‘Jo’ sent us this powerful and moving open letter to all the clients / sex buyers / punters everywhere through our Share Your Story page.

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“The Good Clients” Purchasing Souls

This is for the sex-buyers. Yes, you who suffer from the “Good Client Syndrome” – you who think you are the good client and that only the others can be bad clients. You often purchase the “Girlfriend Experience” and some of you even call yourselves not a client, not a sex-buyer, but a “Sugar Daddy” or a “Sponsor”, as if your sugar-coating makes the act of buying sex any different.

You do not only feel entitled to purchase an access to the prostituted person’s body, it doesn’t do the trick for you anymore. You want to purchase an experience in which you can pretend that the prostituted person desires you. You are not satisfied with the fact that she “simply” offers her body for you to use sexually because she needs the money – you are demanding her to sell her soul too. You require her to use a lot of energy to convince you that she desires you, and this is extremely exhausting for us who don’t want to sell sex to anyone to begin with, but have no other options.

If she doesn’t appear to enjoy the transaction, you are unsatisfied. You must be aware that with her last ounce of energy, she is only acting for money, and your extreme demands suck the life out of her. You see, there is nothing real in offering the “Girlfriend Experience” to hundreds of men for money. There is nothing natural about pretending to be the eternally compliant “girlfriend” to each man who demands it, to different men each day, just for the sake of survival. She is a human being, and no amount of money will automatically make her desire you. Think of it, clients. How well would you do in a similar situation of ”survival sex” and pretense? Would it feel natural to you? Why do you think it’s any different to her?

Part of perceiving yourself as “the Good Client” is also the inability to accept it when a prostituted woman refuses to serve you anymore for any reason she may have. That’s when you get angry and say: “But I’m the good guy! She has no right to refuse me!” This is all too familiar to me and other prostituted women. How many messages from angry “Good Clients” did I get after I decided to stop servicing them (whenever I had the chance to do that – which was definitely not very often). The harassment after dumping a self-proclaimed “Good Client” can go on for months, or even for years sometimes.

You, the most demanding clients seem to believe that the clients who are fast (we say “easy”) and disconnected are the only bad and inhumane clients, and that you are the good ones because you pretend as if you aren’t buying sex, when you want to buy the whole package of pretended mutuality. Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. I have not heard any prostitute say that the more emotional labour and pretended intimacy a client demands on top of buying sex, the better. I have only heard the opposite. Yes, I talk to many other prostitutes. No, not on the disgusting public “escort review boards” where you clients brag about buying consent to sex (by the way, in my opinion real consent cannot be bought, so there’s absolutely nothing for you to brag about) and how you got away with cheating your wives again. In those forums some of the prostitutes clearly advertise. They pretend to enjoy your company, they pretend to tolerate your demands. They do it all for money.

But not behind your backs when they don’t need to lick your boots. Behind your backs we share a very different reality. We are tired of the emotional labour you put us through, not only the fact that you feel entitled to our bodies, but also that you feel entitled to our souls too. We talk about how much easier a client is when he is fast, less demanding. I’m saying ”we” because I’m talking about the majority of prostitutes I talk with, as well as my own experience in the sex trade.

You see, I have been in the sex trade since I was underage. For two decades. Not out of choice, but out of desperation. My mental health problems have been extremely complex, I have never had real stability or social support in my life, so this is the only way I know how to survive. And prostitution has made all my mental health problems a lot worse. I’m writing this because I’m at the point of no return, and I’m very tired of pretending. If I can leave anything behind, I will leave this truth behind.

I understand not everyone is the same, but in my experience this is what the majority of us think, and many of us share very similar difficult life experiences, the root causes to enter prostitution as well as similar views on how the sex trade has damaged our mental and physical health profoundly. That’s why I say “we” even if I leave out the minority of prostitutes who have no significant problems in life, are not in any way dependent on the clients’ money and therefore can possibly have an actual everyday choice.

To the clients who buy the pretence of the “Girlfriend Experience”, you take it to the extreme. We are tired, in pain, suffering from mental health issues, addictions, PTSD, our ongoing memories of childhood abuse, and you are adding to that with your extreme demands of prolonged sexual access and extended emotional labour. But we master dissociation and acting at the same time, as well as masking our mental health problems and addictions.

Until we can’t take it anymore. You call it “bad attitude” and “bad service”, while we call it being sick and tired of the sexual and emotional servitude to the endlessly demanding, entitled clients. With no way out. Yes, a lot of us are trapped in the sex trade for years, even for decades. I’m not expecting you to ever understand this feeling, sex-buyers. Walk a mile in our shoes! You couldn’t.

I have told some (not many – I try to keep my act together!) of my returning clients, particularly the clients who demand the “Girlfriend Experience” that I hate prostitution. Because I always found them the most exhausting and unfair of all clients. I have said things such as I’m trapped in prostitution, I hate this, and I have no sexual urges. I have completely lost my ability to pretend at times, and have expressed clearly to some of my regular clients how much I hate prostitution, and how I’m slowly dying in the sex trade.

Guess how many of my clients really cared enough to stop purchasing my body for sex, or my soul for pretense, after I had expressed my hatred towards prostitution? Not many. A few maybe. I would estimate, that after expressing my disgust towards selling my body and especially selling the unnatural “girlfriend” illusion, about 80% of my clients (“The Good Clients” specifically!) still continued to buy me for the sex acts and pretended intimacy – a lot of them even believing that they are the exception, that they are the good catch unlike all the other clients. Because a lot of you sex-buyers tend to suffer from “The Good Client Syndrome” – you see nothing wrong with you doing it, only the others can do wrong.

I didn’t expect you to care about my feelings, nor did I expect such entitled men to believe that you are not any better than the other clients. You believed you were helping me by being the self-proclaimed “Good Client”, so I wouldn’t have to take any “bad clients”. You were never helping me by buying an access to my body and demanding more and more. If you wanted to help me, you would not have demanded an access to my body and my soul. If you really cared about the people trapped in the sex trade, you wouldn’t buy their bodies for sex nor their souls for stroking your fragile male egos. You would either not touch us at all, or you would actually help without demanding anything. So stop pretending you are the good clients who are there to help, when you’re not.

I’m writing this because I’m extremely tired of all the lies in the sex industry, and all the pretense. I’m extremely exhausted and angry, and I want the clients to wake up and pay attention to their own deviant practices that destroy lives. I do understand a lot of you sex-buyers are sick. The sex trade is full of sick people on both ends, we just suffer from different mental health problems and different addictions – and they do not go well together. They destroy us all.

To all the sex-buyers around the world: She could be me. Yes, I could be her. The writer of this article could be your favourite escort! The one who really seems to “enjoy her job”! And you would never guess, unless I have already told you all of this, or even some of it. To most of you I haven’t told anything about my reality. You know that not everything is how it appears to be on the surface. Many of you live in the world of lies and deception as well, so you should know this. You cheat on and lie to your trusting wives, over and over again. And you lie to yourselves as well.

Stop cheating yourselves. Stop ruining what you have. Some of us would gladly have what you have. Some of us have lost our families, our children, our ability to feel love, because of the sex trade. I have never been a jealous, envious person, but the abuse in the sex trade has finally made me bitter and I’ve started to envy everyone who hasn’t lost their family, their children, their loved ones, and their bodily autonomy, their basic human rights. The right to say no to sex in any circumstances. It should be a basic human right.

Clients, you may believe you only purchase sex from willing women who have all the choices in the world, but the reality is different. None of you can have a clear conscience.

If you want to know if the “Girlfriend Experience” you purchased was real or not, try and ask the prostituted woman to hook up with you completely free of charge in her spare time. If she’s genuinely eager to do that, then it was probably real. But it’s more likely that she will blacklist you and tell the other prostitutes you are a time-waster.

Sex-buyers, it’s bad enough for you to feel entitled to buy our bodies to fulfil all your sexual fantasies, but it’s even worse for you to demand that we’d enjoy these unwanted and therefore degrading and unnatural sex acts. Of course when I say all this, you want to silence me and tell me my opinions don’t matter. I’m always told by clients that “things aren’t that simple” because “men need” to use a woman’s body for sex (apparently no matter who she is and whether she is willing or not). We always have to pretend to agree with your lifestyle, because we are not supposed to have our own opinions or feelings unless they happen to be approved by you, and we are not supposed to have our own moral codes because we only exist to serve hundreds of men sexually. We are not supposed to have any other life than the compliant servitude to clients. We are not supposed to be human beings. Can’t you see that, clients? If we stand up against you in any way to defend ourselves, you easily become aggressive, either physically, verbally or emotionally. That is just the truth behind unwanted existence in prostitution, driven by a multitude of problems in our pasts.

I feel at the end of my road, and this is why I’m writing these articles. This is just raw honesty, and it all comes from my own personal experience being trapped in the sex trade for survival, for a long period of time with no way out. Silenced by the liberal elite prostitutes, the sex industry lobby, and the sex addict clients. This is the real “Girlfriend Experience” for so many of us who actually have to play the unnatural role of the sex-crazed, never-complaining, eternally-pleasing “girlfriend”, the one that doesn’t exist in real life. It’s a lot to ask from us, to make us feel like we are not even human beings.

Why to offer the “Girlfriend Experience” then? Because the sex industry has changed in two decades, at where I live. More clients these days seem to demand this form of compliance, more pretended intimacy, more unnatural “connection” with a stranger. Otherwise they will be unsatisfied. It’s not a free choice for us. The one who has the money has the power to choose. The truth is that prostitution, as well as porn, is the very opposite of intimacy to us who work in this industry. Real intimacy can’t be bought.

I want to leave behind the legacy of truth. And this is the ugly truth about prostitution, without the usual mediasexy sugar-coating that you will always hear from the prostituted persons who are selling you lies to survive, and from the whole unethical ”pro-sex industry” lobby that makes a huge profit out of men’s ignorance.

Was I being rude? Sorry about that, but it felt good. The truth feels good. You should try it, dear sex-buyers, the truth is more powerful than a million lies. I do understand that you are sick, and I can sympathize with you for it to some extend, but I would prefer not to participate in it directly by selling my body and my soul for you to use. It really dehumanizes us both.

A note from us

When ‘Jo’ sent us this powerful testimony, she prefixed it with a note:

“Hi Nordic Model Now, I recently wrote this long open letter of my honest thoughts to all the clients/sex-buyers everywhere, and I’m sending it to you here in case you would like to publish it or quote it sometime. By the way, Thank you for your advocacy!”

We cannot reply to her directly because we don’t collect any contact information on the Share Your Story page, so contributors can be assured of their anonymity. But we would like to thank her for sharing it and for her gratitude for our work. And we want to send her a message of hope that she can find her way out of the horror she is trapped in. This is why we call for services to help women exit prostitution and rebuild their lives.

Thank you, ‘Jo,’ for telling this powerful truth. We believe it will contribute to change, so fewer girls and young women are drawn into the sex trade. We send you love. We hope so much that you can find safety and healing.

Further reading

‘I am a prostitute. I have been a prostitute since I was underage. I’m in my mid-30s now’

Share your story

If you’ve been in the sex trade, or have been affected by it in other less direct ways, and would like to share your story anonymously, we’d love to hear from you.