Jacquelynne Willcox-Bailey

'Conversations in a brothel' is a book about the male perspective of prostitution. Most of the book is a record of edited conversations with men involved in prostitution in Australia in early 2000, tied together with a few of the author's experiences visiting the brothels and prostitute's homes to provide context. The men featured include clients, male prostitutes, partners and husbands of prostitutes, and the sons of prostitutes. Brothels featured include city, suburban, and the homes of S&M workers, both legal and illegal depending upon the state law.

The subtitle of the book is 'Men tell why they do it', and so most of the content is men explaining their beliefs about prostitution, how and why they are involved, etc. However, if the reader is hoping for a coherent answer to the "why" question, they will be disappointed. The conversations from the men are often confused and contradictory, despite having been edited by the author for flow and clarity (and apparently to remove her half of the conversation). Quite a few times a man would say one thing and then say the exact opposite in the very next sentence. So while that in itself is interesting, with interview subjects like these it is difficult to glean the true meanings of their words without some guidance from the author.

For me, this lack of a synthesis was the main let-down of the book. I didn't feel that the author had added anything to the conversations beyond having brought them together and provided some situational context. There are some words from her about her own background - a father who loathed prostitutes, her middle-class sensibilities, a mother who worked at women's shelters - and some interesting observations about the effects of the legal aspect, observations of the brothels in general. But these have nothing to do with the stated goal of the book. What little synthesis of the male perspective there was, in the final chapter (a mere 7 pages long), did not seem to connect to the monologues just read. The thesis presented there seems drawn from one man's interview and a few anecdotes presented only in that final chapter. So if the reader is interested in acquiring this kind of insight, they should be warned that they will have to to analyse the monologues, with the hindrance of the distance of being a reader, for themselves.

Despite this lack of synthesis, the men's monologues are kind of interesting on an individual basis. There are some personalities in there, not all of them unlikeable. The clients are funny at times with their self-justifications and cognitive dissonance, and the monologue from the young son was particularly painful. This kind of content is readily available online in blogs and forums, but it is good to read it with the addition of situational context and the author's descriptions of the people and their surroundings.… (plus d'informations)