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Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.
Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.
Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.
Dear Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer,
If you’re a single guy, is it ok to have sex with a ‘pok pok’ (prostitute) lots of times? Like three times a week?
– Jimmy
Dear Jimmy,
Thank you for your message.
Your question, despite its brevity, touches on a number of areas, including morality, physical health, mental health, and consent.
Starting with morality, there are clearly different perspectives on this issue,
depending on one’s religious and personal moral positions. At one extreme there are those with very liberal views who believe in free love, however defined.
At the other there are those who believe that sexual intercourse should be confined to married couples.
Where you stand, you do not reveal but it seems reasonable to suppose that you are at least a little conflicted or you would not be asking this question in the first place.
As for physical health, intercourse with sex workers who have multiple partners whose sexual history is unknown carries obvious STI risks. This makes protection and STI testing of paramount importance, both to protect yourself, the woman you are paying to have sex with you, and also any other partners you may have.
Mental health is another matter worth considering, raising questions such as: does the frequency with which you have this kind of sex indicate an unhealthy reliance or even sex addiction? Does it for example place any undue strain on your finances? Does this amount of transactional sex interfere with your ability to have deeper and more meaningful relationships? Are you forgoing intimacy and connection by limiting yourself to these fleeting encounters?
As for consent, it is important to consider whether there is genuine consent.
It is one thing to spend time with a high class escort in a five star hotel, comfortable in the knowledge that she has freely chosen to be an escort rather than work at other options equally available to her. It is quite another to spend time with someone being exploited and without alternatives. Of course it is not always clear where the truth lies in these situations and hopefully your ethical compass will guide you to embrace true consent, safety and the absence of exploitation.
If any of this raises doubts in your mind, Aaron, then it might be wise to consider investing time and energy into dating or building relationships which could be more fulfilling in the longer term.
All the best,
– JAF Baer
Dear Jimmy,
Thank you very much for your letter. As mentioned above, there are many important issues inextricably linked to the two questions you ask: paying someone to have sex with you and doing it as often as at least 13 times a month.
If I were the kind of clinical psychologist that believed I should assuage you only about things that either concern you directly (where directly is defined as financial, physical, social, medical, even emotional) AND/OR you have asked about, then I would write no more.
There is nothing new I could add because I agree with everything Mr. Baer wrote above.
But I find I cannot leave things as is, because I am not that kind of psychologist.
Not THAT kind of pragmatic psychologist, unwilling to suggest another dimension because the client never brought it up. If I strongly felt that transcendent and/or spiritual parts of you were not addressed when they should have been, I would say something.
Why “should they have been addressed” in the first place? Because they could affect or be affected by your paying a person to have sex with you.
Not THAT kind of mental health professional who eschews transpersonal psychology simply because it acknowledges that humans are not isolated individuals but are interconnected with something larger than themselves.
In other words, Jimmy, if you want straight answers to your straight 2-sentence letter, Mr Baer has provided them plus a wider perspective from which to view your behavior.
However, if you don’t mind reading further from someone who has thought long and hard about her chosen profession (clinical psychology) and wonders where its true worth lies, then read on.
You see, people can assuage your fears/guilt//concerns by sharing amusing quotes like
Gloria Allred’s “Why is it immoral to be paid for an act that is perfectly legal if done for free?”
Or, they can guilt you because you have not immediately and ferociously taken up the cause for prostituted women. One way to do this might be to misquote Gail Sheehy: “The one thing prostitution is not is a ‘victimless crime.’ It attracts a wide species of preying criminals and generates a long line of victims, beginning with the most obvious and least understood — the prostitute herself.”
But for me, an admittedly wanna-be transpersonal psychologist (but mainly because as a tried and tested clinical psychologist I believe the transpersonal aspect fits right in with your concerns ) would quote Kate Millett who herself is quoting a prostitute.
This is in Ms Millett’s 1976 book The Prostitution Papers:
“The worst part about prostitution is that you’re obliged not to sell sex only, but your humanity. That’s the worst part of it: that what you’re selling is your human dignity. Not really so much in bed, but in accepting the agreement – in becoming a bought person.”
To my mind, your human dignity could also be affected, dearest Jimmy, because you have “bought people” approximately 13 times a month.
I do hope this makes sense? Please please write us again if it doesn’t and/or if you disagree and/or you want further clarification.
All the best
– MG Holmes
– Rappler.com
Please send any comments, questions, or requests for advice to twopronged@rappler.com.
