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 must precede any discussion of research into prostitution: it is a notoriously difficult subject on which to procure reliable data.

Prostitution is both socially stigmatized and illegal. In Canada, unlike the United States in general, only certain aspects of prostitution are criminalized, but the whiff of criminality pervades the activity. Moreover, if a woman admits to prostitution, she risks losing custody of her children and her status in “regular” society; she may ruin alternative career prospects and put associates at risk of being charged with pimping. Understandably, therefore, prostitutes hide their activities and are suspicious of strangers with questions.

Both Gangs and Girls and The Johns acknowledge the dearth of data about their target populations as well as the difficulty of collecting solid information. But the books deal with these obstacles in widely differing ways. The methodologies they employ are key because their value depends entirely on the accuracy of the data. If the information is not valid, then the books may be interesting but they make no necessary or compelling statement about juvenile prostitution or johns. They do not tell us how society should address the issues.

Most of this review, therefore, focuses on methodology.

Defining the Population Studied

Gangs and Girls highlights two populations: gang-related juvenile prostitutes and the gangs themselves. But the definition of those two populations suffers from a severe shift and blurring. Gangs and Girls is based on the 2006 study Jeunes filles sous influence: prostitution juvénile et gangs de rue by Dorais, a professor of social work at Laval University, and Corriveau, a professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. The populations studied were principally in Quebec City and Montreal. The current volume is an updated English edition. As part of the update, the book pushes its findings “beyond the Quebec and Canadian contexts” to apply them to gang-related juvenile prostitution throughout North America. The expanded scope is achieved through meta-analysis—the evaluation and integration of statistical data from other independent studies that examine the same problem. Meta-analysis can be a valuable technique, but for the integration of data to work, the parameters of the studies must be compatible if not identical. If the studies are not compatible, then the attempt to integrate data is more likely to compound errors than to render insight.

Gangs and Girls does a poor job of meta-analysis. For example, Dorais and Corriveau draw on research into American gangs because “the situation in Canada is influenced by what is going on in the United States.” At one point, a parallel is drawn between gangs in Los Angeles in the 1970s and current ones in Quebec when it is not clear that data on current American gangs are even relevant. Too many factors are incompatible with the Canadian experience. Consider just one. Dorais and Corriveau write: “While the best-known gangs in Canada are composed of Caribbean youth … Police estimates for Winnipeg suggest that 85 per cent of street gang members there are aboriginals.” U.S. gang activity is largely driven by blacks and Hispanics; the latter includes a high percentage of illegal immigrants, some of whom act as contact points for criminal gangs in South America. Even without considering other significant variations—for example, the illegality of prostitution and the gun culture in America—the two populations are not homogeneous. The book’s scope properly remains the gangs and gang-related juvenile prostitutes in Quebec City and Montreal.

The Johns by journalist Malarek examines men who buy sex from women. Malarek distinguishes among johns—for instance, the worst sort is “the predator”—but his sweeping statements treat all johns as interchangeable units despite differences in nationality, culture, class, behaviour and motives. Thus Malarek ultimately lumps a 16-year-old farm boy who visits a local “pro” into the same category as the violent john who flies to Thailand to molest children.

How the Data Were Collected

In fairness, research into prostitution has inherent problems because most studies interview prostitutes who are in legal custody or treatment programs. First, the population is self-selecting; for example, prostitutes in drug treatment programs tend toward addiction due to other problems, such as sexual molestation as a child. Moreover, women imprisoned or in treatment are generally street prostitutes, who constitute approximately 15 percent of the industry. They may say little that applies to the majority of prostitutes—e.g., those who drop in and out to finance college or who work as high-priced escorts. Second, prostitutes in prison or in treatment tend to say whatever they think researchers want to hear in order to receive early release, better conditions or continued participation in programs. Without fact checking, how can you tell if a prostitute is being candid or gaming the system? Nevertheless, such studies have the advantage of directly accessing the population being studied.

By contrast, Gangs and Girls “is largely based on accounts … by social workers, community outreach staff, and police officers”; these sources have both a monetary stake in and a professional bent on the issue. And confusingly, the researchers discard such “expert” accounts if they do not like them. Dorais and Corriveau state that “there is a crying lack of awareness on the part of social workers and police officers at all levels of the hierarchy … [T]he extent and even the existence of juvenile prostitution are often questioned or trivialized.” Thus Dorais and Corriveau discredit their own sources when they do not support the book’s contention that juvenile prostitution is “on the rise” and requires more funding for future studies. Similarly, they dismiss juvenile prostitutes who contradict their theories. They cite one study by Michelle Côté in which “teenage girls … who had participated in a gang bang did not consider it to be an instance of sexual assault” when questioned by Montreal police. The contradicting data are attributed to a “culture of silence” and so dismissed.

Dorais and Corriveau did interview a handful of juvenile prostitutes whom they quote, but the number of subjects, the questions asked, the method of verification if any—such information is not offered, and so cannot be evaluated.

Moreover, when dealing with key aspects such as the clients, they rely entirely upon selected studies and the court testimony of accused men. For example, Dorais and Corriveau appeal to “inquiries into underage prostitution by UNICEF and the Conseil du Statut de la Femme du Québec” that “concluded that nothing appears to distinguish clients of under aged girls, as a group, from the clients of adult prostitutes.” Therefore, they use data on the clients of adult prostitutes and apply it to juvenile prostitution. Common sense suggests remarkable differences. For example, juvenile prostitution is utterly taboo and illegal, and a client risks literal ostracism as a sex offender and criminal prosecution for rape. Conflating the two types of clients, however, allows Dorais and Corriveau to make sensational statements about the clients of juveniles, such as “52 per cent were fathers.”

To its credit, Gangs and Girls repeatedly admits the weakness of its own research, stating that “it is practically impossible to accurately assess an ‘underground’ social phenomenon that is constantly shifting in space and time.” Unfortunately, after such admissions, Dorais and Corriveau proceed to make hard claims about the behaviour and motivations of gang members, prostitutes and johns. In fact, much of their presentation is speculation. Regarding the clients of juveniles, for example, the book admits that “in the absence of specific data on the clients of prostituted girls, we put forward here some likely factors stoking the demand for their services.”

The methodology employed by Malarek in The Johns is also questionable but differently so. Although the book references studies, Malarek’s account basically draws on four sources: websites, examples from literature or legal cases, interviews with johns and his own experience as a journalist researching prostitution. Skepticism about his methodology arises on two points: his sources are not credible and his generalizations are not justified.

Consider the credibility of websites. Malarek writes, “I gleaned more than fifty Web sites … I read more than five thousand posts on a wide range of issues written by these men.” The misogynistic online discussion documented by Malarek is fascinating and represents a phenomenon that deserves attention. Nevertheless, online chatter does not establish Malarek’s claims. He offers it as objective evidence of the harmful attitudes and activities of johns when it may be merely the braggadocio of men goading each other on under the protection of anonymity. Moreover, data from misogynistic sites are SLOPs—self-selecting opinion polls; it is akin to asking the membership of Planned Parenthood if they are pro-choice. The results are predictable and say nothing about the general population.

Examples drawn from the vast expanse of literature and legal cases are also predictable because the “researcher” can select whatever supports a chosen theory.

Malarek writes: “I also interviewed sixteen men who talked openly—but on the condition of anonymity—about the reasons they seek paid sex.” It is not credible to use 16 interviews as a basis for assessing the tens of millions of men who have purchased sex at least once. Ultimately, however, johns become a monolith in this book because Malarek views prostitution in that manner: all prostitutes are victims stripped of choice and dignity. He writes that “men are the users and abusers of prostituted women and children. It is their demand for paid sex that is creating huge profits for crime networks worldwide and incentives for traffickers, pimps, brothel owners, and porn producers.” Note that both books conflate the clients of adult and juvenile prostitutes.

The most credible evidence is Malarek’s own experiences, but since he actively seeks out the worst examples of johns to interview—ones who travel abroad to have sex with children—it is not clear his evidence is representative of “The John.”

What Do the Books Conclude?

In the final section of Gangs and Girls, the researchers recommend the decriminalization of prostitution, all the while acknowledging that juvenile prostitution would remain criminal because of the age factor. (Decriminalization means eliminating all laws, including ones against the men; legalization means applying regulatory laws, such as red-light districts.) Dorais and Corriveau clearly stress prevention over criminalization. They ask: “How can this vicious cycle be broken?” Thus, one of the areas of proposed research is clearly intended to develop policy for “practitioners” such as social workers, who are “the preventive support that is needed to help gang-prone girls and boys avoid the temptations of street gangs, including support to the families and communities.”

The epilogue of The Johns states the gist of the book: “If men the world over did not demand paid sex, there would be no need to corral, break, and submit millions of women and children to this dehumanizing existence.” Malarek asks, “So what do we do?” His answer involves education and outreach, but the loudest part of it by far is “target the johns.” The criminalization should focus on the men, not the women. “Learn from the example of Sweden,” he admonishes, “and criminalize the buying of sex,” not the selling of it.

For the last two decades, a great many police departments in North America have taken half of Malarek’s advice: they target men without necessarily sparing women. Consider the Schools for Johns that originated in San Francisco in the 1980s. Generally speaking, these schools offer first-time johns the choice of being arrested or of paying a fine and taking a class. Thus Gangs and Girls and The Johns seem to reach different political conclusions, but their similarities are more significant. Both view prostitution as the victimization of women and focus on the most vulnerable of prostitutes—children. The 10 percent to 20 percent of prostitutes who are male and adults who claim to benefit from prostitution are dismissed. Both primarily blame the johns. They want increased funding and government involvement.

There is no reason to believe their solutions will work. It is not merely that the books’ poor methodologies invalidate their findings. Gangs and Girls advocates more funding to programs that have not worked so far; The Johns wants tougher enforcement that has not worked so far. At least, the solutions have not worked if you accept the foundational premise of both books: the problem of prostitution is ever more urgent and growing.

In fact, society has been aggressively addressing prostitution through social programs since the 1970s. Malarek claims that “little is being done to stop the carnage,” but most countries have been subject for decades to United Nations human rights standards, including sexual rights. Some argue that prostitution and sex trafficking have been over-addressed to a point that makes it difficult to distinguish fact from politics, hysteria or a desire for funding.

A rarely asked question is whether such solutions are causing harm. In 1994, I surveyed 42 prostitute members of the sex workers’ rights group COYOTE; the women maintained that “the solutions” cause them problems. Anti-john laws discourage “safe” men—married, with respectable careers and a lot to lose from exposure—from the streets. But men who are criminally inclined will not be discouraged by a fine. Thus streetwalkers compete more vigorously for fewer johns; they screen less stringently even though the johns may be more violent. The interviewed prostitutes claimed that targeting johns is a major reason that violence against streetwalkers is rising in many North American cities.

Are they correct? That is not the point. Here is the point: the solution of more government is rarely questioned within academia or bureaucracy. Very little real debate or innovative thought relates to the issue of prostitution.

What other solutions are possible? Consider a modest suggestion: as a teenager, I ran away and lived on the streets. I did not turn to illegal activities because I was of age to work legally in Ontario— 16 years old. (Child labour laws vary from province to province.) My suggestion: repeal child labour laws or other legal obstacles that prevent teenagers from working in a safe, warm McDonald’s. Don’t leave vulnerable children with no option but crime or submitting themselves to government programs.

I opened Gangs and Girls and The Johns with great interest. But in both their methodology and solutions, the books were disappointments.