Misreading Prostitution

Thirteen-year-old girls are being pimped as whores on the streets of Canada! (Or are the accounts more sensation than substance?) Johns are the engine driving the sexual terrorism of women and children around the globe! (Or, maybe, most johns are sad, disconnected men who are more often exploited than they are exploiters.) The media are too busy dishing out the sizzle and sex of prostitution to provide objective answers. For those, we turn to researchers.

Two new books offer glimpses into distinct but intimately related aspects of prostitution. Gangs and Girls: Understanding Juvenile Prostitution, by Michel Dorais and Patrice Corriveau, attempts to “document” how street gangs in North America lure underaged girls into prostitution and, then, control them. Victor Malarek’s The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It examines the men who constitute a “little known link in the chain of prostitution and human sex trafficking.”

A caveat...