The John Next Door

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

I'm beginning to feel I need a recovery group for women who have read far too much of this kind of tripe.

 

I scan these articles and fail to find anything that resembles my life or the lives of other paid companions I know. The men these writers describe don't seem to be at all like my clients, either. And I am very suspicious of anyone who does a study that equates men who look at pornography with men who pay for companionship and with men who exploit children sexually. If the researcher had eliminated the pornography viewers from her study, she would have had very different data, although it still would not reflect my experience, from my years inside the sex trade.

 

As it is, Melissa Farley has posed an impossible and completely unrealistic task for herself by contriving to skewer nearly all North American men, label them "sex buyers," and then seriously propose shutting down the sex trade completely. Better feminist researchers long ago recognized that we cannot reasonably expect all North American men to do anything together, nor is it sensible to imagine that those same men will enact legislation that is contrary to their interests and deeply-cherished inclinations and proclivities.

 

I would like to rant about some of this, but, frankly, I'm tired! Pleasant as it is to preach to the choir, I'll leave that for another night.

 

WIT, as always, I'm grateful to you for your steadfast faithfulness and, in the case of articles like this one, your strong stomach.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

One tell-tale BS indicator (excluding the obvious red-flag "Melissa Farley" itself), is the fact that she released this study "exclusively to Newsweek". Because as a scientist, she obviously wouldn't want to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal, now would she? Better to find an easily duped mass-circulation vehicle to broadcast her polemic directly to millions of readers.

 

How far would this fly in the scientific community: "Methodology: Find the most extreme statements possible, made by someone who claims to be a John. Then insinuate that this statement applies to all Johns." I somehow suspect that such a methodology is not standard operating procedure in psychological research. But it is standard operating procedure in the game Melissa Farley has been playing for a long time now.

[roamingguy 300291]

And isn't it interesting, there is no stigma, no people ready to jump to the rescue (said sarcastically) when consenting adults have sex.....except when it involves prostitution. I guess it's evil for a lady and gentleman to have sex in exchange for money...then it's a case of a prostitute and john and that is exploitation of a woman at the hands of a man!!! (again, sarcastically)

But if a lady is asked out for dinner, like on a date, and one thing led to another, well that would be ok

And until Melissa Farley came along, I thought I was reimbursing the ladies for their time, not buying them. And whatever happened was mutually beneficial and agreed to by the lady and myself. Sure glad Melissa has enlightened me to the badness I was doing, and straightened around my thinking. Just kinda feel dirty and ashamed now. BTW my comments are sarcastic, and I too know I'm preaching to the choir

Melissa, the Victorian Era ended a long time ago. Your not out saving anyone, your imposing or trying to impose your beliefs on others.

My rant ended

RG

[Carley Chase 18985]

Reading this article brought nothing out of my life that I could relate to. This is just another one of those stereo-typical articles. I do realise that there is obviously a higher danger risk, in this profession. However, you can make it safer by screening and ect..

 

As for the gentleman that I have gotten to know, they have done nothing more than treat me like a lady. I do not know where they find the people for these studies :)

 

As long as know one is forcing anyone to do the career, then there is nothing wrong it. You can get yourself set up very well in life. I realise there are circumstances were this is not the case, however, I feel the article made it seem all dark and bad.

[Jabba 18389]

I'm (almost) speechless. Where on earth did this author research her "facts" and come to these amazing, and yes, vitriolic conclusions?

 

Remember the McCarthy Red Menace purges in the 50's? Just substitute "John" with "Commie" and you get the idea:

There is a John lurking in our homes, schools, law enforcement agencies and yes, our very neighbourhoods. But wait, if he isn't a John, he will become a John...it is inevitable. Such is the subversive power of Johnunism.

[mrrnice2 157005]

Where should I start? !!

 

I have made references in many other forum contributions to the classic stereotypes and to the many ways in which I have discovered them to be false. These stereotypes are assigned to sex workers and as noted in that crazy 'study', to clients as well.

 

I have met a friend on here who has tried to explain to me how vocabulary usage has evolved and is now changing again. In particular when I questioned her use of the words slut, and queer, and how for me they had a derogatory connotation, she explained how these words are being "reclaimed" and used with pride and purposeful intent by the people to whom they have been applied.

 

Perhaps the word 'john' needs to be reclaimed?

 

I am a John.

 

I am not in any way the John as described in the study.

 

I treat all women and sex workers with respect.

 

I do not buy women. I do pay women for the time that they spend with me. I do have an expectation of sex and intimacy, but honestly, I never have preconceptions. What will be will be.

 

I do NOT expect women to 'perform' or carry out any activity with which they are not comfortable. I would go even further in saying that I do NOT expect women to 'perform' or carry out any activity that is not pleasurable or enjoyable to them.

 

Do I live in a dream world? No. I do know that there are women who are abused and mistreated. I have zero respect for any individual who would treat a woman in that way.

 

As a John, as with all Johns, there are reasons for our participation. My own are very personal and do not involve seeking activities that my wife/girlfriend will not participate in.

 

Sex and intimacy are basic human needs. I need them to be met.

 

I am not going to seek a girlfriend and pretend that there is a future in order for sex and intimacy to occur with her. I am not going to go to singles bars. (Afraid I would be the last man standing there at last call.)

 

What I do, I do with foreknowledge, with respect, and with a certainty that I am not doing anything morally wrong. It emotionally hurts a great deal to know that in many ways what I do is considered to be illegal.

 

This entire issue is presenting a moral dilemma as well. I see and know of women out there who are standing up, being public, intervening in court cases and fighting for their rights. They are also fighting for my rights as they do so.

 

To this point I am a bystander. I cannot think of another situation in my life where I sat back and let someone else fight my battles. I know myself well enough to know that if and when push comes to shove, then I will be there too. Am I ready to precipitate my action? Not yet, and it is in large degree because of the existing stereotypes for both sex workers and their Johns.

 

Like I say, a moral dilemma.

[cat 262460]

I had a wonderful conversation with an SP and we were discussing the Ontario COA proceedings. She defined hobbyists in a clear, concise manner that I had never considered before.

 

The term "John" implies someone who is intentionally anonymous to the SP. That's where the term John came from. The purchaser is never identified and if there is violence or issue, he is not held accountable because the SP cannot identify him.

 

The term client is applicable to someone that initiates a business relationship with an SP, providing his name and information to verify who he is, thus allowing us to take precautionary steps to ensure our safety.

 

I have always felt there is a huge difference between a client and a John, I simply never defined why. Her clarity was dead on. This article is offensive to me on every level. I don't know where they find these guys or what questions they asked to elicit such responses.

 

cat

[Guest f***2f***]

People that do research like this look for people to verify the conclusions they have already made and they exclude those who don't. I can remember a person performing a so called survey just before the last election who once she found out my views were not as liberal as hers simply hung up on me. How scientific will that survey be if she hung up on all the "random" folks she called. Her findings will agree with her pre-conceived notions.

 

These folks are dreaming in techni-colour if they think they will eliminate people "paying for sex." It's done in many ways and in many relationships. It's absurd and as many have pointed out it is the new Puritanism that radical feminism and liberal political correctos have imposed upon us all.

[bcguy42 38594]

I am at a loss in regards to what do you do with people like this "researcher". The theory, the methodology and the results are so absurd they would make for high comedy except for the fact that some people take her seriously.

 

I just deleted a whole section devoted to refuting her findings.

 

Refutation is not the issue.

 

The issue is that this person comes from the same dangerous place as the Tea Party in the US, the activist Christian religious conservatives that insist school textbooks be rewritten to reflect their views that a patriarchal deity created the entire world as a single set piece 6000 years ago. From this black hole comes the people that seriously want to end the life of a woman found not guilty by a duly constituted court of law. (Yee-haw! Let's put persons accused of capital offenses up for a popular vote!)

 

"Researchers" like this scare the crap out of me for two reasons. One - they actively seek to impose their worldview on me and mine. Two - they are gaining more and more followers every day. Witness the rise of Fox News in the US and Sun News here in Canada.

 

New Zealand is starting to look more and more attractive!

[fortunateone 156618]

I think Farley approached this place to publish her research cuz no one else would. I read up on this "research" quite some time ago, and have forgotten more than I remember.

 

Basically, it is worthless because, like many researchers with a bias, the questions and the ones posing the questions were revealed to be with further bias. The face to face interviews were not done by unbiased students, but a specific group of anti-prostitution women. The questions seemed to be designed to get specific sorts of results. For the ones who might behave violently, I am thinking the question itself had no "not applicable" option, leaving the results skewed towards a Yes. I do know the %age for guys who did say yes to that questions was seriously low, and so low as to imply that they were only going to be able to say yes, so chose the yes with the least value.

 

I believe the study was done in Scotland. Someone with a little more patience than I might find that breakdown online about this dubious research. The reporter who presented the story compounds it by including the exaggerated numbers for the trafficked children, numbers which I think were recently revealed to be far out of wack to be to the point of ludicrous.

 

At the same time, there has been research of clients, johnsvoice, which is a far better representation of attitudes, and no obvious abolitionist bias to study the findings, imo.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

... I believe the study was done in Scotland....

 

This latest study, the one released to Newsweek, was based on interviews with men from the Boston, MA area...

 

otherwise, can't argue with you!

[VedaSloan 119179]

http://magazine.goodvibes.com/2011/07/19/melissa-farley-and-the-us-government-want-you-to-stop-buying-sex/

[SamanthaEvans 166766]

Thanks for that link, Berlin. The article is by Laura Agustin, an internationally recognized authority on human migration, human trafficking and the sex trade. It's very good to read her response to Melissa Farley.

[Phaedrus 209521]

I am at a loss in regards to what do you do with people like this "researcher". The theory, the methodology and the results are so absurd they would make for high comedy except for the fact that some people take her seriously.

 

I just deleted a whole section devoted to refuting her findings.

 

Refutation is not the issue.

 

But it's all we can do. Getting angry and frustrated is no use. Mockery may or may not help, but many nut-jobs play the 'persecuted prophet' card and take the mockery and contempt of mainstream society as a badge of honor.

 

Reality will hopefully win out in the long run, but in the meantime I suspect the best thing that reasonable people can do is to refute the lies and the bogus arguments, point out why they're wrong and invalid, and do so whenever they crop up. Most people can spot the difference between a good argument and a bad one, at the end of the day. Yes, it'll be a long and frustrating war of attrition; yes, there will be setbacks along the way. But we'll get there, eventually.

[VedaSloan 119179]

What bothers me more is that media and others pick up on these so called "stats" and then publish them as fact. And the general person isn't about to go check the actual research to find out that it was totally biased, and skewed toward a certain result. This is the reason why the majority of people still think sex trafficking is a huge issue. I can't remember where I read this stat, so I can't back it up (I think it was on Laura Agustin's blog, the Naked Anthropologist, which is currently my favourite blog), but only about 4% of trafficking cases are for sex.

 

I made a really excellent argument in the comments section of the Xtra article talking about the prohibitionists attacking the pro-sex work panels at Women's Worlds and hurling verbal abuse at us (I personally was called a racist whore) (http://cerb.ca/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=245124#post245124)about how in February 500 Indian workers were trafficked after Hurricane Katrina to work in shipyards and they're making a formal complaint to the state about it, and yet no one is saying that we should abolish shipyard labour. Again and again, what it comes down to is sex.

 

These women are convinced that sex work is the exploitation of women, but if both parties have a dick, who's doing the exploiting?

 

"'Exploitation' evokes a zero-sum game: one person gains at the expense of the other. However, prostitution--and especially male prostitution--is almost always a commercial transaction in which both parties agree on a price beforehand. The exploitation argument seems to rest on the spurious claim that women find sex unpleasant, and that any women who engages in it for reasons other than love is having something taken from her, no matter what fee she commands. In comparison, consider the same transaction between two men. Who is exploiting whom? Is it the client, who has the financial ability to buy sex from a younger man with (presumably) less financial freedom, or is it the conventionally attractive hustler, who cashes in on the fact that he's younger and more desireable than the client? Whose erect penis represents the "weaker sex"?" (Julian Marlow, "It's Different for Boys" in Whores and other Feminists ed. Jill Nagle. pp 141-42).

 

Of course, prohibitionists arguments fall to pieces once men and trans individuals are included in the mix.

[Nicolette Vaughn 294340]

Who did they think 'johns' resembled? The boogeyman? A predator lurking in the night? If they are just figuring this out now that a customer of a prostitute can be anyone of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds then society is really behind, ignorant and most of all blind! I suddenly feel like I'm in the dark ages.

[SamanthaEvans 166766]

I think that's just it, Nicolette. These researchers know that the men who pay for sex with companions are ordinary men. That's what's so threatening. If the men they know and love--husbands, friends, fathers, brothers--are no different from men who pay for sex, then they want to make sure that no one can buy sex, period. They fear that women like us are out to take their men away from them (even though we're not) and that they will be exposed as women whose partners resorted to seeing prostitutes, which implies that they weren't able to keep their men happy.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

This study was sponsored by the Hunt Alternatives Fund's "Demand Abolition Project".

 

So it's of course no mystery as to why they chose to pay someone like Melissa Farley, whose predilections so closely match their own, to provide their anti-John research. From their website:

 

Although slavery is illegal in every country in the world, it exists in every nation and in our own backyards. Slavery is more prevalent today than at any point in history, with estimates as high as 27 million slaves worldwide ... the US Department of State estimates that roughly 80 percent of the 600,000 to 800,000 people moved across state borders each year (an estimated 17,500 are brought into the United States) are bought and sold for sex, most of them women and children.... Thousands of US citizens are tricked, lured, and coerced into the sex industry, with an estimated 300,000 juveniles vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation every year ... we focus on the

root cause of the problem: demand. Individuals who assume the right to purchase another human being fuel the market for sex that traffickers and pimps supply with victims. Until the demand for commercial sex is eliminated, the sexual enslavement of children, women, and sometimes men will continue, endangering victims, degrading perpetrators, and harming our society.

 

http://www.huntalternatives.org/pages/4_our_work.cfm

[wayfarer 368]

This puts me in mind of a cute quote from an SP I respect and admire, Lust Day:

<<I know you want me to be safe because you care about me. But when you say "be safe", who do you think we sex workers need to protect ourselves from? ... What is demonstrably more dangerous than sex work is intimate partnership. Domestic violence is the number one cause of death and permanent disability to Australian women. So when your sister tells you she's moving in with her boyfriend, do you tell her to "be safe"? Would you refuse to have your friend's wedding at your home given how you know domestic partnership to be a "high-risk lifestyle"?>>

[Nicolette Vaughn 294340]

This puts me in mind of a cute quote from an SP I respect and admire, Lust Day:

<<I know you want me to be safe because you care about me. But when you say "be safe", who do you think we sex workers need to protect ourselves from? ... What is demonstrably more dangerous than sex work is intimate partnership. Domestic violence is the number one cause of death and permanent disability to Australian women. So when your sister tells you she's moving in with her boyfriend, do you tell her to "be safe"? Would you refuse to have your friend's wedding at your home given how you know domestic partnership to be a "high-risk lifestyle"?>>

 

Good point. When a woman is murdered it is usually at the hands of someone she already knows especially where crimes of passion are concerned. Most SPs take the necessary precautions to protect themselves against any form of violence such as those who work indoors. The stereotype of prostitutes as drug addicted and taking higher risks as a result are considered a much higher rate statistically as opposed to those who are not working in the streets.

 

When someone tells you to be safe, like you said, who are they trying to protect themselves from? Count Dracula? No, it is the everyday guy and is the same type of person as the individual who says things like "Be Safe". Imo these comments can be considered condescening at times since I always take precautions.

[VedaSloan 119179]

This puts me in mind of a cute quote from an SP I respect and admire, Lust Day:

<<I know you want me to be safe because you care about me. But when you say "be safe", who do you think we sex workers need to protect ourselves from? ... What is demonstrably more dangerous than sex work is intimate partnership. Domestic violence is the number one cause of death and permanent disability to Australian women. So when your sister tells you she's moving in with her boyfriend, do you tell her to "be safe"? Would you refuse to have your friend's wedding at your home given how you know domestic partnership to be a "high-risk lifestyle"?>>

 

That sounds like a quote I read on Born Whore's blog (Juliet November)-I know she worked in Australia for quite some time, maybe they're the same person?

 

 

Also, I wanted to make mention of the use of the word "slavery" and "abolition" by prohibitionists.

 

I hate how they have appropriated these terms and in turn have appropriated the experiences of enslaved racialized peoples, which is why I refuse to call them "abolitionists." They are prohibitionists plain and simple.

[SamanthaEvans 166766]

That sounds like a quote I read on Born Whore's blog (Juliet November)-I know she worked in Australia for quite some time, maybe they're the same person?

 

This is one of my favourites actually. Born Whore's piece, "It's You I'm Afraid Of" says a LOT for me!

 

 

Also, I wanted to make mention of the use of the word "slavery" and "abolition" by prohibitionists.

 

I hate how they have appropriated these terms and in turn have appropriated the experiences of enslaved racialized peoples, which is why I refuse to call them "abolitionists." They are prohibitionists plain and simple.

 

I agree with you 100% Berlin and I've started to use "prohibitionists" instead, too. Sex work is not slavery. And we all know how well Prohibition turned out, don't we? Canadian rum runners made quite a bit of money in those days!

[VedaSloan 119179]

This is one of my favourites actually. Born Whore's piece, "It's You I'm Afraid Of" says a LOT for me!

 

Quick aside, her ex-fiancee is my current lover :)

[mrrnice2 157005]

This is one of my favourites actually. Born Whore's piece, "It's You I'm Afraid Of" says a LOT for me!quote]

 

 

What an amazing piece of writing. Thank you so much for sharing this link.

[roamingguy 300291]

I'd like to thank Cat for her post, distinguishing between a "john" and a client. I find that the arguments used to argue against prostitution are based on ignorance and stereotypes, not on rational arguments. In my experience, the encounters have been mutually beneficial. In a few cases, I had to provide references, in a few others, not just references, but verification to the ladies I wanted to meet. Although it has been quite a few years now, I don't recall in my conventional dating days where I needed such scrutiny to go out with a woman. In fact, not one of the conventional dates I ever went on did I ever need any sort of reference/verification/vouching. Really, seeing escorts in a lot of cases requires being more scrutinized than conventional dating. I won't touch on abusive relationships/marriages, it seems to have already been done. The tragedy is that it is the ugly little secret that there isn't the same political will to deal with.

I certainly hope I'm a client, not a "john". In one case, the lady and myself are friends. A few ladies know my real name. And even those ladies who did not request/require verification, well if asked I would have provided it. None of the ladies I've seen I'm embarrassed or ashamed of seeing.

And to intersperse a thought here. I haven't met a prostitute/whore or hooker in the time I've been involved with this lifestyle. All I've met are ladies This, in my opinion, is more than just a matter of semantics. But to call and/or view the ladies as prostitutes/whores/ or hookers allows someone to marginalize and view ladies as less than people, and not deserving of any rights or respect. But a lady is a real person, someone's mother/sister/daughter, and all ladies deserve respect.

I hope this is coming out right. My morning thoughts while the second pot of coffee is brewing

From a client (and gentleman) who enjoys the company of ladies

RG