Reasons why people hate prostitution

What this is all about

It’s hard to not notice the widespread despise of prostitution. Even men who go to brothels tend to be ashamed of it, not to mention the prostitutes themselves. In our everyday language, it is hard to overlook the self-evident feeling of moral superiority that accompanies the use of the word "slut" or saying that one or another woman is of easy virtue.

Ever since I learned, at some early age, what the words "prostitute" and "prostitution" meant, I've been trying to find out what’s supposed to be so awful and despicable about prostitution. I still can't fully understand it, but I believe I have found some likely psychological reasons to it. I am offering them for discussion, hoping that someone will tell me something that will help me to understand things better.

Method

Let's examine what it is that people dislike about prostitution, and why they dislike it.

This discussion shall be limited to female prostitution for men, since that's the overwhelming majority of the existent prostitution, as well as the symbol of prostitution for the general public. Thus, when I speak of "prostitution" from now on, I mean only women getting paid for having sex with men, and when I speak of "sex", I mean heterosexual sex.

It's reasonable to discuss the opinions of men and women separately, not only because of their profound biological differences, but also because their very different roles in prostitution – women can only be prostitutes and men can only be their customers.

As far as I understand, there are essentially five things people dislike about prostitution:

1) women’s willingness to have a lot of sex;

2) exchange of sex for money;

3) availability of sex partners for men;

4) sexual freedom (freedom to choose whom to have sex with);

5) assumed involuntariness of prostitution.

Of course, not all reason apply to all people. People are different and different people detest prostitution for different reasons.

It should also be clear that it's extremely rare that people actually admit to those reasons (apart from the 5th). They hide their real motives behind meaningless moralist slogans, like how the sale and purchase of "love" is "wrong". That is humanly understandable, but, of course, not to be taken seriously.  (What love? I'm talking about sex. What has love got to do with anything? And there is no such thing as "right" or "wrong". There are things you like and things you don't like.)

Please note that a number of ideas are covered rather briefly in this article. That is not because I'm being superficial, it's because I didn't want to make this article too long. (It's pretty long as it is.) I can explain all those points in detail, and in fact I have several additional articles in work, and I'm looking forward to publishing them in the near future.

Now let us examine the individual reasons for the people's aversion to prostitution, one by one.

1. Why people don’t like women’s willingness to have a lot of sex?

Men

A man's disliking of women who are willing to have a lot of sex can have some of the following reasons:

1. Before the invention of DNA tests, a man could never know for certain who was the father born to his woman. Therefore, men have evolutionally developed a number of psychological defence mechanisms against the danger of spending a huge portion of their resources on raising another man's child. Among those is a strong desire that the woman be a virgin and never desiring to have sex with more than one man during her life.

2. He fears that he is inferior to other men. He believes that other men's sexual skills are superior to his own. So he fears that his sexual skills aren't enough to satisfy the woman's expectations. Therefore he prefers his partner to have as little sexual experience as possible.

That fear results mainly from our destructive education and socialisation system of boys, as well as distorted representations of human sexuality in "adult" magazines.

3. He believes that women who enjoy sex are abnormal or bad. That belief results partly from failing to understand the complexity of sexuality, partly from religious and ideological propaganda.

4. Men have a huge need for sex and women can easily satisfy it, but they don't have to. The power to refuse sex gives women enormous influence on men. Therefore, a man might dislike women who aren't ashamed of their sexuality, as such women would have no scruples about actually using that power for their benefit, and he feels he's helpless against it.

5. Sex with a woman who likes to have a lot of sex might leave unsatisfied the man's natural desire for conquest.

Women

Many women have been taught from the childhood on that sex is bad (at least with a man who is not one's husband). That's why they detest "sluts".

Of course, such puritanical upbringing has been decreasing rapidly in the last decades, so this reason is increasingly less important.

2. Why people don’t like the exchange of sex for money?

Men

Men don’t like the exchange of sex for money mostly because they consider the prostitutes' fees too high. Rationalising away the hidden costs of seduction, they fail to realise that "decent" women usually cost far more – except when you'll gain them as long-time partners, and even that is disputable.

Women

Women have two kinds of feelings about buyable sex. An aging wife might feel envy – she has to spread her legs for her (similarly aging, and inceasingly less sexy) husband for free while some other women seem to be making considerable money with their bodies. For younger and more competitive women, in turn, the price prostitutes are asking for sex is far too low, but that has more to do with reason number 3.

In connection with the reason number 1, it should be noted that those women who consider sex dirty as such, are, of course, especially appalled by the sale and purchase of sex, as it increases the occurrence of the "sin" of sex considerably.

3. Why people don’t like the availability of sex partners for men?

Men

At first, it might seem illogical that a man would be opposed to the availability of sex partners for men. But it’s psychologically explainable with following reasons:

1. The misguided belief that non-prostitutes are free might easily produce another belief – that a "real" man doesn't have to pay for sex. Imagine a man who does everything he can to please women and to get laid for "free" – usually with meagre success. He likes to think that the brothel customers are pathetic men who are unable to seduce women (as if he was). It's understandable that he gets mad when such supposedly inferior men can get sexual satisfaction and he – a "nice guy who treats women with respect" – can't. As he has to work so hard to get laid, it's quite understandable that he's envious of men who get laid cheaper, quicker and with far less stress. As he's too ashamed to go to a brothel (see reason number 1 above), he opposes prostitution out of simple envy: if I can’t get any, the others shouldn’t either.

2. Men naturally desire many different sex partners, but the number of men and women in the world is about equal. Also, many men desire women with no or little sexual experience (see reason number 1 above). Thus, there are clearly way too few women in the world to satisfy all men. Therefore, men have the instinctive urge to try to deprive other men of sex.

Women

For women, the obvious reason for disliking availability of sex partners for men is competition. The less competitive women just hate the thought of their partners having access to other (and possibly more attractive) women. The more competitive women, in turn, are displeased because the prostitutes dump the prices.

4. Why people don’t like sexual freedom?

For shortness's sake, I will use the term "sexual freedom" in the meaning of "freedom to choose one's sex partner".

Sexual freedom is related to the previous reason (availability of sex partners) but it's not the same. Availability of sex means that every person can get laid whenever he wants to. Sexual freedom means that every person is free to choose to have or not to have sex with any given person. Example: if every adult human being would be forced to be married and refusing sex to one's spouse would be forbidden, sex would be available but there would be no sexual freedom. Contrarily, if there were no (hetero)sexual taboos whatsoever, but the whole population of Earth would be male, there would be (hetero)sexual freedom but no availability of (heterosexual) sex.

Apart from religious demands for monogamy, sexual freedom is generally unwanted because any unrestricted market promotes competition, which results in the more able getting more and the less able getting less. The more the market is restricted, the more it can be guaranteed that everyone will get at least something. So most people think that being chained to one partner for life is a lesser evil than having to constantly compete for sex partners.

5. Why do people assume that prostitution is involuntary?

It should be understandable that people who detest prostitution for one of the above reasons, find its existence hard to accept. Whenever a person is very strongly opposed to something, his brain tends to reject input that might justify it, and seek justifications for opposing it.

Among other things, when a person detests prostitution, it's easy for him to start believing that no woman would ever voluntarily do anything so abhorrent. It follows logically that if they do it anyway, they are being coerced.

The hypothesis of sexual slavery is the most effective weapon against prostitution. It is psychologically very difficult for a man to admit that he is terrified of women who have had many sex partners, or for a woman to express his displeasure at the prostitutes making sex so easily available for the men. When, however, they declare that they are fighting against sexual slavery, they appear noble and moral. By throwing big emotional words about supposed human trafficking and forced prostitution at people, they can avoid revealing their real motives (even to themselves).

Why does the society support and enhance the irrational anti-prostitution sentiments?

Rulers of virtually every nation cultivate the anti-prostitution sentiments with legislation, education and propaganda.

Some politicians really do oppose prostitution, for the reasons discussed above. It is quite understandable that they try to force their personal preferences upon others. Most people are inclined to do that, out of misguided belief that their opinion somehow represents what is "good" and "moral" and reflects the true "human nature", while people who have differing preferences are misguided and need to be made to see the truth.

Other politicians, however, fight prostitution because it serves their benefit. They can basically have two motives:

1) to increase their own chances of getting laid (by kissing up to women and by restricting other men's access to sex partners);

2) to increase their power (by making women more influential and by suppressing people’s sexuality).

So, this is it in a nutshell. Stand by for additional articles which will explain things in more detail.