One response I’m seeing to the mass shooting at UCSB is, “Why didn’t he just get a prostitute?” (or some variation of it: “Couldn’t get a date, why not get a call girl?”) Like all the killer needed was some sex, and he wouldn’t have been violent.
A few reasons this response is poorly thought out:
First off, having sex with a prostitute doesn’t make violent people less violent. That’s already seen from the way that prostitutes themselves are frequently targeted for murders and assaults. Having sex doesn’t make violent, entitled, and misogynistic people less violent and misogynistic and entitled. Sex is not a magical cure for deeply toxic thinking.
The killer wanted power and control. Paying for sex from a prostitute would not have been enough to satisfy his needs. He didn’t just need sex. He needed to have any woman he desired. In his eyes, women weren’t individuals in their own right; they simply existed to be his. (His sense of entitlement also extended beyond his relationships with women to other areas of his life, but women were his main focus.)
And the last point (but not the least important one): prostitutes are people and, except when they’re victims of human trafficking or other kinds of coercion, they choose who they have sex with. They often try to avoid people or blacklist people they suspect might kill or otherwise brutalize them. Who’s to say the killer would never have been turned down by a prostitute? In any case, prostitutes shouldn’t be seen as fodder for brutal, toxic people.
Bright Across the Lifespan 