If a guy used prostitutes, do you think less of him?

[jonny15]

Or just live your life the right way so you don't have to hide who you really are to be accepted by others.

 

And who are you to decicde what the right way to live is?

[jonny15]

If they are doing it to pay for their kids or a drug habit, or college. They are making the choice to do it. Nobody is putting a gun to their head.

[jonny15]

I find this an odd thing to say coming from a man who feels powerless to change the circumstances of his life, sexually, socially, financially, interpersonally and in every other way. Even though he has a roof over his head, his basic creature needs taken care of, and people who support him so he can do anything he wants without having to work or acquire any skill to put food in his mouth.

 

They chose the job. So I have no sympathy.

[jonny15]

Every girl will say yes...because any girl selling herself, is making the game Too Easy, Not Fair, or Coping Out.

 

Too easy? How can it be too easy?

[lerenard]

No matter how classy and well paid prostitutes can be nowadays, this word for me still associates with being broke and selling your body to have money for food or drugs, STD and mascara all over the face, fishnet stockings and cheap lingerie under a coat. Or being sold to slavery. I can accept strippers with one half of my brain, and I have a friend that does pole-dancing for living by her own choice and to pay her study and is amazing at it, but at the same time is it any different from being a heroin dealer? Sex is addicting, so when you have no - you go and buy some. It is expensive, illegal almost everywhere and your chances to catch a STD are the same as any junkie would have. And if you feel so little confidence that you need to go and BUY yourself a woman for getting laid, being with her wont be your biggest trouble.

Yes, I would think less of a guy if I knew he uses prostitutes. If you have dancers in the cake for your bachelor party - its OK, but paying someone you don't know so she gives you a blowjob... no.

[lavenderdove]

Yes, I would have a problem with it and be seriously afraid he'd give you a nasty STD someday.

[sleepingdonut]

I find this an odd thing to say coming from a man who feels powerless to change the circumstances of his life, sexually, socially, financially, interpersonally and in every other way. Even though he has a roof over his head, his basic creature needs taken care of, and people who support him so he can do anything he wants without having to work or acquire any skill to put food in his mouth.

 

Oh snap...

[Fudgie]

Oh snap...

 

Yeah, I saw what TOV said and squinted my eyes and went "Oooooo" out loud.

 

It's extremely hard to say that what someone does is their own responsibility if you can't take responsibility for what you do (or not do).

[ParisPaulette]

If they are doing it to pay for their kids or a drug habit, or college. They are making the choice to do it. Nobody is putting a gun to their head.

 

Wow, I can't believe this line. Actually you don't know who put a gun to their head just before they took you on as a client. Or did you miss that class on basic Pimp Tactics 101? And life can put a gun to your head just as fast. You go live on the streets, be tired and cold and hungry and see how fast you say yes when somebody offers you money in exchange for a blowjob. Sure it's your "choice" to say yes, but let's face it, it's not much of a choice now is it.

 

Keep telling yourself that, but most people don't share your reality at all. Thank goodness.

[shelty24]

If they are doing it to pay for their kids or a drug habit, or college. They are making the choice to do it. Nobody is putting a gun to their head.

 

Funny how thats the only thing you picked up on. I watched a documentary recently about 2men who travel around just to pay for sex.. any time anyone tasked them how they feel about trafficking, drugs, STDs, pimps, rape, abuse, the vulnerability of these women-it was blatantly obvious he was in complete denial. He either tried to avoid the qs or he would say im helping her by giving her money.. laughable really.. they asked one girl some qs about her family, whether they no or not what she does for a living, is she happy etc it was obvious she was vulnerable, scared, unhappy and hated her job but she put on a fake smile and answered the qs very shyly. You could tell a mile away how vulnerable and nervous she was.. another lady cried her eyes out in desperation and begged for help. She spoke about how she has been raped 4 times in the past year

 

Again go sit in your bubble and pretend its glamorous.

[Mesemene]

I'm with ToV on this one.

 

I've known a few male friends whose friends or fathers (ewww) actually got a prostitute for them for something like their 16th birthday. Just ick. But a one time deal as a teenager? Meh, there's a lot of things I did as a teenager I can safely say would be against my better judgement now. I don't expect most guys or girls to be able to look back at the teen and adolescent years and be spotless.

 

As a thinking adult I would have an issue with it, both from the PoV of ethics (sex for money) and from the standpoint that taking advantage of another's desperation is never a good moral option.

 

They chose the job. So I have no sympathy.

 

Please tell me I was never quite THIS naive.

[tiredofvampires]

They chose the job. So I have no sympathy.

 

In a sense, you're right that it's a choice. Just the way every decision we make about how we're going to survive in this world could be classified as a choice.

 

But you're acting as though the choice to go into prostitution is a stand-alone one, free of context, in a vacuum, and apart from an entire lead-in of backstory.

 

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone working in the sex industry (and this includes men) who have not been raped and molested as children, abandoned, verbally, emotionally, and physically assaulted and abused, neglected, and are often terribly poor, living in bad neighborhoods with many socioeconomically depressed elements. I'm talking about ketchup-sandwiches-for-lunch poor. If they aren't desperately poor to start with, there are all those other factors which can even involve parents who are making money but are lost souls, emotionally distant or abusive, and generally leave their child with no role models. Which then leads to gateway behaviors: skipping school, hanging out with the wrong crowds for validation, experimenting with ever-increasingly harder drugs, sex at young ages, other risky behaviors. Are all of these choices? Yes, but children's brains are growing, and molding to their environment and they're adapting to what life is presenting them, which is NOT their choice. And given non-nourishing soil to thrive on, you don't get a plant that is thriving, but one that's withered. By the time such children reach pre-adulthood, they have no resources, no focus in life, no self-esteem, no tools to handle life as an emerging adult, and in many cases, materially, they are deprived of the basics of security. Many are runaways -- by choice again, because risking being on the street is preferable to the life of violence/neglect, etc. they encounter at home. Many are cast out by their family, onto the streets.

 

So their lives are a series of choices arising out of an attempt to adapt to a series of circumstances and events that were not choices. By the time they are prostituting themselves, they are choosing for the moment to live rather than to die, because the latter would be the only other option they see.

 

I suspect that you don't need this education, jonny. I felt it was worth saying anyway, but as I said, you should know better than anyone else that where you stand in your life now is a result of a series of things that have happened. Did you wake up today with all the problems you want sympathy for? Or was it an entire life history that lead you to this moment you're standing in?

 

That you can suffer so much over the lacks you feel about yourself and yet not have sympathy for others who have likely had it far, far more brutal than you, adds another whole layer of unappealing to your persona that certainly doesn't do you any favors.

[tiredofvampires]

(And I'm not even talking about human trafficking cases, where it's 100% not a choice, but a matter of coercion, which is a global-wide phenomenon that doesn't spare the U.S.; but you wouldn't necessarily know which ones are the victims of that.)

[Iggles]

Every girl will say yes...because any girl selling herself, is making the game Too Easy, Not Fair, or Coping Out.

 

No, because I find it gross. I don't trade sex for relationships, so it's no skin off my back.

 

My issue with dating a man who pays for sex, is that he doesn't share the same values towards sex that I do. For me sex and emotional attachment is linked. Sharing you body with another person is special and reserved for someone you care about/are committed to. I wouldn't have sex with strangers. I wouldn't have sex with friends. I wouldn't have sex with someone I was casually seeing. So paying someone to sleep with them doesn't even enter into the conversation!

 

Plus, there's the promiscuity angle. I find a high partner count gross, as you're essential sleeping with all the people they've slept with. STD risks increase exponentially. Ick.

[pl3asehelp]

And who are you to decicde what the right way to live is?

 

I'm not - you are. You already know part of the answer. All the things you do that you choose to hide by lying to others about. Obviously, not right or you could be proud of yourself and not have to hide.

[ThatwasThen]

If a guy used prostitutes, do you think less

I know I'd probably think there was something wrong with him if he had to resort to paying for sex. In this day and age of FB's and FWB's and One night stands then to pay to get done seems like you'd have to be pretty desperate.

[jonny15]

Yeah, I saw what TOV said and squinted my eyes and went "Oooooo" out loud.

 

It's extremely hard to say that what someone does is their own responsibility if you can't take responsibility for what you do (or not do).

 

I'd don't recall selling myself So I do not get the point. There is no hypocrisy in my mentioning personal responsiblity when it comes to something like that.

[jonny15]

In a sense, you're right that it's a choice. Just the way every decision we make about how we're going to survive in this world could be classified as a choice.

 

But you're acting as though the choice to go into prostitution is a stand-alone one, free of context, in a vacuum, and apart from an entire lead-in of backstory.

 

Couldn't that be said about every job?

 

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone working in the sex industry (and this includes men) who have not been raped and molested as children, abandoned, verbally, emotionally, and physically assaulted and abused, neglected, and are often terribly poor, living in bad neighborhoods with many socioeconomically depressed elements. I'm talking about ketchup-sandwiches-for-lunch poor. If they aren't desperately poor to start with, there are all those other factors which can even involve parents who are making money but are lost souls, emotionally distant or abusive, and generally leave their child with no role models. Which then leads to gateway behaviors: skipping school, hanging out with the wrong crowds for validation, experimenting with ever-increasingly harder drugs, sex at young ages, other risky behaviors. Are all of these choices? Yes, but children's brains are growing, and molding to their environment and they're adapting to what life is presenting them, which is NOT their choice. And given non-nourishing soil to thrive on, you don't get a plant that is thriving, but one that's withered. By the time such children reach pre-adulthood, they have no resources, no focus in life, no self-esteem, no tools to handle life as an emerging adult, and in many cases, materially, they are deprived of the basics of security. Many are runaways -- by choice again, because risking being on the street is preferable to the life of violence/neglect, etc. they encounter at home. Many are cast out by their family, onto the streets.

 

Some guys get into porn basically because they have a big penis and are halfway decent looking. Not because they have issues. But then again. don't we all have issues of some sort?

 

Do you feel the same thing about people watching porn then? I say that because they are watching sex workers.

 

 

That you can suffer so much over the lacks you feel about yourself and yet not have sympathy for others who have likely had it far, far more brutal than you, adds another whole layer of unappealing to your persona that certainly doesn't do you any favors.

 

I've learned that life sucks and then you die. And while my life hasn't amounted to much, I have not put myself in situations where things of this nature could happen.

 

I've never been high, never been drunk, don't gamble, don't have a bunch of debt, and don't have a bunch of babies to feed. When you do risking things that almost certainly have no reward, you will most likely one day have to face the consequences of taking said risks. If that is the path those things lead some people down, then it is their responsibility to take themselves out of it. But then again, it's all a hustle and so is life.

[Fudgie]

I actually find it pretty odd myself. Why have you not amounted to anything (your words?). Because I've seen you post a lot about your life and how you aren't in school and aren't trying to go, don't have a job and aren't trying for one, don't have any burning interests, don't have a relationship, etc. And when you say why that is, i see excuses. You say you're fat, you're stupid, you're not cool or funny, you have a small penis, etc. All excuses. No responsibility.

 

If you were truly to take responsibility, you'd say "My own misgivings, insecurities, close mindedness, and laziness are what has led me to live the life I had today. I could be happy and self sufficient but I chose not to be. I have chosen to blame my bad traits for my poor life instead of closing to improve on them."

 

So yeah, I'm sorry, but I don't think you can condemn the actions of others and say it's their responsibility when someone could easily say the same for you.

 

Of course you haven't done drugs, racked up debt, or had a bunch of unwanted kids. Is that an accomplishment or something? That's like me asking for a metal because I've gotten to 24 years in life without shanking someone. Has the bar really fallen so low? It's easy to not have kids and not rack up debt when you don't work, don't go to school, and don't date.

[tiredofvampires]

Couldn't that be said about every job?

 

Sure. Every job is the result of backstory. Every life has backstory. Even first thing out of the birth canal, there's backstory -- a stage has been set for you.

 

In the case of someone who grew up with their family loving them, instilling values in them to work hard and respect themselves, providing the necessary nurturing, providing for them a lot of enriching choices to make, talents to grow, and skills to acquire, the result would be a child who grows up to be a pediatrician, or an educator, a news anchor, or in the blue collar field, maybe someone who excels in the trades.

 

In the case of a girl who is raped by her uncle while in grade school, hit, screamed at, left alone, and witness of domestic violence, whose whole life revolves around survivalism, not growth of inborn potential, the result might be growing up to be in prostitution.

 

So in one case, you have a story about someone blessed with a backstory of love, nurturing, protection, values, encouragement, and examples set of how to be a productive member of society and do something you love doing. There are money, resources, and opportunity funneled into the education and preparation of the child for their career/job. In the second case, you have a story about someone who has no preparation, no instruction, no education, no modeled values --nothing to build their career/job choices on, and only a life of pain and trauma, which they are trying to cope with emotionally and mentally, so achieving anything above subsistence isn't anywhere on the radar.

 

One is a tale of having chances and opportunity -- the other, of having no chances and no opportunity.

 

One is a case of privileged preparation, the other is a case of severe disadvantage.

 

And what's your point?

 

How does this minimize the tragic nature of prostitution, and how does someone else's blessings and good fortune make the misfortune of the prostitute's history any less worthy of sympathy and alarm? I don't get what you're trying to say, but if it's that someone coming from a wonderful upbringing and someone coming from a horrific upbringing have the same shot at a good life, well, I can't help you at that point.

 

I don't want to derail the thread with a discussion of porn, but I will say I've seen male porn stars show off about how much they love their job and present it as you've said, only later in an interview mention that by the way, when they were growing up, they had no friends and no father. So you are in no position to know what the issues of distant porn celebrities are. You're too far removed from them to have any idea what their real lives and stories were like. Dig enough though, and you're not going to find men who grew up with their dad coaching Little League, helping them with their homework, talking about what college they will go to turning to porn. Porn is certainly exploitative too, and many in porn double as escorts and prostitution. But the pimp situation with prostitution makes it more dangerous and coercive.

 

I've learned that life sucks and then you die. And while my life hasn't amounted to much, I have not put myself in situations where things of this nature could happen.

 

I've never been high, never been drunk, don't gamble, don't have a bunch of debt, and don't have a bunch of babies to feed. When you do risking things that almost certainly have no reward, you will most likely one day have to face the consequences of taking said risks. If that is the path those things lead some people down, then it is their responsibility to take themselves out of it. But then again, it's all a hustle and so is life.

 

Well fine. You haven't been drunk or high and you've never sold your body, but your life sucks in other ways. So you have problems and they have theirs. Yours is just a different lousy lot. Different mess for different folks. Though you lucked out by having a different set of givens, which seems to translate in your mind as possessing superior choice-making ability.

 

Someone could say at least prostitutes have a hardcore reason to end up hating life, whereas, in your case, nothing was seriously bad...you didn't even have much of a cause for ending up as you are right now. But that would take a lot of assumptions on my part -- me filling in blanks about your 30 years of life that I don't have a clue about. Just like you'd be assuming that some guys in porn just have big penises and enjoy the money, and that's all there is to it. Best not to guess why people have failed to thrive in life, perhaps, lest you erroneously consider yourself omniscient.

 

I can see why it'd be hard to have sympathy for anyone else when you don't know how to have any care for yourself or life itself.

[Lonewing]

I read a recent study about meth addiction and rats. When the rats were in a blank small cage, they drank the drug laced water like you would expect an addict to drink it.

 

When they had space, an interesting environment, and other rats to interact with, they drank from the undrugged water dish, even those "Addicted" rats who had been in the cage.

 

In otherwords, the rats were doing drugs as an escape, from boredom. Not because they were addicted, but because they had nothing better to do.

 

And prostitution, well, it's a boring way of life. You don't have to work hard to get your money, especially if you Like having Sex. Sex, as in, not that romantic emotional crap, but the sensation of having a penis on the vagina. You don't have to work very long, either, a couple clients and you have more money than most people make in two weeks. A couple "regulars" each month, and the risks do down even further.

 

So you have a person who has what the rest of us work so hard to get and for almost nothing compared to what the rest of us put out to get that same amount. Further, there's no drive to "get a real job," either, because the economics simply don't make sense. In general, nobody wants to date them, either, and they really only want to date someone who can give them the lifestyle they're used to getting now. So you end up with a person who has no ambition, or any drive towards self actualization and is in short bored with life.

 

And you wonder why they do drugs?

 

There are a lot of smart girls in the industry - college kids in the strip clubs using the job to pay for their degrees. I suppose some of them never move out, and that's fine if that's what they want to do.

[shelty24]

Not always. Some are sex addicts-many are actually who do it as a form of self destruction-not coz they cannot get it elsewhere. Many sex addicts have erectile dysfunction and cannot get it up unless they see her as an object-no emotion. Some are narcissists who like splashing the cash and thinks having a high class escort makes him look great (rolling my eyes) they also get a thrill from controlling her, punishing her, hurting her, raping her, some have fetishes which stem from issues in childhood (again addiction) and too ashamed to ask for it elsewhere, some are v insecure/low self esteem and want her to role play-pretend its a real date (some love and attention). In short they ALL have issues one way or another-some sexual, some emotional, some hormonal, some psychological.. its not normal behaviour and is actually quiet rare on a % scale. Only a minority engage in paying for it

[Lonewing]

How's this for a twist...

 

I knew a guy back in school who was a returned escort. He was hot/smooth enough/slick enough he could get any woman he wanted, and I believe it. He became an escort because it was a way of doing what he liked doing, and he also liked providing those emotional services that he could give when he was taking care of his clients.

 

His clients ranged from women who were just starting out with sex to those who had to pay to get sex because nobody would touch them otherwise [fat or ugly]. And then there were the very good looking girls who just wanted a good F***ing without all the relationship BS that usually comes with it. They just wanted to put down their money, get laid, and get out. These women included the executive type, who didn't have the time to screw around with the emotional constraints of a relationship, or the time to wine and dine - they just wanted to have sex, and beyond that, they had no use or need for a man in their life.

 

So you may want to call these people sex-addicts, but really, I don't think you're a sex addict if you just want to have the sex and nothing else. It's a personality, and that's just how some people are. If the rest of us can't handle that, well, they really don't care at this point.

 

There are a number of people who use sex as a barrel in their relationship. It's kind of hard to put someone over the barrel when he'll look you straight in the eyes and say "I don't care if you withhold it from me, I'll get it if and when I Want it."

[shelty24]

Your friend is probably narcissistic. Again not normal.

 

Those women-emotionally unavailable-again issues..

 

And what does your last point have to do with anything? How is that relevant to this topic? Your saying if your partner refuses to give you sex-your answer is yo cheat? Oh very mature.. id rather dump him and find myself someone better

[Lonewing]

I did not get a narcissistic vibe from him one bit. If anything, he was a really free spirit.

 

When people exhibit traits counter to those nice happy traits we think people should have, we label them?

 

My last point is really the point that prostitution removes the hurdles to sex that people have to go through in a puritanical society. I'm saying if a partner in a relationship wishes to withhold sex for X, Y or Z, what good is the relationship to the person who knows a quickie is $250, an hour is $500, and a night is $1000? And at the point where partner is bartering she's already reduced herself to the level of a prostitute, only she isn't dealing in money, she's dealing in favors, preferred behavior or getting things done her way. Someone who is used to paying for it is on the side of the fence where that stigma that holds most people back isn't there. Someone like that will probably not wait for you to dump them - they're already gone.

 

Maturity? It's all pettiness in the end.