# Taboo - Why Prostitution, Brothels and Sauna Clubs Are Still Seen So Badly (Part 1)

It's Friday night at Nachtflug, one of the hottest discotheques in Köln. Take a closer look, and you'll see a picture that's really not that rare: a young man chatting with a woman, they dance. Glances, touches, kisses and phone numbers are exchanged. At the end of the night, they go home together.

The "one-night-stand" principle has become something completely normal and acceptable in today's society. As a man, you can even boast and brag about it! Because how great does it sound when you can proudly tell your friends that yesterday you had sex with a pretty lady again, and all it cost you was a few hours, a drink or two and a nice word here and there?

And how does it sound to tell people that a visit to the sauna club and the exchange of tenderness and more with the sweet prostitute last night lightened your wallet by a whole 100€? Ridiculous, shameful, cheap.

"Only losers pay for sex." is also Kajsa Ekis Ekman's opinion. The author and activist has been fighting against prostitution for years and believes that it can in no way be consensual when one of the two parties pays for the service. So it's also understandable that customers and visitors of such establishments feel ashamed of it, are even supposed to feel ashamed of it.

In Elsdorf in Lower Saxony, however, one sauna club knows how to help its customers: "The parking lot located securely behind the building is just one of the measures we take to protect our guests' anonymity."

But why do you have to be ashamed of visiting a sauna club, yet get to feel proud when you take someone home from a discotheque after a few drinks? Where exactly is the difference between "picking someone up" and "prostitution"? In both cases one half pays for the sex, whether it's with cash, time or drinks. Unlike "picking someone up", however, prostitution enjoys nowhere near the same standing. On the contrary: it's frowned upon and seen as dirty, sex workers are labelled as victims.

Strictly speaking, though, this is really only taking the opportunity costs properly into account: if you spend several hours in a discotheque with the goal of taking a woman home for sex, you invest not just time but also money in the form of admission fees and drinks to achieve that goal. Let's do some rough back-of-the-envelope maths and say that in one evening around 200€ is spent on admission, drinks and the taxi home. A one-hour visit to a sauna club, on the other hand, costs on average 50 - 100€, depending on which services are wanted. So not only was time saved, but when you do the maths, probably quite a bit of money too. Of course, the thrill of the chase is missing, since with money in a sauna club you can get almost anything.

But is the act of "picking someone up" so much more respected simply because it shows the success of the hunting instinct? Is it really so worth striving for, to demonstrate how good you are at presenting your beauty and charm and ultimately bringing home one trophy after another? Not to forget that in our society it has apparently become common to choose your partners based on outward beauty features. So a "pretty boy" who matches the prevailing ideals of most women logically gets far more chances to make contact with them than those who don't fit into this beauty grid.

Read part 2 here of "Tabu - Warum Prostitution, Bordelle und Saunaclubs immer noch so schlecht angesehen werden"