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Vaidah Mashangwa
It is a simple fact that prostitution is about men paying for sexual favours of anonymous women, women they meet mostly for the first time, women they know in black and white that have been out the whole night with different other men
Deviant sexual behaviour includes gender-based violence, rape, incest, child molestation and pornography.
Though prostitution and pornography are both widely condemned, they continue to be practised and tolerated by a greater segment of society.
The main reason why prostitution cannot be regarded as an individualised matter but rather a social institution is that there are always a number of other players involved such as the prostitute and her customer, other prostitutes, pimps, police, judges, hotel/lodge owners, landlords, clerks and so on. While the general public usually blames the prostitutes themselves, there is need to understand all these underlying factors.
The same can be said about pornography. The parties to it include the male and female actors or models, producers, photographers, viewers, purchasers of the pornographic material, distributors ,owners and employees of the retail stores and shops that sell, rent or distribute the material .In a way, there are therefore various players involved in the activity.
A prostitute can be man or woman who sells sexual favours to the same or to opposite sex customers. Of course in terms of frequency, there are far more female prostitutes selling sexual favours to male customers than all other forms combined.
While most prostitutes treat prostitution as an economic gain, that is, they maintain that they can earn high income selling their bodies than engaging in other economic enterprises, they are not worried about being regarded as sex objects, commodities, saleable objects as they are more concerned about sex and not affection.
The debate that has for a long time been going on is that women who sell their bodies are regarded as whores, sluts and tramps earning widespread public scorn while men who pay for the sexual favours are socially and morally acceptable or even respectable. The other main reason why there has not been an improvement in addressing prostitution is that society blames the prostitutes only and not the customers themselves who are mostly married men.
A behavioural surveillance survey conducted in Rwanda for example revealed that 66 percent of female prostitutes reported that their most frequent clients were married men, that 21 percent were widowers and 13 percent were single people. What was most disturbing is that only 33 percent of the female prostitutes reported having consistently used condoms during commercial sex. If the customers are mostly married men then what implications does this have in terms of the transmission of HIV to their spouses?
Usually in prostitution a relatively small number of women end up servicing a very large number of men and these men do not seem to care sleeping around with such women.
Prostitution also shows the devaluation of women in our society. What they do is not held in the same regard as what men do. Women receive their reward through men, their role is to serve men. What women do not know is that prostitution is an outward manifestation of a male dominated society which is there to cater to the desires of men and to exploit women, keeping them in their subordinate positions. Men therefore do not regard women as fully human whether they are mothers or whores .What men see in women is that inability to make informed decisions and lack of economic dependency.
It is high time women braced themselves for personal liberty and empowerment as there are quite a number of opportunities out there. Empowerment initiatives at their disposal include bee-keeping, floriculture, animal husbandry, mushroom and potato production, manufacturing, small-livestock production just to mention but a few. At this year’s Zimbabwe International Trade Fair quite a number of women products were on display at the Ministry of Women Affairs stand which scooped gold and two silver medals. This indicates that women have the same potential as men in terms of the social, economic and political development of a nation. Women should learn to be their own bosses and refuse to be an inferior species.
I fail to understand why married men continue to engage the services of prostitutes. It is a simple fact that prostitution is about men paying for sexual favours of anonymous women, women they meet mostly for the first time, women they know in black and white that have been out the whole night with different other men. Surely then there must be something special hidden in the whole risky engagements.
How come these men are sexually deprived yet most of them are middle-aged and most often married. Is it an indication that marriages are probably sexually unsatisfying in some way? Most debates around this reveal that perhaps their wives are less than enthusiastic about performing certain sexual acts that these men want or that these men feel guilty about demanding absurd sexual positions from their wives who are after all good wives.
Some people maintain that it may be that these men are unwilling to ask their wives to perform or take part in certain acts they themselves like but consider deviant and dirty. Maybe they do not want their wives to do immoral sexual acts which they themselves want of course. Some people simply highlight that most husbands and wives are not open with each other when it comes to sexual matters.
One prostitute interviewed pointed out that men couldn’t have their wives do the things that they did because their wives might challenge the sudden introduction of new sexual techniques. Men interviewed also pointed out they craved for variety through sexual contact with a number of women as they cannot attract women sexually unless they pay them. There are also men who are afraid of emotional commitment in meaningful relationships, so they would rather have prostitutes more often.
On the other hand, one author conceded that men do not pay much sexual attention to their wives and consequently their wives become turned off by their lacklustre performances. Could it be that some men have a sagging male ego and feel that it is not necessary to apologise to a prostitute for their inabilities, yet the wives expect sexual satisfaction?
By and large, some men feel that they have become successful in their careers and think that they are worth more on the sexual market than their wives are. According to the book Deviant Behaviour perhaps these men are starved of companionship and intimacy, they miss someone with whom they can absolutely say anything without fear or embarrassment. With a prostitute men can brag, lie and pretend that at home everything is not normal.
There are of course some men whose sexual interests are so bizarre that they cannot imagine a single night on their own. When they travel they cannot face the prospect of an empty hotel room or all-male companionship or the likely success of a night watching television on their own. Each time they travel they feel that they are physically, emotionally and sexually deformed or handicapped if they do not solicit the services of a prostitute.
Interviews conducted with prostitutes revealed that most of them besides making money do not like the trade and most of them hate having sex with their clients because they feel it is impossible to develop and maintain a positive and affectionate attitude towards hundreds of strangers/clients.
Vaidah Mashangwa is Provincial Development Officer for Bulawayo in the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development. She can be contacted on 0772111592 email- [email protected].
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