Introduction

For decades the debate about prostitution has focused on the philosophical-political issue of consent. On the one side, there are those who defend the normalization of sex industry arguing that prostitution is any woman's right; on the other, there are those who state that it is irrational and unfair to seriously argue in favor of consent in a globalized planet, crossed by economic, ethnical and especially gender inequalities.¹⁶

For Sheila ^{Jeffreys (2011)}, using the term "[female] sex workers" makes men invisible and women the reason for the existence of prostitution. Moreover, the term 'sex worker' gives prostitution the status of "a job like any other job", sending a clear message to society: prostitution does not have a gender, anyone can prostitute themselves ^{(Miguel, 2012)}. Because of this, Jeffreys proposes using the term "prostituted women" to indicate that the woman does not exist without the other pole of the relationship, which is called prostituting [individual] or prostitution user instead of the term "client", closer to sex industry and sex entrepreneurs.

Prostitution has been legitimized from conservative, liberal and progressive stances, however we also find among these ideologies people opposed to it. Conservative arguments have been based on what is called a double sexual standard: women shall not have sexual relations until marriage; while men must have them. It is taken for granted that men need and it is good for them to have varied sexual relations. From the conservative perspective prostitution is considered a "lesser evil". The "greatest evil" would be that men were not able to satisfy their need for sex ^{(Miguel, 2012)}.

In the 1970's, the arrival of sexual revolution would end part of the hypocrisy imposed by the double sexual standard. According to the new sexual norms to have many sexual relations is good, modern and transgressing. Well now, sexual revolution criticized the double standard, but not the traditional masculine sexuality; this way, the idea of a whorehouse starts to be idealized ^{(Miguel, 2012)}. One of the keys for the reconceptualization of prostitution after the seventies was the theory of free choice and consent: if there is consent, individual liberty becomes a determinant factor for its acceptance. The consequences of sexual revolution were, in this particular case, similar to those of the traditional double sexual standard: the market of prostitutes was secured, reinforced and extended.

Nowadays, the neoliberal patriarchy¹⁷ has made gender violence against women extreme by means of dehumanizing and reifying them, turning women into merchandise that can be transformed in new business opportunities. The new function of prostitution at this neoliberal historic moment is to reinforce the sensation of power and domination that must accompany the hegemonic masculinity by means of the misogynous use of sexuality.

Prostitution is no longer here to sexually satisfy men, but for those who can have a space/body/territory upon which to exercise a determinate sort of masculinity, at a monument of "masculine sexual panic" or "gender vertigo" (^{Atencio, 2015}). Prostitution is an institution that works to preserve the order of gender, as it serves men to underpin their traditional masculinity (naturalized, non-penetrable and dominant) and to extract from it or from its existence a symbolic masculine capital, a sort of gender surplus before women (^{Connell, 2003}).

At present, in Spain we can difference various discursive typologies around this phenomenon. At one end there would be the abolitionists or anti-prostitution, and on the other those in favor of legalization or pro-prostitution (^{Gómez et al., 2015}). The abolitionist discourse states that prostitution is another expression of gender violence, in which victims are largely women in a patriarchal and capitalist context that commoditizes and reifies women. Thereby, clients are accomplices of this sexual exploitation and take advantage of this patriarchal privilege proper to their gender. According to this vision, it is necessary to analytically distinguish the social phenomenon, which prostitution is, from the concrete collective of women who practice it. This distinction will allow criticizing the social reality and the structure of subordination and sexual exploitation that underlies prostitution and have a solidary stance with the victims of this system (^{Cobo, 2014}).

A factor relevant to understand this social practice is economic inequality among the population that offers prostitution and the one that demands it, thus fostering the appearance of a new class of servitude; one in which prostitution becomes one of the few available options for poor women (^{Sassen, 2003}).

Carole ^{Pateman (1988)} conceptualizes prostitution bearing in mind that it is gendered (sexes do not have the same role). It is an institution by means of which society regulates for a price the free access of men to the bodies of women. And it has been and is tolerated because of the legitimization of a patriarchal ideology, now also neoliberal (^{Jeffreys, 2011}). The normalization of prostitution, according to philosopher Scott A. ^{Anderson (2002)}, would imply that people (especially women) ended up losing their right to sexual autonomy.

The discursive typology in favor of legalization holds an amoral stance in relation to prostitution: it is neither good nor bad, nor does it harms women, but it is another job, as dignifying as any other. This discourse is placed in the struggle against stigmatization and marginalization of both the prostituted woman and the client, against sex trafficking, exploitation and abuse in the frame of any worker's rights and the use of the empowerment from the exercise of citizenship.

From this discursive typology more complex measures are proposed; those that have to do with a change of mentality in the hegemonic socio-affective culture of our society, in view of ending any relationship of power, domination and exploitation in sexual-affective interactions. In this line we find philosophers such as Martha ^{Nussbaum (1999)}, who states that problems implied by sex work come from conjuncture factors such as the social stigma that surrounds prostitution.

In this text we intend to contribute to the debate on the phenomenon of prostitution in our country, analyzing an aspect of this reality that has not been sufficiently researched: those who demand prostitution, this is to say, clients.¹⁸ Given the complexity of the very concept of prostitution, it is difficult to offer exact figures that help us grasp the actual magnitude of the phenomenon. For the Spanish case, in a 2007 report produced by the Mixed Commission of Woman's Rights and Equal Opportunities of the Congress of the Representatives of the Government of Spain, it is indicated that there are more than 300 000 women who exercise prostitution, being the overwhelming majority poor, immigrant and undocumented, while almost the totality of clients, 99.7%, are men.

Moreover, in this report it is estimated that sex trade in Spain generates some 18 billion Euros a year and the expenditure of Spanish men in prostitution reaches 50 million Euros a day. Indeed, this noticeable expense on prostitution services is also associated to a large number of consumers, as it is demonstrated by another survey carried out by the Center of Sociological Researches in 2009, which estimates that 32.1% of men have paid one time to have sex.

In this article we present the most relevant results from a research that we undertook from 2011 to 2013.¹⁹ We divided the exposition in four sections: in the first one, we make an outline of the studies on this topic; in the second, we expose the theoretical and methodological grounds; in the third -the core of this work- the study of the client's accounts are approached; finally, in the last section, the results reached are presented and some reflections on them are made.

Forerunners of research on prostitution clients

Researches that analyze -and in some cases classify-prostitution clients are relatively novel. At international level, the pioneer of this topic is Sven-Axel Mansson (2001), who has studied the phenomenon of prostitution as of the 1970's from the viewpoint of men and clientele. In his book Men´s practices in prostitution: the case of Sweden, he divides the clients of prostitution into four groups. The first comprises men who have the fantasy of a "filthy whore"; the second group is composed of those who want to experience non-usual sexual activities; in the third group there are those who because of fear, shyness, old age or a disability resort to prostitution as a consolation; finally, the fourth group mainly comprises young men who have a vision of sex defined by pornography, publicity and leisure programs.

Another noteworthy research in which a typology of the prostitution clients is carried out is the one performed in France by Mouvement du Nid. The studies, led by Saíd ^{Bouamama and Claudine Legardinier (2006}), concentrate in the book Les clients de la prostitution, l´enquête, in which five sorts of clients are identified.

In the first typology, which encompasses 75% of the cases, one finds men who justify their condition of "prostituting individuals" as a by-product of their own sexual, social and affective insufficiencies. The second typology gathers men who refer to the distrust, fear and hate women produce in them to justify their consumption. The third category includes the "consumers of merchandise", who assume their condition of "consumers" in order to "buy" what is "on sale". The fourth category includes those who want to meet an imperative of sexuality, so they pay to avoid problems. Finally, the fifth category groups men addicted to sex.

However, most of the researches who analyze the motivations expressed by men to ask for this sort of service do not produce a typology of these men. This way, Anne ^{Allison (1994}) analyzed the consumption of prostitution in Japanese clubs by businessmen in the book Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. One of her conclusions is that the consumption of prostitution is rather a ritual to belong to a masculine group, utilized as organized leisure in the peer group (nights out, meetings, bachelor parties, etc.) Allison affirms that many men feel coerced by the group, thus the consumption of prostitution works as a form of masculine control, to demonstrate to the peer group that they are "fully men".

A different perspective appears is Sex Markets, in which ^{Giusta, Di Tommaso and Strom (2008}) explore the offer and demand of prostitution and conclude that most men who use these services are excited by the idea of the illicit, of the transgression: for them, women prostitute themselves because they like it, not because of money.

Sociability, necessity of domination and entertainment are some of the reasons distinguishable in other studies. Sociability as a reason for the client of prostitution is accounted for in the research carried out in Brazil by Elisiane ^{Pasini (2000}), in which there is reference to "regular" men to define the client of prostitution.

The need to dominate is distinguished in a work on Finn clients published by Anne-Maria ^{Marttila (2003}), in which the demand of paid sex is related to the generalized structures of power and to the need to dominate. Entertainment and desire to experience other sexual practices are accounted for the book by Melissa ^{Farley, Julie Bindel and Jacqueline M. Golding (2009}) entitled Men who buy sex. Who they buy and what they know. From 103 interviews with prostitution clients in England, 54% of the respondents stated that the main reason to pay for sex was immediate satisfaction, entertainment and pleasure, as well as "changing women".

In Spain, the first work that analyzes the client of prostitution is the one by José L. Solana (2002), who in 2002 publishes the article "Prostitution of immigrant women in the province of Córdoba" [Prostitución de mujeres inmigrantes en la provincia de Córdoba], in which he distinguishes two sorts of clients: the ones who objectify and those who personalize. Later on, in 2003, Mª José Barahona and Luís M. García publish the book An approximation to the profile of the client of feminine prostitution in the Community of Madrid [Una aproximación al perfil del cliente de prostitución femenina en la Comunidad de Madrid]. From 15 interviews with Spanish clients, they inquired on the reasons to pay for sex: dissatisfaction with the relationship with their partners; higher frequency and more variety of sexual relations; power from the fact of paying for sex: live their sexual fantasies; and finally, having a good time ^{(Barahona and García, 2003)}.

In 2007, Rafael López and David Baringo publish the article "City and heterosexual prostitution in Spain: the viewpoint of the male 'client'" [Ciudad y prostitución heterosexual en España: el punto de vista del 'cliente' masculino]. From performing 12 interviews with clients, they establish six categories: men who find it difficult to bond with women; men who go out in group to have fun; married men who wanted to have extramarital sex as a lesser affair; men who have marital crises; men who join because of labor or business; and finally, young men who argued minimal complication and effort ^{(López and Baringo, 2007)}.

In 2010, Mª José Barahona publishes the book Study on the information, opinion and attitude of the inhabitants of Álava about the phenomenon of prostitution and an approximation to the profile of the client of feminine prostitution [Estudio sobre la información, opinión y actitud de los habitantes de Álava ante el fenómeno de la prostitución y una aproximación al perfil del cliente de prostitución femenina]. The research was performed with 452 questionnaires distributed in Álava to people older than 18 years. 16.6% of the men who participated in the survey admitted to having paid for sex at some time in their lives. Besides, 30% of the respondents skipped this question, which makes the author of the study think that they also paid for sex, but are unwilling to accept it ^{(Barahona, 2010)}.

Also in 2010, Carmen Meneses analyzes the motives men have to pay for sex. From 138 interviews, out of the 14 reasons to pay for sex, the three with which men agreed the most are: be able to choose different women every time (56.5%); think paid sex generates fewer complications (46.6%); and, have fast and impersonal sex (41.3%). With the motivations expressed by the clients, Meneses applies a factorial analysis using the method of principal components and obtains six factors that explain 80% of the variance: "company", "necessity", "leisure", "risk", "domination" and "speed" ^{(Meneses, 2010)}.

In 2012, Enrique J. Díez publishes the article "The role of men in prostitution..." [El papel de los hombres en la prostitución...], in which the he states that increasingly there are more men who look for [female] prostitutes to dominate them: men have experienced a loss of power and traditional masculinity, and they are not able to establish relationships of respect and reciprocity with women ^{(Díez, 2012)}.

^{Gómez and Pérez publish in 2009} the book Prostitución: clientes e outros homes, which deals with young men and the consumption of prostitution in Galicia. In this work, 17 interviews were held with clients, 5 interviews with discussion groups of masculinized collectives,²⁰ 6 interviews with women in prostitution, 2 interviews with transsexuals in prostitution, 3 to owners and managers of clubs, 1 to a club worker and 3 to social-services technicians who work with women in prostitution ^{(Gómez and Pérez, 2009)}.

As it is evident from the various researches we have analyzed, men's consumption of paid sex comes from a concrete manner to understand "being a man". If in the past the traditional values of men were responsible paternity and being the breadwinner and protector of the family, nowadays virility is built through a "compulsive sex life" that is boasted in front of the group of male peers.

Theoretical and methodological considerations

To develop this work and in view of understanding our study subjects, it was necessary to reflect on the construction of masculinity. Gender is one of the bearers of the central mechanisms by means of which power and resources are allotted in society, and it is by means of them that individuals model the meanings of their lives. Gender studies analyze the asymmetric relations of power and opportunity that each individual has in society in function of their sexual body ^{(Ortner, 1979)}. Each social group exalts a masculinity model above the rest, which responds to political, economic, social and cultural logics.

In any case, the construction of the masculine social identity is related to the sex-gender system of a society (^{Otegui, 1999)}. This system is based, in the first place, on the theories that research the "naturalization" that explain the socially constructed sexual characteristics (^{Irigaray, 1998}; ^{Moore and Gillette, 1993}; ^{Chodorow, 1989}; ^{Gilligan, 1982}; ^{Goldberg, 1973}); secondly, on the functionalist theories that appear in order to legitimize the hegemonic socio-sexual orders in occidental societies (^{Parsons, 1999}; ^{Gilmore, 1990}); and in the third place, on the theories that emphasize the existence of a diversity in which their own relational component places them at "socio-historical standardization processes of some specific power relations" ^{(Otegui, 1999)}, such as constructivist (^{Connell, 2003}; ^{Bourdieu, 2000}) and queer theories (^{Preciado, 2002}; ^{Butler, 2001}).

All in all, the importance of studies on masculinity lies in their capacity to analyze the practices and representations of men from their gender specificities, being such practices part of some social relationships that largely place men at a dominating position. The masculine identity does not respond to a common model, but to a collective construction previously configured in the institutions and is exercised through social practices.

The consumption of prostitution highlights such characteristics, where in the same cultural context there exist various masculinity models that operate with differenced gender mandates and where sexuality is an expression of exercising domination and power over the bodies of women in our society. Due to the heterogeneity of the clients' sociological profile, in this work we opted to classify them in function of the story produced from their experience and perception of prostitution.

In order to analyze their narrations we resorted to the use of frame analysis (^{Gerhards, 1995}; ^{Goffman, 1974}) in order to coherently structure their stories and classify them in categories to improve their handling and comprehension. At present, this research method is widely utilized to analyze how people understand situations and activities from multiple disciplines. With this sort of analyses it is proposed to identify the inner logic of the dominant "interpretative frameworks", stressing the various representations social actors perform by means of an organizing principle that turns fragmentary information into a structured and significant political problem. Therefore, frames are constructions that provide such reality with meaning and structure its comprehension (^{Snow et al., 1993}; ^{Tarrow, 1997}).

In the following section we describe the central framing dimensions of the ideological discourse of prostitution clients in our country and their claims to legitimize objectives, interests and ideologies from the declarations taken in the individual and group interviews with them. To do so, we held semi-directed in-depth interviews with 29 clients,²¹ 13 women in prostitution,²² 3 owners of clubs and/or flats, 4 workers of these places, and 23 social technicians, academicians and/or professionals of social services; moreover, three group interviews were held with men in nine Spanish autonomous communities. Our objective is to establish a typology of prostitution clients from the analysis of their discourses, which makes this research different from previous ones.

Clients' discourses

In this section we classify prostitution clients from their discourses, analyzed by means of frame analysis (^{Goffman, 1974}). The result was the identification of four sorts of clients which we have called: "misogynic client", "consumer client", "friendly client" and "critical client" (see figure 1 ²³). The sociologic profile of prostitution clients we have analyzed is broad and heterogeneous in relation to age, marital status, education and/or profession (see table 1); therefore, the classification produced by this research might be extrapolated to the whole of prostitution clients.

Conclusions

In occidental contemporary societies the mass consumption of prostitution by male population is one of the most significant indicators of a way to understand, live and feel sexuality, to glimpse the norm that regulates the affections and sexuality of our historic time.

Contrary to expectations, prostitution has acquired unsuspected and unpredictable relevance in the context of sexual liberation, which suggested a progressive disappearance. We say "unsuspected" because commitment to equality, joined with the new sexual liberty, enjoyed by several generations, generated the blurry idea that prostitution would end up becoming a residual and marginal phenomenon.

Prostitution has expanded and diversified, it has become a practice legitimized by the very post-capitalist system, in a context of exploitation and pauperization increasingly normalized. From an outline over the existing scientific production and also empirical research, this paper in Spain focuses on the study of the client, trying to understand why men -the largest consumer of prostitution in our country- resort to paid sex.

The typologies obtained in this research coincide with many of those presented in similar works in this field. However, in our research we have taken one step further, as we have characterized the clients of each typology. In the profile of the misogynic client, men who have poor schooling and identify with the right are the majority prevail. At the opposite end, men with a critical profile, distinguishable are those with better education and self-identified with the left.

The analyzed individuals unfolded their emic perspective (i.e., the vision of the researched subjects), particular for their reasons, causes and impressions on prostitution; however, it is from the etic perspective (i.e., the vision "from the outside" of the researched subjects) that they can be complemented and fully understood. Through the theoretical perspective of "frame analysis" and the sociological significances, this reality has been comprehended.

To sum up, this research identifies a series of sexual and extra-sexual reasons to consume paid sex: the search for domination, entertainment, affection, sociability, the desire of trying new "merchandise", etc. In none of the discourses did we find pleasure for its own sake as a transcending act.

The causes and motivations are other, and from our viewpoint, these relate to the construction of a dominant and patriarchal masculinity that is still hegemonic in our societies, and that directly matches with the homosocial link (^{Gilmore, 1990}; ^{Connell, 2003}): the relationship with the masculine peer group (then, it is usual that they go to the place of prostitution as a group).

Buying sex responds to a patriarchal mandate and to a strategy, not necessarily conscious, to reinforce a masculinity shaped by an identity that revolves around the exhibition before the peer group, the "use of the phallus" and frequent sexual relations with women.

In our work hypothesis we consider that buying sex is directly related to contemporary masculinities, build on compulsive sexual activities and with other men as witness so that there is public testimony of that underpinning and reinforcement of their masculinity. The dominant masculine identity centers on a narcissistic phallocentrism³⁰ that displaces the traditional model (father-protector-provider) and is build in relation to the "other" men. And it is in prostitution spaces that this sort of masculine identity shelters, reproduces and legitimizes.

The elements on which this dimension seats are collective consumption, a pact of silence shared by consumers of prostitution and groups of friends -this way, what occurs in the club is never revealed- and the presence-use of the phallus. These elements produce an impeccable code shared by the masculinized subjects, the "prostituting subculture", which can be considered another exponent of the violation of human rights and gender violence.

Prostitution appears as another element of the leisure industry at a socio-historical time of banalization of sexuality, hyper-valuing of pleasure and commoditization of human relationships (^{Han, 2014}). There are bodies, such as those of some poor women, whose value in the labor market is almost null; their bodies are mistreated and even assassinated, turned into symbolical marks of the power of a determinate masculinity (^{Atencio, 2015}). They are the propitiating victims of femicides, in a context of neoliberal capitalism.

The perverse and pernicious effects of the excess of commodification and reification of human beings would be rejected in other identity models in which other forms of "masculinity", based on the integral personal development, physical, psychical and social of men are reinforced through the practice of a pleasurable and healthful sex life that develops in the frame of respectful, egalitarian, fair and solidary social relations with other men and also with women.

In our opinion, in an ever globalized world it is necessary to reflect on human sexuality. There exist other forms to interpret affection, gender and sexuality to be able to produce an alternative "epistemology" that helps build a fairer and more egalitarian world.