In prostitution,
demand creates supply. Because men want women who are constantly
sexually available, prostitution is assumed to be inevitable, and
therefore normal. Trafficking, the transnational movement of women
for the purpose of prostitution, supplies the demand for quantity
and variety of women and girls in prostitution.
Who are the “johns,”
those people who buy women and girls in prostitution? What do we
know about them? Johns are average citizens rather than sadistic
psychopaths. They are from all walks of life – doctors, judges,
famous actors and CEOs, as well as construction workers, social
workers, and travelling salesmen. Rich and poor, young and old, the
men who buy the women and girls in prostitution are from every
race/ethnicity in the world. Most are married. Women in prostitution
report that about half of their customers demand sexual acts without
a condom. One woman reported that as she was about to perform
fellatio on a man in his Volvo, she heard a cry from behind her,
turned around, and saw a year-old baby, strapped into a car seat.
Johns demand sexual
acts where they have 100% control over what happens. They may, for
example, want oral sex that their girlfriends refuse to perform, or
they may want to be spanked and they are embarrassed to ask their
wives to spank them, or they just want to get off with no emotional
obligation. As one man put it, “it’s like going to have your car
done.” Sometimes men in heterosexual marriages go to gay
prostitutes – and don’t use condoms because planning to use condoms
would impede their denial that they are bisexual or gay.
Johns’ capacity for
denial is legendary. Against common sense, johns insist that
prostitutes truly enjoy the non-relational, repetitive, rape-like
sex of prostitution. One man told an interviewer that he visited a
prostitute regularly in a Nevada brothel “in order to give her
pleasure.” A predatory genius with a website posted articles about
the medical benefits to women of breast massage, then claimed that
his purchase of women in prostitution was promoting their health.
Johns are secretive,
and it’s not easy to interview or research them. It is almost
impossible to estimate how many men in the world have bought women
for sex. Even where prostitution is legal, much of johns’ behaviors
are hidden from public view. We can’t be sure how many men have used
prostitutes. But it’s a lot, especially when you include bachelor
parties (sometimes described as gang rape parties by prostitutes)
and strip clubs (where women are prostituted in lap dancing).
Estimates of the numbers of men who have ever purchased women in
prostitution range from 16% - 80%. A conservative guess at the
percentage of US johns is probably around 50% of all men. This
includes purchase of trafficked women. Johns don’t ask for a
“trafficked woman” in a massage parlor. We do know, however, that
they often demand “something different,” which keeps up the demand
for so-called “exotic” women.
Sexologists like
Kinsey and Masters & Johnson worked from the 1940s through the
1970s, and articulated a prostitution-like sexuality for men and
women that was enthusiastically promoted by Hefner and Hollywood.
Most people learn about prostitution from movies such as Pretty
Woman. While the women and girls may be pretty, the johns are
not. According to one woman, “Prostitution wasn’t the fantasy full
of well-adjusted, merely lonely men, attractive and charismatic,
that we had all imagined. They were aggressive, needy, filthy and
unwashed. They scammed us constantly….”
Our awareness about
the harmful consequences of prostitution lags many years behind
awareness of the harms of incest, rape, and domestic violence. We do
know that violence against women is strongly associated with
culturally supported attitudes that encourage men to feel entitled
to sexual access to women, to feel superior to women, or to feel
that they have license as sexual aggressors. Accepting prostitution
as normal or inevitable male behavior justifies violence against
women. It critical to understand the nature and origin of men’s
attitudes and behaviors in prostitution: The relationship between
men and women in prostitution is paradigmatic for the relationship
between the sexes everywhere. This conference in Chicago, October
16-17, 2003, brings together activists, survivors of prostitution,
lawyers, and researchers to challenge men’s demand for
prostitution.
* Melissa Farley PhD is at
Prostitution Research & Education, San Francisco.
Email:
mfarley@prostitutionresearch.com
Website:
www.prostitutionresearch.com
Phone 415-922-4555
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