A Research Report Based on Interviews with 110 Men Who Bought Women in Prostitution

Jan Macleod, Melissa Farley, Lynn Anderson, and Jacqueline Golding
Women's Support Project & Prostitution Research & Education, 2008

Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 110 Scottish punters. A few findings from the study:

80% bought sex indoors, 56% outdoors.
56% of the 110 men we interviewed had bought sex outside of the UK, having traveled to 40 different countries on 6 continents.

One-fourth to one-third of the men we interviewed endorsed rape-tolerant attitudes.

We asked interviewees about the extent to which their identity as men was based on valuing psychological and sexual dominance and about their suspiciousness and resentment toward women. Taken together, these constructs constitute what might be called hostile masculinity. We also asked respondents 46 questions about acceptance of and justification for prostitution. We found that the men who were most accepting of prostitution were those who most strongly identified with hostile masculinity.

We assessed sexually coercive behaviors with nonprostituting women such as verbally or physically threatening a partner or using physical force in order to obtain sexual intercourse. 54% of the men who frequently used women in prostitution had committed sexually aggressive acts against non-prostitute partners compared to 30% of the less frequent users. The more frequently a punter used women in prostitution, the more likely he was to have committed sexually coercive acts against non-prostituting women.

We asked what would deter these men from buying sex. Educational programs were the least effective deterrent according to these punters. Most effective deterrence methods included being labeled a sex offender and other public exposure, jail time, and high fines.

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