Susannah Breslin's Letters From Johns Project

I just discovered a now ended project entitled Letters From Johns. The project was an online project created by Susannah Breslin, a journalist and blogger. The project began in 2008 and ended in 2009.

As a feminist I feel that pornography is a business that hurts all who are involved. If a person decides to sleep with a prostitute there are most likely going to be physical or emotional consequences if not immediately, then later down the road.

One of the issues that strikes me is that the physical and emotional well being of the willing prostitute is not always considered. A customer may or may not debate the reasons as to why or if he should use such sexual services before engaging with the prostitute. I'm curious as to how often the customer may think about the well being of the person he or she is about to become entangled with. Perhaps that's the point for some. Some individuals may not care about the personal background of the person whom they are about to have sex with. Some may not care if one is choosing prostituting themselves because they do not know how else to support themselves. Some may not care if a prostitute is willing to perform sexual acts despite shame, guilt, and sorrow. Some may not care if a willing prostitute is only willing because they believe that prostitution brings forth a sense of power and control.

Despite whatever reasons a man or woman decides to engage with another male or female prostitute, it is harmful because it is an act that takes advantage of another fellow human being. The excuse of "well, she was willing" is no longer an excuse. The argument that sex workers may enjoy what they do has never held weight with me. A prostitute may feel that they are in control and may enjoy the ego trip of assisting in offering other pleasure but the person being pleasured may feel that he or she is in fact the dominant one. So round and round goes a circle of oblivion.

When sex becomes about dominance from either side it is not about sharing, it is not about giving and receiving it is about power. This for some may be exactly what is desired. If so, I wonder how many explore the reasons as to why this is desired.

While I feel confident in my stance that prostitution is harmful I have been curious about the voices from those who sell themselves and those who buy. Letters From Johns offers a glimpse into the mindset of those who wish to buy sex.



Disclaimer: The below excerpts are explicit in nature.

Writer is 30 years old and considering returning to a sex worker:

I couldn't do most of what I had in mind: couldn't undress her, couldn't kiss her, couldn't perform cunnilingus. She was also weirded out by my penis, I have a phimosis. Still, I was enjoying myself until she got on top of me. She immediately started to moan, and it hit me as incredibly fake. I lost my erection. We spent the rest of our time together lying on the bed, me holding her… For the next few weeks what I had done would hit me: sometimes it would make me happy, sometimes sad. Now it's just another memory.

Writer is a 29-year-old immigrant and sexual abuse survivor:

This was the first time I touched a woman in a sexual manner. I felt like a human being, and almost cried. We moved on to the bed, but she laughed at me. She positioned her body so that it was difficult for me to have intercourse and eventually she told me to stop when I began to do it with feeling…

…The experience was not pleasurable at all, but rather very nerve racking and riddled with guilt throughout the whole act. It was something to simply do it and get it out of the way, so that I would be just like other non-virgin men.

Writer is 24 year old and has cerebral palsy:

…having sex with her (even if I had to pay for it) made up for a lifetime of rejection.

It was the most enjoyable experience I have ever had in my life […] For once I had gained control over my body, and it felt like I was in control of my life. The worst thing about having a physical disability is the lack of control I have in life.

Second, it was the first time I felt like I was being treated like a sexual being with desires and needs that were important. All my life I have been viewed as an asexual being whose desires should be avoided or neglected.

I Had Gone on a Bender (full story)

The first time I paid for sex I was twenty-four years old at a business convention in New Orleans. After finding out that my wife had slept with one of her co-workers while I was away, I had gone on a bender through the French Quarter. The last place I ended up at was a real dive, and I bought a "champagne room dance" from a woman working the bar. The champagne room was the antithesis of glamor; it was just an empty room with a couple of chairs, a red light bulb, and a blue plastic tarp that covered the doorway. When she seated me in the chair she noticed my wedding ring and asked if I'd ever cheated on my wife before. I hadn't realized until then what I had purchased, but I decided to go ahead with it. I can remember it vividly; what she was wearing, the songs on the jukebox, and mostly talking to her afterward. She had a story about losing her husband in a car wreck and ending up in New Orleans. Even though the bartender had delivered the two splits of champagne, neither of us touched it; she was drinking peach schnapps from a bottle out of her purse. I didn't really feel anything about the experience, and to this day I still don't know what to make of it. There was a five year interlude before I paid for sex again. By then, it was a lot easier to find "erotic services" online, and I saw perhaps a dozen providers over a few year period. Some I saw repeatedly; one I ended up dating for a few months. She was still working while we were together and it didn't bother me. It's been over a year now and I don't really miss it. The sex itself ranged from at best okay to downright mediocre, and the experience didn't give me what I really wanted. It never really cut through the lonely feeling in my life, and I stopped trying to fill that with sex, paid or otherwise.

Writer is a 34 year old virgin..

It was still nearly a year before my first experience. I finally selected a woman in a town miles from home, about ten years older than me. I chose a more mature woman, as I felt it would be easier, somehow, to confess my inexperience to her than it would be to a younger girl. The experience itself was mixed. My performance was as you might expect from a first timer, but she was sympathetic and understanding. She didn't clock watch, and I enjoyed her company as much as the sexual activity. I left with a feeling of relief that I'd got it over with, that I was no longer a virgin. After that, I found other girls local to me. I've had some fantastic experiences and none of the girls have fitted the media mould, here in the UK at least, of trafficked Eastern Europeans or drug addicts. There was the single mum of 19, who was saving to put herself through a college course to get a professional qualification (and she did, successfully, and gave up the escorting to take a less well paid job in her chosen field). There was the recent graduate, making some extra cash while deciding what career path to take. There was the swinger, who had decided that if she was going to do it anyway, she might as well get paid for it. There have been several students, who will leave college without the debt that weighs down their peers. Overall, more of the experiences have been good than bad. I accept that I'm working at the middle to upper end of the market, but most of the girls I've seen have been intelligent and good company and I put that down to the amount of effort I put in to selection. I'm generally very careful in who I choose, and the less successful experiences have always come when I let myself make a rushed decision. My plan was for it to be a short term fix, a start towards a normal life and a way of catching up with experiences I should have had ten years ago. It's worked so well, that it's becoming a lifestyle choice. I think I prefer it this way.


Writer felt he demeaned himself by haggling over the price...

I understand with sudden clarity why many women and some men are against the practice, much like I understand people’s objections towards drug use. In particular, the charge that prostitution demeans women but I must admit, that I felt like I demeaned myself, bartering with this woman like I would over a cloth shirt. In essence, if I demean another person what does that act imply about my own character? And I don’t mean, “what do people think about what I did?”, I’m referring to my own self-image, I feel like I lowered my standards for myself, not by paying for the services of a prostitute but by haggling over the price of the service. As it stands, I don’t regret utilizing the service of a prostitute, as I’ve learnt more than a single lesson, through just one act but I can honestly admit that I sincerely doubt I’d procure such services again.

To read more stories go to Letters From Johns. Remember the project is closed but the stories still remain on the blog site.

From these stories above you see that some have no issue with paying for sex and feel the experience was well worth it. As I read those stories I thought that their logic was skewed. For example the man with cerebral palsy. I cannot being to imagine what it is like to have a condition such as cerebral palsy and I do not know what this man's life has been like. He stated that he felt like he was in control of his body for the first time and his life. He further stated that he felt like he was being treated like a sexual being. While these all seem like positives there are a couple issues that are being neglected.

One is that this man felt control of his own being through another person rather than himself.

The second is that this man did not give thought to how prostitution may have affected the person he was sleeping with.

My heart goes out to all the Johns who felt the need to turn to sex workers to fulfill their own specific voids. My heart also goes out to all the sex workers who engage in such acts to feed their families, to feel in control, to fill their own voids.