Book review: When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays?

‘When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays? Canadian Stories of Exploitation, Survival and Advocacy’ is by two women, Andrea Heinz and Kathy King, who are determined to transform their own personal suffering into powerful social change.

Andrea Heinz entered the sex trade as a deeply indebted 22-year old after enduring years of relationships with toxic and often abusive boyfriends. She explains, “I believed what so many young women do: I’m having sex anyway, why not get paid for it? What’s the big deal?” It was five years before she could face the truth – that enduring men “spitting on me, slapping me, removing condoms without my consent, choking me, stalking me, and verbally degrading me” was not in fact the happy, empowering and liberating occupation the “sex positive feminists” had led her to believe.

But the effectiveness of the pro-sex work propaganda, her desperate need for money and her ability to dissociate had blinded her. By the time she woke up, she’d invested in a property that she was running as a brothel along less exploitative lines than the ones she’d endured in the early years. Tied into a commercial lease, she stopped renting rooms to other women and continued to sell sex herself until she was able to sell the lease (at a considerable loss).

I find it profoundly moving that Andrea is so honest about this history of involvement in other women’s prostitution, for which she clearly feels huge remorse. I have observed the flak she has received for it over the years – often from women who have never been in prostitution themselves and whose lack of compassion is chilling. Can any of us honestly say that if we’d found ourselves trapped in prostitution with no way out, we wouldn’t have done something similar or even worse when we found we could no longer endure being groped and penetrated by men we find unattractive and possibly repulsive?

Kathy King is the mother of a daughter, Cara, who struggled with drug addiction and mental health challenges and was drawn into prostitution. She disappeared from the streets of Edmonton in 1997 and her body was found in a farmer’s field a month later. Instead of focusing on the man who murdered her and the failure of the authorities to provide this troubled teenager with appropriate support, the media blamed and vilified her. This opened Kathy’s eyes to the terrible reality of large numbers of women, particularly indigenous women and women involved in prostitution, disappearing across Canada and the hopelessness of the official response.

There is a chapter dedicated to Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, but the authors do not relegate the shocking scale of this issue and the nihilism it reflects to just one chapter, but rather keep it as a thread throughout the book: The brutality of colonialism, the heartless residential schools that decimated indigenous families and their kinship and social systems, and the prostitution system that was intrinsic to the imperialist project and into which indigenous women were funnelled. A system that defines women and girls as disposable, as subhuman, as resources for pimps to get rich on, and for men to use and abuse in some warped version of what it means to be a man. A warped version of manhood predicated on hurting and diminishing women and girls.

Each chapter starts with a series of thought-provoking questions. Here are just a few to whet your appetite: “What are the components of a healthy society? What does it mean when society allows some members to be bought and exploited? Is there ever a legitimate role for buying sex? How do we separate propaganda from truth? What are the implications for all people if we sanction the treatment of some people as though they are not human?”

One of the book’s great strengths is the way it consistently frames the core problem as men’s enduring entitlement to pay to use and abuse women and girls, and how tolerance for this simply fuels the sexploitation industry and leads to more women and girls suffering. This is hugely refreshing in this culture where the notion that “sex work is real work” dominates and if any problems are acknowledged, they inevitably revolve around the oxymoron of women’s safety. As if women can ever be safe when they are alone and being paid by men they don’t know, and who are typically much bigger and stronger, to be available for any and every sexual practice and whim.

The authors promote a realistic assessment of the scale of the problem and emphasise how common men paying to use women and girls sexually really is. There is no mealy-mouthed claim that it is only a tiny minority of men as some authors insist. Instead, they emphasise the dizzying numbers involved and include calculations showing that realistically we should expect that there are at least 400 million sex buyers worldwide with over 2 million in Canada alone.

“We need to shift from public nonchalance to questioning the entitlement of buyers to commercialized sex and pornography.” [Page 125]

The main part of the book, written by Andrea and Kathy, ends with a chapter looking at best practice and calls to action. They emphasise that change is possible.

“What can the average citizen do? A recent article suggested that a successful nonviolent campaign requires 3.5% of the population to be actively involved. In fact, ‘those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.’” [Page 148]

This is followed by powerful contributions from a variety of women who survived prostitution. Their disturbing testimonies display the themes that we at Nordic Model Now! are so familiar with: poverty and racism, and childhoods disrupted by neglect, family breakdown, sexual abuse, alcohol and drug problems, and the utter failure of society to warn girls about predatory men, loverboy pimps, and the significant and predictable risks and dangers of the sexploitation industry – along with the Canadian fallout of generations enduring the residential schools and other toxic colonial practices.

Over and over again girls and young women find out the truth the hard way. As Jenn explains:

“Pimps, like parasites, lived off the resources of broken women and girls with families who ached for their safe return. These vultures would drive around in silk and velour two-piece suits and detailed cars, while their stable of girls/women would rent their bodies to porn addicts, lawyers, mechanics, and farmers.” [Page 256]

A powerful poem by Jessica, a single mother of two, speaks to women’s poverty and inequality:

“WHY?
Because of the Wage Gap.
Because our rights as women have been stripped away.
Because the best way to feed and clothe your children is with a dick in your mouth.
[…]
Because it was decriminalized and required only licensing and police checks.
Because for the first time in my adult life, I was able to buy an outfit for myself.” [Page 260-261]

The survivor testimonies are followed by a rather self-indulgent piece by a man who spent 35 years buying sex. He referred to the women he’d paid for sex as “service providers” which seems an unnecessary indignity and lack of respect for their humanness. He confesses he still treats his 35-year reign of terror as a secret and hasn’t come clean to his wife and son – while expressing forlorn hope that his son won’t follow in his footsteps. I felt like shaking him and screaming that if he really cares about his son, he will tell him the truth and explain why paying women to use them sexually is destructive of everything that makes life meaningful.

But my disquiet was ameliorated by the excellent contributions that followed, including a fascinating account of a programme for men who buy sex and an inspiring report of a men’s project to tackle sex trafficking. They posted fake prostitution ads, waited for the phone to ring and then talked to the potential buyers. They interrupted more than a quarter of a million such phone calls:

“What began as a simple tactic to disrupt the online sex market forced us to look critically at a culture that was enabling this exploitation, and as we stared that reality in the face, we were confronted by our own complicity in the problem. […] We wanted to facilitate a change away from toxic, destructive masculinity and toward generative, health-sustaining masculinity. […] This meant we needed to learn to stand alongside women. We believe that women and men are made to flourish together and that they share a fundamental right to equality.” [Page 321]

‘When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays?’ is a brilliant and timely contribution to the Canadian and global abolitionist movements. Please read it and take note. And let’s build our movement to that unstoppable 3.5% so we can bring an end to the destructive prostitution system.

Thank you, Andrea and Kathy.