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The forgotten victims of prostitution

By Jehane Sharah - posted Wednesday, 12 November 2008


The International Day of No Prostitution, held last month, came and went with little fanfare. Unsurprisingly, it got almost no media coverage. These days, prostitution is a given. Any debate that does occur usually centres on the glamorisation of the sex industry or its polar opposite, the seamy world of human trafficking.

While these conversations are important, there are victims of the trade of prostitution who rarely get a mention: the partners of the men who use them.

When a woman discovers that her partner has been using prostitutes, she can experience trauma on a number of levels. Not only does she have to deal with the grief and betrayal, but she also has to face the possibility that she may have contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Then there is the indignity of learning that the family finances have been whittled away on her partner’s sexual habit.

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The psychological impact of discovering a partner is using a prostitute can also be severe: a woman’s confidence can be shattered by such an experience and it is not uncommon for her to blame herself. And she would not be alone in doing so. When such stories emerge, some sections of society also like to point the finger at the partners of “Johns”.

Take the case of the former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign after it was revealed he had a penchant for high-class escorts.

In her column in the Canberra Times, Virginia Haussegger chastised Spitzer’s wife for standing by her man, only to then paint her as complicit in the whole affair.

Haussegger wrote: “It is Silda who is the most humiliated party here. Her husband's repeated expenditure on expensive prostitutes speaks volumes about their marriage and their unfulfilling sex life as a couple.”

The implication was clear: Silda wasn’t satisfying her man, so her man strayed. Perhaps the ABC newsreader had an inside knowledge of what goes on in the Spitzers’ bedroom; although I would hazard a guess that she was simply jumping to the sorts of conclusions that a philandering man would want us to.

For all we know, Silda is a vixen between the sheets. Maybe her husband just liked the power of paying for sex, or perhaps he wanted to fornicate with someone young enough to be his daughter. We could speculate on such unpleasant thoughts all day long, but we will never know why he did what he did.

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When so-called feminists such as Haussegger claim that women are somehow to blame for their partners’ infidelity, ultimately it sends the message that the behaviour is acceptable.

Another member of the “sisterhood”, British columnist Minette Marrin, wrote in The Sunday Times that married men are justified in using prostitutes, partly because they are generally more fun in bed:

Right up and down the scale, a man can rent a girl a great deal better and more cooperative than the woman he lives with. She will be probably be much more sexually experienced and more accomplished than most wives too. In plain English, or so I am told by perfectly nice men, prostitutes tend to be better at it.

Each year, sexual counsellor and Sydney University lecturer Brett McCann sees between 20 and 30 couples because the woman has discovered her partner pays for sex; making this a “common” problem. He says it is misguided to blame anyone but the person who has cheated.

“It’s unfair. It’s shifting the responsibility on to the wrong person,” he says.

There are several reasons why men visit prostitutes, according to McCann. While dissatisfaction in a relationship is a possibility, it can also stem from sexual compulsion, self-esteem problems, a man’s desire to pretend to be “someone else” or the simple fact that it feels good and he can get away with it.

At least one study suggests that significantly more men, at least in the UK, are now using prostitutes. A report in the British Medical Journal in 2005 found that the proportion of British men paying for sex nearly doubled from 5.6 to 9 per cent between 1990 and 2000.

Professor Sheila Jeffreys, an expert in sexual politics at the University of Melbourne, says research suggests that society’s normalisation of prostitution, including its legalisation in Australia, has led to an increase in its use.

“Prostitution behaviour in men is not natural. It is a learned activity, learned through pornography and strip clubs. It is immensely problematic for men’s wives, daughters and [female] colleagues,” Jeffreys says.

Another common myth is that prostitutes can help save a marriage. Marrin argues that it was better for Spitzer to cheat with escorts than his wife’s “best friends”. Similarly, US academic and former sex worker Jeannette Angell wrote in her book Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life that she would prefer her husband to be unfaithful with a prostitute than someone he may become emotionally involved with.

Of course, some women may be perfectly happy for their partners to use sex workers. Before entering politics, New South Wales MP Pru Goward declared that her husband was welcome to if he ever became bored (although she has since said she was joking). But in most relationships, McCann says, monogamy is a central rule, making any infidelity a breach of trust, regardless of who the third-party is.

While men have a tendency to separate sex from emotion, it is common for them to experience guilt if they have been unfaithful. This tends to create more problems in the relationship, even if his partner is unaware of his activities.

“Generally, when men have sex outside the relationship, it creates a border. When it becomes a routine thing, stopping them from feeling the emotions of what they’re doing, he may think ‘we’re not close’, but it’s his actions that are creating that wall,” McCann says.

There are no specific support groups available to the wives or girlfriends of men who use prostitutes, which is unfortunate because some find it extremely difficult to talk about their experience. Often the shame is too great.

“If women do disclose the fact [that their partner has been visiting sex workers], they may fear that people will think badly of them. It affects their identity,” says McCann.

Discovering that your partner has been visiting bordellos is perhaps no less painful than finding out he has been having an affair, but it is quite a different matter to comprehend.

Society is used to infidelity to the point where it is often romanticised - think Madame Bovary, Doctor Zhivago and Anna Karenina. However, these and other famous fictional affairs involve various degrees of passion and love.

For a woman in a seemingly intimate, caring and sexually satisfying relationship, the discovery that her partner has a double life which involves sex as a commercial transaction can come as a major shock. Indeed, according to McCann, in many cases, both partners report that they shared a “great” sex life.

McCann says that if a woman discovers her partner has been involved in this type of behaviour, she should confront him about it (so long as she is at no risk of violence) because otherwise it will eat away at her. If there is still hope for the relationship, he recommends professional couples counselling to re-establish the rules. Otherwise, the woman may need to seek help individually.

Men who use prostitutes, and whose partners are still in the dark, should make an appointment with a sex therapist, to work on enhancing their relationship and dealing with their problem.

“And it is a sexual problem,” McCann says.

So next time a former call girl publishes her diaries or a high profile figure gets caught in bed with an escort (and there will be a next time), spare a thought for the many women whose hearts have been broken and lives changed forever as a result.

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About the Author

Jehane Sharah is a freelance journalist and communications student at the University of Canberra.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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