Men Who Buy Sex

Over at Border Thinking, Laura Agustín links to an article on the clients of sex workers. It is an information-packed and short read, and describes Canadian research on the topic -- so of course I recommend checking it out.

On the topic of clients, I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think it's all too easy to think of the clients of sex workers (also known as johns or kerb crawlers depending on your side of the Atlantic) as monstrous or in some way "different" from other men. Even some who recognize that laws against sex workers themselves (that is, against selling) are counter-productive and absurd may want to criminalize the demand end of the equation. Taken to the extreme, we get shaming campaigns and the existence of "John schools" which can amount to little more than ill-informed "lessons" and diversion from prison time.

It's gotten more difficult lately for me to think coherently about sex work and especially clients, given that my views on feminism and gender relations have changed substantially in the time since I first became interested in the topic. Yet I still don't think that these extreme reactions to clients are helpful to anybody: clients, sex workers, or the communities in which both live and work.