Abstract
This article is focused on the study conducted on prostitution customers in Spain with the purpose of understanding why men pay for sex. In order to answer this question, the discourses of prostitution customers were analyzed through semi-structured in-depth interviews, group interviews and discussion groups. With the aim of coherently structuring the obtained narrations and classifying them in categories, the theoretical framework “frame analysis” was implemented. Four typologies of ideal customers were obtained: the misogynistic (hatred for women); consumerist (everything can be bought and sold); friend (affective though abusive); and critical (occasional and repentant). As far as we are concerned, the purchase of sex is not produced by the search for quality sex, fun and hedonistic enjoyment, but rather for a strategy to reinforce masculinity based on an identity focused on exhibition in front of a group of peers.
Highlights
This article is focused on the study conducted on prostitution customers in Spain with the purpose of understanding why men pay for sex
This vast expenditure in prostitution services is linked to a high number of consumers, as understood by a poll conducted by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) [Center for Sociological Research] in 2009, that estimates that 32.1% of men have paid at least once to have sexual intercourse
The existence of prostitution services is something normal and necessary. They do not observe any “dark zone” in this business, adopting a critical and unreflective attitude and naturalizing the existence of prostitution because they consider it essential to mankind. From their point of view, the consumption of prostitution is logical and, according to them, general in our society: I: “What is your opinion about prostitution?” A: “I think that it offers a necessary service for society and is in higher demand than some people would like to admit”
Summary
The investigations that analyze, and in some cases classify, prostitution customers are relatively recent and highly descriptive, since in general they do not study in depth the reasons of the consumption of prostitution. 17 interviews with customers were conducted, 5 with discussion groups of masculinized collectives, 6 with female prostitutes, 2 with transsexual prostitutes, 3 with owners and managers of prostitution clubs, 1 with a worker of these clubs and 3 with social services technicians that work with female prostitutes (Gómez & Pérez, 2009) Afterwards, this investigation was expanded to the Spanish territory during the period 2010-13, and in this article we will present the most relevant results from this research. It was created with the objective of understanding why men choose to pay for sex in Spanish society To answer this question, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 customers, 13 female prostitutes, 3 owners of prostitution clubs or flats, 4 workers from these clubs, 23 social services technicians, academics and/or professionals of social services. The sociological typology of the analyzed prostitution customers is wide and comprises a broad range of ages, civil status, different backgrounds and different professions (Table 1), allowing the final classification to be extrapolated to all prostitution customers
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