'I could not make my peace with the power imbalance'

“Ruth Henderson,” a former booking agent for incredibly high-priced Manhattan 'call girls' explains how it all works for Pajamas Media.

Show me a rich and powerful man between the ages of 35 and 60 who has never paid an escort for sex, and I will show you a man who is a very rare exception.

Why would a rich, powerful and handsome man pay for extra-marital sex? Aren’t there tons of women waiting to throw themselves at him for free? Yes, there are. But those women always want something: they want attention, intimacy and romance. They want to enjoy the high of sleeping with a powerful man. Escorts don’t want or care about any of those things.

The simple act of ordering up an anonymously pretty 22 year-old girl to do your bidding in the salubrious confines of a luxury hotel suite is an act of power.

'Difficult clients'

Take, for example, the CEO of an international airline who was a cocaine freak. Once a month, usually over a weekend, he would check into a suite at the Pierre, call the agency and book a dozen or so girls. He would book the girls for four hours each, staggered over the following two days. According to the girls, all he did was sit half-naked on his bed next to a mountain of cocaine, which he snorted constantly while crying about his divorce and the stress he endured at work. As the hours progressed, he would become increasingly paranoid and irrational.

I did not inquire into the fate of the girls who sort of faded away. I did not want to hear about their loneliness and poverty.

So the value of the escorts declined rapidly as they aged. Meanwhile, the value of the clients increased because they accumulated more money and more power. I could not make my peace with the power imbalance.

I had a really hard time dealing with the dawning understanding that the very men I’d been taught to value — my peers, as it were — were pretty atavistic types. They seemed to prefer whores in the bedroom and ladies in the salon.

Elliott Spitzer's wife

The mask of hypocritical social propriety has been ripped off. Her female friends are all looking at their husbands, knowing that they dodged a bullet. And Mrs. Spitzer must figure out how to maintain her dignity in the face of mainstream America’s hypocritical opprobrium.

Does anyone really think 'that doesn't happen in the UK'? Are these rich men the ones that Harriet Harman has in her sights or just kerb-crawlers?

Her crusade, and it is a crusade, will also inadvertently recriminalise some gay men, which won't be lost on some police. Something Ms. Harman doesn't give a shit about — somewhat of a tradition with some feminists.

As a former HIV prevention frontline worker, I know as well that crusades just drives human activity like prostitution further away from services like needle exchange and sexual health. Again, Harman doesn't seem to give a stuff.

Prostitution is never going to disappear. It should be legalised and regulated. The best way to challenge that 'power imbalance'.