Customer Reviews

The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was a little worried this book might be a little too prurient. It actually turned out to be rather serious, and definitely very hard-hitting.

Unlike most books on prostitution, this one focuses on the other side of the equation - the men who purchase sex. Two things really struck me about these men. One, they seemed to have a lot of anger and resentment toward women, and expressed a real need for control over them. Second, they operate very strongly in denial.

As an example of the latter is the idea that prostitution is a victimless crime. Malarek does a good job pointing out that this is rarely the case - whether talking about children, drug users, abuse victims, trafficking victims, etc.

Being a good journalist, Malarek does provide plenty of stories (right down to trying to purchase some girls in Costa Rica himself), but also provides analysis and a surprising amount of passion too.

That the men who buy sex from trafficked girls are not moral pillars of the community is a shock to absolutely no one. The surprise coming from Malarek's The Johns Sex for Sale and the Men who Buy it is how brazen and unapologetic these men are for their actions. Some are even so diluted in their thought process that they actually believe that they are performing some sort of charitable action by giving a poor girl a miniscule amount of money that will go back to help feed her impoverished family in some third world country, therefore making the men heroes instead of disgusting pigs. Some reviewers have described this book as "man bashing." With all due respect, the men depicted within these pages are the prototypical man who would buy sex--a man who has hidden anger towards women or has been somehow conditioned to believe that women and children are a property to be owned.

I was able to read this book in one day because it read very quickly painting a picture of this angry, insecure, man-creature, discontented with his own life who needs to buy the sex of a stranger to compensate for the failings of himself...or more often in the eyes of the Johns the failings of Western women. I wish that Malarek had balanced his study of the men with more stories of the young women he's met in prostitution and human trafficking, that way maybe it would not have seemed like he was gaining up on the men involved in the global sex trade. Malarek is correct however in pinpointing the men in the link of the global sex trade because without men willing to pay for the sex, the trafficking and exploitation of women would not be so profitable. In any business whether it be legal or illegal the key is profitability, there's a reason why pimps, brothel owners, and gangsters traffic women because there are men willing to pay for sex making it immensely profitable.

I have very mixed feelings about The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It. On one hand, the author has clearly spent a significant amount of time investigating human trafficking and the abuse of children domestically and abroad, and I applaud his efforts to raise awareness of these tragedies. Unfortunately this makes the title of his book somewhat misleading, as the focus is almost exclusively on the men who subsidize these types of activities as consumers. There are already a number of books that focus on these men (such as Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry by Jeremy Seabrook), so I was hoping that this book would also discuss johns who patronize expensive escorts, legal brothels in Nevada, etc. There are mentions, but they are brief.

The intentions of the author are noble, but by demonizing all pornography and prostitution he over-simplifies a complicated issue. He dismisses the "happy hookers" who attest to entering the profession willingly and call for legalization and regulation as either not representative of most women in the profession, or puppets for pimps and mobsters. By disregarding the opinions and experiences of these women isn't he in a way disrespecting them, albeit in a well-intentioned way?

There is a lot of good information on the dark side of prostitution here, and much to enrage the reader. I wish the book would have had a broader focus though.

A must read for men, especially fathers, who feel that prostitution is a 'victim-less' crime.

This book describes how millions of men, around the globe, are buying sex from teenagers. Organized crime recieves the dollars, not the young girls who are often-time held captive and forced to service 10-20 men a day, every day.

It's time for us all to stop looking the other way.

I have been fundraising for human trafficking for a number of years as well as raising awareness about this topic. About a year ago I kept thinking, if we only rescue it is like cutting a weed for it to just grow back again. To get rid of weeds you poison them and pull out the roots. This is like human trafficking. In order to stop it you need to pull out the roots - which in my opinion starts with pornography.

I have read, watched and spoken so much on human trafficking that to say it doesn't effect me would be wrong, but I am not as emotionally sensitive (ie cry every time I talk about it). To now read about the HUGE problem of pornography and to see how it leads to men buying sex from women and children who have been trafficked has been a shocking wake up call.

Who knew the sadistic imagery that is floating around the internet today was so confronting! We need people to stand up against pornography before our Western society self destructs! If there is one book that you need to read on this problem - this is it. It will give you a bird's eye view as well as what goes on in the minds of these men who are purchasing sex.

William Wilberforce said "If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large."

Let's be fanatical about this problem because I can tell you the porn industry is fanatical about hooking men in! Read the book, get educated, get motivated and be fanatical about changing the world you live in!

Malarek writes an intense, well documented, paradigm shifting piece in this brilliantly disturbing book about men who purchase women and girls for sex. Parts of the book are (appropriately) very, very disturbing but not gratuitous. To understand "Johns" and the issue of sex trafficking, and sex tourism this is a must read.

I FOUND THIS BOOK TO BE A REAL EYE OPENER. THERE ARE A LOT OF MONEY GRUBBING SICK PERVS IN THIS WORLD.
I HAD NO CLUE! FASCINATING READ.

The subject matter of this book is quite disturbing but the author has done an excellent job of stepping inside the world of Johns and researching their thought processes and actions - in their own words in many cases. He even traveled to several sites around the world seen as sexual vacation locations by Johns and promoted on the worldwide tourims venues as sex tourism locations. Anyone with a conscience and awareness of human trafficking for the sex trade and those who are sheltered from this topic should give this book a read. This book tells the ugly truth about men who pay for sex.

This author hit the nail on the head on this subject. That buying sex is both harmful to women and men. This book shows all aspects of different types of "Johns" and how that the huge majority of women and children are lured, tricked, or forced into prostitution and that no woman or child grows up wanting to be a prostitute. The part I found amazing (in a good way) was the chapter on "Charge the Johns". That in 1999 Sweden decriminalized "selling sex", women would no longer face being arrested. Sweden then criminalized "buying sex" holding johns criminally responsible for the sexual exploitation of women for prostitution. In other words go after the "johns". As stated in this book, Sweden doesn't have a problem with prostitutes, they have a problem with men who buy sex! Sweden was at a crossroad: they had to decide if their society would take the path of least resistance and give into the notion that prostitution is normal and nothing you can do about it and legalize it, or reject the notion that some women and children should be used as commodities that can be bought and sold (some quoting from the book). Sweden did the right thing. I wish America would. Sweden's Sex purchase law (and I quote from the book) "In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem....Gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell, and exploit women and children by prostituting them."
Reading some of the things these "johns" said will make you sick. I actually had to put the book down and come back to it later. These "johns" have no respect for women and a huge majority of them even hate women. What they can't get "normal" women to do sexually to them, they pay a prostitute to do. Don't kid yourself if you think "johns" don't know that these prostitutes are being forced to do it. Most of these "johns" know it, they just don't care.

The Johns by Victor Malarek is an overview of the men who purchase sex from prostitutes. I'm not sure, as advertised, that "little" has been written about such men. If I enter "customers prostitution" in Amazon Books I get over three hundred responses. Not having read those books I can not venture to say whether this book is in any way better or more complete. However, having read The Johns, I can say that I found it to be a moderately interesting overview of the subject.

The first 60% or so of the book is built around a series of chapters about the men who buy sex. The chapters basically "escalate" from the meek men who are socially maladjusted, the family men who aren't getting any at home, those who've had divorces or failed relationships, the third world sex tourists through the hardcore women haters looking to degrade women. Most of chapters are illustrated by the quotes that the author has taken from the thousands of on-line comments he reviewed. Personally I would suspect that men who log on the internet to boast about their sexual activities might not be a totally average selection of Johns. While I don't doubt the quotes Victor Malarek cites they seem far more colorful than the predominantly banal discussions I saw on some of the websites the author mentions. I didn't think that there was anything particularly new or insightful in these chapters, compared with say a feature article on sex tourism in Thailand in the Sunday newspaper, but I did feel that it was a comprehensive summation.

The balance of the book is more editorial and based on the author's perception of what should be done. Some aspects of these chapters are interesting: the presence of trafficking in prostitutes (the author wrote a compelling book on the subject, The Natashas), the effectiveness of "John" school and the impact of outlawing the buying (as opposed to the selling) of sex in Sweden. However the author's opinions tend to predominate rather than any exhaustive analysis. His very justified disgust at human trafficking also means that he will not tolerate any consideration whatsoever that a woman might voluntarily choose to become a sex worker. Similarly he admires the Swedish experiment but fails to followup his own assertion that prostitution was expanding rapidly in the adjacent countries (i.e. did the Swedes reduce prostitution or simply create sex tourists).

Victor Malarek is an investigative journalist on Canadian public television. As such he specializes in 8 to 12 minute segments where there is the innocent victim, the dastardly villain and the self righteous condemnation at the end. In many ways the strengths and weaknesses of this book mirror those segments. It shows the plight of the innocent prostitute who must sell her body, it condemns the dastardly males who purchase sex and it demands the criminalization of Johns to resolve the matter. However those mini-Victorian morality plays leave no room for complexity, doubt or discussion. Unfortunately the same is true of this book.