The John Next Door

[homasse]

The John Next Door
The men who buy sex are your neighbors and colleagues. A new study reveals how the burgeoning demand for porn and prostitutes is warping personal relationships and endangering women and girls.Men of all ages, races, religions, and backgrounds do it. Rich men do it, and poor men do it, in forms so varied and ubiquitous that they

Comments

[chaya]

I'm far more concerned by and interested in learning about men that visit prostitutes than men who watch porn. Kind of confused as to why they had to include porn at all in this general study..? In comparison to prostitution the problems associated are pretty low.

[alierakieron]

My thoughts exactly. That's... one hell of a jump.

[archanglrobriel]

Yeah, it seems very much like a "one of these things is NOT like the others."

[alierakieron]

It's... kinda like.... well, I'm struggling for an analogy without a bunch of unfortunate connotations, but...
yeah.
And what counts as porn here? Does literary porn (IE, about the most victimless thing I can possibly imagine if you consider sex workers as victims, which I realize isn't apt either) count?

[chaya]

I assume they only counted porn that involved sex workers or amateurs, but even literary porn could be argued to be objectifying the subjects... idk. Brooooad category.

[slurp]

porn is pretty much filmed prostitution though. Especially when on any main page of most mainstream porn site you get titles like "bitch gets punished" "gags on cock" etc.

[quietprayer]

ia

[baked_goldfish]

Agreed. I mean, I get that a lot of for-purchase porn is made in creepy to criminal situations - with women who are basically enslaved, in some cases - but isn't there a difference between that and, say, going to one of the zillion free amateur sites where regular people record themselves and put it up online? Or maybe the study did differentiate between the two and it just wasn't written up in this article.

[chaya]

I agree that both things involve the sex industry, but the levels of risk to the women, of likelihood for the intended audience to escalate objectification or violence to dangerous levels, everything, is so much lower. And I like to think that while 95% of men watch porn, FAR fewer are buying prostitutes. We've had enough bullshit porn studies. Let's finally focus on the johns.

[thenakedcat]

Yeah I really did NOT get the conflation of porn with prostitution...and I'm kind of iffy on conflating visiting strip clubs/buying lap dances with prostitution, too. I have a feeling that might have skewed the results: really, you're looking at two groups on the opposite extremes of the sexual continuum. The "control" group's level of interest in porn and exotic dancers seems to be lower than that of pretty much everyone I know, women and men alike.

[chaya]

Yes. This is going to be a bizarre and somewhat inappropriate comparison, but if I did a study on unhealthy eating I would not put anyone who had voluntarily attended a fast food restaurant in the last moth with the people who regularly ate 5,000 calories a day. One of these things is both socially acceptable and not, on its own, likely to cause any problems. The other is indicative of a huge issue which could lead to even bigger problems. Focus on the problemy problems.

[sankaku_atama]

As far as including strip clubs in with this study, the people running the study might have been including the percentage of strip club dancers who do engage in acts of prostitution, but seeing as how it's probably difficult (if not impossible) to know exactly what that percentage is, it was simpler to include strip clubs overall as a category. Even though this would definitely skew the results.

[echoandsway]

I was assuming it had to do with both being commodification of sex. I agree one doesn't equate with the other.

[hola_meg_a_cola]

Yeah, that was my big hang up. I was confused at first when they said they couldn't find men who don't pay for sex and I was like, "Wait... what??" Then they clarified, and I really don't think that watching a porn is on the same level as having sex with an underage girl that has been forced into the profession.

[chaya]

Or even having sex with a woman of age who wasn't forced into it. I'm sure there is a sizable chunk of men who watch porn who would never want to go to a prostitute.