When someone refers to a sex-workers customer as someone who “uses prostitutes” it implies a certain instrumental relationship towards the sex worker. One that, frankly, makes me at least a little uncomfortable.
Question: How do the same people who speak disapprovingly of the “use” of prostitutes speak about their own employment of…
- Doctors
- Hair dressers
- Massage therapists
- Plumbers
- Accountants
- Nanny
- Gardeners
and, especially,
- housecleaners?
Because, just in general, I’ve noticed that proper-minded people rarely speak of “using” doctors to check an unexplained cough, mole, or lump. Nor do you hear people speak of “using a plumber” to replace a broken toilet or leaky faucet. Nor do they talk about “using” a massage therapist when they need a kink in their back worked out.
Oddly you often will hear the same people say that they “use” a housecleaner, gardener, or pool-boy to keep their home in order.
I’m sure it’s just a quirk, sort of like the business in gendered languages like French or German where I’m perpetually assured it’s agreed it doesn’t mean anything.
I dunno. I was walking home from the grocery store thinking about this article in The Guardian about “why men use prostitutes.”
It’s a creepy article, mostly because of the alternately dreadful, desperate, self-deluding, and alienating things the customers say about what they know and how they feel about the (mostly) women they hire.
But it’s also creepy because of that “use prostitutes” thing the author and many of her compatriots do.
It’s an interesting article, and that’s just a minor quibble. But… I dunno. I mostly don’t like it when people talk about themselves or other people “using” people when they really mean they hire them to perform services. If the people themselves say “well yes, I use prostitutes” that’s one thing.
Update: Eh, maybe not so random usage. The report’s authors also uses phrases like “... had bought women in prostitution in the year before being interviewed.” With the extravagantly patriarchal implications that merely by hiring someone to do something sexual you’re buying an entire human being. Not a good thing.
I think it’s connected to the
Submitted by Holly Pervocracy (not verified) on Sun, 2010-01-17 20:51.I think it’s connected to the attitude that when a person sells sex it means that anything is for grabs. I’m surprised how many people (on both the anti-prostitution side and the john side) seem to think that “$100 for a motel date” means “$100 for absolutely anything.” Talk about an attitude you REALLY wouldn’t take with your hairdresser or gardener.
I blame this half on illegality—if you tell your hairdresser to do something disgusting, she can go to the cops—and half on sex-negativity. Why, if someone’s willing to have sex (ew!), she’s presumably willing to do anything! It’s not like she could sink any lower, right?
[And, to make matters worse (here in the Northwest anyway) after they’ve proven their disgusting willingness to sink that low some people have decided they’d be better off dead. And promptly killed them and dumped their body near the Green River. Thanks, Holly. —fl]
In the Farley/Bindel/Golding
Submitted by SnowdropExplodes (not verified) on Mon, 2010-01-18 06:57.In the Farley/Bindel/Golding paper that the Guardian article is baed on, it reveals that 103 customers interviewed for the research, 27% (i.e. 28 men) expressed the view that once you’ve paid you can do whatever you want. 25% said that the concept of “rape a prostitute” was “ridiculous”.
[Also pretty common beliefs. That whole belief set and it’s consequences is what flipped me from vague indifference to prostitution to a strong moral sense that it should be legalized. Nowadays I think prostitution is based on a lot of false premises about gender… but I still think it should be legal so that it’s workers could receive, you know, legal protection. Thanks, SE. —fl]
Well….Housekeepers, gardeners
Submitted by tlt (not verified) on Mon, 2010-01-18 00:25.Well….Housekeepers, gardeners and pool boys all do work that can be dirty, monotonous and arduous. In other words, distasteful and unpleasant to many people. Maybe they think of sex the same way
BUT...it might also be something regional. I’ve lived in the South all but three years of my life and I’ve never, ever heard anyone say they “use” a nanny, housekeeper or landscaping worker. I’ve always heard “I have a nanny, etc.” I’ve also only ever heard people say that someone “goes to” prostitutes, just like they’d say “She goes to a personal trainer.”
[“Maybe they think of sex the same way.” Or at least they think of prostitutes the same way. I think you’re probably right that it’s just a regional quirk or something. Because I’m pretty sure you’re right that most people don’t talk about employing someone as “using” them. So like I said in the post I didn’t think I needed to read too much into it. Quirky or creepy isn’t the same as significant. Thanks, tlt. —fl]
I did a very extensive review
Submitted by SnowdropExplodes (not verified) on Mon, 2010-01-18 07:06.I did a very extensive review of the paper (criticising methodology above all else – e.g. why no control sample?) over at Harlot’s Parlour (I did also post it to my A Femanist View blog).
It’s true that the findings (and the way they’re reported) are creepy, “mostly because of the alternately dreadful, desperate, self-deluding, and alienating things the customers say about what they know and how they feel about the (mostly) women they hire.” But what I find creepiest and scariest is that the language used is far from unique to sex workers’ customers: I have heard similar ideas expressed by people in the general public, and they seem to be distressingly common there as well (which is why Farley, Bindel and Golding’s lack of a control group means that their findings reveal very little in terms of the relationship between buying sex and misogynistic views).
I think these views are, sadly, held in similar proportions among the general population of men (e.g. in 2009 a UK Govt Home Office report said that 17% of people think that a prostitute is “entirely to blame” if someone rapes her)
[Oh absolutely it’s not just the customers who believe that. It’s my suspicion that by and large anti-prostitution people who do surveys believe it too, which is why the “use,” well, usage bothers me when anti’s say it. Oh, and by the way, another really good reason a control would be needed: to help diagnose whether customers are reflecting from their direct experience or whether they already have their cultural assumptions intact (from, say, watching cop shows or reading anti-prostitution reports) or whether their direct experience alters their perception compared to the general population. Thanks, SE. —fl]
The author and her
Submitted by ChrisJ (not verified) on Mon, 2010-01-18 09:20.The author and her compatriots also write about circumstances when a customer “buys a woman” which is as bad or worse.
There really does seem to be a disturbing bias here on the part of these researchers. They are oddly similar to their interviewees.
[Wow do great minds think alike or something, Chris. You must have been submitting this comment the same instant I was submitting an update saying the same thing. And yes, there’s definitely a very conservative-oriented, almost patriarchal bias in their assumptions. Thanks. —fl]
Hello Figleaf. Do you take
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2010-01-18 17:20.Hello Figleaf. Do you take advertising? If interested get back to me at the email above. Thank you, Domina.
[Hi Domina. Here’s a link to my Blogads page. Thanks for asking. —fl]
I think your point about
Submitted by schneewittchen (not verified) on Wed, 2010-01-20 09:00.I think your point about language usage is perfectly valid. But to throw something into the pot, we do, for example, say,
‘I used a solicitor(/lawyer/attorney) when I sold my house, got divorced etc., I used a realtor to sell my house, I used an agency to find me an employee,’, I think it’s distancing language which we employ when we don’t actually have an ongoing relationship with the person or persons we are hiring. I think I would say, for example,
‘I used a plumber,’ in certain interchanges, but again, when distancing is in play, ‘How did you get your toilet fixed, did you do it yourself, or did you use a plumber?’
[Excellent point about how the usage creates distance between the speaker and the person providing the service. Using people instead of their services doesn’t seem wrong, exactly, but it doesn’t seem quite right either. Thanks for helping clarify that, Schneewittchen. —fl]