Women cannot claim the right to be considered mature and responsible until they decide the course of their lives for themselves and refuse to be a “manipulated group.” – Mary Barnett Gilson
Last Monday (January 3rd) Brandy Devereaux published a column in which she mentioned this recent article in the Sacramento Bee. The story is the usual pap in which all prostitution is equated with the lowest segment of streetwalking: blah blah blah pimps, blah blah blah used condoms, blah blah blah scum, blah blah blah property values. The only good part about it is that it reports that the city of Sacramento, California no longer has enough money to set up prostitution stings, which means they only arrest those prostitutes on whom they receive complaints; that in turn means escorts and massage parlors are enjoying a brief respite from persecution by armed, violent busybodies.
Of course, that won’t last long if certain people have their way. Brandy reprinted this “Ask Officer Michelle” column from Monday’s Sacramento Press in which a woman calling herself “Justme” referred to the aforementioned article and bemoaned the fact that the police are too busy with actual criminals to remove all possible opportunities for her husband’s infidelity:
I recently found out my husband visits massage parlors and he finds them on myredbook.com…Is it true that there are this many escorts, providers, massage parlors so easily available in Sacramento and in my own neighborhood? And no, I don’t live on [a list of skid row locations]…These services are advertising for [a list of suburbs and neighborhoods]…the websites advertise “happy endings” and all of the massage parlors in town. Today I spotted 12 parlors in just 15 minutes. How do they get permits and not get caught? Exchanging money for sex is still illegal right? Or did I miss something…Sorry for unloading all of this, but I live in Sacramento to get away from this in San Francisco, New York, etc.
Surprise, Justme! “Officer Michelle” and others like her have been lying to you. We’re citizens just like you and we live and work in all sorts of neighborhoods, even in Sacramento; we don’t all stand on big-city street corners wearing Hollywood costumes, and most of us even know how to use the internet just like you. As for “exchanging money for sex”, would it make you happier if he got it for free from some lonely chick in a bar who might then start calling him at home, and who might not be so scrupulous about condom use as a professional would? Furthermore, I’d watch where you’re pointing that finger because unless you never give your husband sex and he never gives you money that line’s awfully hard to draw. But perhaps I’m making an unwarranted assumption here; maybe you don’t give your husband sex, in which case it’s pretty obvious why he’s visiting massage parlors.
“Justme” is obviously pretty naïve and badly in need of a wake-up call, but does “Officer Michelle” give her one? You’re kidding, right? Notice she doesn’t even answer any of her questions:
I called Women Escaping a Violent Environment (WEAVE) to see if they had services for women that are in your situation. They have people that you can talk to about this…They are there for women who are in crisis; not just for women that are going through abuse, but they are there for support including circumstances like what you are experiencing. I have heard prostitution as been referred to as a “victimless crime.” After hearing stories such as yours from other women as well, it is apparent that prostitution is not victimless at all.
Read that again. This policewoman columnist is actually advising a woman who caught her husband going to massage parlors to contact an organization intended to help abused women; despite her prevarication about the group’s mission, I think the words “violent environment” are pretty clear. I understand that for a naïve wife to discover her husband’s extracurricular activities could be disturbing, but it’s NOT the same as being beaten. And since “Officer Michelle” opines that prostitution should be a “crime” due to male infidelity, I’ll be waiting for the column in which she endorses laws against adultery and gay bathhouses. As Brandy said in her column:
Now this poor poor wife is the victim of a sex crime because her husband visited a massage parlor…Her feelings were hurt. Let’s run around and arrest people for the crime of “hurting someone’s feelings”. Oh wait a minute, but that would not be the fault of the massage parlor. They didn’t hurt her little feelers. The husband, who I am sure willingly walked into the place for a massage…is the one who hurt her feelings. I’m sure the massage place did not know or even ask if he was married. No that is his responsibility, not theirs. Yet we want to persecute the massage parlor…for just being available.
Brandy has, of course, just smacked the proverbial nail dead-on. A hundred years ago one of the chief propaganda arguments used to convince women to support prohibition of alcohol was that it caused husbands to neglect or abuse their wives and children; modern anti-drug and anti-porn activists use similar rhetoric. Many women seem to find it much easier to blame the activities dissatisfied husbands replace them with (whether that be ball, booze or broads) than to blame the husbands for neglecting them, and it goes without saying that they find it vastly easier than examining themselves for possible husband-alienating faults or actually working at trying to understand their men and helping them to avoid temptation. It’s not only scorned women who do this, either; modern culture encourages people of both genders to surrender personal responsibility for their actions. It’s not the fault of the human for misbehaving; it’s the fault of the drugs/tobacco/video games/porn/guns/gambling/television/movies or whatever. Even sex is called an “addiction”.
But since prostitution involves two people rather than a person and a thing, modern prohibitionists have turned the blame game into a version of “hot potato”; angry wives and advocates of criminalization like “Officer Michelle” say the prostitute is evil and leads innocent men into wrongdoing, while the “Swedish Model” and trafficking rhetoric blame evil males for exploiting innocent women. And by this both groups demonstrate the fallacy of criminalization; consensual behaviors have no victim and are therefore not crimes. The prostitute who offers a service is no more responsible for clients who come to her when they shouldn’t than an auto manufacturer is responsible for someone who is harmed by driving his car off of the highway, and neither can a client be held responsible for the free choice of a whore. It’s time for people to stop allowing governments to treat them like children, and the way to accomplish this is to stop acting like children by running to Big Brother every time someone hurts our feelings, or expecting Nanny to remedy every consequence resulting from our own ill-considered actions. It’s time for modern people to leave their state-run, police-guarded nurseries and grow the hell up.
*applause* *whistles*
Hear, hear!
Thank you, Emily! 🙂
Yes.
Now, there are things government should do, like build roads and defend the country from invasion. Then there are things where people argue how much, what, and even if: food stamps, space exploration, OSHA standards, and so on.
But it isn’t the government’s place to make me moral, or to make sure I go to heaven, or anything like that. And even if it were (which it isn’t), could they at least be consistent? It’s perfectly legal for me to give a woman $200 and then walk away, and it’s perfectly legal for me to have sex with a woman for nothing. She can be an utter stranger. But if the woman I give $200 to and the woman I have sex with are the same woman, I’m going to jail.
I’m also going to jail if I take, just once, a drug, ecstasy, which if taken frequently might (MIGHT!) cause permanent damage, but not if I take another drug (tobacco) several times a day, every day, which has been proven to cause permanent damage. Now of course if I’m smoking at the indoor playground at McDonald’s and blowing smoke right at the kids and when the manager comes to kick me out I refuse to go and tell him to fuck off and when the cop comes to make me leave I take a swing at him, well yeah then I’m in trouble. But if that same cop sees me pull an ecstasy pill out of my pocket, bring it towards my mouth, and then change my mind and throw it away (and I’m not at MikkiD’s and there isn’t a minor in sight), I’m in bigger trouble.
What the hell?
I’m not sure when or where, but I am almost certainly going to steal that for my own use at some point (assuming one of my two remaining memory cells will hold on to it for a while).
Have at it. I was going to say $300, but then I remembered that I live in Dallas.
I liked this whole exchange (and agree with Dave about stealing the line) but your closing comment drew an audible guffaw from me. Touche, indeed! 🙂
I was a bit surprised when Maggie told me Dallas was some sort of saturated market, with correspondingly lowered prices.
Can I get an AMEN and HALLELUJAH brothers and sisters mine!!
Hallelujah! And thank you for the inspiration! 🙂
Actually in at least one place that I know of, (Alabama) the statutes do make it a crime to commit adultery, and put the responsibility on us to know whether or not a man is married. As a bonus, “enticing one to commit adultery” is included in the statutes.
Maybe Just me should relocate her family to Alabama and find a nice misinformed officer to misappropriate much needed resources for ACTUAL victims so that abused women can be denied the help that they desperately need. It’s a wonderful country we live in. Maybe if she gets really lucky, she can successfully divert funding from a woman escaping a violent environment who also is a prostitute. Wouldn’t that make Officer Michelle proud?
Good old Alabama, the only state where sex toys are still illegal. 🙁
Kelly,
I think the Alabama adultery law requires cohabitation with someone not your spouse. Also, being able to show that you reasonably believed the person was unmarried is a defense.
I didn’t find anything about the enticement issue, but I may have just missed it.
This is one of the things that really frustrates me with the modern world (though, like so many of these things, putting the blame elsewhere is as old as H. sapiens itself… isn’t the Devil the father of all temptation?). Every time I look around it seems someone has found yet another way to avoid responsibility by claiming something else is to blame for their mistaken decisions. Leaving aside the (in itself interesting, but in an important way irrelevant) philosophical decision about determinism, free will, and responsibility, it is clear that, in practical terms, we should be willing to accept responsibility for our decisions. Hell, even when we screw up it can actually feel liberating to see that we screwed up, that we are agents, rather than little machines being ‘seduced’ and ‘tempted’ by external causes.
That’s a quite interesting thought, Maggie, one I haven’t seen elsewhere: that in fact the traditional criminalization and the Swedish models are mirror images of each other but both still characterizable by the assumption that the blame is to be invariably located in only one of the two parties involved — client and prostitute. They’re both guilty of assuming that, in some strange way, only one of two consenting adults entering into a consensual commercial exchange is to be considered guilty for any resulting bad consequences. Either the prostitute is a victim, or the client is. A false dichotomy–like so many others.
It’s interesting what you say, and it reminds us that sometimes things have more than one opposite.
Take the Nineteenth Century issue of race-based slavery in the United States. Now, the mirror image of whites enslaving blacks would be blacks enslaving whites. This could go on for three hundred years or so, and then the whites could enslave the blacks again, and then flip, and then flip… This might even be considered “fair” in the sense that both races have to take a turn as slaves, and both get to be masters.(*)
But of course the real solution is to end slavery of anybody by anybody.
The mirror image of fighting prostitution so that those wicked women don’t exploit those poor men is to fight prostitution so that those wicked men don’t exploit those poor women.
But of course the real solution is to stop fighting prostitution.
.
(*) This would only be “fair” on a racial level, not an individual level. The vast majority of slaves, under this system, would never get to be masters (though their ancestors and descendants did and would), while the vast majority of masters would never know what it was to be a slave (though their ancestors and descendants did and would). Sense I value individuals more highly than racial categories, I would find this system unfair. However, it might make a good basis for a science fiction or fantasy story. Somebody else will have to write it, though.
An interesting idea, Sailor Barsoom, isn’t it? The false dichotomy in both cases is motivated by the thought that fairness means both suffering equally — so if Blacks were slaves, why Whites have to be slaves, too, so that the universe reaches harmony. If they alternate, like the rotating yin-yang symbol (in this case representing the opposition powerful-powerless, agent-patient, master-slave), we then get “dynamic justice”; and if the disk turns fast enough, we even get the optical illusion of a single, greysh color… equality… If we admit that we have to stay in the disk, that we’re either slave or master, either oppressor or oppressed, like those people playing whatever role chance gave them to play in Jorge Luis Borges’ The Lottery in Babylon. If we don’t, then we realize the possibility of transcending the disk.
The same thing with the who’s-to-blame question in anti-prostitution activism, which is the implicit claim that there is someone to blame: the wanton woman who corrupts a lady’s husband and takes him away from her (whose prototype is Marlène Dietrich as Lola Lola, seducing poor Prof. Rath in the 1930s movie The Blue Angel), or the evil man who takes advantage of his position of power to force a poor, naive, young girl to submit to his oppression (which, for some reason, always reminds me of Viktor Komarovsky, Lara’s exploiter in Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago).
In the case of slavery it is fairly easy to transcend the dichotomy. In the case of prostitution, it isn’t, at least not yet.
(Just Me) knows NOTHING!!!! If she was an upscale hooker she would know that MANY men get sex from their wives and cheat anyway. Look at Tiger Woods!! We only hear of him because he is famous, but men are doing this every day and night. A woman can be screwing her husband 4 times a day and he will still cheat because men like variety. They are made that way. A wife cannot change him.
On the other hand removing hookers will not keep him from cheating either. He will find a waitress, bar maid, secretary or SOME woman to stick it in NO MATTER WHAT.
A woman is best off to not depend on a man. Get an education, get a girl friend and live your life without grief from a man. Marry a quad if you want a man that will not cheat. Trust me I know. I worked as a hooker making 14 K per week. I have seen and heard it all. I have dated and I have been married………….NO MAN, IF HE IS MOBILE is going to be faithful…NO MAN!!!
Yes JUST ME, There are even hookers out there that will have sex without a condom. They do it if they want extra pay. I had clients try this with me all the times. I even saw men that had pregnant wives at home. Then you get the ones that tell you up front that they love their wife, the the ones that say that their wife will not have sex. I used to think to myself (I would not either if I were she, hell she knows you are cheating). I did it because of the money and nothing else. I had no respect for any married man walking through my door. He was a TRICK and only a TRICK. A hooker never wants YOUR cheating husband!!! She knows he is cheat, why the hell would SHE want him??? He is your problem. Yes Of course I lied and told him he was GREAT, THE BEST I EVER HAD ETC…, but I told them ALL that. My rate was 500.00 to 800.00 per hr. I did overnights, trips, events, dinner dates etc…. I saw Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Athletes, Politicians and Church leaders.
I personally did not care or even want to know if he was married or not because if he had not been in my room, he would have been in another hooker’s room…….FACT.
I do not regret what I did. It taught me A LOT. TRUST NO MAN EVER NOT TO CHEAT!!!
Joyce
I beg to differ, Joyce. I am a man, I’ve been married for 10 years, and never once — not even once! — did I cheat on my wife, nor did I even want to.
I’m sure you think you’ve “heard it all” and had all experiences. But believe me: you haven’t. Nobody has. There is too much variation in the world, even among men, who are so different from each other in almost every respect.
I’m sorry you ended up so angry at men. There was no reason for that. You sound like the men who, disillusioned because the woman they married (or the ones they dated) turned out to be manipulative gold diggers or something similar, end up with a deep-seated hatred of all women.
Men have been telling themselves “never to trust women” from time immemorial too. It’s in literature, it’s in religion, it’s in history. And it’s not true.
I don’t think you’ve really understood even your clients; much the less “all men.” You sound angry and hurt; and that is hardly a position from which to make truth claims.
Men — like everything else — are more complicated than you think.
Interesting (Asehpe) that you “Have never cheated” on your wife, Not even once, nor did you even want to)
Yet you fill (this) blog with comments. Why are YOU the Faithful Husband looking on THIS blog??? You must have some interest in Prostitution/hookers. Yes I know it facinates you, you can have better sex with your wife after reading about us, you are looking for insight…etc…
The fact is IF you have ever looked at a female and thought of sex with that woman, YOU HAVE CHEATED on your wife (emotionally). Tell me YOU never look at porn……LOL. There are many ways men cheat and they all do.
In my world there is NO such thing as a “Manipilative Gold Digger”. These kinds terms are applied BY MEN to the poor unknowing women that married some smuck and all he wanted was FREE sex and if she dare want anything nice, then she is a GOLD DIGGER….Screw that!!!
I never “ended up so angry at men”. I just know the FACTS. Yes I very much understood my clients. Had I not been able to be a very good actress, I would not have made the money I did, nor gotten the type of calls that I did.
Yes I know of the “Never trust women”, and All women want is money crap too. If men feel this way, and yes they do, why not just leave women alone?, why call us?
I never one time, nor did the Services get in the white pages and call a MAN!!!! The fact is, it is THEIR Addiction, not ours. Men are not “Complicated” at all.
I can spot a trick in a second, just as I can spot a call girl, low end or high end, in a second.
I was never “Hurt”, I just tell myself (Of course he did it, HE IS A MAN!). No man can hurt an experienced hooker and that I am.
Joyce
I am sorry, but Joyce is not far off. She may use an over generalization when she says all, but quite nearly all is indeed accurate. It is good to hear that you have not cheated on your wife. However you would be the exception, and not the rule. I know women that feel as if their men don’t have time to cheat… they come home straight from work, family guys. But, they don’t know what we do. Any guy with a lunch break has time to cheat. That’s when they do it. No missing time from wifey. A hooker has the unique opportunity to see and hear the secrets that men don’t share. So believe it my friend, though your friends are not sharing it with you, most cheat. The ones that care about their wives hire a pro, the slimeballs just pick up random girls and have affairs. Either way, it does become ugly to those of us that see it on a regular basis. Not once do I look down at a wedding ring and not think about it for several minutes. Why he wore it, where he could have left it. Noticing whether or not it is pressed into my vagina. I am just saying.
My educated guess, based upon research, personal experience and professional input, is that about 67-80% of married men have engaged in extramarital sexual activity of one kind or another; I usually use the more conservative 67% figure. Fortunately, only about 1/4 of these actually have affairs; the rest see prostitutes. Unfortunately, neofeminist and neofeminism-addled researchers with a weird agenda have in the past two decades attempted to obscure this by conducting “studies” designed to downplay the numbers on male infidelity in order to A) pathologize prostitution even further by making it seem much rarer than it is; and B) make it seem as though “liberated” modern women are now cheating more than they did in the past when in fact the number has remained constant at about 15%. I wrote about this in more detail on October 24th.
I would have expected more, Maggie — my own educated guess wouldn’t go lower than 80%, perhaps more (with maybe a good 50% thrown in for women who cheat, if I believe the stories of my female friends–do you have references on this 15% number?).
I think the worst problem here is the assumption that ‘cheating’ is necessarily bad, which everybody makes. ‘Cheating’ would apparently imply something necessarily bad, deceitful, etc. with the ‘cheating’ person. That is indeed possible: manipulators certainly don’t have any problems with cheating. But this is far from being always the case.
15% is a figure which keeps coming up pretty consistently in every study since Kinsey, which leads me to suspect it’s a good one. Even the recent misdesigned studies which generate infidelity figures of only about 20% for men still yield the tried and true 15% for women.
Is this the survey where men were interviewed at home, sometimes with the wife present?
So I’m sitting at the table with my wife and the sex researcher, and the question is asked, “Since marrying your wife, have you had sex with anybody else?” Exactly what does the researcher expect me to say: “Oh yes, dozens?”
The only thing impressive here is that 20% of married men still did say yes. My guess: swingers and men whose wives had already caught them.
There was one recent survey which was touted as showing there was not much of a difference in male and female infidelity; what they didn’t say was that the question asked “have you ever had an affair?” Since most male infidelity is sporadic (with prostitutes or pickups) most men could honestly answer “I have never had an affair”, and since heterosexual affairs take two it’s not at all surprising that the numbers were similar. 🙁
Ah, because an affair is an ongoing thing. Makes all the difference how the question is asked.
Just started Brave New World. He makes sure to hit us with the horror of it right off the bat, probably so we don’t fall into thinking this is a wonderful place to live. He also seems to have accurately predicted fetal alcohol syndrome, and hybrid helicopter/airplanes, in a time when helicopters themselves were experimental.
No, I haven’t actually read this before.
Yes, these are example of confirmation bias influencing the choice of questions: either using terms that exclude most of the positives (‘have you had an affair?’) or in environments that will add pressure in one direction (presence of spouse).
How come people make such obvious mistakes in their data-gathering methodology and still think it a good idea to publish their results? My Stats 101 teacher wouldn’t have let me pass with such a poorly designed questionnaire; whereas some people get such results published!
He sure does. Brave New World scared the hell out of me, a lot more than 1984 ever did.
I don’t think they’re truly “mistakes” at all; I think they’re the result of conscious (in the case of those with a political agenda) or unconscious (in the case of the weak-minded) bias influencing the experimental design.
But the fact that they are accepted and published by their peers… The peer review system is supposed to weed out exactly things like this (and at least as far as the top journals in my field, that’s what it does); but obviously there are other places to get things published that simply fail normal quality control.
Or then, maybe, these other places are also manned by people with agendas to advance… Or am I becoming paranoid?
You’re not being paranoid; that’s exactly the problem. Even the APA has become too political to be trusted to conduct proper peer review any longer, and the social work and academic feminism fields have never practiced it.
Such ideas sometimes occur to me, Maggie; and then I wonder how a sane person can avoid simply despairing and wondering how long it will take till the whole of science becomes just a political endeavor more sensitive to group agendas than to the pursuit of truth.
I try to be optimist, though. At least in my personal experience, there are sufficiently many sane individuals in my own field for me to believe that the peer review process does produce more often than not real advances rather than simply furthering the political goals of some group. But then again, this is probably because etymology, historical and cognitive linguistics aren’t really that useful for social control — unlike anthropology and sociology, whose studies are often the basis for suggested social initiatives.
What I oppose in her post, Kelly, is exactly the overgeneralization. If 90% of men were like that, her treatment of the whole gender as simple would still be wrong. (Homosexuality is a good example: 10% of men in average are homosexuals, plus another slice of bi and bi-curious of various degrees.) That, and the clear anger in her post: it’s not simply that men all cheat, but they are all wrong for cheating — which, as Maggie has pointed out elsewhere, is often not true.
I am sure lots of men cheat. But I am equally sure that lots of men don’t cheat. A majority? Probably not. Probably a minority. But a significant one, and one that shouldn’t be overlooked by someone who claims to be talking about “men.”
Thank You Kelly,
Excellent post.
Joyce
Personally, I don’t care – I don’t care IF they are cheating nor WHY they are cheating. I sometimes ask simply out of curiosity and the answers range from “she won’t give me a blow job” to “those chemo treatments she has for cancer don’t leave her in much of a mood”. Each man has his own reasoning for feeling the need to find gratification (satisfaction, release, whatever) elsewhere and I am certainly not one to judge and I’m certainly not in a position to truly care (I’m not looking at this man as a potential mate after all). I try to empathize with them, but not to a point where it makes a difference. But just as I can’t lump all sex-workers with the victimized poor trafficking victims, neither can I lump all men into a ‘cheaters for the sake of cheating’ category. Just IMO FWIW.
Brandy, I think you and I are on the same page about it. A woman who doesn’t want sex doesn’t want to feel guilty or pressured for sex either, so even though she might be hurt if she found out it’s a no-win situation so harm reduction is the best that can be hoped for. I’m going to do a column on this later in the week.
Ooh yay! Can’t wait to read it!
I am not saying they should or shouldn’t (cheat), I am saying that they do. Most of them anyway. I am glad that they do, because if not, I would be punching a clock somewhere. If it were up to me though, I would have them leave their rings somewhere that does not conjure up images of their wife in my mind. I just think it’s tacky. I notice that like most of my clients automatically remove their watches, alot of my clients leave their rings in their car or somewhere not on the fingers that they are engaging in such a way. They aren’t wrong to engage, but do they have to leave their rings on? Maybe it means that they are still committed to the wife even then, I don’t know, but I don’t like to see rings anymore than a guy wants to think about our families.
Ah I think I’m on your page now. I hardly notice if they are wearing a ring or not myself and it doesn’t bother me. I do respect how you feel about it though.
I think this comes from you imagining that the cheating is necessarily evil, Kelly. Maybe you imagine a boyfriend or a loved one also cheating on you, and the image is saddening.
There are many reasons for cheating, judging by the situations I’ve been involved in or heard about throughout life. Maybe a prostitute can, despite her own life experience, still resent a little bit the man who cheats, because of the betrayal of implied trust that this seems to carry. And we would like all people to always be nice and treat each other decently. (I’ve heard similar mixed feelings from other people in the ‘vice’ industries about the reasons why their clients buy their products, by the way.)
Maybe this contains some assumptions about people, what they do and about what constitutes good and evil. A few grams of good old conservatism, maybe.
And I say this as someone who never cheated on any of his partners (the few times that there was more than one woman, it was with full knowledge and consent from both), and who has never cheated on his wife ever since we married 10 years ago. Not because I think cheating is necessarily bad, or cheaters are necessarily bad people. For other, more personal, reasons.
Uhm, If we were to link my thinking about rings to anything deep rooted, it would be that I am a germophob. I value my sex toys enough to always cover them in use, yet here is this wedding ring, that is just all up in the mix.
As for my fear of a cheating man, I do not believe in Monogomy, and being bisexual could never be monogomous to anyone so nah, it’s not that. To be honest, only once has anyone that I have been with confessed to “cheating” without my knowledge, and the whole thing turned me on. We wound up having a threesome with her. It wasn’t sad at all! =)
Hm, that I admit I hadn’t expected! 🙂
Indeed, I’m all in favor of people who enjoy their sexuality in an autonomous, self-confident way. If you don’t feel that a ‘cheating’ partner is a threat to your self-esteem, then more power to you, Kelly! I’m glad you enjoyed your threesome; I wished this would be case for more people!
ah. Brandy – I never even notice if they’re wearing a ring either. It’s no more my business than it is the bartender’s or the blackjack dealer’s.
Men cheat. Women also cheat. The reasons why are so varied it’s impossible to make a general judgment – except that it’s human nature, and when an individual really puts forth an effort NOT to cheat – I gotta respect that…
Indeed. Not that it isn’t interesting to think about it, though. Cheating, its frequency and its reasons tend to tell us things about people and sex that many usually don’t think about.
“Harm Reduction.”
This is a very interesting, and, I think, important phrase.
Legitimate needs aren’t selfishness….and marital vows are not to be taken lightly. When you agree to be someone’s ONLY SOURCE of something, what exactly are they supposed to do if they can’t get what they want/need at home?
If it is indeed true that 80% of married men cheat, and if it is indeed true that we crave variety, then my question, again, is the same:
What exactly is the societal form that will work to keep people happy & satisfied? (Acknowledging of course that attitude, maturity, and “growing the Hell up” are required for happiness no matter what.)
Not at all coincidentally, today’s column is about harm reduction. To answer your final question, though, I don’t think there is any one answer. As Joyce pointed out some men are going to stray no matter what, but I think that many others could be kept from straying merely by a wife being more attentive to her husband’s needs and/or short-circuiting the need for variety by allowing him porn and participating in fantasies. Some women will scream “that’s not fair!” but as I pointed out in my column of September 9th nobody forced you to buy a dog.
I started typing on this and poof my screen disappeared, so I will start it over. I wanted to say, thank you Maggie for this blog.
I also wanted to add a few things on several of the subjects since I do not get to post here very often. Too busy with my Suggar Daddies on email, phone etc….
Yes I used to get WOMEN calling me to ask if I saw Couples, but I had to decline those calls because the Huge City that I worked in where I got MOST of these calls was known to use this tactic in VICE. I did, however see many husbands sent to me by their wife. Their wife would call and then I had to have my screener do the usual intense screening on BOTH. Most of these calls actually did work out and became regulars.
I did lots of Doubles through the Services, as we all know some guys wanted two girls.
Yes I too saw lots of wedding rings on the finger. I saw some fall onto the floor from their pockets and some men admitted they left it in the car. I was never really sure as to why they left it in the car, but it was fine with me. My guess as a professional, they thought (I only cheated with my wedding ring off). I cannot remember if is was Newt or Edwards who said I ONLY CHEATED WHEN SHE WAS IN REMISSION. Anyway that statement always reminded me of those clients.
Joyce
You’re welcome, Joyce. In New Orleans, it was the exact opposite; vice never tried anything like a couple call, so we knew they were 100% safe. 🙂
“Nobody forced you to buy a dog.”
…Should be the title of your book.
Well, as always, it seems to come down to immaturity. A lack of education coupled with a lack of an emotional ability to process life as it actually is, instead of the pornographic and rom com fantasies centered on how people *wish* it was.
Also the idea of the church realizing that imposing impossible standards is a guarantee of failure needs to be brought back in style.
*sigh* I don’t want to get married.
@Maggie – awesome column as usual. I loved that final paragraph!
@Joyce said:
“The fact is IF you have ever looked at a female and thought of sex with that woman, YOU HAVE CHEATED on your wife (emotionally). Tell me YOU never look at porn……LOL. There are many ways men cheat and they all do.”
A look and a thought = EMOTIONAL CHEATING!?
You’re right – any woman who really believes that^ should never, ever marry a man. That’s a crazy desire for control over someone that a wife claims to love. Whenever I read this kind of thing – especially your crack about how a woman who wants a faithful man should marry a quadruplegic – it makes me so glad I never married.
There’s a wild double standard going on in marriage 2.0 – wives are in complete control of their own sexuality (or lack of). Which is fine. Everyone should be in charge of their own body.
BUT the crazy part is that they EXPECT to control HIS sexuality and his body too! When the wife doesn’t want her husband he’s expected to accept that, but there’s hell to pay if he finds someone else that does want him (or his $). Sounds exactly like an abusive, controlling relationship to me.
Props to the wives who called you on behalf of their husbands, that’s some love and understanding right there. Funnily enough: I’m living in Spain right now, where sex work is legal, and it’s a common opinion (apparently) among wives that it’s ok for hubby to go visit a prostitute, cos that’s way less likely to split up the marital home. Much more of a marriage 1.0 attitude.
“A look and a thought = EMOTIONAL CHEATING!?
You’re right – any woman who really believes that^ should never, ever marry a man. That’s a crazy desire for control over someone that a wife claims to love.”
^THIS.
“There’s a wild double standard going on in marriage 2.0 – wives are in complete control of their own sexuality (or lack of). Which is fine. Everyone should be in charge of their own body.
BUT the crazy part is that they EXPECT to control HIS sexuality and his body too! When the wife doesn’t want her husband he’s expected to accept that, but there’s hell to pay if he finds someone else that does want him (or his $). Sounds exactly like an abusive, controlling relationship to me.”
^THIS. TIMES A MILLION.
Thanks, Joswitch! I share the attitude of the Spanish ladies, as discussed in my column of January 13th. 🙂
Men like you should never marry.
You call my comment a “CRACK”…Screw you!!!
Yes for a married man to look at another woman and think…I wonder what my dick would fell like inside of her is (Emotional cheating), unless he shares his thoughts with his wife and she approves. If not get a divorce and marry one that does approve.
Yes I expected my husbands to not do unprotected sex with hookers and run around seeing women without my permission. I need to know she is safe, I have a right to know. If you call that controlling “his sexuality”, because I am protecting myself from possible DEATH or illness then you need help or just go on as you are get aids and we have one less abusive man in this world. By all means never MARRY!!!! No woman deserves it.
I even told my husbands they could work as MALE ESCORTS as long as they were safe in what they did. They accused me of not loving them. Hell, they would rather SNEAK????
The women that called me for their husbands did so because they were sick to death of him. For money or kids they did not divorce, but there was no “martial home”
Yes I will take the Quad and that is MY business Pal. I really prefer women though because the are honest and not lying cheats. I have a policy of JUST BE HONEST.
I think lack of Honesty in the industry is one of the problems.
When a woman “Doesn’t want her husband”, there usually is damn good reason as you have shown.
By The way (Joswitch)
Love the way you do the typical suck up to Maggie before you mouth off to my post. Typical MAN SHIT!!!!
I actually saw your post when it first went up. I had to wait until I settled down.
Now, Joyce, let’s try to keep cool! I need all the readers I can get, so I don’t want y’all tearing each other apart, OK? 😉
Sorry Maggie, but a whore dog was trying to bite me. Called My COMMENT a “crack” Could not help myself. I will try to practice “Silence is one of the hardest arugments to refute”…..Josh Billings
I will also try to remember that “Conceit is God’s gift to little men”….Bruce Barton.
Hugs……Joyce
Go ahead and defend yourself. Bottom line is a woman who has sex with a man and accepts a payment is a whore. Period. I found out my husband was finding whores on myredbook.com and was providing a hotel room for the whore to service his needs. I assure you I am not naive or he wouldn’t have been caught. I also assure you he has sex with me all the time. I don’t blame the whore for my husbands infidelity but ishe should be held accountable for her actions. Knowingly being a self indulged home wrecker will at some point have a consequence. She can be arrested … she will clearly never have a healthy relationship because she obviously sees herself as an object … at some point she will have to meet her maker … or she can meet a really pissed off wife. My advice stay away from married men! Sell your scandelous ass to someone single … u have plenty to choose from. My family is ruined because of both my husbands disguisting decisions and from the whores who spread their legs for a quick payment! He is paying the price and will continue to until he is bled of everything. The whores should get theirs too!
“Defend myself?” You obviously haven’t read much. I agree, a woman who accepts compensation – including a house and a family – for sex is indeed a whore. And yes, you ARE naive if you think that it’s whores who “entice” men to screw around. Men screw around, period; they can do it with professionals (in which case the only “harm” is a slight cash loss) or they can do it with floozies, in which case you’re looking at serious homewrecking action. You are also naive in your belief that a marriage is “ruined” by a husband seeing whores; what “ruins” it is a wife setting absurd standards. 70% of married men cheat, dear; saying “the marriage is over if he cheats” is like playing Russian Roulette with four loaded chambers. If you don’t want to put up with it, I suggest you give lesbianism a try.
And as for “sees herself as an object”…oh, my! If you discarded the feminist propaganda before dealing with real women, you wouldn’t end up looking like such a fool. I have a very healthy relationship, thanks, and so do many whores I know. But none of us are so foolish that we think work makes people into “objects” or that it’s morally correct to “bleed a man of everything” because he made your little princessy self feel rejected.
You have a problem with your husband, not whores.
You have to understand male sexuality. Sometimes, they just want to be with someone different. Geez, at least he was responsible about it, and didn’t have a girlfriend.
If you have a “cheat and its over” ultimatum in place, then in my opinion, you are the homewrecker.
Your husband never wanted to wreck his home, you did. He just wanted a blowjob.
Whats the big deal? You love him don’t you? You have a family right? Forgive him, and be done with it. Life is about love, and love is about forgiveness. It’s okay to let him come home, or stay home, or fix this. Its not too late. Lashing out at whores won’t help you honey, none of us are moved by angry outbursts. We are immune to them.
Sounds like you have control issues. He is a man, he needs time to be a man away from home so he can carry the burden of a home. I am sure he never meant to hurt you. Stop checking up on him so much and you won’t cause yourself all of this heartache.
I was just wondering, could it be that your anger comes from the fact that your husband put you in a position to demand something that you didn’t want?
I know that women fear the way that others will view them if they knew that the woman forgave a cheating spouse. Maybe you didn’t want people to view you as weak, or something. Maybe you would have never ended it if you weren’t so wrapped up in what others thought of you.
Look at Hilary Clinton, if you love your man, affairs are just a bump in the road.
Joyce wrote:
“Interesting (Asehpe) that you “Have never cheated” on your wife, Not even once, nor did you even want to)
“Yet you fill (this) blog with comments. Why are YOU the Faithful Husband looking on THIS blog??? You must have some interest in Prostitution/hookers. Yes I know it facinates you, you can have better sex with your wife after reading about us, you are looking for insight…etc…
“The fact is IF you have ever looked at a female and thought of sex with that woman, YOU HAVE CHEATED on your wife (emotionally). Tell me YOU never look at porn……LOL. There are many ways men cheat and they all do.”
Joyce, I was married for decades and never cheated on my wife. I will not say that I never wanted to. Sure I had impulses, but never acted on them. Sure I looked at females, some females I looked at were pointed out to me by my wife. So I never thought I cheated emotionally. Of course I watched porn when I was married. I have never been a big fan of porn but I will probably watch it again.
I am no longer married.
I am a huge fan of this blog for many reasons. I would say the biggest one is that I thoroughly enjoy Maggie’s writing and her unique view of events.
And, yes, I am fascinated by prostitution and I enjoy the company of most of the prostitutes I have met.
I find prostitutes to be more honest than the general population. I find them also to be excellent conversationalists with varied interests. I cherish the friendships I have made in brothels. Some of the women I think of as friends, I have never had sex with. Some of the friends I have met at brothels are men.
I have been in many bars in Northern Nevada and the best ones with the best clients are located inside the brothels.
Here’s my experience. My wife and I have been married for 19 years. We had a satisfying intimate sexual relationship. We clicked sexually.It was great; she was right for me.
We also had a clear “cheat and quit” rule. We were fulfilling each other, and it was great. I was fine with that.
10 years ago, however, Bev began to suffer extended heavy bleeding, and vicious cramps during her menstrual phase. Our sex life, understandably, cut back. Of course I didnt mind that; only a total heel would go elsewhere for sex : two weeks is nothing.
However, her symptoms got worse. I got her to go to the doctor (she always was a reluctant patient) and it transpired that she had both Ovarian cysts (benign) and severe endometriosis. *ouch*
After the unavoidable hysterectomy and removal of 75% of her ovarian tissue, and waiting for the surgery to heal, we tried to rekindle our intimate relationship.
She wasn’t interested.
I was dissapointed, but patient. We weren’t able to rekindle our sexual relationship at all. Being a patient fellow, we cuddled, and every so often I made my usual gentle teasing advances, which she’d always loved.
I got turned down flat. At this point, we’d had no intimate sexual contact for six months. And she didn’t want to discuss it.
By this point, not wanting to cheat, I was using pornography and masturbating to relieve my sexual urges, which have always been pretty strong (I’m an AM & PM kind of guy, masturbation wise, and a sexual intercourse every other day chap, life circumstances permitting).
The thing is, I miss the sexual intimacy we had. Masturbation isnt the same. Connecting sexually with another person is; my wife was perfect for me.
Skip forward to last week. I finally asked her what was wrong with me as a lover; she said “It’s not you,I just don’t want sex”.
So, here I am. I’ll be frank, ive kept faithful to a woman who (quite understandably, I guess) has gone from firecracker to frozen, and I’m out in the cold.
But after these 10 years (there’s a good gap in our ages, I’m 14 years her junior) without human sexual contact, I’ve reached my breaking point. I’m not prepared to give up sex for good. My masturbatory stopgap just isnt enough anymore. I need to have that degree of intimacy again.
I’m now faced with a huge problem : what do I do next?
Contacting an escort and paying for it makes me a criminal, here in the UK; Finding another willing partner seems to make me a criminal in all but name, by feminine opinion (I support sexual equality and mutuality; I had that, its the best… while it lasts); and despite my sexual needs not being met, I dont want to divorce my wife, who I still very much love *and still want*.
Except the latter is never going to happen, and the other options suck chunks.
Genuine advice would be very helpful.
The UK has legal prostitution in form, right? Maybe this has changed in the last couple of years. Do you your wife would flip out over you getting the sex elsewhere? Or will she be glad that you’re getting what you want, without her having to do what she doesn’t want?
I can’t tell you what you should do, but if you can answer those two questions for yourself, well, maybe you’ll know what you should do.