What I Learned From Hookers

A few years ago, I did something kind of odd. I talked to prostitutes to see if I could learn why they would try to take money from people for sex. I just couldn't understand why anyone would treat someone else like that. It really baffled me. And so, every once in a while, when women would "offer" to take money from me in this way, I would ask them why they were trying to do that.

Of course, the first people I spoke to, when I wanted to know what was going on, weren't hookers. I don't like being treated like that, and so I really didn't want to speak to them except to express some polite variation of "no way." Instead, I'd ask my buddies about it. But they didn't have much to say except to point out that some people are a little messed up, and it probably had something to do with them being mistreated as children, and that it was a depressing subject and they'd rather talk about something else.

You might notice, as I did, that what my friends said wasn't the thing we often hear about prostitution, which is that it's all men's fault. That didn't surprise me, because no man that I've ever known has liked prostitution. I'm certain every man has had to deal with it, and I'm sure many men accept it, and there's little doubt that a few men think it's a wonderful idea, but, by and large, most of us seem upset by the practice.

And why wouldn't that be the case? The first time someone tried to "turn a trick" on me I thought, initially, that she must be joking. After I figured out that she wasn't, I thought that there must be something horribly wrong with me. And I felt that way for years. I've had prostitutes try to grift money off me in bars, parks, college campuses, convenience stores, and shopping malls. Just the other night, I had someone in the car next to mine try it when I stopped at a traffic light. Despite the way prostitution is typically portrayed in the mass media, it's not, as most men eventually learn, limited to street walkers who have fallen in with the local organized crime scene. They don't dress oddly. They don't act differently. They aren't any more or less attractive than anyone else. To all appearances, prostitution is just something that some women have tried to do to me, on a fairly regular basis, ever since high school.

At business school, I was introduced to some other ideas about why this happens. Business managers, and their students, love their market theories, and they'll apply them to pretty much everything they see. And while none of my teachers addressed this subject, directly, my classmates would, on occasion, voice their theories about prostitution. They figured that men must be inherently unappealing, or women must be fundamentally asexual, or perhaps, prostitution had something to do with "value adding processes" concerning presentation or efficiency or competence or dependability. To business students, these notions fit right in with the rest of our subject matter, except that these theories were, as far as anyone could tell, completely counter-factual.

It was puzzling. If there wasn't anything particularly wrong with me, or other men, and if none of the economic theories made any sense, then, what, exactly, was going on? I got my first real answers when I was on vacation in Las Vegas. Yes, I know, but I wanted to see the shows and the funky architecture and I figured the situation couldn't be much worse there than anywhere else I'd been. Of course, I was wrong; it was worse. But while I was there, I couldn't help but notice some things that weren't quite as obvious elsewhere. For one thing, hookers really don't like to hear "no" as an answer. For another, a startling number of people assumed that I was a prostitute also. The last thing I noticed was that, if you ask, they'll tell you what's up with what they do. And so I did. And I did so on other vacations, and when I moved to another town, and when I moved to still another town. I stopped asking when it became clear that I wasn't going to hear anything but the same stuff over and over again.

What they told me really wasn't all that surprising. It just wasn't what you usually hear. It's not because of childhood trauma. Only one prostitute told me that was the case, and when I asked if that were true, she laughed and admitted she only said so because she thought that "johns" liked to hear it. With few exceptions, and those overseas, it's not because of economic hardship. And it's not because they think of sex as a chore, or because they aren't attracted to men, even though a few of them did say they were homosexual. It's also not because American society has left them with no other options, or because a "patriarchal culture" coerces them into it.

What they told me was that, in general, they engaged in prostitution because they thought men were dumb, or insecure, enough to agree to it, or because they thought that men, in general, were awful people and deserved it. The reasons they disliked men varied, a lot, from men being too "too casual" or "too insistent" about sex, to men being "too possessive" and "clinging," to the idea that "everybody knows" men are abusive or callous.

I don't think this means that the usual reasons we hear for prostitution are false. When I was stationed overseas, in the military, I saw, and heard, things that led me to believe that, in some places, families will sometimes "contract" their children to brothels or prostitution rings to try to get out of debt, and that there are organizations that will claim to be "entertainment" agents, but not tell their clients what they're really signing up for. I've also been to places with economies so broken that people are reduced to cannibalizing each other in whatever way they can manage. And, yes, I'm aware of the fact that some men actually look for hookers, and I'm also sure that there are people who live in places so prudish that prostitution is the only practical alternative to courtship rites or marriage contracts.

But I also think that most prostitutes in the developed world do what they do, mainly, for the reasons they told me. And if you think those reasons sound petty and mean-spirited, then maybe that's because they are. And maybe it's time for us to stop blaming men for the phenomenon. I've tried to work through the tortured reasoning of political activists who claim, to everyone's applause, that the men who get scammed by prostitutes are, somehow, the victimizers, and that hookers are, in some undefined way, the victims of prostitution, but I really can't understand it. I also have a hard time understanding the people who claim it's some sort of victimless crime. Let's not kid ourselves. Even if we pretend that "john's" really like to have their money taken from them, or be treated as if they're so inadequate or repugnant that they should feel grateful for it, prostitution does have an effect on how all of us, both men and women, see, and treat, the opposite sex, and there's no way anyone can construe that effect as a positive one.