Why Men Buy Sex

Examining sex worker clients

Philip Birch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317813194
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sex work has been a contentious issue in a variety of ways throughout history – socially, morally, ethically, religiously and politically. Traditionally noted as one of the oldest professions in the world, sex work has commonly been demonised and is often viewed as a social disgrace. While sex work involves both providers of sexual services, most commonly women, and purchasers of sexual services, most commonly men, providers have attracted the most social commentary. Recent research shows that a limited number of studies have been conducted since 1990 concerning men who procure sexual services. This book aims to help reset this balance.

In this book, Philip Birch examines the procurement of female sexual services with a focus on the personal and social aspects of men who procure such exchanges and offers insight into the demographics amongst men who purchase sexual services, alongside an analysis of the reasons why they purchase sex. This book brings together existing literature with analyses of new data to develop a multi-factor model reflecting men's procurement of sexual services and demonstrates the complexities surrounding the procuration of these sexual services in exchange for money.

The book considers what contribution the understanding of the personal and social aspects of men who procure sexual services has on re-theorising the purchasing of sex in the 21st Century and will be of interest to academics and students involved in the study of criminology, criminal justice, social policy, law, sociology, sexuality and gender studies.

Part I Theorising sex work and the procurement of sexual services

Introduction

Sex work has been a contentious matter over time in a variety of ways – socially, morally, ethically, religiously and politically. Noted as one of the oldest professions in the world (Matthews, 2008), sex work involves providers of sexual services, most commonly women, and purchasers of sexual services, most commonly men: providers have attracted the most social commentary. This book will examine this lesser explored aspect of sex work, the procurement of sexual services by male purchasers. It is acknowledged that sex work encompasses many aspects, such as male sex work as well as cultural differences in relation to the procurement of sexual services. It has been and is associated in certain circumstances with abhorrent and criminal acts, such as child prostitution, people trafficking and smuggling, sexual coercion and organised crime. This volume, though, will focus on the procurement of sexual services from heterosexual female providers by male purchasers within a de-criminalised Western cultural context, with a view to understanding and making sense of some men’s reasons for purchasing sex. The term ‘sex worker’ and ‘sex work’ rather than ‘prostitute’ and ‘prostitution’ will be employed in this volume by the author as a means of reflecting the focus of this book: a focus on voluntary, non-coerced exchanges of sexual services.

Sex work has been constructed variously as deviant and immoral, or as a normative function with a market value. Brooks Gordon (2006) documents that in the main, throughout ‘Western’ history a man’s access to the provision of female sexual services was advocated as ‘his’ right, whereas ‘she’ (who sold her sexual services) attracted stigma and was a social disgrace. Documentation throughout history, for example in the medieval times, with particular reference to sex work in Europe, highlights the role of the Church and medical science in how the sex work industry was governed and subsequently perceived by society. Brooks Gordon (2006) documents how the Church redefined the sex work industry, from a business requiring payment to one of promiscuity. This provides a background to the way sex work is still considered to be an immoral act by some contemporary social groups. Brooks Gordon argues that religious teachings of the Church, in particular the Roman Catholic Church during the medieval times and beyond, supported by medical science, encouraged a man not to engage in sex with ‘his’ wife for non-procreational sex as this was said to be immoral and also dangerous as it often resulted in pregnancy leading to an increased chance of death during childbirth (Brooks Gordon, 2006). To redress this and to prevent rape and sodomy, men were encouraged to satisfy their sexual urges by using sex workers. More contemporaneously, modern feminist views, with particular reference to radical feminists such as Sheila Jeffreys (1997), have constructed sex work as patriarchal objectifying, sexual domination and violence towards women by men. This has long been reflected in some jurisdictions such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and most states of the United States of America where the purchasing of sex has been criminalised. So attitudes towards female sex work in Euro-Western cultures have been associated over recent centuries with deviancy, creating stigma, and in most parts of the world criminalisation.

However, not all historical documentation of sex work problematises it. Perkins (1991), for example, discusses the courtesan, a woman who was well educated and at the top of the social strata in society. Since around the mid-twentieth century, sex work has been reconceptualised by some to be a legitimate profession when willingly entered into and freely exited from. This has been the case for scholars such as Teela Sanders, Jane Pitcher, Hilary Kinnell and Ron Weitzer, to name but a few. Clients of sex workers too, are seen to be making a legitimate and valid choice in their procurement, rather than being perceived as passive agents who cannot control ‘their’ sexual urges. Debates regarding sex work raised by researchers, some of whom, like Roberta Pekins, have been sex workers, illustrate that most research and writing produced on this social practice are by those who are not directly involved in it. This may be why a misleading picture of this social practice is perpetuated.

Understanding why men purchase sex

Men who purchase sex, along with the sex worker who sells sex, are the main actors in the procurement of sexual service, yet understanding why men pay for sex has been poorly explored and theorised (Weitzer, 2005, 2009; Brooks Gordon, 2006). Commonly, sex work research has focussed on those who sell sexual services, with a small amount of attention paid towards those who purchase such services. As Weitzer acknowledges, those who procure sexual services are ‘traditionally ignored’ (2005: 224). Addressing this gap in the research will provide a more informed understanding of the practice of sex work.

Scholars such as Weitzer (2005; 2009) have criticised the lack of rigour in theoretical developments concerning sex work. Weitzer has argued that advancements have been politically motivated and based on overly descriptive research (Weitzer, 2005: 214–215). He proposes that developments in sex work research should use middle range theories applied to empirical data in order to examine and understand the variety of components that make up sex work, from supply to demand to pimp to the sauna receptionist. Weitzer critiques the standards of research used in order to establish the current knowledge base that surrounds the different aspects of the sex work industry, claiming that there are few primary research studies conducted where significant sample sizes have been used. This finding is echoed by Wilcox et al. (2009), who conducted a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) on men’s procurement of sexual services. The REA was an examination of studies in the English language concerned with men’s procurement of sexual services since 1990. Some 220 studies were identified and assessed, and from this 179 studies were verified as reliable and valid in terms of set criteria: research design, methodology/methods and analytical approach and demonstration of findings. Nevertheless, there was an over reliance on qualitative research methods, indicating a lack of quantitative research design, and a lack of mixed methods research drawing from quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The REA revealed, first, support for Weitzer’s 2005 claim that procurers of sexual services are poorly researched, and second, that scholars, along with policy makers and legislators, attempting to categorise men and their behaviour are doing so with evidence from limited data sets.

This volume aims in part to address some of these shortcomings and to establish a new framework and direction for research on this topic area.

Current theorising on men who procure sexual services: a brief introduction

Recently, Monto and McRee (2005) coined the terms ‘everyman perspective’ and ‘peculiar man perspective’ as a means of categorising what they saw as the ways in which men who purchase sex were perceived. The ‘everyman perspective’ suggests that some clients of sex workers are no different from any other man, whilst the ‘peculiar man perspective’ implies that some clients of sex workers have some unique qualities, such as being psychologically deficient, socially inadequate or sexually deviant. This conceptualisation of men who procure sexual services reflects and reinforces the binary conceptualisation of the sex work industry as deviant/immoral or as normative with a market value. This volume will use Monto and McRee’s typology of men who procure sexual services when considering sex work as deviant and sex work as normative in order to frame these discussions.

Since the 1960s, social scientists have attempted to offer an understanding of men’s procurement of sexual services by applying theoretical positions to explain this social practice. In this volume, the procurement of sexual services is referred to as a social practice. It is appropriate to apply this term for a number of reasons: the procurement of sexual services has been in existence for millennia and as the work in this volume will outline, in both the work of others and from within the empirical research underpinning this volume, this ‘social practice’ is a regular feature of these men’s social lives and is a common practice. Theories of the ‘individual’ and the ‘social’ have been applied, and have, on the whole, been used to explain male procurement of sex as a negative social practice, supporting Monto and McRee’s ‘peculiar man perspective’. Even research in the 1980s, for example by McLeod (1982), which focused on men’s procurement of a sexual service as a commodity, implied the purchasing and selling of sex as deviant. It was not until the new millennium that men’s procurement of sexual services began to be considered as normative and to display a ‘normative value’. This normative perspective is illustrated by the work of Sanders (2008a) and more recently by that of Milrod and Weitzer (2012). In these works, men’s emotional and intimacy needs are evidenced as reasons for the procurement of sexual services. It is important to note here, that research seldom acknowledges women as purchasers of sexual services, or men as purchasers of sex with men. Weitzer uses these omissions to argue that the current understanding of this social practice is poor, and he uses essentialist and normalisation approaches to understanding the practices of the sex work industry. He argues that while such approaches may offer some understanding of the female supplier/male consumer transaction, it is not helpful in understanding other forms of this practice, for example between transgender supplier/consumer. However, although these social phenomena are even less understood than that of male purchasers of female sexual services as indicated earlier, they will not be explored in this volume.

Four frameworks used by scholars and commentators to understand men’s involvement in this social practice – deviancy, power relations, normative value and exchange – are examined in the first part of this volume. Theories of deviancy, including pathology, and theories of ‘power relations’, with particular reference to the influence of radical feminism, religion, the Church and the law in understanding men’s procurement of sexual services as deviant and/or immoral are examined. In contrast, theories of normative value and commodity, considering behavioural and sexual scripts and how these guide behaviour can be used to understand sex work as legitimate and acceptable behaviour. These sit alongside theories of exchange that consider both social and sexual exchange and how humans are motivated by the purchasing of commodities. Whilst considering the theoretical perspectives of ‘theories of normative value and commodity’, to explain why men procure sexual services, a brief survey of feminism’s pro sex work perspective will be undertaken; this strand of feminism supports and advocates sex work as a valid choice of occupation.

Each of the frameworks are examined and critiqued as a means of ‘making sense of men’s procurement of sexual services’. The approach and process adopted within this book begins to address what Weitzer claims is lacking in the discourse around the different elements of sex work concerning the poor theorising on the sex work industry as well as acknowledging how the ‘meaning [customers] attached to paid encounters’ is overlooked (2005: 225).

Aim of the study underpinning this volume

Based on a sample of a self-identified cohort of men who procure sexual services in NSW, Australia, the main aim of the empirical research that underpins this volume is to: The research aim is addressed by the following research questions, which are the focus of Part II of this volume: Drawing on a mixed method approach to social research, this study was conducted in two phases. Phase one investigated the personal and social characteristics of men who procure sexual services, along with exploring their reasons for engaging in this behaviour, utilising a quantitative method, a questionnaire. The second phase of the research used in-depth interviews to examine the reasons men give for their procurement of sexual services. This second phase of data collection was extended to two other cohorts: female sex workers who were asked why they thought the men who procured their services did so, and specific groups in society: the clergy, health professionals and women’s collective groups in NSW who were asked their views of men who procure sexual services from women. The findings from the two phases are brought together in order to examine why men procure sexual services. This provides a new understanding of the transaction of sexual services between female providers and male purchasers, in a non-coercive and regulated context, contributing to the debate regarding the morality and utility of this social practice and assisting to build theory in this field of study.

Examine the procurement of female sexual services with a focus on the personal and social characteristics, reasons and experiences of men who procure such services.

1. Are there common demographics amongst a cohort of men who purchase sexual services in NSW and if so what are they?
2. What are the reasons men give for purchasing sexual services in NSW?
3. What services do men purchase within the sex work industry in NSW?
4. In relation to men who purchase sex, what are the views of particular groups in society with an interest in the sex work industry?
5. What contributions do these new understandings of the personal and social aspects of men who procure sexual services make to re-theorising this social practice in the twenty-first century?

This study advances the under-theorised and under-examined area of why men purchase sex in the twenty-first century. It does this in a number of ways.

First, whilst sex work theorising can be traced to early written records in the Roman era (Brookes-Gordon, 2006: 2) the focus of such theorising has been on the female provider. Theorising of men’s procurement of sexual services is relatively new, with Charles Winick in the 1960s the first social scientist to develop such a discourse. Understanding the procurement of sexual services from the client’s perspective is still a relatively new area of study.

Second, the theorising that has been done since the 1960s has primarily viewed men’s behaviour in purchasing sex, as deviant and pathological. Such behaviour could be argued to have been understood through a medical model over time. Some theorising has viewed men’s procurement of sexual services as an economic issue, that is, men who purchased sex were doing so in the same way as they bought any other commodity. Very recently men’s procurement...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Compared to the voluminous writings on female sex workers
• Halftitle Page
• Routledge studies in crime and society
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• PART I Theorising sex work and the procurement of sexual services
• PART II Examining men who procure sexual services
• References
• Glossary of terms
• Index