Skip to main content

Paying for Sex

There has been much comment on the blogosphere on the recent revelations of gay sex within the Lib Dems party. I have, of course, commented myself. Among others, I came across this post, expanding the debate slightly, and I left the following comment:

I hate to start my commenting on this blog with a negative note but it seems to me that you are making an erronous amalgam in this post.

While Oaten probably did pay for sex (although I am not sure how one can have a "relationship", as the business has been described, with someone one pays), Hughes does not seem to have paid for sex and as far as we know the sex he got was conscensual.

As for using chat lines, that is what they are: phone lines allowing men to hook up for sex: the forebears of Gaydar if you like. Again no money has changed hands between the parties involved (although the operators of the lines do get some money).

I think their is a big difference in this between the straight and gay world. Straight men, to find relief, have it much harder the gay men. They have to "deal with" women who are generally not ready for a quick rump. Gay men, because the "deal with" other men, find themselves on a more level field as both parties are more or less looking for the same thing. The criteria for an encounter to happen are then reduced to looks and probably age.

I have a feeling the gay guys involved in the sex trade do it much more out of choice than their female counter part. There is, to a certain extent, a glamourisation of sex on the gay scene and there not as much stigmatisation as their is in the straight world. Escorts (as we call them) generally also operate on their own and do not work with a pimp as women tend to do, I believe.

Comment: So what if Hughes and Oaten are gay or bisexual?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , .
Labels:

Comments

  1. Marie1/27/2006 5:57 pm

    So do you think it's less problematic for gay men than for straight men to pay for sex? It sounds like the gay sex industry is less exploitative, which does help, and I read an interesting article in the Guardian today where a gay prostitute says that most of the men he sees are in straight relationships, and he has taken a counselling cource to help them deal with their feelings about their closeted existences. Sounds very responsible!

    Still I can't help but feel nauseated by the notion of anyone paying for sex, it is just so opposed to what I think of as being what I look for sexually (primarily, the enjoyment of my partner) - what is wrong with finding "relief" at the end of your own right arm? I would be desperately distressed if anyone I was in a relationship with also used prostitutes.

    Incidentally, apologies for my lack of understanding re sex lines versus chat lines - not really my field!

    PS for the record, couldn't care less if my politicians are gay or straight or unclassified.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at...
19 comments
Read more

pink sauce | life, with a pink seasoning

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte...
4 comments
Read more

Tick, Tick... BOOM! - review

Tick, Tick... BOOM! (by and on Netflix), titled after one of its hero's musicals, is the film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the acclaimed creator of Hamilton . Perhaps appropriately, it is about musical theatre and, itself, turns into a musical; covering the few days, in early 1990, leading to star-crossed composer Jonathan Larson's 30 birthday.  At that time, Larson, who went on to write Rent , was in the throes of completing his first musical, on which he had been working for eight years, before a crucial showcase in front major players in the industry. With social puritanism and the AIDS epidemic as background – with close friends getting infected, or sick; some of them dying, Larson, a straight man, struggles to write a final key song for his show, while confronting existential questions about creativity, his life choices, and his priorities. The film features numerous examples of Larson's work meshed into the narrative of those few days. Some are part o...
Post a Comment
Read more