Bonnie Bullough and Vern Bullough,
Women and Prostitution
, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987.

12. Michael, et al.,
Sex in America
.

13. Nannette Davis, “From Victims to Survivors: Working with Recovering Prostitutes,” in Ronald Weitzer, ed.,
Sex for Sale
, New York: Routledge, 2000.

14. Ronald Weitzer, “New Directions in Research on Prostitution,”
Crime,
Law, and Social Change
43 (2005): 211–235
.

15. Monto, “Female Prostitution”; O’Connell Davidson, “Prostitution, Power, and Freedom.”

16. Mimi Silbert, “Occupational Hazards of Street Prostitutes,”
Criminal
Justice and Behavior
8 (1981): 395–399; Nannette Davis,
Prostitution:
An International Handbook on Trends, Problems, and Policies
, London: Greenwood Press, 1993.

17. See Chapter 1 in this volume, and Ronald Weitzer, “Prostitution Control in America: Rethinking Public Policy,”
Crime, Law, and Social Change
32 (1999): 83–102.

18. Catherine Benson and Roger Matthews, “Street Prostitution: Ten Facts in Search of a Policy,”
International Journal of the Sociology of Law
23 (1995): 395–415; Mimi Silbert, “Prostitution and Sexual Assault: Summary of Results,”
International Journal of Biosocial Research
3 (1981): 69–71; D. Kelly Weisberg,
Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent
Prostitution
, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985.