People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics. – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
On September 30th I saw a Gawker article whose headline announced “Top Tea Partier Parties With Hookers”, then I yawned, clicked onto another item and promptly forgot about the non-news story for a couple of days until some other source reminded me of it. Apparently, there are people in this country who have memories so short they can’t remember the last story of a politician caught looking for or hiring a whore, or the one before that, or the one before that, or the many dozens before that (or this one which broke Friday). I know that Gawker is the online equivalent of a tabloid, but “politician hires prostitute” is the political equivalent of “dog bites man”, a commonplace event which really isn’t the least bit newsworthy.
But since there may be a few of you out there who still believe in the Tooth Fairy, I reckon I need to say this declaratively: most male politicians hire prostitutes from time to time. And this really shouldn’t be surprising because 69% of all Western men have directly paid for sex at least once in their lives, 20% do it occasionally and 6% regularly. I say “directly paid” because as I’ve pointed out many times before, nearly all heterosexual men have paid for it indirectly…and I’m sure a good percentage of them are honest enough to recognize that. Furthermore, roughly 1% of Western women have worked as prostitutes at some point in their lives, and if Sweden is representative perhaps ten times that number have accepted money for sex at least once (which, incidentally, is similar to historical percentages of the female population working as whores). Yet the widespread myth that “only desperate men pay for sex” and its sister, “only desperate, damaged women accept money for sex,” persist despite the fact that at least seven out of ten men and one out of ten women repeating or hearing the statements know for a fact from personal experience that they aren’t true …and many, many more know secondhand.
Prostitution is the elephant in the American parlor; though most men and a sizeable fraction of women see it standing there, they refuse to talk honestly about it lest they upset their half-blind old Auntie who either can’t see it or has mistaken it for a large and rather oddly-shaped sideboard or ottoman. And so they allow her to prattle on about the weather and the price of tea and how the immigrants are ruining this country, listening quietly as she makes wholly absurd statements about that piece of furniture she doesn’t recognize as an elephant and agreeing with her even though they can clearly see that she’s spouting utter nonsense. Why do they do this? I suspect it’s the result of cognitive dissonance caused by the conflict of what they know personally and intellectually to be true and that which they have been taught to believe. For example, 46% of Americans continue to support the criminalization of marijuana even though most of them have used it themselves; many insist that teen sexuality can be curbed by keeping them in ignorance despite the fact that their own ignorance never stopped them when they were teens; and most support Draconian and disproportionate sentences for all crimes despite the fact that everyone breaks some laws on occasion.
A politician hires whores more often than other men do for the same reason a dog licks his genitals: because he can. The average politician has a lot more money and a vastly greater sense of his own entitlement than the average non-politician, but a lot more to lose should he be discovered with a mistress; a professional is therefore the obvious choice. Yes, some of them (like Anthony Weiner or Bill Clinton) are foolish enough to obtain their extracurricular nookie from amateurs…who then, predictably, talk and get them in trouble. But most of them have more sense, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the normal frequency categories were shifted up one step for politicians; i.e., 20% hiring hookers frequently, 69% occasionally and virtually all of them at least once in their lives. This is, of course, merely an educated guess, but ask yourself: Why is it that the client lists of state-destroyed escort services like Miami Companions or Pamela Martin and Associates are literally never revealed?
This makes the public behavior of politicians toward prostitutes to be all the more despicable. Most of the legislators who vomit bile against us, most of the attorneys general who try to shut down our advertising venues, most of the judges who sentence us and most of the police chiefs who hunt us like animals are all customers; as I pointed out in “The Biggest Whores”, they hate us precisely because they need us: “Most people are willing to crawl to the politician, licking his boots in order to gain a few scraps from his table, but the whore merely laughs at him and reverses the relationship while providing living proof of the inability of his profession to eradicate or control ours.” And this is why it’s so rare that an escort service gets busted; politicians…
…don’t want to cut off easy access to easy women by persecuting the services. So they allow the cops to harass streetwalkers and play sadistic little tricks on escorts and call girls, knowing full well that even if a few high-quality girls are scared out of the profession by police shenanigans there will still be plenty of others available…These sleazy
sons of bitches don’t care how many individual girls get hurt; most of them prefer endless variety anyhow and consider individual escorts to be a disposable commodity.
Expressed more graphically, they don’t mind poaching as long as the whole herd isn’t wiped out.
Of course, politicians are still human (albeit the worst and least-evolved specimens of humanity), so they can get caught up in hysteria just like other people can. Undoubtedly, there are many politicians who genuinely believe in the “child sex trafficking” hysteria, confusing the “elephant in the parlor” of prostitution with the “heffalump in the parlor” of pedophilia (as discussed in my column of one year ago today) and obsessing over lurid fantasies of 300,000 barely-pubescent sex slaves. But even most of those politicians still have their whores, not only because they can rationalize their own escorts as among the “rare” non-coerced sex workers, but also because of the time-honored credo of the overlord, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
So true.
One of the worst clients I ever had was with the government. (He wasn’t exactly a politician, he was appointed to his high position by politicians.)
I blame much of this on religion. Religion tells us we are “better” than our animal natures, tries hard to separate us from the rest of nature, and make us divine. Thus we deny our urges to fuck often, and with different partners. This sets us up to be hypocrites.
I also see Americans as some of the most self-deluded people on the planet. So many of us see ourselves as only a lucky break from being rich and powerful, and as much more “moral” than we are. Thus we hate the poor, and the whores, and derive great pleasure from exposed sex scandals. The rich want us to think the way we do, so we see our interests in alignment with theirs, and not as different from theirs.
We think other people hire, or are, hookers. We hide it deep, deny it, and it festers. So when a hooker-monger, or whore is caught, we demand great retribution, to hide our own shame.
I’m quite thankful to my career in the sex industry for keeping me out of that hypocrisy, at least. Odd thing is, I’d known former hookers to be just as anti-hooker as others, they say those who are caught deserve it, because unlike them, they are doing it wrong. I’ve always found that bit of hypocrisy especially galling.
I feel the same way; I find that attitude is particularly prevalent among whores who believe in “magic formulae” that will reveal cops for what they are.
I just don’t get why the cops act this way when it comes to prostitution. I also find it ironic that when they send out the female cops to pretend to be hookers…there are no cries of women being “objectified”
I wonder if we will ever have a politician that can reform all these problems
There’s always that small group who think they are just so classy, so discrete that no one, not even a cop would ever mistake them for a whore!
That’s one of the things I disliked about the business, how there are always some women seeking to see themselves as above the rest. I remember calling a woman for a reference once, and while we were talking, she mentioned that she knew I showed my face in photo ads, and that she would never do that! She felt that was just risking too much.
“Odd thing is, I’d known former hookers to be just as anti-hooker as others, they say those who are caught deserve it, because unlike them, they are doing it wrong. I’ve always found that bit of hypocrisy especially galling”
This sounds similar to what “good” women do to the “bad” women who have become victims of rape. They rationalize the rape with allegedly wrong behaviour of the victim, so that they themselves can feel safe. After all, bad things only happen to bad girls. Sometimes even women who have been raped (when nobody else knows it) do this to distance themselves from the stigmatisation that comes with being a victim.
I think pols adopt these positions less out of personal hypocrisy – and more for political reality. For instance – George Wallace didn’t start his career as segregationist – quite the opposite, but he was unable to win elections in Alabama until he went “racial”.
David Vitter – who allegedly (almost certainly) had some liaisons with beltway hookers (I’m told involving some role play which included a diaper? Would that be a submissive role? Where does that fall in the fetish spectrum?) … anyway – he’s another good example. He’s been reelected – but I think that’s because he’s the most predictable conservative vote in the Senate and his constituents in Louisiana mostly like that. I think Vitter, personally, would be okay with decriminalizing prostitution but, there’s no way in hell he’ll ever vote that way because his constituents would be outraged. Maybe, more accurately – the special interests which control the votes of his constituents would be outraged.
I kind of felt sorry watching Vitter in the debates here. He got killed by his opponents in every debate on the subject of his involvement with prostitutes. One fat, bloated old idiot stated … “I don’t even like standing next to David Vitter – it disgusts me just to stand this close to such an immoral man.”
Whew! I guess that guy never heard the “He who is without sin – cast the first stone!” quote, huh?
Anyway – none of this, I suppose, makes Vitter a better person – even if he would personally be find with decriminalizing prostitution. Like Wallace, it’s the body of his actual work and deeds that will condemn him.
And – speaking of “special interests” who control the minds of voters …
Last year, in Saint Tammany Parish – we had an OUTSTANDING proposal to build the parish’s first Casino resort on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain, just south of I-10. This part of Saint Tammany NEEDS some development and this would’ve increased my property’s value exponentially – which has been decreased by the combined effects of Katrina and the economy.
The PREACHERS – killed the proposal. They reminded people that Casinos bring drugs, and alcohol problems, and gambling problems, and …
PROSTITUTION.
It’s impossible to win on this planet.
I second everthing you stated here.
Thanks for writing this blog, Maggie. I found it haphazardly off The Scientific Fundamentalist’s blog at Psychology Today. I’ll be reading yours much more often. It’s astute, erudite, sagacious and intriguing. Keep up the great work.
Wow, thank you, Astrolube! 🙂
@ Maggie
I agree with everything you stated. I do have two things which may contradict what you wrote, but in a positive way for prostitution. I believe your statistics on male customers to be more or less accurate. However, even though I do not have the statistics to back it up, I believe your percentages about female prostitutes to be inaccurate. I beleive that at least 1% of all Western females are professional prostitutes, and at least 5% of all females have been occasional “amatuer” prostitutes. Otherwise, this is a a fantastic article. Please keep up the excellant work!
Let me correct what I said above. I believe that at least 1% of Western Women are or have been professional prostitutes. I also believe that at least 5% of all Western females are or have been occasional “amatuer” prostitutes.
That’s basically what I said in the column, Doc. The National Taskforce on Prostitution estimates that roughly 1% of modern Western women have worked as prostitutes at some point in their lives, and my own estimates from the New Zealand figures indicate that almost 0.3% are currently working in the trade, which supports the first figure since most women only do it for a few years before marrying or otherwise moving on. And the Swedish study indicates that roughly 10% of women have taken money for sex at least once, so it stands to reason that the number who take payment occasionally – i.e. more than once in her life but not frequently enough to count as a pro – would be somewhere between 1 and 10%. Therefore, 5% would be as good a “guesstimate” as any, and it jibes with the 19th-century percentage of the European female population engaged in prostitution at any given time, which is 5.5%.
Thankyou for clarifying your statements. You seem to be right on this. It jibes with what I’ve seen anecdotally or read in this world.
I remember when I taught English in South Korea from 1999 to 2002. There was an article in one of the English Language newspapers, either The Korea Herald or The Korea Times, and I can’t for the life of me remember which one or what year. The article stated that at least 90% of South Korean men had payed for a prostitute at least once in their lives. It also said that 10% of the South Korean women worked in the sex industry presently or in the past. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that they were prostitutes. They could have been Madams who owned or mamged the prostitutes. They could have been chefs, bartenders or servers who served drinks and food to prostitutes and prostitute customers. The article never broke down who did what job or what kind of prostitute or support staff or manger or business owner etc. There are a lot of hostess bars with hostesses fronting for prostitution in South Korea which the American military men called juicy bars and juicy girls. I listed a lot of other kinds of prostitutes responding to Gorbachev in a recent previous post. I believe it was your two articles ago, Maggie. Yet under the influence of The USA and fundamentalist insane Protestant Christianity, South Korea has made prostitution more expensive and difficult. They seem to be going in the opposite direction of Taiwan which tried what they are and are now rightly giving up in that folly.
The thing everyone needs to understand about Korean culture in particular and East Asian culture in general is the concept of the face a person presents to the world and the inner feeling one truly has. Both are often quite different. They are often morew apart then you would find in the West. For example, it would be totally unacceptable for one to get fresh with a work superior or an older person especially if they are of an older generation. This is especially true when both are sober. Koreans will use liquor and company outings after work for the underlings to tell the superiors what is wrong. There’s plausible deniabilty especially for the underlings. I’ve heard the rest of East Asia is the same.
One may wonder how this relates to prostitution. Many men in a company certainly in South Korea and seems in other East Asian countries will go drinking and maybe gambling and whoring in order to build esprit de corps. Male friends will often do the same. The men seldom if ever discuss this with the women, and even when they do discuss it, they try to say as little as possible with rare exceptions. I imagine the women who worked in the sex industry are even more discreet and for justifiable reasons.Korean men specifically and maybe East Asian men generally will discuss prostitution with eachother, but only after enough trust has been earned, and sons seldom if ever discuss it with their fathers or grandfathers although they may or may not discuss it with brothers, male cousin or uncles. Korean men specificly and East Asian men generally once trust has been earned seem to be more free in discussing prostitution with eachother than American men specificly and Western men generally. There seems to be less shame among men in the East than there is in the West about prostitution once trust has been earned. East Asian men will even reccomend prostitutes to their friends.However, not even Eastern Asian men will discuss it with someone they don’t trust, and trust is harder to earn with them.
I heard it was changed recently where ATMs in South Korea are open 24 hours. They used to be shut down even when I was there off and on from 1996 to 2006 from midnight to 5 A.M or 8 A.M. the reason most of Westerners living and working there figured out it was because too many men were doing too much alcohol drinking, gambling and whoring and losing the month’s rent money in the process.
I hope Gorbachev reads this as his current project is about prostitution.
Doc … the spread of “anti-whore disease” to all nations visited by our military is a sad byproduct of officer corps leadership. We have officers that interface with foreign governments – and for some reason they seem to want to spread the morality of “Rome” throughout her empire. So they always negotiate for tougher laws on prostitution in the host nations they plant the flag.
Believe me – if ENLISTED people ran the military – none of this would happen. In fact, we’d move the hookers into a vacant building RIGHT on base – and even decorate it up for them. 😀
Sorry to respond late, and maybe you’re not going to read this. I remember being at Camp Stanley in Uijeongbu, a suburb north of Seoul, South Korea wtih a civilian who retired from the Army as a First Sergeant and a Vietnam War Veteran. He was working there because his Korean wife wanted to live in Korea, and since he had been all over the world with his wife, he decided to be kind and live where she wanted to live after his military retirement. He told me that one kwanzaa hut building is all offices now, but back in the 1960s, it was known as the “STEAM and CREAM”. A Man could get a haircut up front in the barber shop, and in the back there were women who would wash the men and give them happy ending hanjobs. He was in Korea first in 1960, then Vietnam in the late 1960s, and again in Korea in 1971. He told me that it all ended one day when someone forgot to steer the battalion chaplain away from the back where one gets washed and a happy ending handjob. We both laughed hillariously hard at the true story he told me.
You’re right that a higher percentage of the enlisted men wouldn’t outlaw prostitution. A higher percentage females would because they don’t like the competition from whores despite their alleged “morality” and “disgust”. The higher ranking men on average care less about how anti-prostitution harms people because not only do they make more money and have higher rank, but they have higher status which attracts the women. Why should these higher status men care about their lower status bretheren when it’s easier for them to pick up women? They don’t and won’t until forced to do so.
I realize that this is a side issue to the main point of your post here, but I’ve been bothered by your comments about Sex Education for a while, and I finally figured out why. I would urge you to consider that there are reasons other than prudishness to oppose explicit sex ed in the public schools.
I cringe whenever I hear about a new Sex Ed “scandal” in the public schools. I have to wonder what possessed anybody who thought that thrusting the schools into that particular briar patch would be a Good Thing. To see what I mean, I ask you to step sideways and consider another issue that I feel the same way about; Public Service graduation requirements. Who in hell thought that a public servant could draw up a list of “approved” public service organizations without stirring up a firestorm of disagreement and abuse? Who in hell thought that a public servant could decide what to teach kids about as sensitive a subject as sexuality without exciting hoards of opposition, some of whom actually have children? I oppose Sex ed. not because I am a prude, but because a) I doubt that the State schools are capable of doing it well and b) I don’t want their resources wasted on doing it badly, especially considering how they are failing to achieve their core purpose of teaching the little yard ages to read, write, and figure.
But then, I would welcome a movement to get public schools to jettison music, dramatics, sports, any any number of other activities until they have a better track record on teaching scholastics.
The sex business gave me my sex education. Oh, I mean I knew about it before that, about the basics, and by 18 had done it a few times (Wasn’t at all impressed, and couldn’t figure out what all the obsession was about.) My parents were fairly open, but we never really talked about it much. Sex just was, it happened.
Then I found myself having sex for a living. (I had been a dancer, but broke my foot. Couldn’t dance with the big Frankenstein boot on) so I got a job at a massage parlor. The older women taught me the ropes. I also learned during porn shoots.)
All in all, I’d say it was a fine education.
C. S. P. Schofield, the public schools absolutely must teach Sex Education because: 1. In the age of AIDS, it’s a matter of life and death, 2. Teenagers need to know how best to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease while being sexually active, as almost all of them either already are or will be within a few years, 3, It’s part of basic biology education, 4. If teens can’t get sexual information from adults, they get it from other teens who may give inaccurate information, 5. Too many parents rarely or never talk to their kids about sex.
I reject the idea that Sex Education is somehow different from all other education. Sex is just one more important aspect of life for which public schools must prepare students.
C. S. P. Schofield wrote: “But then, I would welcome a movement to get public schools to jettison music, dramatics, sports, any any number of other activities until they have a better track record on teaching scholastics.” Many public schools already have jettisoned or minimized music, dramatics, sports, and other activities outside the four core subjects, and are still failing to teach the four core subjects properly, so your plan would not work. Studies have shown that children who are exposed to the arts do better in school in all their subjects, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status. We are not going to make kids smarter by keeping them art-illiterate.
Thank you, Marla. You are correct on both points.
I’d like to add that the abject ignorance and basic stupidity of teenagers is, in every generation, exaggerated like mad. The kiddies ain’t as dumb as envious and gullible adults want to believe.
May I add that even though the statistics Maggie and I gave to you are not lies or deceptions on our part, please be careful with them. I believe the numbers Maggie and I stated about prostitution are at LEAST that NUMBER. They might be higher. People have been known to lie especially about their personal practices if they believe it will show them in a bad light. They will do this even if they know that they are anonyomous too.
That’s one of the reasons I’m careful to list my sources, and to cross-check the estimates wherever possible.
A politician hires whores more often than other men do for the same reason a dog licks his genitals: because he can.
Thanks Maggie. That is one of the funniest truisms out there.
I despise Eliot Spitzer for this reason. Not for sleeping with prostitutes but for persecuting them beforehand.
Do you think that there is any element of Baptists and Bootleggers in any of this?
CSP Schofield – My parents were a bit prudish but to this day I don’t know if the college textbook my father (he was a college professor of biology) gave me for a 7th grade report on the circulatory system was also given to me because of the explicit sections on human anatomy and physiology in the human reproductive systems. Which made the locker room discussions extremely funny from my perspective.
My father has a poached elephant tusk just like the ones in the second photograph. It’s on his living room mantelpiece and guests are often shocked by it. Those who came into my den saw my baby polar bearskin rug with the head with empty eye sockets. By now you may have guessed that my parents are not “animal rights” people.
“I say “directly paid” because as I’ve pointed out many times before, nearly all heterosexual men have paid for it indirectly…and I’m sure a good percentage of them are honest enough to recognize that.”
Yep…when you think in my case my ex was given 95% despite not working for 16 years of an 18 year marriage? I paid a LOT more for sex than I would have paid if I had “paid directly”.
Hi Maggie.
Just to let you know. I have created women only sites related to Crimes Against Fathers now. If women wish to join them and wish to prosecute criminal women who commit crimes against fathers then they are welcome.
Obviously, once we get the new courts established ALL people who are victims of crime will be welcome to bring their cases. I am starting with fathers first as I was one father who was criminally abused. We are putting an end to the criminal abuse of fathers. It would be nice if our women folk helped us.
http://www.crimesagainstfathers.com/
Also for news. We are starting a global mens business association outside the jurisdiction of any government. Our position on women is that we would be DELIGHTED if our women folk started a WOMENS business association along the same lines. And you women already have ONE business that beats the hell out of anything we can do for ready to pay customers! LOL!
The Mens Business Association will operate on the basis of freedom of association. We choose NOT to associate with governments and their agents. We will have our own law, courts, peace officers, money, passports, bank and then businesses to run off that platform.
It would seem to me that sex workers would be an ideal candidate as one of the founding businesses of a womens business association.
Just giving you the idea to chew over with your women friends.
http://www.crimesagainstfathers.com/australia/Forums/tabid/82/forumid/124/threadid/730/scope/posts/Default.aspx