Who are the Johns?
Often the focus of sex trafficking and prostitution issues is on the women who are victimized. Except for the occasional scandal in the political world, the men who buy are largely kept out of discussion. However, at a recent UN Commission on the Status of Women panel on the issue of “Mass Marketing Prostitution: Sexual Exploitation as Entertainment” it was clear that most attendants believed the only way to combat trafficking is to, not only be educated on the issue, but to look at the demand side as a major source of the problem.
The title question brought me to the book by Victor Malarek, frankly titled The Johns. Malarek provides insight into the Brotherhood of Johns and assembles narratives from different men (from the "Lonely Guy" to the "Predator.") It soon becomes clear that if we were to meet a John, he would be all too familiar.
Excerpt "Confessions of a John"
Norman was a teenager when he first paid for sex. "I'm the classic story. I lost my virginity to a prostitute. I was eighteen, horny, and not getting beyond third base with any girls. So I paid twenty-five-dollars and hit a homerun!
"It wasn't like fireworks lighting up the nighttime sky or anything even approximating that," he admits. "It was quick. Over in probably fifteen seconds." he laughs.
I don't remember a thing about the woman, but I'll always remember the rush in my brain about going to see a prostitute. I knew inside I was doing something dirty. If my mother ever found out, she would have hit me over the head with a ladle. I'm sure my old man would have laughed. But never in my mind did I think it would lead to a lifestyle and a serious problem."
Norman, a retired engineer who is married and has two sons and five grandchildren, continued patronizing prostituted women for almost half a century. For the first two decades, he stayed home, but at thirty-eight he started vacationing abroad. He has been to the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Brazil, Romania, Russia, Columbia, and the Dominican Republic, to name a few, and he figures that over the years he has spent $250,000 on women alone.
I am sitting with Norman in a coffee shop. When he heard I was writing a book about johns, he approached me, wanting to tell his story.
For the past two years, he tells me, he has been clean, with the help of Sex Addicts Anonymous. I ask him what made him stop. Norman stares at the wall for a moment and then looks down at his coffee mug. "I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. My sex life is over, and who knows if I'll be around in a year."
He takes a deep breath and continues. "About a year ago, I decided to tell my wife everything... everything I had been doing all these years behind her back. She was devastated. I thought she would ask for a divorce, but she didn't. She stays with me for the sake of the children and the grandchildren. She cried a lot at first. She's over the initial shock, but I don't think she will ever get over it totally.
"I needed to clean the slate. I wanted to get all this... out of my head. I needed her to forgive me," he says. "She says she's forgiven me, and maybe in some small way she has. At least my mind is a little calmer."
But there is a nagging regret that jabs at Norman's conscience. He admits that he had never thought much about whether the women he paid were forced. "For a lot of years, I never thought about it," he says. "I figured they were all in it for the money. When I went to foreign destinations, I didn't speak the language, so there was little if any conversation. "
"But I realized something about myself a few years back. I had never really looked into the eyes of any of my dates. I'd look at their face but I never looked into their eyes."
One night in Prague, he finally noticed. " I hired this beautiful escort. She was in her midtwenties. I think she was Russian or Ukrainian.... She was brought to my hotel room by a guy with no neck. I noticed right away that she looked embarrassed and scared. I had no way of knowing what she was thinking. We couldn't communicate.
"Then I looked into her eyes. There was this haunting sadness and a fear in them." But Norman went ahead. "I had already paid so I had sex with her. When it was over, I went to the washroom to clean up and when I came back into the room she was crying. It was the first time I had ever felt ashamed inside for doing this."
Norman admits that it ruined his vacation. "I didn't really feel up for much after that. So I headed home. Not much later, I read a few articles on this phenomenon of trafficked women -- girls being kidnapped or tricked into prostitution, being taken to another country and forced into prostitution by gangs of pimps. I got the feeling then that she was definitely trafficked. There was no way she wanted to be there. I knew that even before I had asked her.
I ask whether this changed his view of prostitution. "Not right away," he replies. "What did change is I started looking at the women I'd hire. I mean looking beyond their looks and their body. What I began to notice is that while most smiled and said how happy they were to see me, there was a certain look in their eyes, and slowly I began to feel more and more uncomfortable with myself and what I was doing. It wasn't like some sort of epiphany or anything like that. It was this gnawing feeling in my gut."
"Guilt?" I asked.
"I never felt guilt. I just did it because I wanted sex and I'd bought into all the cliches -- all this about the oldest profession, that men need sex, and prostitutes were doing it for the money. Guilt never entered my thought process," he recalls, "that is, until that night in Prague."
"What happened?" I asked.
"I kept seeing her face. I kept seeing the fear in her eyes, and I'd see her crying. She made me think how many of the prostitutes I had sex with -- and they number in the hundreds -- were really doing it because they wanted to. To me, I was buying a product. They didn't exist as people. They were just whores. And all of a sudden, I start asking myself, 'What have I done?'
"I know what I've done is despicable and dishonorable. I used a lot of women because I had the cash and they were selling. I didn't think much about their situation. I only thought about my situation. It's taken me a long time to get to this point in my life and to come to terms with it. All I want to do is somehow make amends."
Asked if he had any words of advice for other men following in his footsteps, Norman was initially reluctant.
"There isn't much I can say that will make most of them ever change their ways. They don't care about the women they sleep with. Sex is the thing. And who am I to give advice? I'm a life-long monger.
But if I had one bit of advice, I'd ask them to look into the woman's eyes. That will tell them if she wants to be there or whether she's been forced into it. All drug addicted hookers are forced to do it. All poor women are forced into it. When I look back at the hundreds of women I've paid for sex, I know that most didn't want to be prostitutes. If anything, they should be called destitutes and I used every single one of them because I didn't care. I would say the majority of women don't want to be whores and men should think hard about what they are doing and quit deluding themselves with excuses and lies."
(taken from p. 111-114)
- Elle Park, NYCUP Advocate
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