The Secret Prostitution Code, and What It Says About Johns

This summer, I discovered the many ridiculous sexual euphemisms employed by johns who frequent online prostitution forums. On the Internet, dudes who pay women to have sex with them communicate in an absurd code in the hopes of eluding law enforcement officers (that’s “LEOs” to them). The code ranges from straight acronym (BBBJ is “Bareback Blow Job”) to schoolyard joke (Ed Zachary Disease is code for “A woman with an unattractive face”). My pick for the most offensive code-word? “CCL.” That means that your sex worker of choice has got the “Concentration Camp Look.”

Now, a study in this month’s Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has attempted to decipher these sex codes for real for real. The study, conducted by researchers Kristie R. Blevins and Thomas J. Holt, examines the “argot,” or coded language, of the prostitution enthusiast’s “virtual subculture” in order to discern what these communication strategies indicate about the men who engage in—and report on—prostitution. Here’s what they discovered about the language of johns:

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