How common is hooker patronage? And a Craigslist question

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was a kid, I thought that drugs, prostitutes, and all kinds of “bad” things were rare and hardly anyone did them. Then I realized that people I know do all kinds of bad things. Now I think it’s a little out of the ordinary if someone doesn’t smoke weed (at least a few times in their life) and I know that promiscuity is actually commonplace. I realize now that most men go to strip clubs, too, even though I avoided them for years of my adult life.

But how often do people hire sex workers? If I polled 100 random men, let’s say, how many would have visited a lady of the night? Is this also a thing that most people do, if even only once, or is it a rare thing? There are so many of them, surely people go more often than I think. Or maybe not.

A second question: How many people do you think actually go through with Craigslist casual connections hookups? And how many “adult service” offerers really get any business?

So basically, how rampant is cheap sex between people that only met a few minutes prior and mostly talked about the logistics of the deed?

2

  1. Lots, and lots of men have done semi-anonymous causal hookups at some point and a whole lot of men cheat on their wives as well although I won’t guess the exact figures. This includes men of all classes, means, and relationship statuses.

  2. I think the percentage of men that have seen a true prostitute for sex is fairly small but it is a thriving niche market. Strip clubs fill in 80% of the gap for everyone else.

  3. The adult service providers on Craigslist and, more traditionally, escort services have always done a brisk business and always will. You can’t stay in the #1 spot as the world’s oldest profession for thousands of years without a sound business plan. There are plenty of women from all walks of life who are willing to be had for a price.

I don’t do any of this myself but I am a male and some of the things that friends and collegues tell me sometimes never ceases to amaze me. I thought that I was hardened to the realities of the world, but, the more I learn, the worse it gets.

3

Worst user/post combo ever. :dubious:

4

You’ve led a sheltered life indeed. As far as the casual encounters, m4m hookups are really really common. It seems real m4w/w4m hookups are comparatively much less common, but still happen. (most of the ads in w4m are spam)

As far as men hiring prostitutes, just think about it. Prostitution thrives everywhere, and has for thousands of years. The product they’re offering has pretty much the highest demand of anything on the planet. Greater than that of coke, heroin… even weed.

5

I’ve done it and didn’t really like it all that much.

Turns out I like foreplay a lot more than I thought.

I don’t know if this qualifies as paying for it or not, but one time I went to one of these completely nude, bring your own booze, type bars. The lady at the door told me I REALLY need to buy a VIP pass. (it cost me 20 extra bucks).

Anyway, a girl chats me up, I buy about three dances from her totaling $60. At the end of the third dance the DJ calls her down to the main stage. She tells me she’s gonna go do her dances on main stage and come right back. I tell her “Don’t bother, I spent all the money I have on me and I’m heading home” she responds with “Oh don’t worry, I’m gonna give you some free dances”

So sure enough she comes back which basically ends up with us having sex right there in the club. (not uncommon at this place btw.) She didn’t charge me a dime.

I know how incredibly sleezy that all sounds, but JEBUS, it was hot!!

FWIW, I’m no Matt Damon so it’s not like the ladies are falling all over themselves to get a date with me. But OTOH I’ve never had any problem getting legitimate GF’s either. So my armchair theory is if a guy like me is willing to go to one of these places, than so too must a lot of other guys.

I seriously don’t think a hookers clientele is limited to just “basement dwellers.” I think they come in all walks of life.

6

Jesus, were you really in the Army?

7

I think you are looking at two distinct numbers.

  1. Number of men who have paid for sex.
  2. Number of men who admit to having paid for sex.

I suspect 1>2.

8

Do you have any friends who have taken trips to places like Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, Czech Republic and obviously Amsterdam either by themselves or with a small number of just guys? Chances are they have taken advantage of the local prostitution industry.

NYC has a number of Asian “massage parlors” which are essentially brothels. Some of the strip clubs also skirt the line a bit (but it’s usually very expensive if you want to pay a stripper for sex)

IOW, it seems pretty common with men in NYC. Perhaps a bit more common than you might find out in suburban middle America due to the fact that it’s a) available and b) there are a lot of young men who have a large disposable income.

9

So if I was like “I was with a hooker the other day. Pretty good, you should try her.”, do you think the average person would be shocked and offended or like “Oh yeah? Maybe I will.”

10

I don’t know if it’s still the case but I gather that back in the “good old days” there was practically a culture of patronizing prostitutes. It was simply a given of urban life that working men would spend Saturday night drinking, gambling and whoring. And that was simply how men lived, married with family or not.

11

I admit that I occasionally browse the commercial and the amateur m4w section, for amusement purposes only. Either my tastes are really atypical (a distinct possibility) or these guys seriously overestimate their attractiveness, and think that if they can just declare how great they are, the babes will come running.

12

According to Kinsey, 70% of adult men had engaged in prostitution at least once. But even if those figures were accurate to begin with, the number is surely lower as pre-marital sex has become more accepted and with the rise of HIV. In a 2006 study in the US, 16% of men reported buying sex at least once in their lives. A 2004 study in Australia put the figure at 23.4%. If we bump those a bit for men that had done it, but refused to report it (even anonymously), we can feel pretty safe with a figure in the 20% range.

To me, that seems really high. On average, 1 in 5 of my friends has used a prostitute? I doubt it. I guess that means 2 of your friends have. Weirdo.

13

Hey, not my friends. Must be 3 friends of that pervert over there.

14

The number of men who use prostitutes has dropped over the years. If you look back in the 19th century, most big cities had hundreds of brothels and thousands of prostitutes.

By WWII, men still usually went to hookers for sex. I know one vet who talked about how he wanted to go to see a hooker while in the army and was only stopped when his sergeant forced him to watch one of the Army VD films.

Robert Klein, writing about growing up in the 50s in New York, talks about going to a prostitute in order to lose his virginity, so it still hung around in that era.

It started changing in the 1960s. The social stigma of premarital sex fell away. So there was less need for men to look for prostitutes – with the issues of disease and the danger of being arrested. Women were willing and didn’t expect to be paid for sex, which made going to a hooker less of an option.

In addition, masturbation went from being a sick perversion to absolutely normal. If you were horny and didn’t have a girlfriend you could deal with it yourself; prior to that change, you needed to find a partner.

By the mid-70s, prostitutes basically filled the niche for things like oral sex, which a lot of women didn’t want to do. I recall one report in the time that quoted a hooker as saying that if wives were willing to give their husbands blowjobs, the oldest profession would be not more. Hyperbole, but an indication that that was the hooker’s stock in trade.

Now, as oral sex is pretty much mainstream (over half of young women have tried it), so that’s fading away.

It’s become a niche market. It will still continue, of course (see Elliot Spitzer), but the upside of going to a prostitute is, for most men, hardly enough to make it worthwhile.

15

I think it depends on the availability and nature of the local prostitutes. When I traveled in Europe for work, many countries have perfectly legal sex clubs. Why spend an entire night getting wasted trying to pick up girls if you can go to a formalized Red Light distcit or to what is essentially a strip club where you can pay a girl for sex.

On the other hand, when I lived in suburban Connecticut, I suspect the only place I would be able to find a prostitute would be to drive to center city Bridgeport or Hartford, find a streetwalker under the I-95 overpass and negotiate with her dangerous looking pimp. Not exactly a level of risk I would be willing to engage in just to get laid

16

You’re joking. Only “over half?” You’re telling me that there are that many sexually active women out there who have never given a blow job? I find that really hard to believe. Where did that figure come from?

Maybe this question requires its own thread…

17

You may want to open one. His comment was about “young women” and “tried it”. I have no idea what those true percentages are but I do know that lots of females HATE giving blowjobs, fake it for a while, and get out of them as soon as they can (landing a man temporarily or, even worse, getting married). That is where the jokes originate from and it probably has some basis in reality.

Taking a poll on this board for such a matter is problematic however because the females that are absolute tigers in the sack are going to chime in and the males that got fooled aren’t going to say much.

18

I’d believe it- I’m 23 and I know plenty of girls my age who talk about how they’d never stick their mouth on a dirty cock- omigawd! Don’t you know that’s where he PEES FROM???

19

Probably my three friends…

I was having a conversation with some male friends recently (I’m female) and they were reliving old bachelor parties and visits to strip joints.

It was always “some other guy” at the party who disappeared into the bathroom with the stripper - but there was always one, or two, or three that would disappear in these stories.

So my guess is that MOST men will end up at several sleazy bachelor parties during their young adult years. MANY of them will consume enough alcohol to be judgment impaired. Some of them will regularly utilize the “value added” services of the hired stripper with regularity at these events, some will only do it once, and some never. And it isn’t that hard to get to 1 in 5.

We have factories in Thailand. No one ever admits to being the one who utilized the services of the prostitute - however, they all come back with an understanding of the transaction - based entirely on the input of their coworkers who traveled with them.

20

From someone who actually enjoys oral sex, I find this to be hilarious. Do the girls object to receiving oral sex? I can’t imagine that they think their girly bits are cleaner than the average guy’s penis.

msmith537 has a good point-- if it’s more convenient and takes less effort to pay for a night of hot sex, then wouldn’t it be more profitable on occasion to hit up a brothel rather than try to pick up some girl who may or may not be like having sex with a dead fish.