来源：Nikolas Westerhoff. Why Do Men Buy Sex? Scientific American Mind, December, 2008
首先声明，这是一篇学术性文章，请大家纯洁地看待；
其次，大家有兴趣可以锻炼锻炼自己的英文，实在懒的话，文章的中文翻译可以参考《环球科学》2009年第3期。
扩展阅读：如果大家对这个问题继续感兴趣，可以读读这些东西

• Recidivism among the Customers of Female Street Prostitutes: Do Intervention Programs Help? Martin A. Monto and Steve Garcia in Western Criminology Review, Vol. 3, No. 2; June 2002. Available online at http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v3n2/monto.html
• Why Do Men Buy Sex? Maria Jacobson in NIKK magasin, No. 1, pages 22-25; 2002.
• The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality. Michael S. Kimmel. State University of New York Press, 2005.
• Prostitution policies by nation: http://prostitution.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=772

Why Do Men Buy Sex? 【男人为什么要召妓？】
Some researchers say johns seek intimacy on demand; others believe these men typically want to use and dominate women【有研究者认为，嫖客买春，是为了追求即时的性满足；也有人认为，这些男人不过是想利用并主宰女性】

By Nikolas Westerhoff

Key Concepts

• In the U.S., police officers detained about 78,000 people in 2007 for prostitution-related crimes, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Only about 10 percent of these arrests are of the sex patrons, who almost exclusively are men. 【根据联邦调查局公布的信息，美国警方在2007年以卖淫等相关罪名拘留了约78,000人。被捕者中，约10%是买春者，他们几乎都是男性。】
• A considerable proportion of men worldwide buy sex from female prostitutes, with most estimates of lifetime prevalence ranging from 7 to 39 percent, depending on the country and study. Many experts argue that it is a male appetite—and not the choices of prostitutes—that fundamentally drives the sex trade. 【全世界有相当比例的男性从妓女处买春，因国家和研究而异，具体比例从7%到39%不等。许多专家认为：推动性产业的基本动力是男性的癖好，而非妓女的选择。】
• Men’s motives for buying sex are hotly contested among researchers. Some believe the practice serves as a salve for common psychological afflictions, such as an unfulfilled craving for sex or romance. Others, meanwhile, paint a dimmer portrait of johns, believing they are driven by chauvinistic motives, such as a desire to dominate and control women. 【研究人员针对男性买春的动机展开了激烈的论战。有人认为，此举能慰藉一般的心理痛苦，比如为获得满足的、对性或浪漫的渴求。也有人对嫖客买春持有较为负面的看法，认为驱使他们买春的动机是沙文主义，比如对女性的主宰和控制的欲望。】

Arthur is an alleged john, a man who patronizes prostitutes. After his arrest on September 5, 2008, a photograph of this 41-year-old appeared on the Web site of the Chicago Police Department. Arthur (not his real name) was far from the only person so branded on this Internet portal. Samuel, 59, and José, 34, (whose names were also changed to protect their privacy) were on this online pillory for a month after their September 5 arrests.

The apprehensions of Arthur, Samuel, José and many others represent the huge demand among males for prostitutes. In the U.S., police officers detained about 78,000 people in 2007 for prostitution-related crimes, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Experts believe that about 10 percent of these arrests are of the sex patrons, almost all of whom are men.

Overall, an estimated 16 percent of men pay for sex in the U.S., according to a 2005 report by social work professor Sven-Axel Månsson of Malmö University in Sweden. And a study published in 2000 of 998 street prostitutes and 83 call girls in Los Angeles led by sociologist Janet Lever of California State University, Los Angeles, suggests that 28 percent of men who patronize prostitutes and nearly half of those who employ call girls buy sex regularly, with the rest being occasional customers.

The proportion of patrons seems to vary considerably by country and by study. Månsson reported that 14 percent of Dutch men have bought sex as compared with nearly 40 percent of men in Spain. (Prostitution is legal in both countries.)

And according to HYDRA, a Berlin-based organization that provides legal advice and other aid to prostitutes, up to three quarters of men in Germany, which also has legalized prostitution, have paid for sexual services. Meanwhile other estimates for Germany put the proportion far lower, at about one fifth. In Thailand, where prostitution is illegal but socially accepted, one study suggested that a whopping 95 percent of men have slept with a prostitute.

Whatever the numbers, the behavior is prevalent enough that psychologists cannot easily write it off as pathological. Rather men’s motives for buying sex are hotly contested among researchers. Some believe the practice serves as a salve for common psychological afflictions, such as an unfulfilled appetite for sex, love or romance. Others paint a dimmer ­portrait of johns, believing they are typically driven by chauvinistic motives, such as a desire to dominate and control ­women. A similar debate rages among experts about the morality of prostitution itself.

Basic Instinct【诉诸本能】
嫖客遍布各个国家的所有经济阶层，他们的买春动机也各不相同。嫖客身上并不存在异于其他男性的显著特征。

Of course, the simplest explanation for men buying sex is that they like it. After all, people are generally willing to pay for activities they enjoy as much as they do sex. On the other hand, a man can usually get sex for free in the context of an ordinary intimate relationship. So why pay good money for it, especially given the social and health risks of having sex with a prostitute? Are all johns so unappealing that they cannot get sex any other way?

Most researchers do not think so. Johns come from all socioeconomic classes, according to culture researcher Sabine Grenz of Humboldt University of Berlin. They may be stockbrokers, truck drivers, teachers, priests or law-enforcement officials. Many are married with children. “There are no social characteristics that basically distinguish johns from other men,” says Grenz, who published her interviews with a large number of johns in a 2005 book.

Nor are these men defined by obvious personality problems. In a survey published in 1994 psychologist Dieter Kleiber of the Free University of Berlin had some 600 johns fill out the Freiburg Personality Inventory and found no particular abnormalities. The only correlations he found applied to risk taking and unprotected sex. For example, the men who demanded sex without condoms tended to score higher on aggression, and married and well-to-do customers practiced unprotected sex more frequently than others did. “The more secure and orderly a man’s life is, the more he believes in his own invulnerability,” Kleiber concludes.

The research underscores the diversity of the men who pay for sex. Accordingly, these individuals seek prostitutes for varied reasons. Some of them may indeed be driven purely by sexual impulse. In a study of johns sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, sociologist Udo Gerheim of Bremen, Germany, found that many of these men are either sexually frustrated (because they are not getting satisfying sex elsewhere) or hedonists who want to live out their erotic fantasies in a red-light setting.

Representatives of HYDRA similarly say that men go to prostitutes to appease a sexual appetite. Many men feel freer to experiment within the context of commercial sex than with their wives or girlfriends, enabling them to expand their sexual range and to experience greater sexual fulfillment.

Fee for Romance?【浪漫有价？】
有些嫖客想在这项收费服务中获得理想的爱情，并认为他们与妓女之间有着亲密的关系。

Yet some researchers have identified emotional and psychological motivations among the men who purchase sex. Gerheim spotted a type of romantic john who imagines that he is having a genuine relationship with a prostitute based on mutual trust. Kleiber also saw a romantic streak in many of his interviewees. These men, Kleiber explains, seem to be pursuing the ideal of love in a fee-for-service setting.

When Kleiber and his colleagues asked johns to characterize their prostitutes, most rated them as “charming” and “open.” Some also said these women were “intelligent” and “witty.” Many of the men painted a picture of a perfect woman whom they would like to get to know better. A few even penned statements such as “I can easily imagine the prostitute to whom I go as my wife.” “These men have emotionally charged relationships with prostitutes,” Kleiber says. They portray these relationships as intimate despite their commercial nature and limited scope, he adds.

The behavior of male customers during their encounters with prostitutes also may suggest that they seek a social connection outside of coitus. From her interviews with Los Angeles prostitutes, Lever learned that purchasers of sex often ask indiscreet questions such as “Where do you come from?” or “Is Lara your real name?” before and after the act.

As if to continue their “relationship”, many if not most johns prefer to go back to the same prostitute over and over again. According to Kleiber’s study, more than two thirds of devotees used the services of a particular prostitute more than 50 times. One in four had sex with the same prostitute more than 100 times.

But why would a man turn to a prostitute—as opposed to a girlfriend, wife or other consensual female lover—to satisfy his need for a social bond? One reason may be that real relationships with women are risky and complicated, features that men do not always want and cannot always handle. Prostitutes are far less exacting than girlfriends and wives and may even be soothing to the psyche.

That is, an ordinary female date might reject a man or happen to be tired, distant or not in the mood. In contrast, sex workers generally accept their customers unconditionally and offer intimacy on demand, whatever their true feelings, says gender researcher Gunda Schumann, who co-authored a 1980 book on the psychology of prostitution. “They offer the men emotional involvement, psychic stability and empathy,” she observes. In this view, ordinary men buy sex to deal with their psychological insecurities as well as their sexual needs.

The idea that sex with a prostitute can be therapeutic dates back thousands of years. In the Epic of Gilgamesh【《吉尔伽美什史诗》】, a poem from ancient Mesopotamia, Enkidu—a friend of the king who is half wild—is civilized by having sex with a whore. The tale portrays the prostitute as sacred because she sacrifices herself to the man to cleanse him of destructive inner forces.

'Material' Girls【女性？商品？】
有些嫖客将与妓女之间的性关系视为一种消费品。而在卖淫合法化的国家，妓院也像销售产品一样叫卖“妓女”的服务。

Other researchers disagree that prostitutes serve as a balm for the woes of essentially normal men. Sociologist Julia O’Connell Davidson of the University of Nottingham in England characterizes johns as necrophiliacs who commit their acts on socially “dead” women. These are men, she says, whose sexual desire is switched on by not having to care about the prostitute as a human being—the opposite of the intimacy hypothesis.

'What turns the john on is the woman’s powerlessness,' O’Connell Davidson concludes. Sex with a prostitute, she says, is more about seeking revenge on women or exerting control over them than about a quest for intimacy and romance.

In a speech he gave to the European Parliament in 2006, Månsson pointed out that johns frequently speak about sex “as a consumer product rather than an expression_r of intimate relations.” One man, he reported, compared sex with a prostitute to “going to McDonald’s.” Indeed, on the Internet, where a person can remain relatively anonymous, many johns refer to women as “material,” Gerheim notes, and may also describe misogynistic submission fantasies.

Some sex purchasers may even have a social agenda to go along with their personal predilections. For many of them, Månsson opines, a prostitute’s bed represents the last bastion of antifeminism. Only there can men reestablish the traditional male dominance over women.

Catering to such men, brothels in countries where these institutions are legal hawk women like merchandise on their Web sites. Meanwhile nudist clubs in nations such as Germany attract customers with “all-inclusive” deals: for a fixed price (often less than $100), men can have sex with any of the women present. Some clubs even offer happy-hour specials.

Månsson believes that johns are usually psychologically disturbed and in need of counseling and treatment. Many Swedish johns similarly view their sexual behavior as “out of control” or “psychologically toxic,” a self-characterization certain scientists reject. In the opinion of these dissenters, johns in the U.S. and other countries that ban prostitution are unjustly criminalized and labeled mentally unstable.

However toxic the activity might be to the men, the women often end up more seriously wounded by it. 【无论买春这项活动对男性的毒害有多大，最后受伤更深的往往是女性。】At the very least, prostitutes suffer psychologically from trying to wall off their own emotions so that they can sell intimacy as a commodity. In addition, they often suffer from physical abuse at the hands of johns. The 2006 annual report of KARO, an organization trying to thwart prostitution in the region dividing Germany and the Czech Republic, noted many incidents of brutality related to the selling of sex. Prostitutes in the U.S. are also subject to high levels of violence.

Prostitution is not a profession women pursue because they like the work. As stated on the KARO Web site: “Very few women have ever said that they voluntarily became prostitutes.” Poverty, drug addiction or fear of violence from pimps often pushes women into the sex trade.

Thus, many experts argue that the female sex workers are not the real drivers of prostitution. Instead the business survives because of demand from the legions of males who have problems in their relationships with women. This rationale lies behind the law in Sweden that came into force in 1999 under which selling sex is legal but buying sex is not. 【瑞典于1999年规定，卖淫不犯法，嫖娼犯法。】The same notion also propels a growing crop of workshops and classes in the U.S. aimed at discouraging offending males from repeating an act that many consider a crime against women.

yy和8g似乎是人类的本能

哲学家们永无止境地

yy世界的本原

——世上本没有哲学家

yy的人多了也便有了哲学家

历史学家们前仆后继地

从史料中寻找8g

——世上本没有历史学家

8g的人多了也便有了历史学家

……

    在申请了而停止使用这个blog的N久之后，回来突然发现sina把她的造形改得挺pp，尤其是有了我喜欢的green style，于是我也重新有了做文人骚客的欲望，虽然我本来就有“骚”的潜质。

    新blog要有新气象，所以删掉了被别人认为ws或者容易使别人ws的内容，希望将blog表现的学术一些，要ws就要ws的学术，缺少理论支持的ws必将归于下流。

    同时，希望以后多一些原创的文章，一是发表意见，二是抒发感情，三是锻炼写作。很久没用流畅地使用中文表达自己的思想，如果连自己的母语都用不好，真还是不太好意思使用其它国家的语言——虽然发paper偏偏是如此。

    暂时就写这些吧，只是希望这是一个好的开始。

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• ....