People say prostitution is necessary. Some even go as far as saying it’s a necessary evil, but even those people still insist it is necessary.

If men can’t buy access to women’s bodies, these people say, whatever will they do?

Yes, I would like to ask them, what exactly is it you think men will do? Rape women?

What that means is that either men get to rape for money or they will rape for free. Or in other words: “rape is inevitable, let’s outsource the victim role to someone who has no options.”

If you think these men are rapists who by definition don’t care whether the woman or girl they are fucking wants any part of them (which is what you’re saying if you think they will rape unless they can ‘buy sex’), then why do you support their right to throw down a few bills and take that attitude out on an actual woman’s or girl’s body?

If men couldn’t buy access to women’s bodies, what would they do? Spontaneously combust?

Of course not. They’d do what women are doing: live their lives without buying access to people’s bodies to sate their sexual greed. Sex is not a need. It’s a want. Financial transactions are not a natural part of reproduction either, so arguments about how this sort of behavior is natural ‘because men’s hormones’ (or the ominous-sounding ‘men have needs’) are completely idiotic anyway, save your breath. Prostitution also hasn’t existed in every culture there ever was, even if pro-pornstitution liars try to make it look that way.

If we can admit that prostitution isn’t actually necessary, it’s just something men WANT, and if we then look at the unspeakable harm that we KNOW is being inflicted upon millions of girls and women worldwide, to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars, who can justify any of it? Who can say, but that’s integral to our society, let’s keep this up? Only a total sociopath, or someone who is so deeply in denial about the horrors being committed on women’s bodies and souls that their view has little to do with reality.

All this said, let’s look at a few statements from johns/punters that I read on photographer Bettina Flitner’s website and that I’ve translated into English.

I encourage you to click on the link and look at the photographs as you read the statement of each man on his prostituting. I have added some comments of my own for each of them.

Please beware that these statements are dehumanizing and misogynistic and what follows is upsetting if you care about women at all.

Christian, 23, freight forwarding agent, single

“Why do I pay for sex? Women often get on my tits. They nag you if you don’t spend enough time with them. That’s why I come here when I just feel like I fuck – and then I leave again. That’s it. It quickly gets boring to me with a girlfriend. And anyways: paying for it gives it that special something. Then you own the woman. You can do whatever you want with her. That’s power when you think about it. My last time? I come here about every six weeks. Sometimes I do it with one I already know, sometimes with a different one. I like it a little harder, no vanilla sex.”

This man is a rapist and he knows it. He wants to own a woman who has no rights, no power, no way out in the face of his ‘a little harder’ (really rough, sadistic, degrading) treatment. He undoubtedly watches rape porn when he’s not acting out his sadism on a woman directly.

Dung, 28, works in parental restaurant, single

“My first time in a brothel was four years ago. A date is always stressful and costs a lot of time. In a brothel, everything is much more open. There are no lies and no illusions there. I can freely admit it — I am single after all and I’m not hurting anyone. My type are women with black hair and brown eyes. But definitely no Asians. Don’t like them at all. There has to be good chemistry, then the woman enjoys it too. But sometimes they look at the time already when you enter the room. You don’t really feel like it anymore when they do that.”

He believes the brothel to be the most honest place because it’s the only place where he himself is honest. Those two things are very different. Does he really believe there are women who enjoy him using their bodies? He does it anyway even when he knows they don’t want to — evidence that he doesn’t see the women as actual people at all (he isn’t hurting anyone, after all, even when women show clear signs of just wanting it over with and him gone). Why can’t this Asian man stand Asian women? Internalized racism meets misogyny.

Günther, 55, bar owner, divorced, 1 son

„I just need a lot of sex. It excites me to always have new women. I also go to swingers clubs. But there are often old and ugly ones there. Sometimes I book an escort service. My type? Black or very light skin. So mulatto or from Latvia. No silicone breasts and pumped-up lips. I also don’t like them too professional, I prefer those who just do their job normally and only do this now and then. My last time was one week ago. She said it was the most beautiful sex of her life. The usual 50 euros. The price/performance ratio is simply right here.”

No, you do not need, you want. Such ugly words from an ugly man who believes himself entitled to an unlimited number of women’s bodies, picked for their hues and shapes like fruit in a shop. Look at him. Look at the contempt he has for the women who do what he makes them do — as evidenced by the fact that an actual ‘professional’ is not good enough for him, he needs the illusion that women with regular jobs moonlight at brothels for fun and have ‘beautiful sex’ with disgusting, unfeeling rapists like him.

Ingo, 43, tax accountant assistant, single

“Outside I’m too shy to talk to anyone. I work from home and hardly get out. But of course this is a fantasy world. The men here are chasing after an illusion, and so am I. Sometimes the women say, ‘I love you’ afterwards. That’s pure customer retention. Twice I fell in love with a woman from the brothel. There is this Samaritan Effect, where you want to take them out of the mire. That’s over for me, I don’t fall in love anymore. Now I only come here because of one of them. Everything is the way it should be. At least inside the room. I don’t know anything else about her.”

He knows that he is only a customer and not a ‘loved one’. He also knows the women in the brothel are suffering, to the point of feeling like a ‘Samaritan’ for wanting to keep them to himself and get them away from the brothel. Selfishness is the main motivator and always was; the Samaritanism is just in his head, since obviously there was no desire to free the women he didn’t fall in love with…and he has now successfully desensitized himself even beyond the point of imagining he has romantic feelings at all. Just fucking a stranger who you know doesn’t want to be there. Rapist.

Iwan, 65, auto mechanic, single

“One does it once. One does it twice. And then at some point one is just in there. One gets used to it. Normally I have to take a pretty woman out to dinner twice, costs 100 euros. And then maybe it doesn’t go anywhere. Here it works immediately. I like southern women – Spaniards, Italians, those from the Dominican Republic. I also had a Colombian here for a few months, a Bella, nicely built. She was really into it. Or she was a good actress. But she was suddenly gone. Pity.“

Note the impersonal, generalizing language. This way of expressing things is a common pattern in German, especially used by men when trying to disguise their emotional investment in something or their responsibility for something negative. He switches from that to ‘Normally I have to…’, i.e. a more personal tone, when trying to get sympathy for the plight of having to buy pretty women dinner in hopes of getting them to spit out sex like a slot machine showing three pineapples…or some other exotic fruit. Racist rapist. (Who knows what happened to the woman who was suddenly gone, but don’t expect him to have any worry beyond his loss of purchase options.)

Joachim, 58, engineer, separated, 1 daughter

“Ten years ago I woke up one night and couldn’t get up anymore. I had bad pain in my heart, the emergency doctor came, they took me to the ER. And back then I thought: my life could be over tomorrow. I come here about once a week. For three months now I have booked the same one. I spent two hours in the room with her today. It’s true: when you go to a club, you are no longer satisfied with normal women. The figures! They wear a size 6 or 8 here. [US; UK 8/10, Germany 34/36]”

I’m currently reading a book about resuscitation medicine and death experiences (Erasing Death by Sam Parnia, MD, PhD) and while there are many people who come close to death and change their lives after the experience, this is the very lowest life-change I have ever read of. His life could be over soon, so he better stick his dick into as many women size 6 or 8 as possible before he croaks (hurry up, for goodness’ sake). For “you are no longer satisfied with normal women”, read, “you lose the last of your ability to empathize with or care about women”. Rapist.

Kai, 49, bank employee, divorced, 2 children

“Why do I come here? I would normally never get women like the ones here. And I can also cross boundaries here. Anal for instance, I would probably not dare to ask a woman outside for that. Costs 100 euros more. I’m not for the really young ones or the skinny-bones. It’s fine if they have completely normal breasts, even a little tummy. You know, a womanly figure. I’ve been going to the same one for three years now, twice a month. My last time? A week ago.”

Women are a collection of body parts. A personality or emotions do not even figure into it when this guy thinks about women. He pays to cross boundaries and to do things to women that he actually instinctively knows women don’t want. So the women he pays for are a different class of (not-)humans to him, absolving him of the need to respect their boundaries and feelings. He feels like a really generous and humane punter for not going after the “really young ones” and ‘allowing’ the women to have ‘normal breasts’.

Ralf, 28, computer scientist, single

„I went to a brothel for the first time when I was 17, with my very first paycheck. Going to a club like this is deep relaxation to me. There’s no chitchat, the girls are clever and adjust to your preferences. That can become addictive. I had a relationship for four years, but at some point it always comes out. And then the shutters go down. Now I’m also here for professional reasons. I am developing an online platform together with a friend where men can buy punter alibis: traffic accident, hospital – we can do anything.”

I struggle to find words for this specimen because the personality he presents in one short paragraph is so hideous. He believes men have a right to use as many women’s bodies as they want, while keeping girlfriends and wives as deceived domestic servants. He has obviously understood there is money in facilitating rape, so now he wants in on it.

For all these men, note how utterly self-/man-centered their entire concept of reality is, how they have fetishized power imbalance including racism, and how the things they tell us about themselves clearly show that women in general and prostituted women in particular are less-than-human, not real people, to them. To them we are animated body parts for men’s use. If you can’t see that in their words, I suggest you look a little harder and take off the rose-colored porn glasses. These eight men are rapists and should be criminalized.

For more insight into how johns see the women to whose bodies they buy access, see the incredibly revealing and commendable The Invisible Men Project on tumblr and Twitter.