Men Who Pay For Sex Also In Debt To Society

A new report issued by Prostitution Research and Education found that men who pay for sex- including paying prostitutes for sex acts, lap dances at strip clubs, and pornography- tend to commit more crimes and generally act like shitheels at a greater frequency than men who do not buy sex. Researchers found that sex buying men tend to have less empathy for women, among other things-

For example, significantly fewer sex buyers, 47 percent against 70 percent, reported that they were taught about respect for women in sex education classes.

Almost three in four of the sex buyers reported they learned about sex from pornography, whereas only 54 percent of the non-buyers did so.

The two groups also held significantly different attitudes regarding whether prostitution was consenting sex or exploitation. Men who bought sex were significantly less empathetic toward women working as prostitutes.

What’s interesting about this study isn’t that it found that men who buy sex are more likely to commit crimes; it seems like a redundant no-brainer that men committing a crime- paying for sex from a prostitute- were more likely to commit a crime. This also far from implies that every single man who has ever bought a lap dance is a Patrick Bateman-in-waiting, either. It seems that willful blindness to the plight of exploited sex workers is a symptom of a deeply seated problem in our society, and that there’s no clear solution to eradicating the sexism at the root of it.