So, it’s the world’s oldest profession. Therefore, it must be the world’s oldest argument. What to do about prostitution? You’d think that, by now, we’d have come up with some answers to this centuries-old question. But, if anything, the conversation continues to get more muddy and complicated. So complicated that now we have schools about it!
Yup, that’s right, we’re talking about “john schools.” Confused? You’d be forgiven for thinking this means getting a degree in being a “john,” but it’s actually the opposite and it’s growing in popularity.
The term “john” is said to have come from the mostly male clients’ practice of giving their name as Joh to maintain anonymity and, despite its informality, is widely used to describe buyers of sex. Advocacy groups refrain from using the word “customer” so as not to “equate commercial sexual exploitation with a simple economic transaction” (so eloquently described by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation).
“John schools” are programs run in over 50 communities around the U.S for men who have been convicted of solicitation of a prostitute. These are diversion programs for first-offenders as part of restitution for their crimes. Started in San Francisco in 1995, they were recently instituted here in Oregon and are in their second year running in Multnomah County.
The Sex Buyer Accountability and Diversion program—its more official title—is part of a growing trend that focuses heavily on the “demand” side of prostitution. How it works is simple: if the men complete the class, for which they pay $1,000, and are arrest-free for a six to nine month period, the charge is dropped from their record.
So, what’s in this class? Well, it’s an eight-hour curriculum designed to educate men about the far-reaching effects their behavior has on not only the women, but the community at large. “The First Offender program gets people thinking,” said Terry Jackson, former assistant district attorney in San Francisco, in a recent interview with the NPR. “It makes them think about prostitution. It makes them think about the exploitation of people, the social ramifications.”
Men in the class are confronted by former prostitutes who describe the years of damage and pain they endured, how they were lured as young vulnerable girls and what it felt like to be bought. Crystal Cooper started working in prostitution on the streets of Portland at the age of 18 and, now 33, stands before a group of 52 men as one of the featured speakers for a recent class held in Portland.
“We’re dying inside,” Cooper told the men. “We’re hopeless and lost, and that’s truly what you guys are contributing to.”
The goal is to show men the faces behind what they consider a transaction; they are real women, with real lives, with names and stories. A Portland survey revealed that two-thirds of the men in the classes were married and nearly two-thirds had children.
Many of these men entered “john school” thinking prostitution was a “victimless crime,” or that they, themselves, were victims of a police sting operation. This class hits them with a cold slap of reality—these women could be their wives, their sisters, their daughters.
But, does it work? Can eight hours really change someone? Portland prosecutor J.R. Ujifusa asked the same question. “I didn’t know how a single, eight-hour class would change anything for some people,” he said.
But after seeing the results, he’s a convert and emphasizes how important it is that individuals see the far reaching effects of their actions. “I think that education piece is extremely important for people who either didn’t want to know or didn’t seem to care,” he said.
The men hear the stories and they’re almost always the same—85 percent of prostitutes have reported sexual abuse in childhood, and 70 percent report incest, according to the Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report. From the outset, they’re taught that their bodies are fair game and to be used as others please, beginning a lifelong cycle in which their power is placed in the hands of someone else.
One man wrote in a survey after having gone through the program, “I’m going home to take a shower and cry.” And there are many like him who leave very different from when they arrived. Studies would also seem to indicate the success of these programs. Abt Associates, a private research company, showed that these programs reduce rearrests conservatively by 40 percent.
But as much as the numbers suggest a change of heart, is it real or is it just a matter of not getting caught again? Can an eight-hour class undo a lifetime of our socially ingrained views of women? We are surrounded by the message that women are valuable for their bodies, and now it’s starting from when they can barely walk—Toddlers & Tiaras, anybody?
Our television and computer screens blare the non-stop reminder that women’s bodies are objects and that you’re not a real man if you think otherwise. We are more educated and more exposed to feminist thinking in academic institutions than ever before, so why did a study by Prostitution Research & Education, show that it was at university age that men reported they first bought sex? Let’s think about that in our next Women’s Studies class.
“John Schools” provide eight hours of reality, and maybe that’s the best we have right now in the criminal justice system. But if we are to see any lasting change, we have to do a lot better than that. This is just a symptom of a bigger problem—our problem, as a whole.
Until this education is part of our daily lives and until we as a society believe that all people are valuable—not for their bodies, not for what they can give us, but for who they are—we will continue having the world’s oldest argument.