Recommended Reading

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

Each year, more than 800,000 women and children are lured, tricked, or forced into prostitution to meet an apparently insatiable demand, joining an estimated 10 million women already ensnared in the $20 billion worldwide sex trade. To date, most research on the subject has focused on the various issues that propel these women into the trade, but little has been investigated, or written, about those who trigger the demand—the “Johns.” In this hard- hitting expose´, Victor Malarek ranges worldwide, unmasking the kind of men—and organizations—that foster and drive the sex trade, from America to Europe, Brazil to Thailand, Phnom Penh to St. Petersburg and Costa Rica.

From socioeconomic background to emotional stability, Malarek investigates the root of the cause and attacks the idea that prostitution is a victimless crime. He explores the efficacy of Sweden’s outlawing the buying—rather than the selling—of sex, and its dramatic impact on the country’s prostitution rates. The Johns is a chilling look into a dark corner of the world that these men have created at the expense of countless women and children.

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The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth

This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe – the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether pro-prostitution activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved.

Over the course of two years, Bindel conducted 250 interviews in almost 40 countries, cities and states, traveling around Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and East and South Africa. Visiting legal brothels all around the world, Bindel got to know pimps, pornographers, survivors of the sex trade, and the women being sold by men classed as ‘business entrepreneurs’. Whilst meeting feminist abolitionists, pro-prostitution campaigners, police and government officials, and the men who drive the demand, Bindel uncovered the lies, mythology and criminal activity that shroud this global trade, and suggests here a way forward for the women seeking to abolish the oldest oppression. Informed by the lived human experience of those interviewed, this book will be of great interest to feminists, students, criminal justice advocates, criminologists and human rights activists.

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More than condoms and sandwiches : a feminist investigation of the contradictory promises of harm reduction…

This research explores the experiences and perspectives of women providing front-line service in organizations and agencies, both feminist and mainstream, whose mandate includes support for women experiencing violence, particularly women in prostitution. There is significant research into the experiences of women in prostitution, however, little is known about the experiences and perspectives of front-line workers employed in paid and unpaid positions in the social service industry who are providing support to women in prostitution.

Their views of prostitution and the policy frameworks that inform their work are the focus of this inquiry drawing attention, in particular, to how policies framed as harm reduction shape what kinds of support women in prostitution are offered. Harm reduction is an approach initially used to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with the use of illicit drugs. Since the 2003 opening of Insite, North America’s first supervised injection facility (SIF), tactics called harm reduction have been applied to other social problems, including street-level prostitution.

This study argues for an approach that goes beyond mere reduction of harm, and explicates and extends a feminist response to male violence in pursuit of good old-fashioned women’s liberation. Data for this inquiry included in-depth interviews with 16 women providing front line services. This study also examined key governmental reports on prostitution and recent court challenges regarding the legality of prostitution, including the 1985 Fraser Report on Pornography and Prostitution in Canada, the 2006 Federal report called The Challenge of Change: A Study of Canada’s Criminal Prostitution Laws, and affidavits gathered by Pivot Legal Society in 2003 from women engaged in prostitution in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

Using a methodology informed by Dorothy Smith’s sociology for women and critical discourse analysis, the contemporary and historical contexts of Vancouver’s response to social inequality as it is expressed in public discourse about prostitution and harm reduction was examined. Smith’s approach also informs analysis of the study participants’ perspectives. This work challenges the de-politicizing and pathologizing discourses of harm reduction ideology in Vancouver, and provides a forum for women on the front-lines to offer alternatives that may move us to harm elimination.

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