Industry | 2010.08.31
The myth of the male brothel | Julie Bindel
Sexing up the numbers of women who pay for sex is a ruse to make the industry more palatable
Women – ever wondered how you could attract scintillating company from any number of hunky men who will focus entirely on you and your needs? Simple: just get out your credit card – a male brothel will soon be opening near you . Or at least that is the impression from blogs and news outlets.
Recently it was announced that New Zealand will be hosting the first male brothel, in Auckland, where women could "either just drink and be titillated, or go the whole nine yards". Behind it is Pam Corkery, a former politician who is trying to stitch up a deal with a reality TV channel to film the grand opening and subsequent shenanigans. She is looking for a suitable property.
But one male escort who has been selling sex for 14 years in NZ has expressed surprise at this "business plan" and said that women would not feel comfortable in a brothel. I have to say I can\'t imagine a woman going into a massage parlour and doing what male punters do – sitting around talking to the other buyers before choosing which body to buy from the flesh parade.
The claim that male-for-female prostitution is a growing market sounds similar to the arguments that women are perpetrators of domestic violence, child sexual abuse and sexual assault in equal numbers to men, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. While women do pay for sex, they remain a tiny minority. As with the female consumption of porn, most women encounter male prostitution by being persuaded to join in a threesome with a male partner.
Why are there no male brothels in the UK, where the sex industry is a huge, profitable business, besides those catering for the gay male market? As far as any research or police operations have uncovered, there are none for women.
In January the international media jumped on a story of a Nevada brothel hiring Markus, a former marine and porn star , for its female punters, claiming that he would be the first legal male prostitute in the US. But weeks later he left having received fewer than 10 customers . Looking at websites advertising male escort services for women it is obvious that many are having to attract "couples" to supplement their incomes. It is clear that male escorts usually charge less than their female counterparts, suggesting a struggling market.
Five years ago the pimp Heidi Fleiss announced that she would be opening a brothel staffed by men catering exclusively to female customers. Her plan was abandoned when market research found that it would not be a runner.
I am not denying that some women pay for sex. I was the first UK-based journalist to expose, in this newspaper, the phenomenon of female sex tourists paying for sex with Jamaican beach boys . While on the island I witnessed desperately poor young men hanging around middle-aged white women happy to swap food and accommodation for sex. The women deluded themselves that they were "helping out financially", exactly the excuse some male sex tourists use in countries such as Thailand.
Exploitation does not disappear when women are the buyers, but sexing up the numbers of women paying for sex is a ruse adopted by the pro-prostitution lobby to divert attention from the fact that the sex industry, in the main, benefits men and harms women.
In this climate of raunch culture and a misogynist backlash directed at feminist campaigns against the sex industry, it is no wonder that the "women do it too" lobby is gaining credibility. But females are still far more likely to be abused within prostitution than paying for it.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/22/myth-of-the-male-brothel
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