I might be able toi explain that a little. There seem to be lines that men of this type draw between 'consensual', 'transactional' and 'coercive' sex.
Consensual sex is your standard hook-up, a fuck-buddy, your girlfriend, sometimes your wife, more often your bit on the side.
Transactional sex is what one does with a prostitute or a mistress, depending upon class and wealth. Prostitutes we know about, they are the working-class women who provide relief for cash. The middle-class mistress is often a single mum who meets the man at lunchtime on his half-day. He buys her lunch, takes her to the supermarket and pays for her groceries, then drives her home. They have sex, arrange to meet again next month, then he goes home and she picks the kids up from after-school club, Grandmas', or wherever. Having the monthly 'big shop' paid for takes some strain off the Income Support and allows for a few luxuries. Upper-class mistresses expect their wealthy clients to provide a flat, high-end clothing and expensive presents in return for a more varied and exciting sex-life than their wives provide. Courtesans are on a whole other level: "the subtle whoring that costs too much to be free"
The key here is that the giving of something in exchange for sex is not perceived as being coercive. The coercion is actually at one remove in that it comes from the economic status (or lack thereof) of the woman concerned. This allows the men to pretend that the women don't have to do what they do - they could get a job, or lower their lifestyle expectations- - but choose to. This allows the men to make the excuse that they never forced her, she took the money fully aware of the service she was expected to provide. We both know it's more complicated than that, but these men don't, and they don't want to!
Coercive sex, in this mindset, ranges from misuse of power/authority (the boss shagging his much-younger secretary, who needs to keep her job), to outright violence. It is ironic that many men who regularly engage in transactional sex take an extremely dim view of other men who engage in more openly coercive behaviour!
Inter alia, there are prostitues who attempt to justify their lifestyle. They claim that their availability to 'desperate' men prevents many rapes (non sequitur - rape is about domination, not lust). Others claim they provide a service to those unable to obtain relief any other way. I knew one woman who specialised in elderly widowers and men whose wives were ill or disabled. Another who dealt only with disabled men.
I've been around a bit, and for some reason, people talk to me. That's how I found these things out. All of the above comes from them, not me, and acordingly should be taken cum grano! Personally, I figure most of it is bullshit.
