The Johns

The Johns
Victor Malarek

There are many men who, for a host of various reasons, prefer to pay for sex. And with the steady expansion of single lifestyles, harder economic times, and the further enshrinement of the cash nexus, we may expect their number to rise – unless masturbation becomes more widely accepted as a worthy alternative. Alas, crusading journalist Victor Malarek doesn’t approve of pornography either. For the most part his book on johns is a lazy compilation of Internet postings interspersed with a handful of interviews and headline gathering, without any point to it aside from the obvious one: that prostitution is a degrading and dangerous profession that women rarely if ever freely choose to adopt. This is true, and I think the criminal label should be placed on the johns. That said, there is something narrow, puritanical, and frankly unrealistic about Malarek’s insistence on only allowing for lasting, loving relationships based on mutual respect. Also unaddressed is the question of how to deal with a vast, and growing, global underclass with few other options available.