The reasons why men visit prostitutes are complex and varied, reflecting a mix of psychological, social, and sexual motivations.

Thank you Suraj for your answer, which is no doubt comprehensive but also extremely vague. Promiscuity is appealing to many men because they enjoy the act. Unlike women who are primarily offering sex in return for a loving relationship or other emotional and financial rewards. Some men go to prostitutes just to find out what the experience is like. Some go because they cannot obtain the kind of sexual interaction they want from girlfriends and wives. For example, one of the top reasons men go to prostitutes is to obtain fellatio. Other men have specific fantasies or sexual needs that are objectionable to women looking for a loving relationship.

My questions are intended to challenge preconceptions about sexuality and get people thinking. Women don't usually pay for sex, for example. So why do men? Women can find sex easily enough without paying if they want it. But equally women are looking for a loving relationship, which cannot be paid for. Men are looking for erotic variety or perhaps simply feigned enthusiasm. The point is that men's sexual needs are not always completely satisfied within their relationships with women. Few women understand a man's desire for erotic turn-ons or variety of sex play. This is what Alfred Kinsey is referring to in the quote I provided. We all come to sexuality with different experiences and expectations. So we all interpret any sexual reference differently. I am simply trying to break the silence, foremost with women, but of course men usually comment, which is also fine.

Hi Jane, you’re not breaking silence — you’re recycling tired, gender-essentialist clichés dressed up as insight. Suggesting that men go to prostitutes because women “don’t understand” their sexual needs or aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic isn’t analysis — it’s justification for entitlement.

Framing men’s use of prostitution as a natural response to unmet desires ignores the power dynamics and structural inequalities that underpin the sex industry. As feminist political theorist Carole Pateman argued, prostitution exists within a broader sexual contract — one where women’s bodies are made available to men through systems that normalize inequality, not intimacy.

You claim women want “love” and men want “variety.” That isn’t truth — it’s a narrative that erases women’s erotic agency and reduces men to walking appetites. It’s not only reductive — it’s dangerous. This kind of thinking has long been used to excuse coercion, infidelity, and the commodification of women under the guise of “needs.”

So men seek “variety” and women seek “love”? Funny how that version always leaves men with options — and women with duties. We’re expected to meet emotional, sexual, and domestic needs, but when men feel vaguely unsatisfied, it somehow justifies commodifying someone else’s body. Then, tell me — should women start outsourcing their unmet needs too, or is that kind of freedom still reserved for men?

Dr. María Herrera

It's easy to criticise but not so easy to provide any scientific explanations for the different sexual behaviours men and women display. Women seem to object to any facts, logic and research findings that might explain their sexuality. Your defensiveness says it all - emotional beliefs.

Jane, I won't be made invisible :)

Your response doesn’t read as an argument — it reads as a textbook case of rhetorical abuse dressed up as intellectual superiority. So let’s be clear about what just happened.

When you say “women object to facts, logic, and research”, you’re not making a point — you’re dismissing an entire gender’s intellectual credibility. This is epistemic injustice (Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, 2007): discrediting someone’s capacity to know, reason, or critique based solely on identity. Ironically, you cite no facts yourself. The only “research” invoked is the echo chamber of your own assumptions.

Calling my argument “defensive” and based on “emotional beliefs” is a classic form of tone policing — a move historically used to disqualify women from intellectual discourse by painting them as overly emotional (see Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004). You don’t engage with content; you label disagreement as weakness.

You accuse me of rejecting science while offering zero citations, no theory, no studies — just anecdotal generalisations. What you call “facts” are gender stereotypes recycled since the 19th century. To invoke science while refusing to meet its standards is not analysis — it’s intellectual gaslighting.

My critique was grounded in structural analysis — citing Carole Pateman’s concept of the sexual contract (1988), which explains how women’s bodies have been systematically commodified under patriarchal systems. You ignored this completely, replacing it with a lazy binary: men want sex, women want love. That’s not theory — it’s Mills & Boon in drag.

You imply that critiquing men's sexual behaviours is unfair unless women provide “scientific explanations.” This is a form of discursive coercion — shifting the burden of proof to silence critique, while holding yourself to no standard at all.

And finally — if men commodifying women’s bodies is merely about unmet “needs,” then what exactly should women do with their unmet needs? Pay for affection? For orgasms? Or perhaps for someone who doesn’t condescend to them in a debate?

You claimed to be “breaking silence,” but all I heard were the usual tactics used to maintain it.

Dr. María Herrera

Long emotional rants with the use of bold letters are indicative of emotion. I am looking for an intellectual discussion backed by research findings. If you want to rant, please go elsewhere. You are a woman. Please describe what erotic turn-ons cause your arousal. Please indicate the anatomy and the stimulation technique that you use to achieve orgasm. Science involves presenting the evidence for your assertions. Theories alone are not enough.

What Jane has just written is not science — it is harassment dressed in the language of inquiry.

She began by tone-policing, accusing me of being “emotional” for using bold text — as if typographic emphasis somehow invalidates intellectual substance. Then she escalated to something far more serious: demanding that I describe my sexual arousal, anatomy, and orgasm techniques in detail to “prove” my argument. That is not scientific rigor — it is sexual harassment, plain and simple.

Let’s be absolutely clear: asking a woman to disclose personal, explicit sexual information in the context of a public intellectual exchange is a grotesque violation of academic and ethical boundaries. This kind of invasive demand is not neutral. It is a tactic of gendered silencing, dressed up in faux-objectivity.

The fact that I’ve engaged this conversation respectfully does not mean I accept this abuse. Respect is not submission. Respect is not permission.

When a woman presents a structural critique, and the response is to demand that she exposes her body in words to be taken seriously, we are not in the realm of science — we are in the realm of control.

This is not just inappropriate; it is dangerous. I will be reporting this comment as a formal case of harassment, because no one — no one — should be subjected to this kind of degradation under the guise of academic discussion.

I’m not replying to Jane. I’m writing this for everyone witnessing what just happened — because it’s precisely these moments that reveal why feminist critique remains urgent, necessary, and non-negotiable.

Dr. María Herrera