Prostitution

Globally, prostitution and other commercial sex activities such as stripping, lap dancing, sex tourism, etc. disproportionately involve men using women and (mostly girl) children for sexual use or titillation. Despite the rhetoric from advocates, these activities are not a level playing field. Overwhelmingly, they:

  • exist to sexually privilege men

  • have their roots in gender inequality

  • reinforce attitudes and beliefs around male sexual entitlement and female sexual servitude

  • are predicated on unequal power and economic structures, where men want sex or sexual titillation and have the means to pay for it, and women/children want money or ‘in kind’ payment

  • reduce women and children to their orifices, available to rent by men

  • corrode men’s connection to themselves and to others

  • exploit, denigrate and harm women and children.

If there were no demand by men, there would be no supply of women and children. Challenging male demand is critical to effective reduction of prostitution and other commercial sex activities.

Putting it bluntly...

 Prostitution reduces women and girls to three orifices. 
It treats women and children as public toilets.
It can never be made respectful.

 
 

FAQs

  • The "male sex drive discourse", which holds that men are perpetually interested in sex and that once they are sexually stimulated they need to be satisfied by orgasm (Holloway, 1984, 1989), is often touted in support of prostitution. However, as O’Connell Davidson (2001) observes: “The idea that men have sexual ‘needs’ (as opposed to socially constructed ‘wants’) may be widely accepted, but in practice, there is no biological imperative to orgasm any set number of times a day, week or year.”

  • “Some prostitution supporters argue that prostitution is an acceptable solution to poverty. What they mean, but do not say, is that prostitution is an acceptable solution for women living in poverty. Seldom do we see proposals that poor men should make their way out of poverty by welcoming the insertion of penises and other objects into them on a regular basis or dance naked on a stage in front of ogling and masturbating males.

    “The prostitution industry exploits to its advantage the fact that most women and children who are in prostitution come from the most oppressed and vulnerable groups in society.”

    - Gunilla Ekberg, Policy Adviser, Swedish Division for Gender Equality

  • The vast majority of women and girls engaged in prostitution do so out of little or no economic choice. Most entered prostitution as physical or emotional children, with histories of physical and sexual abuse, neglect or violence. Many entered prostitution under the control of a pimp or ‘minder’. If not at the time of entry, many become substance-dependent. Some are homeless. The cycle of hopelessness, desperation and poverty offers little or no choice to escape a lifestyle where violence, abuse and exploitation are the norm. For many, globally, prostitution is a means of survival. It is not a choice.

    The number of women who have freely chosen prostitution from amongst other equal income-generating alternatives is so small it is unrepresentative of the prostitution industry. For those (often vocal) few to claim that their experience is the norm is misleading, if not dishonest. In any event, their choice to engage in prostitution frequently requires them to cognitively distort and minimise the violence, abuse and threats that even they are subjected to (see the New Zealand example in the FAQ “What about women’s ‘agency’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘sex work’”?) This small group of women who sell sex without any economic driver to do so, collude with sex buyers; reinforcing men's belief in an entitlement to be provided with sex on demand, and further entrenching the harms and gender inequality inherent to the industry, to the detriment of the vast majority of women and children in prostitution.

  • Decriminalisation or legalisation of prostitution does not provide safety to women in prostitution; rather, it merely provides mechanisms to report incidents of violence.

    In those countries where prostitution has been made lawful through legalisation or decriminalisation, women in prostitution across both indoor and outdoor sectors continue to be physically assaulted, threatened with violence, held against their will, raped, and verbally abused by the men paying them for sex.

  • "Civilised" countries denounce behaviours such as physical or sexual assault, threats of violence, being held unwillingly, rape, and verbal abuse by men who have intimate access to women. It is commonly called domestic or partner abuse. Women are urged to leave such harmful situations.

    The mere addition of cash in such a situation alters nothing, despite those who seek to accommodate, trivialise and cognitively distort the violence and its ever present threat, and reframe it with rhetoric around “agency” and “empowerment” for women.

    No industry that is inherently predicated on gendered violence, inequality and degradation should be elevated to the status of “work”. Neither should it be legitimised by the State.

  • From a "demand" perspective, no. When addressing "demand" factors, it is meaningless to attempt a distinction between demand for women in prostitution and demand for trafficked women in prostitution.

    The fact that buyers seek out a smorgasbord of women of varying ages, ethnicities, characteristics, and "willingness" to perform various sex acts, means intermediaries (pimps/traffickers) constantly need to supply "fresh goods".

    "Recruiting was ongoing, not only because of turnover, but also because repeat customers wanted variety and new faces had to be continually supplied. One [pimp] said that every six months he would 'clean house'" (From Victims to Victimisers p.5).

Stop Demand is in favour of The Nordic Model (also known as the Equality Model) which sees the buyer criminalised for buying sex, rather than criminalising the seller.

 
 

 

Reducing Demand

Men who buy sex or sexual titillation report that their sex buying behaviour is influenced by factors such as effort, convenience, having the money, risk of prosecution, and a belief that is a harmless activity.

Most sex buyers are not that committed, observes international human trafficking expert Brian Iselin.

The key to taking buyers out of the sex markets is to make the casual buyer think before acting; to interrupt the transaction. How?

  1. Increase the effort needed to buy

  2. Increase the inconvenience for buying

  3. Push up price

  4. Normalise the illegality

  5. Provide information

Submission on Prostitution to UN Women 2024

Submission on Prostitution to UN Women 2016

 
It is time to adopt a new code on what it means to be a man. Being a man does not mean buying sex with women or children. We can still run a hundred miles, watch the footy, continue to barbecue, even still not take too seriously the clothes we buy. We are not talking about making men less masculine, but deciding it is both a strength and a virtue to not prey on and abuse others.
— Brian Iselin, international human trafficking expert
 
Men should feel guilty when they buy women. Guilt can be healthy. Buying women is wrong not because of a society’s repressive moral code or its effects on an individual’s psychological process. It is wrong because it creates a world in which people get hurt. And the people who get hurt the most are women and children, the people with the least amount of power.
— Robert Jensen, professor of journalism and author