Why socialists should oppose the sex industry

Introduction[1]

Sex work is defended and even celebrated by many progressives today. This represents a significant departure from the traditions of the left. Historically, socialists and feminists saw the sex industry as a manifestation of women’s oppression. Outlining the socialist position, Russian Marxist Alexandra Kollontai said in a speech in 1921: “Prostitution is above all a social phenomenon; it is closely connected to the needy position of woman and her economic dependence on man in marriage and the family. The roots of prostitution are in economics”.^[2] In addition, the industry depends on the sexist stereotypes and sexual objectification of women so prominent in capitalist society. The sex industry has a negative impact on society as a whole: it reinforces dehumanising attitudes towards women and other oppressed people, normalises male entitlement and preys on vulnerable women, perpetuating their disadvantage in the process.

Today, most of the left has abandoned this position. They glorify sex work as liberating and subversive or insist it is just another humdrum job, no better or worse than any other. Defending and even celebrating the sex industry has become a central part of progressive culture. It is common for left-wing people to take up the talking points and demands of sex industry bosses, celebrating such policies as unqualified wins for workers.

The shift towards a rosy view of the sex industry can be linked to the increased prominence of identity politics on the left. This involved moving away from more Marxist frameworks which viewed oppression as structural and social, towards a micro-level focus on individual identity, choice and personal preference. The rise of this individualist form of identity politics accompanied the neoliberal turn of the 1980s. The commodification of everything, including sex and bodies, was sold as liberating and empowering, as guaranteeing an individual’s freedom to choose. Identity politics language suffuses the pro-sex work circles today. They defend sex work as individually liberating, a choice, a form of sexual expression and a sexual identity.

In opposition to this view, socialists should oppose the sex industry and view it as a symptom of the broader oppressions and inequalities of capitalism. This article will argue that commercialised sexual exploitation is incompatible with women’s liberation and socialism. Socialists should fight for anti-sexist politics, and that includes staunch opposition to the sex industry.

Socialists aim to unite the working class to fight capitalism. Even the everyday struggle for reforms involves uniting ordinary people against capitalist institutions like the state. Socialists must be wary of bourgeois ideas which undermine class unity. Sexist ideas are particularly pernicious because they are subtly embedded in so many intimate interactions, and we are socialised to believe them from a very young age. The normalisation of the sex industry feeds into sexism, encouraging men to see women as sex objects who exist to satisfy the desires of men. This can only undermine working-class men’s ability to see women as equals in the class struggle. When the left adopts a positive attitude towards sexual exploitation, we are undermining our own arguments against sexism and oppression and betraying that commitment to class unity.

Opposing a capitalist industry is not a foreign approach to socialists and the left. We oppose many industries considered destructive, divisive or oppressive. We argue to shut down the fossil-fuel industry, refugee detention centres, nuclear power plants and the weapons industry. This is not to morally condemn the people who work in these industries. Workers have little control over the structures of society and are not to blame for the existence of oppressive institutions. But the simple fact that these industries employ workers is no reason to defend them.

Our position on sex work cannot be guided by a knee-jerk reaction to the moralising of social conservatives and right-wing Christians. To the extent that they oppose the sex industry, they are not driven by concern about sexism and oppression, which they themselves perpetuate. While much of the Christian right are puritanical around sex, many other right-wingers believe that prostitution is a natural expression of male sexual appetites. Opposition to the right cannot be the political compass of socialists. We must objectively analyse the institutions of capitalism and understand their social role in order to arrive at a position consistent with our opposition to oppression and capitalism.

A note on language: throughout this article I will occasionally use the word “prostitution”, both in quotes and my own formulations. The word has been mostly expunged from the writings of sex industry apologists, and my choice will be considered controversial. My aim is not to titillate or outrage. Rather, I believe that the widely adopted term “sex work” serves to sanitise a deeply exploitative and sexist phenomenon. I do not refer to people who sell sex as “prostitutes”, because of the history of abuse and discrimination associated with that word.

The arguments of the sex industry apologists

Contemporary apologists for the sex industry dismiss concerns about sex work as a new form of prejudice, underpinned by a stuffy puritanical moralism that is anti-sex and hostile to individual self-expression. They tend to see sex work as a source of empowerment and liberation for women and queer people, the result of personal choice and sexual freedom.

An article in Red Wedge by a group of “pissed off sex workers” accuses “much of the left” of “clinging to the vestiges of a puritanical past”.^[3] They present the sex industry as a challenge to the traditional nuclear family and bourgeois sexual morality, thereby undermining a key pillar of capitalism. Some see “sex worker” as a sexual identity belonging in the LGBTQI+ rainbow, and champion sex workers as an inherently radical layer, responsible for many of the progressive movements of the past, including the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s.

Other sex industry advocates argue that sex work is no better or worse than any other job. The rallying cry of this crowd is “sex work is work”. Molly Smith and Juno Mac, authors of Revolting Prostitutes who claim to have a “Marxist-feminist, labour-centred analysis”, chastise those who focus on “sex as symbol” rather than the “‘work’ of sex work”.^[4] Smith and Mac demand that the left remain politically neutral towards the sex industry, seeing it as neither liberating nor oppressive. Our only tasks are to “destigmatise” sex work (to accept that it is no different from any other service industry), to fight for full decriminalisation, and to support sex workers’ struggles for better wages and conditions.

Some manage to combine these two seemingly contradictory arguments, seeing sex work as both subversive and unexceptional. In a 2012 article in Jacobin magazine, Peter Frase wrote: “Not only does sex work destabilize the work ideology, it also conflicts with a bourgeois ideal of private, monogamous sexuality”.^[5] But Frase also firmly believes that “sex work is work”. In the same article, he writes, “‘Jobs’ are degrading because capitalism is degrading, because waged work is degrading”, thereby deflecting any criticism of the sex industry as particularly degrading and oppressive.

The pro-sex work arguments of the left are largely indistinguishable from the self-serving excuses of sex industry bosses. In Australia, Sexpo (“Australia’s hottest adults only weekend”) and the Sex Party (later the Reason Party, established by Fiona Patten, the former CEO of a sex industry bosses’ association) have helped normalise and glamorise the sex industry. They argue that the sex industry is a site of female empowerment, that it is a woman’s choice to sell sex, that sex work is a job like any other, and only prudish “stigma” and legal restrictions make the industry unsafe.

To begin to understand the flaws with these pro-sex industry arguments, it is worth considering the relationship between sex work and consent.

Consent and economic coercion

The global sex trade is built on the assertion that it is irrelevant whether the desire to have sex is mutual, as long as he pays, and she feels sufficiently compelled to accept the money. The money isn’t coincidence; it’s coercion. – Kat Banyard, Pimp State^[6]

Most pro-industry advocates accept that sexual assault happens in sex work, but they do not see the whole transaction as inherently coercive and abusive.

Sex work involves non-consensual sex which has been economically coerced. The lack of consent from one party is overridden by the exchange of money, the primary method of coercion under capitalism. In other circumstances we would immediately recognise this scenario as morally and politically unacceptable: a teacher accepting sexual favours from a student in exchange for tutoring, charity workers accepting sex from refugees as payment for safe passage, bosses demanding sex from employees. There is an obvious power imbalance in each of these examples. A similar power imbalance exists between a sex buyer and a sex worker – one has the money which can provide a livelihood to the other. The sex between them is coerced. Of course, there is a qualitative distinction between rape and violence against sex workers and the overall coercive nature of the transaction. This is not an attempt to conflate violent attacks on sex workers with their everyday experience of sex work.

It is concerning that the modern, progressive understanding of consent is rarely applied to the circumstances that give rise to prostitution. Consent is such a widespread concern that governments in countries like Australia are incorporating the concept into policy and legislation. The Commonwealth Consent Policy Framework explicitly states that consent is not “a problem to solve” or “a transaction or a contract – an exchange where someone ‘gives’ or ‘receives’ consent”.^[7] Economic coercion and the need to earn a livelihood are powerful factors which limit a person’s ability to give free agreement to a sex act.

Many people who are sexually assaulted do not actively resist their rapists, for a variety of reasons. This obviously doesn’t mean they are consenting to the assault. Just because the form of coercion is economic rather than physical, and just because sex workers consent to the coercion, we should not say that the sex itself is consensual.

The added problem for sex workers is that because a supposedly fair exchange has taken place, they often find it difficult to be treated as victims of sexual assault or coercion. As Rachel Moran puts it:

That voice of shame that whispers in the ear of some abuse victims: “You can’t say you were abused because you got enjoyment from it”, is not dissimilar to the voice of blame that tells every prostitute: “You can’t say you were abused because you got paid for it.”^[8]

While sex industry apologists often discuss the issue of assault in sex work, they usually argue that the way to prevent it is with regulations and the destigmatising of sex work. But even in a fully regulated and destigmatised industry, the same power imbalance exists, with sex workers submitting to the desires of sex buyers in exchange for money.

Pro-sex worker advocates often answer this argument about economic coercion by pointing out that all work is economically coerced under capitalism. This is true, and it is a big reason to be a socialist. It is also the case that most people believe sex is different, and that being coerced into sex is worse than being coerced into office work or truck driving. This is why progressives have argued for a new, broad understanding of sexual consent to be adopted by governments. Perhaps this view of sex is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. But why would the left want to challenge that? Would it be better to insist that sex, like every other aspect of our humanity, should be out of our control and exposed to the impersonal hand of the market? Besides, there is evidence that sex work is particularly psychologically traumatic, hinting at the importance of sexual autonomy for mental health. Kat Banyard cites a 2014 European Parliament report on sex workers in nine countries, which found that “68 per cent met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – comparable to the rate detected among survivors of state-sponsored torture”.^[9] Just because sex can be commodified and sold on the market doesn’t mean it should be. Organs, wombs and even human beings are all sold on the market. The left should not sanitise such transactions by pointing to the fact that almost everything else is bought and sold on the market.

Responding to the apologists

Capitalism tends to normalise its worst crimes. Thanks to trite slogans like “sex work is work”, sexual exploitation risks becoming completely normalised in modern culture. In opposition to these arguments, socialists must reclaim a position that clearly identifies the sex industry as a symptom of women’s oppression and class inequality. The next section of this article will systematically combat the main arguments and myths touted by sex industry apologists.

Is sex work liberating?

Many apologists see the acceptance of sex work as the fruit of the sexual liberation movements of the 1970s.^[10] But the hopes and dreams of those activists were quite different from the world we live in today. They saw sexual liberation as the emancipation of sex from all oppression, repression and coercion. Crucially, sexual liberation would free women from being the mere object of other people’s desires. Consider John Berger’s words in his 1972 BBC documentary Ways of Seeing:

A woman is always accompanied, except when quite alone, and perhaps even then, by her own image of herself… She has to survey everything she is and everything she does, because how she appears to others – and particularly how she appears to men – is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.

This is how radicals in the 1970s understood sexism: as stultifying objectification which turns in on itself and defines how women move through the world. Berger’s words are even more relevant today, when young women are encouraged to turn their entire lives into heavily curated online galleries, shaped by the opinions of anonymous followers.

Since the 1980s we have been sold an image of sexual liberation as self-objectification. Ariel Levy documented this phenomenon in her 2005 book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. Levy claims that women “traded the old, rigid model of femininity for a new, equally rigid one that says empowered equals sexualized”. Women could stop playing the roles of demure virgin and Stepford wife but had to aspire to be “a caricature of a sex object”, as Levy puts it.^[11] They were encouraged to see sexual liberation in the latest clothing and makeup products, in pole-dancing and burlesque classes, and in going under the knife to meet ridiculous beauty standards. In lieu of any real liberation, women could now “choose” to revel in the commodification of their sexuality and the objectification of their bodies. Doing sexism to ourselves became the new feminism.

The glorification of sex work was part of this process. Glamorous autobiographies like Diaries of a London Call Girl, along with a slew of blockbuster films and TV, from Pretty Woman to The Girlfriend Experience, helped sell an image of prostitution as a viable career choice for the sexually liberated woman. Sex workers are portrayed as women in control, even dominating and controlling the men who pay them. Independent, high-class escorts became the glamorous new archetype of the modern sex worker, often portrayed as educated, well-paid women who simply love sex, and whose clients pay for sophisticated, elegant company as much as sex.

The enlisting of women in their own objectification helped turn companies like Playboy into mainstream, respectable brands, and has made billions of dollars for the owners of tech platforms like OnlyFans and Instagram. But it should be clear that none of this was genuinely liberating for women. It merely encouraged women to obsessively cultivate a sexy and desirable image of themselves.

With the rise of the hustle-and-grind influencer culture of the past decade, many millions of people have found new ways to monetise sex and sexuality online. Symeon Brown documented this phenomenon in his 2022 book, Get Rich or Lie Trying. Brown points to the recent “renaissance in commercialised feminism”. “At the heart of this movement”, he says “is the questionable belief that anything that makes a woman rich is empowering for all women”.^[12] After Instagram, OnlyFans is the online platform which has profited the most from the online commercialisation of sex. Over 1.4 million content creators offer their content on OnlyFans, 78 percent of them are women and over 87 percent of their audience are men. The platform, which takes a 20 percent cut of all transactions, was started by Tim Stokely with loans from his investment banker father.^[13] There is nothing progressive to be celebrated in social media empires making billions of dollars from the commodification of (mostly) women’s bodies. Cardi B may promote the liberatory potential of online sex work because OnlyFans helped make her a millionaire, but most online sex workers do not make that kind of money. They are sold an elegant lifestyle and a quick path to riches, but usually find themselves having to sink countless hours and dollars into cultivating their image, from expensive cosmetic procedures to hours spent perfecting their photographs and feigning interest in an audience of voyeurs. As former sex worker Rae Story put it, “The internet sex industry has become the paragon of the idea of an idealised femininity as a sexual locality: a homing ground for masculine gratification, distorted to look like female empowerment through exposure, manufacture and branding”.^[14]

Is sex work transgressive?

A common argument proffered by progressives in favour of the sex industry is that it challenges bourgeois sexual norms and the ideal of the nuclear family. Sex work itself is seen as transgressive, even as a radical challenge to capitalism. But this narrative misses the long history of prostitution as a complement to the institution of monogamous marriage. Since the beginning of class society, monogamous marriage and the control of wives’ sexuality was a way for ruling classes to guarantee property inheritance through a restricted line of legitimate heirs. In pre-capitalist class societies like feudalism, prostitution was a relatively accepted way of upholding the sanctity of the marriage contract. The sexual servitude of a layer of poor women was a way to maintain the “purity” and virginity of upper-class women until marriage. In describing the European Middle Ages, Alexandra Kollontai said:

The prostitute guaranteed that the daughters of the respectable citizens remained chaste and their wives faithful, since single men could…turn to the members of the guild for comfort. Prostitution was thus to the advantage of the worthy propertied citizens and was openly accepted by them.^[15]

With the rise of capitalism, urban class inequalities drew ever greater numbers of women into prostitution. As Kollontai puts it, “The hypocritical morality of bourgeois society encourages prostitution by the structure of its exploitative economy, while at the same time mercilessly covering with contempt any girl or woman who is forced to take this path”.^[16] Despite this contempt, prostitution has never represented a serious threat to the institution of the family, even when it goes against the “morals” of the bourgeois family ideal. Capitalism has always been able to straddle this seeming contradiction. It is the same contradiction inherent in the social construction of femininity under capitalism: the “whore” and the “virgin”. Women are expected to satisfy the sexual and aesthetic desires of men, while also being respectable wives and mothers. Neither side of this unjust dichotomy is more subversive than the other.

An associated idea is that the experience of sex workers makes them an inherently subversive layer. Sex workers are seen as radical iconoclasts who refuse to fit society’s restrictive sexual norms. Radical movements for social change are attributed to the influence and leadership of sex workers. In an article in Xtra magazine in 2021, Chanelle Gallant wrote that sex workers “have developed the most transformational sexual liberation politics of any social justice movement”.^[17] This view stems from an identity politics framework which assigns moral worthiness to people based on how downtrodden and marginalised they are. Gallant says it herself: the “diversity of marginalization” of sex workers is purportedly the reason they have “such an exceptional range of wisdom and analysis about systems of domination, how to stand up to them and how to survive”.^[18] In reality, being economically marginalised due to extreme discrimination does not turn people into radical anti-capitalists capable of combating the system. It just as easily forces them to focus on survival. Most sex workers are not in unions or engaged in political activism. They do not occupy a position of social power within the system, unlike workers employed in essential industries like healthcare. These objective considerations tell us far more about which sections of the population are the vanguard of the workers’ movement and social change than the arbitrary moralism of identity politics.

Choice

Sex industry apologists argue that sex workers are merely exercising their right to choose what to do with their bodies. In this way they implicitly link sex work to other “rights to choose” that the left has championed for decades, such as abortion rights. Those who oppose sexual exploitation are, according to this logic, denying women the right to choose, just like the conservative right and pro-lifers.

First, we should interrogate the concept of “choice” under capitalism. The catchcry of “choice” has been used by conservatives for the past forty years to promote the privatisation of social services, attacks on unions and the idea of personal rather than social responsibility. American right-to-work laws, also known as “workplace choice laws” have been enacted across 27 US states to weaken unions and lower wages. Similar language is used to dismantle government-run healthcare services in favour of for-profit providers on a private market. The grandfather of neoliberal thought, Milton Friedman, applied the same laissez-faire, pro-market attitude to the buying and selling of sex:

You put a willing buyer [with] a willing seller, and it’s up to them. You can argue with them that it’s foolish, you can argue with them that it’s a bad thing to do, but I don’t see any justification for bringing the police into it.^[19]

Friedman was no anti-police activist. He meant that the state and the public have no right to intervene in commercial activities of any kind, no matter how harmful. The left should be careful about taking up Friedman’s logic. Just because someone chooses to sell or buy something doesn’t mean that society has no responsibility or right to intervene in that exchange. We don’t accept that opposing other industries unreasonably limits “the right to choose”: weapons manufacturing, border patrol and the fossil fuel industries all rely on the labour of workers who “choose” to work in them, and the companies that “choose” to buy their services. This should not restrain our hostility to industries which destroy lives and the planet.

The big lie behind neoliberalism’s favourite mantra is that we make “choices” in circumstances not of our own choosing, to paraphrase Marx. The reality is that most sex workers don’t have many options. People do not choose to be poor, abused or homeless, but they can “choose” to try to escape that fate by selling sex. It’s a “choice” that wealthy people never have to make. Many people who become sex workers are driven by factors completely outside their control. A 2015 study of 250 indoor sex workers in the UK found that more than 70 percent had previously worked in healthcare, education or charities.^[20] Government austerity has hit these sectors hard in recent decades and made working conditions tough. Some have seen sex work as a preferable choice to 13-hour shifts in nursing, or low-paid, highly exploitative work in child and aged care. Horrifying facts like these are often used by prostitution advocates to argue that sex work is no different from any other kind of care work. But that is a twisted interpretation. It is an outrage that decades of austerity and increasing wealth inequality have driven working-class women out of socially useful jobs and into prostitution. If the left’s demands were met – to improve the social safety net and the wages and conditions of workers – fewer people would need to engage in sex work to survive.

The focus on personal choice is problematic in another way: it narrows our view to the psychology of individual sex workers and ignores the impact that the sex trade has on society as a whole. The industry perpetuates and feeds off some of capitalism’s most misogynistic ideas about women: that they exist for the pleasure and satisfaction of others, regardless of their own desires. The normalisation of sex work, whether in brothels or online platforms, tells men that they have a right to purchase sexual access to women. And it tells women that their sexual desirability is a commodifiable asset to be bought and consumed by others. This is reason enough to oppose the sex industry, regardless of whether individual sex workers insist that they freely choose to sell sex.

“Sex work is work”

The phrase “sex work is work” is a truism. Sex work is work, by definition, but this platitude tells us nothing about whether we should defend or oppose the sex industry. Police work is work, guarding refugee detention centres is work, slavery is work. The word “work” does not absolve every horror of capitalism, a system capable of commercialising practically any aspect of human life and turning it into “work”.

But even if we accept the “work” in “sex work”, socialists do not treat all industries and jobs as equal. No industry has an automatic right to exist. Many are inhuman, destructive or the product of oppression. Unlike industries such as healthcare, prostitution cannot be repurposed and reorganised under workers’ control to benefit humanity. Even though nursing is corrupted, undervalued and exploited under capitalism, it would continue to be essential work in a socialist society. We cannot say the same about prostitution, which must be abolished if we are serious about the goal of sexual liberation – ie for every individual to experience full sexual autonomy and freedom. This puts the sex industry in the same camp as other capitalist institutions that only serve an oppressive and destructive function, like the weapons industry or prisons.

While sex work may be work, there would be extremely problematic consequences if it was treated like any other working-class job.

In commercial activities, consumers have rights that are protected by the state. In the UK for example, consumer laws require that “the service be supplied with reasonable care and skill. In the event of a breach, the payer may be relieved of the obligation to pay, and may also sue for damages including loss of enjoyment, going beyond the price of the service itself”.^[21] If sex work was subject to consumer laws, courts could hear cases of clients suing sex workers for discrimination (eg when a sex worker refuses to have sex with a client due to some physical characteristic), for failing to deliver a service (eg when a sex worker changes their mind after payment), or for false advertising (eg if a sex worker advertises an extra service but then refuses to perform it).

If sex work was genuinely like any other job, it could be recommended by schools and universities to students. JobSeeker and other work-for-the-dole programs could force people to take jobs as sex workers or face a loss of benefits. People in other industries could be expected to perform sex work as part of their roles and have this stipulated in their contracts. The union movement has rightly fought attempts to pressure women workers to carry out sexualised roles while at work, particularly in service industries where the objectification of women employees is commonplace. The historical position of the left was always to see such attempts as sexist attacks on workers’ rights. The question remains: why should a major exception be made for the sex industry?

Even the most permissive legislation around the sex industry acknowledges that it is not like any other job, because it cannot be treated like any other job. After an uproar in Germany, the government ensured that work-for-the-dole programs could not refer dole recipients to work in brothels. This is because almost everyone instinctively understands that sex work is different from every other job, even when compared to the usual humiliations and suffering workers face under capitalism. Mass public opinion recognises that women shouldn’t have to sell their bodies and sexual services to survive. Why would the left want to beat this progressive sentiment out of ordinary people?

The sex industry is also an occupational health and safety disaster. It breaks all the health and safety rules expected of other industries. If union standards were applied to the sex industry it would not be able to function. In every other industry, bodily fluids, such as semen, sweat and saliva, must be handled with extreme caution and effective barriers. No such protection is possible during prostitution, without wrapping the sex worker in plastic from head to toe. The usual standards of safety must be lowered to the floor for the sex industry to remain profitable. Safety conditions have been hard-won by centuries of union struggle. They are cherished and defended by workers in the best-unionised industries. On the Australian railways, workers regularly refuse to drive trains with potential safety defects, or to enter rooms suspected of containing asbestos and other hazards. Why should an exception be made so that pimps and brothel owners can make a profit? To do so undermines the position of all workers. Applying union standards of safety to the sex industry is utopian due to the nature of the work itself – which is to satisfy the sexual desires of buyers.

Sex work and the union movement

Advocates who believe that “sex work is work” argue that the trade union movement should defend the existence of the sex industry, embrace “sex worker unions” and advocate for decriminalisation. This position is a betrayal of the left’s struggle to establish a commitment to anti-sexism in the workers’ movement. That stance is not just a moral opposition to injustice, but an essential component of building class unity.

The workers’ movement should be, in Lenin’s words, the “tribune of the oppressed”. Unions must not, in the supposed interests of a narrow section of the workforce, overlook the rights of oppressed people or of the working class as a whole. This is the classic error of economism, which has led union leaders and social democrats to take up reactionary positions on the basis that they appeal to a minority interest of the working class. For socialists, the key question is the class consciousness of the whole working class. The union movement should not support the sex industry because working-class consciousness should be avowedly anti sexist and against the sexual objectification of oppressed people. To endorse the idea that “sex work is work”, or that the sex trade is an industry like any other, normalises sexist behaviour and attitudes that should be unacceptable in the union movement, which at its core seeks to unite working-class people to fight the bosses. That fight is undermined when workers accept divisive bourgeois ideas like sexism, or the idea that sex should be sold on the market.

Lenin’s “tribune of the oppressed” idea is about the role of socialists in winning masses of workers to identify with all the oppressed and fight against all the injustices of capitalism. Only a working class with this socialist consciousness would be capable of overthrowing the system. Support for a sexually exploitative and sexist industry has a regressive effect on the social conscience of the working class. A socialist current within the union movement would fight to win workers to oppose the sex industry. Socialists don’t accept workers’ reactionary ideas about other issues. We want workers to understand the necessity of abolishing institutions like refugee detention centres or the police. The same should be true for opposing sexual exploitation and objectification.

The left of the union movement has always fought against sexism. Union members in the 1960s had to fight to rid union publications of sexualised caricatures of women. Office workers stood up against the sexist norm of managers conducting work meetings in strip clubs. Workers have opposed attempts to force women workers to go topless in bars, wear makeup and revealing clothing, or submit to sexual harassment. In recent years, when migrant workers on Australian farms were being coerced into sex with their employers, the United Workers’ Union organised against such abuses.^[22] A left which praises sexual objectification and exploitation is at odds with this anti-sexist tradition.

Unions must be intolerant of sexist behaviour by male workers and bosses, which can undermine the confidence of women workers and their capacity to fight back. Should women workers have to accept male workmates or fellow unionists paying women to have non-consensual sex with them? This is contrary to the task of promoting respectful attitudes towards women in the union movement. If we accept that such behaviour is perfectly normal and acceptable, what would be our argument against work meetings taking place in strip clubs? What leg would we have to stand on when opposing sexist bosses?

Socialists are not for excluding sex workers from the union movement or opposing their unionisation attempts. But so-called “sex worker unions” should not be uncritically supported. Sex workers, being some of the most marginalised people in society, are difficult to unionise. The prevalence of extreme poverty, precarious visa situations and controlling pimps in the sex industry means sex workers are unlikely to join official unions. Many “sex worker unions” end up including pimps, brothel managers and people whose main aim is to advocate for sex industry decriminalisation. This has been such an issue that some sex worker unions like the Scarlet Alliance have had to change their rules in response to criticism over the presence of brothel owners and managers in their ranks. The Scarlet Alliance now has a tiered membership structure: a first tier of sex-worker and ex-sex worker members, and a second tier which still includes non-sex worker “associate member organisations”.

Even so, it is difficult to distinguish the campaigns of sex worker unions from those of peak sex industry organisations. The Scarlet Alliance’s main public campaign in recent years has unambiguously promoted the demands of sex industry bosses, opposing bans on strip clubs. A Scarlet Alliance press release last year rejected “the suggestion that strip clubs are responsible for gender inequality and disrespect of women [sic]”.^[23] Of course, it would be false to claim that strip clubs are solely responsible for gender inequality, but they certainly contribute to disrespectful and sexist attitudes towards women. The UK’s Sex Workers Union (SWU) has campaigned numerous times against the closure of strip clubs and against zoning laws that exclude the sex industry. It should hardly be the role of the union movement to advocate for the rights of strip club owners to set up shop wherever they please. The union movement should not be insensitive to the rights of ordinary people, especially women, to not have a sexist trade in women’s bodies in their community. We do not accept the right of other businesses to trade wherever they please. Attempts to construct power stations, highways and big shopping centres have faced public community pressure in the past due to their proximity to residential areas. Why should strip clubs and brothels be exempt from these considerations?

The main political role of sex worker unions and peer organisations has been to advocate for total decriminalisation, a demand also raised by sex industry bosses. This issue will be examined in full later in this article.

Stigma

It isn’t the stigma that kills people in the sex industry – it’s the horrors of the job… You earn thousands and thousands of dollars each week, and it disappears on just surviving the life. – Simone Watson, former Australian sex worker.^[24]

Often for pro-sex work campaigners, the main or only problem with the sex industry is “stigma”. Janelle Fawkes, chief executive of the Scarlet Alliance in 2015, claimed that: “Sex workers in Australia experience unacceptably high levels of stigma and discrimination and in some states criminalisation. Both public attitudes and policy approaches that harm sex workers are fuelled by those that refuse to acknowledge sex work as legitimate employment”.^[25] In other words, the main harm done to sex workers is due to stigma.

The sex industry does inherent harm to sex workers, and to society at large, quite apart from whether it is stigmatised. But before discussing this issue further, I want to thoroughly examine the realities of the industry that apologists want to “destigmatise”.

The reality of the capitalist sex industry

The sex industry only thrives thanks to the injustices of modern capitalism: class inequality, and the systemic oppression of women, people of colour and LGBTI people.

The centrality of women’s oppression to the sex industry

Most sex workers are women and girls. A 2014 report from the Urban Institute found that 78 percent of US sex worker respondents were cisgender females, 19 percent transgender women, and 3 percent male.^[26] The extreme gender imbalance is an indication that the industry relies on the sexual objectification and oppression of women which is common to all class societies.

One factor in this is the overall wealth inequality that results from women’s oppression. Women are more likely to find themselves in poverty and, as a consequence, be driven into prostitution.

Another crucial factor that drives the sex industry is the idea that women are sex objects, which can be internalised by women themselves. Girls and women are socialised by a sexist society and learn to think of and treat their bodies as objects of others’ desires. A lap dancer interviewed by Natasha Walters for her book Living Dolls described the experience: “You just feel you can’t make money any other way, that the most important thing about you is the fact that you are a sexual object, and that’s what men want, and that’s all you are”.^[27] Women and girls are taught to internalise the sexist attitudes of a society which constantly objectifies and undervalues them. When they find themselves in need of cash, is it any wonder that some women try to monetise that objectification?

While men are very unlikely to sell their bodies as sex workers, they are the overwhelming majority of sex buyers. This fact is worth reflecting on. We do not expect such a gendered consumer base in other service industries like aged care. Roughly equal numbers of women and men live in homes for the elderly. Men and women both grow old and require care. Similarly, men and women both have sex and experience sexual desire, so why are sex-buyers overwhelmingly men? The answer should be obvious: women are sexually objectified and oppressed in a way men are not, and men are taught to view women’s bodies as objects they can purchase and control.

Extremely sexist attitudes surround the purchase of sex

It must be remembered, however, that only a minority of men purchase sex. A 2014 study found that around 17 percent of Australian men have bought sex at least once in their lives, and only 2 percent had done so in the past year.^[28] The same study asked men who had stopped buying sex why they did so, with 72.3 percent saying: “I realized paying for sex is inconsistent with my morals”. Men, even many who have bought sex, understand the immorality of using another person to satisfy one’s own desires, without concern for reciprocity.

Why should a deeply sexist industry be “destigmatised”? Would society be improved if more men believed that women were sex objects who existed to satisfy their own sexual desires? We should be relieved to discover that, despite the sexist socialisation that men experience from a young age, only a minority think that paying for sex is acceptable. If we have stigma to thank for this, then stigma performs a useful social function by preventing more men from acting like sexist pigs. People who defend the sex industry are defending the rights of a deeply misogynistic minority of men to economically coerce people into unwanted sex.

Class inequality

There is a tight correlation between poverty and sex work. Capitalism’s extreme class inequality creates a section of the population who exist on the margins of the formal economy and must eke out a living selling their ability to labour and if not, their bodies and sexuality. The poorest sections of a country’s population are overrepresented in the sex industry. Where poverty increases, prostitution tends to as well. When the 2008 economic crisis drove Greek unemployment up to 25 percent, the number of sex workers increased by 7 percent.^[29]

Economic destitution drives prostitution. Thailand is thought to have the largest population of sex workers per capita in the world. It is also a country with high levels of poverty and unemployment among women, many of whom populate Thailand’s sex trade. In Brazil, where 12 million impoverished people live in favelas (slums), there are estimated to be around 250,000 children in prostitution.

The class divide also drives the demand for prostitution. Sex buyers tend to be higher on the social pecking order than the sex workers whose services they purchase. While sex buyers exist across demographics of race and sexual orientation, a 2018 study found that high-frequency sex buyers are much more likely than other men to make US$100,000 or more annually.^[30]

The labour supply of the sex industry is driven by poverty and marginalisation, while demand is often driven by the sense of entitlement of wealthy men to the bodies of poor and oppressed women.

Racism

Systemic oppression like racism and the oppression of trans and gay people, like women’s oppression, contributes to people entering the sex industry. People of colour and LGBTI people disproportionately find themselves on the margins of the labour force, and therefore pushed into the sex industry. They are also denigrated, demeaned and sexually objectified in ways that can be monetised.

Migrants make up a large proportion of sex worker populations in Western countries, if not the majority. This is because, in countries with higher standards of living and a social safety net, fewer citizens can be induced to work in the sex industry, whereas migrants denied the rights of citizenship are more likely to be induced to sell sex. In NSW, a 2012 study found that two-thirds of sex worker respondents were migrants and 46 percent rated their English language skills as fair to poor.^[31] In Australia, most migrant sex workers are from Thailand, China or Korea. Migrants make up around 25 percent of the overall workforce in Australia, so they are overrepresented in the sex industry. Western Europe draws many of its sex workers from impoverished Eastern European and African countries. Fondation Scelles claimed in 2013 that two-thirds of France’s sex workers were of foreign origin.^[32] Poverty and the vulnerability imposed by visa conditions probably contribute to the overrepresentation of migrants in the sex industry.

The “supply” countries for sex worker migration and trafficking are mostly in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, where large numbers of poor and oppressed people form a potential pool of recruits into the global sex trade, through both violent and economic coercion. Eastern European countries devastated by war and economic collapse since the 1990s have become particularly notorious sites of sex trafficking. The industry for mail-order brides, which combines sexual exploitation with outright domestic slavery, follows the same routes, with women typically shipped out of Eastern Europe and Asia to marry men in the West. Many of these countries have also become destinations for sex tourism. Thailand is a notorious example, but Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines and Kenya are also popular spots for Western sex tourists. Racist stereotypes about sexually obliging non-Western women provide fuel for this horrific trade in human beings. US researcher Yasmina Katsulis cites the misogynistic and racist attitudes of sex buyers themselves. The administrator of one online sex tourism forum declared: “Women in Western countries are spoiled bitches… But there are many places in the world where women will treat you like a king for a minor fraction of what your Western girlfriend costs”.^[33]

Within Western countries, people from oppressed ethnic and racial backgrounds are overrepresented in the sex industry. An Urban Institute study found that 33 percent of US sex worker respondents identified as Black, though Black people make up 12.6 percent of the total US population.^[34] Indigenous people are overrepresented among sex workers in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US. Higher rates of poverty and discrimination against these groups explain their overrepresentation in prostitution, but the industry also trades off stereotypes of non-white women as more sexually obliging. Katsulis found that in sex industry advertising, “Mexicanas are repeatedly portrayed as more open-minded and accepting, and a preference for the intrinsic asymmetry in the relationship is legitimized and naturalized”.^[35]

LGBTI people and sex work

LGBTI people are overrepresented among sex workers. Some progressives see this as a positive, and argue that “sex worker” is a marginalised sexual identity. Some have proposed adding SW to the LGBTQI+ rainbow. They also draw a particular connection between being pro-trans rights and pro-sex work.

The alliance between the LGBTI community and pro-sex industry groups has been corrosive. Many of the spaces of young LGBTI people are now suffused with a pro-sex work message. From Ru Paul’s Drag Race to LGBTI activist campaigns, sex work is increasingly seen as a healthy and normal part of the queer experience.

The identity politics framework is more about self-identity than structural oppression. This framework depoliticises questions of oppression: identities are just seen as tastes and personal preferences, rather than historically oppressed identity groups. Sexual kinks and aspects of our personality are presented as identities, regardless of any connection to actual oppression. This is how sex workers and even sex buyers are presented as a unique sexual identity. The left should reject this framework. Sex work represents the commercialisation of sexual activity, not a sexual identity. In fact, prostitution often involves sex workers having to repress their sexual identity and desires in order to satisfy someone else’s. In her autobiography, Call Me Sasha, Geena Leigh describes how for decades as a sex worker she repressed her own sexual identity as a lesbian to service her male clients.^[36]

With the depoliticised identity politics framework, nothing prevents us from seeing sex buyers as a sexual identity. Regularly paying for sex can be cast as an interesting kink, essential to one’s identity. This demonstrates the absurdity of the identity politics framework. Buying people for your own sexual pleasure is not an identity, it is the expression of a power imbalance, of dehumanisation, and having internalised the idea that some people exist solely to satisfy one’s own sexual desires.

Trans women are overrepresented in sex work. This is a symptom of oppression, of the extreme discrimination transgender people face in broader society. Transgender people are more likely to be impoverished, homeless, unemployed and suffer severe mental distress than cisgender people. In Australia, the unemployment rates for transgender men and women are double that of the general population. In addition, the high cost of gender-affirming surgeries and medications can be financially crippling. Derogatory stereotypes also contribute: LGBTI people, particularly trans women, are often treated like sexual curiosities who exist to satisfy the desires of others. These factors can drive LGBTI people into the sex industry for lack of better options. A telling 2017 survey of transgender people in Buenos Aires found that only 9 percent held formal employment, while 70 percent were sex workers, of whom 87 percent would leave the sex trade if offered formal employment.^[37] Some of the key demands of the trans rights movement – for an end to discrimination in healthcare and employment – are not congruent with the promotion of the sex industry. If there was less discrimination, if transgender people were less marginalised, fewer transgender people would have to sell sex to survive.

The socialist attitude to stigma

Given these realities of the sex industry, what should the socialist attitude be to its “stigmatisation”?

On the one hand, there is an unjustified stigma against sex workers. They often face discrimination in accessing services, police harassment and difficulty accessing employment outside the sex industry. This is because the authorities usually think of prostitution as the moral failing of individual sex workers, rather than a moral failing of capitalist society. This is the sort of hypocritical moralism that Lenin mocked in an article about the Fifth International Congress against Prostitution: “One lady from Canada waxed enthusiastic over the police and the supervision of ‘fallen’ women by policewomen, but as far as raising wages was concerned, she said that women workers did not deserve better pay”.^[38] This has been the general attitude of the authorities throughout capitalist history: to refuse to address the economic and social conditions that give rise to prostitution, while engaging in moralistic condemnation and policing of sex workers. Socialists should have no truck with this sort of stigma.

However, there is a justified stigma against the people who profit from prostitution and the men who pay for sex. This is part of a broader social rejection of sexual abuse and exploitation. In the last decade there has been a torrent of exposés of powerful men who have sexually assaulted and harassed women. There is, rightly, stigma and condemnation heaped on abusers like Harvey Weinstein. It is a continuation of this stigma to shame men who fly to Thailand for sex tourism trips, or who regularly visit brothels. Social shame is necessary in these cases, not because of the sexual nature of those activities, but because they are sexist, abusive and exploitative. Part of the hatred of far-right poster boy Andrew Tate is due to his unabashed involvement in sex trafficking and prostitution. Any attempt to “destigmatise” these outrageous behaviours only serves to normalise them and the misogyny which underpin them.

We also have some evidence of what “destigmatisation” looks like in practice. Germany’s sex industry has been well-advertised and publicly acceptable since its legalisation in 2002. Nisha Lilia Diu reported in the Telegraph that the German sex industry is “now worth 15 billion euros a year and embraces everything from 12-storey mega-brothels to outdoor sex boxes…known as ‘verrichtungsboxen’ – ‘getting things done boxes’”.^[39] Since 2002, the number of sex workers in Germany has doubled to 400,000 people, servicing 1.2 million men per day. Destigmatising sex work has not in any appreciable way helped Germany’s sex workers, who are now hyper-exploited in mega-brothels. But it has normalised the buying of sex, which is far more widespread in the German male population than in other countries. A 2022 study of 2,336 German men found that 26.9 percent had ever paid for sex.^[40] Compare this extraordinarily high number to a Swedish survey which put the number of Swedish men who have ever purchased sex at 10 percent.^[41]

“Stigma” is often presented as the singular cause of any and all harm to sex workers. This is blatantly false. The people who perpetrate the worst violence and abuse against sex workers are not random members of the public who think the sex trade is a disgrace, but the pimps and johns who approve of prostitution enough to benefit from it.

There is ample evidence that sex buyers are violent towards women. Regular sex-buyers hold more sexist, objectifying attitudes towards sex workers and women in general. Melissa Farley’s 2015 study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that:

Sex buyers were more likely than men who did not buy sex to report sexual aggression and likelihood to rape. Men who bought sex scored higher on measures of impersonal sex and hostile masculinity and had less empathy for prostituted women, viewing them as intrinsically different from other women.^[42]

Sex buyers hold particularly appalling views of sex workers. The authors of a 2012 survey of 103 male sex buyers reported that:

Twenty-five per cent told us that the very concept of raping a prostitute or call girl was “ridiculous”. Nearly one-half of the buyers stated that rape happens because men get sexually carried away (47%) or their sex drive gets “out of control” (48%)”.^[43]

Given their atrocious attitudes towards women, it should come as no shock that regular sex buyers are more right-wing than the rest of the population. An analysis based on the statistics given by online escorts websites found that 55 percent of German sex buyers voted for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the 2017 German elections.^[44] It would in no way improve the position of women and other oppressed people if such misogynistic views and behaviours were “destigmatised”, normalised and allowed to flourish.

Social shame and stigma are not inherent evils, they have been used by all human societies to discourage anti-social behaviour.

Disabilities and the “right to sex”

Another popular argument used to defend the sex industry is that every human being has a “right to sex” and, therefore, a right to purchase it. People with disabilities, it is argued, should have the right to purchase the services of sex workers, with government assistance if necessary.

This is one of the most emotionally manipulative arguments employed by the pro-sex work lobby. It is intended to recruit sympathies for disabled people to defend sexual exploitation. It is worth remembering that the majority of sex buyers are able-bodied men.

First, the “right to sex” can be a misleading phrase. Of course, everyone has a right to freely express their sexuality with other consenting adults, without interference from the state. But do people just have an automatic “right to sex” with someone who would otherwise be unwilling? This argument mirrors the sexist idea that men have insatiable sexual appetites that must be satisfied. Presumably, many rapists believe they have a “right to sex”, as do right-wing “incels” who complain that women don’t want to have sex with them. In reality, no one has a right to sex.

Secondly, this argument is extremely patronising towards people with disabilities, branding them as inherently undesirable and only able to experience sexual intimacy by paying for it. Some people with disabilities, especially women, have baulked at this idea, and at the cynical use of their plight to defend a sexist and exploitative industry. In her article titled “Nobody’s entitled to sex, including disabled people”, Phillipa Willitts writes: “An infantilized view of disabled people also contributes to the idea that sex with one of us is wrong or weird, adding to the stigma and prejudice that limit our lives”.^[45] There are plenty of patronising limitations that capitalist society places on people with disabilities, including sexual ones. These are unacceptable, but the situation is not improved by allowing people with disabilities to participate in the sexual exploitation of other oppressed people.

Listen to sex workers?

Criticisms of the sex industry, like those outlined above, are often met with accusations of not “listening to sex workers”. But there are problems with an understanding of the sex industry based purely on the testimony of sex workers.

First, there is a broad spectrum of opinion among sex workers and ex-sex workers. Accounts by former sex workers range from the glamorous to the harrowing, from Brooke Magnanti’s Diaries of a London Call Girl to Rachel Moran’s Paid For. There has been a tendency to dismiss critical accounts like Moran’s and inflate titillating accounts like Magnanti’s, which was made into a multi-season television show starring Billie Piper. How can the adage “listen to sex workers” be meaningful when their accounts vary wildly? Sex worker organisations similarly range in their opinions of the industry. There are pro-sex work groups which demand total decriminalisation and proclaim that “sex work is work”. There are also organisations of ex-sex workers who call themselves survivors and demand the Swedish model which criminalises sex buyers. These testimonies alone cannot create a full picture of what the industry is, what it does to sex workers and its impacts on broader society.

Secondly, most sex workers are not heard because they are some of the most marginalised and oppressed people in the world. Globally, a quarter are estimated to be children, and almost all sex workers belong to other oppressed groups: women, LGBTI and racially oppressed groups. The majority have no voice, no published books, no flashy screen adaptations. Very few active sex workers are members of sex worker organisations like the Scarlet Alliance in Australia. When we listen to such organisations, we tend to hear the voices of more middle-class, university-educated sex workers, people who no longer sell sex, or even people involved in pimping and exploiting sex workers. It has become common in such organisations to refer to the managers of escort agencies and brothels as sex workers. We must be careful, therefore, that we do not end up hearing the voices of pimps when we try to listen to sex workers.

Thirdly, “listening to sex workers” doesn’t tell us about the impact that the commercialisation of sex has on broader society. The sex trade is part of a broad swathe of social phenomena that encourage women to see their own bodies as monetisable commodities and men to see women as sex objects. As well as asking ourselves what sex workers experience, we must ask what the sex industry says about our society, and its impact on the consciousness of working-class people.

There are plenty of industries which are self-evidently bad for humanity. We do not need to first listen to the workers employed in these industries before forming an opinion of their damaging effects on society. Many workers in coal or weapons manufacturing believe the industries should continue indefinitely. But they represent a small minority of the overall working-class population. Similarly, even if some sex workers genuinely believe sex work is liberating and unoppressive, the left must take a hostile position to the sex industry. This is the only way to consistently oppose the oppression and objectification of women and other groups.

Another problem with this logic is that, if we are to listen to the voices of sex workers, why not listen to the voices of sex buyers? In many other service industries, the left advocates for the rights and interests of consumers: from the treatment of medical patients, of elderly people in aged care, children in childcare and people with disabilities accessing support services. We care about people being overcharged, underserviced and mistreated in these industries. How could any of this apply to the sex industry, where “clients” purchase sex with otherwise unwilling partners? The language about privileging the voices of sex workers has no answer to this ambiguity.

The socialist position

A socialist position on the sex industry starts from recognising that prostitution depends on the twin capitalist injustices of class and women’s oppression. It is the duty of socialists to expose and oppose all forms of oppression. To be consistent opponents of oppression we must oppose the sex trade. “Socialists” who mouth anti-sexist verbiage but think it acceptable for men to visit strip clubs and brothels are not worthy of the name. Tolerating this kind of sexist behaviour on the left says to women and other oppressed people: you are not equal comrades in the struggle, you are sex objects whose role is to satisfy the desires of others.

Ultimately, socialists are fighting for a society without class division or sexual oppression. In such a society, sex wouldn’t be commodified or distorted by sexism, it would be liberated from all coercion. This is the meaning of the “sexual liberation” the left fought for in the 1960s and ’70s.

As with most forms of oppression, sexual exploitation will continue so long as capitalism exists. As Lenin wrote, “no amount of moral indignation (hypocritical in 99 cases out of 100) about prostitution can do anything against this trade in female flesh; so long as wage-slavery exists, inevitably prostitution too will exist”.^[46] The only real solution is a long-term one: the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.

In the meantime, it is important that socialists, the left and the union movement recognise prostitution for what it is – a deeply damaging symptom of an unequal, sexist society.

It is only from that vantage point, of principled opposition to sexism and exploitation, that we can formulate positions on concrete laws and policies, assessing whether they would be better or worse for sex workers and for the rest of society.

Is there a legal solution?

The debate between abolitionist feminists and sex industry apologists tends to focus on finding the perfect legal formula to either eradicate prostitution or to make it safe and “destigmatised”. Socialists should be clear that no such formula exists – the capitalist state can neither end prostitution nor make it safe.

The left does not have some principled opposition to bans on destructive industries. There are many industries and trades which should be banned by the state: the left regularly calls to dismantle the nuclear weapons industry, and supports bans on child labour, slavery and organ-harvesting. The problem is that most outright bans on the sex industry harm the destitute people driven to sell sex, not the pimps who profit from it. This does not mean, however, that the left should flip into uncritically championing every bill which decriminalises a sexist and abusive industry. The call to “destigmatise sex work” too often means normalising the commodification of women’s bodies.

The proposed legal regimes fall into four categories: full criminalisation, the Swedish model, legalisation and decriminalisation.

Full criminalisation, which makes it a crime to sell sex, buy sex, or profit from its sale, ends up targeting and criminalising the victims of sexual exploitation. In the US, where prostitution is criminalised in every state except Nevada, between 70,000 and 80,000 people are arrested in connection with prostitution each year, 90 percent of whom are prostitutes or pimps, 10 percent of whom are sex buyers.^[47] Such laws only add to the over-policing of marginalised and oppressed communities. They leave sex workers at the mercy of police, pimps and johns. They also make it more difficult to leave the industry, because many sex workers acquire criminal records and serve jail time.

No feminist “abolitionist” today argues for the criminalisation of people who sell sex. They point instead to the Nordic Model, also known as the Swedish Model after the country where it was first implemented. Such laws decriminalise sex work, while criminalising the purchase of sex, and claim to reduce demand. The Swedish government’s taskforce in 2008 summed up the theory behind this law: “the primary factor that perpetuates both human trafficking and prostitution is demand, that is, that people, primarily men, purchase sex”.^[48] This is a truism: without demand the sex industry could not operate. But it conveniently sidesteps the various economic and cultural factors which drive “supply”. The results of the ban in Sweden, Norway, France and elsewhere are hotly debated. Most of the evidence comes from studies with relatively small sample sizes, based on surveys of sex buyers and/or sex workers. It is still worth examining some of the evidence compiled over the past two decades.

The most compelling evidence that the criminalisation of sex buyers has protected sex workers in Sweden is that there have been no murders of sex workers by clients or pimps since the model was introduced in 1999, whereas client violence towards sex workers has continued unabated in decriminalised and legalised regimes such as exist in New Zealand and Germany. Surveys in Sweden, Norway and France show that the number of men buying sex has declined and that men see the laws as a deterrent.^[49] In Sweden, the percentage of the male population who paid for sex fell from 13.6 percent in 1996 to 7.9 percent in 2008 and 7.4 percent in 2014, although more recent numbers are difficult to find.^[50] Police departments report that Sweden and Norway have become undesirable destinations for sex traffickers since the bans were implemented, though there are no numbers to back up the claim. The Nordic Model also seems to have affected a change in public attitudes. By 2008, ten years after the model was introduced, 79 percent of women and 60 percent of men were in favour of banning the purchase of sex, compared to 45 percent and 20 percent respectively in 1996.^[51]

The Swedish model has not abolished the sex industry. Trafficking continues, though it may have reduced. Some feminists have criticised the Swedish government for providing too little funding to help people leave prostitution. Another downside is that the ban on the sale of sex relies on police enforcement. This may contribute to the over-policing of marginalised communities and of sex workers themselves. In terms of its overall effect, the Swedish Model has some benefits to recommend it. But, as with all legal solutions to a social problem, it relies on the repressive arm of the state to help solve an issue that is born of inequality, poverty and oppression.

Some sex industry apologists call for total legalisation, indeed – this is the logical conclusion of the argument that sex work is just another service industry. Legalisation existed for decades in Amsterdam and is currently in place in Germany. These regimes, in which the state props up and regulates the sex industry, have been a total disaster. They tend to normalise the abuses and, indeed, criminality, of the sex trade. A study by the London School of Economics in 2012 looked at trafficking in up to 150 different countries. It found that “on average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows”.^[52] The legalisation of prostitution in Germany has turned the country into what Der Spiegel described as the “brothel of Europe”. Widespread criminality and abuse continue there: the number of attempted murders of sex workers has increased since legalisation and trafficking flows have continued and increased in some areas. Despite legalisation, 90 percent of sex workers are unregistered and work without an employment contract. Organised crime syndicates continue to be heavily involved in the legal industry. Jürgen Rudloff was once the self-proclaimed “brothel king” of Germany, owning the Paradise chain of brothels. In 2019 he received a five-year sentence for aiding and abetting trafficking. Rudloff had been closely connected with the Hell’s Angels gang who trafficked women into his brothels from Eastern Europe. In court, a former Hell’s Angels gang member admitted to

forcing women into prostitution at Paradise, setting them a daily target of €500 a day and beating them if they didn’t bring enough money home. He would hit them on the head, rather than the body, he explained, so that no one would see the bruises. He also tattooed his name on to women’s bodies and ordered women to undergo breast enlargement surgery.^[53]

This all occurred in legal mega-brothels throughout Germany, marketed as “male wellness centres”.

Pro-sex work leftists usually acknowledge some of the problems with legalisation regimes like Germany’s and instead call for the full decriminalisation of sex work. NSW, Victoria and New Zealand are held up as shining examples where decriminalisation has delivered on its promise to clean up the sex industry and protect the rights of sex workers. While decriminalisation is preferable to repressive laws which target sex workers, it has serious limitations. Client violence against sex workers has continued under these regimes, including brutal murders. A New Zealand government report found that “The majority of sex workers interviewed felt that the PRA [Prostitution Reform Act, which decriminalised prostitution] could do little about the violence that occurred”.^[54] Trafficking and organised crime involvement in prostitution have also continued.

The main problem with decriminalisation is that, like legalisation, it normalises the purchase of sex. This can negatively impact the way men view women and the way women view themselves.

The other problem is that “decriminalisation” often translates into deregulation of the sex industry, ie for the rights of brothel owners and pimps to ply their trade with fewer restrictions. In Victoria, the further “decriminalisation” of sex work in 2021 relaxed restrictions on sex industry advertising and allowed brothels to run without a license and sell alcohol. In New Zealand, health and safety inspections of brothels were found to be almost non-existent. The left never takes this sort of laissez-faire attitude to other businesses, which must be heavily regulated to defend the rights of workers, consumers and the broader community. Restaurants which prepare food are inspected to enforce safety conditions, bosses must be forced to respect workers’ rights and zoning laws determine where businesses are allowed to operate. It is concerning that under the guise of decriminalisation, sex industry bosses are successfully deregulating brothels and escort agencies. Much of the push for decriminalisation involves opposing zoning laws which ban the sex industry from operating in certain locations, or from advertising widely. Again, this is an odd position for the left to take, and one we do not extend to any other industry. Destructive industries do not just have a right to operate where and when they please.

Proponents of sex work often assume that criminalisation and policing are the main source of criminality and violence in the sex industry. But the connection between the sex industry and organised crime has continued in countries where sex work is decriminalised or legalised. There are underlying reasons for the dominance of organised crime in the sex trade that are not reliant on the particular legal regime.

First, both sex buyers and sex workers often wish to remain anonymous. This leads to brothels and escort services keeping a low profile and many sex workers refusing to register, even in legal and decriminalised systems. The reality is that most men, even in the long-standing legal sex industry in the Netherlands, go to some effort to remain anonymous. This lends a clandestine nature to much of the sex industry that serves the need of organised crime to fly under the radar.

Second, sex industry bosses face hurdles in making their businesses profitable. The sex industry is “labour-intensive” and tends to have very low profit margins. Successful enterprises therefore exercise intense control over their workers and often look to trafficking as a source of cheap and easily controlled labour. Pimps tend to recruit and traffic sex workers who are extremely oppressed, tightly controlled, and paid very little. This is why coercion, abuse and illegal sex trafficking, facilitated by organised criminal gangs, are part and parcel of most sex industry business models, even where sex work is legal and legitimate.

Third, sex buyers, who are already willing to treat human beings like interchangeable sexual objects, tend to cultivate a taste for the degrading treatment of sex workers. This can include violence, rape, bestiality and sex with minors. The fact that such “appetites” are illegal in almost every country gives sex industry bosses ample reason to allow the criminal abuse of sex workers without reporting it to the police. Brothels, escort agencies and pimps who regularly reported such crimes would find their business drying up.

Fourth, many sex workers use drugs to help them dissociate from the experience of sex work. Drugs like alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin are often used to self-medicate and shield sex workers from the psychological pain they endure at work. This need for dissociation drives many pimps to procure a steady supply of illegal drugs, another reason for the industry’s association with organised crime.

None of these elements are dependent on the legal framework surrounding the sex industry.

The reality is that no laws under capitalism can end sexual exploitation or make prostitution safe. “Harm reduction” is a worthy and oft-touted goal, but it can be achieved by materially improving the lives of the women and marginalised groups most likely to be drawn into sex work. For example, increasing wages and employment options for women, Indigenous and LGBTI people, increasing welfare payments and access to childcare and healthcare, would all constitute real harm reduction.

Conclusion

Socialists must embrace a consistently anti-sexist approach to prostitution. Sex work is a symptom of a sexist and unequal society. It should not be raised on a pedestal as liberating or radical, nor should it be normalised through language like “sex work is work”.

Identity politics and raunch culture have had a corrosive effect on left-wing politics. Identity politics has mangled the left’s understanding of the sex industry in at least three ways.

First, because identity and experience are elevated above structural analyses of oppression, many have abandoned any understanding of women’s oppression. Thanks to raunch culture, sexual objectification and other elements of women’s oppression are ignored or even actively celebrated as a liberating choice. Some on the left have not only accepted sexist ideas around objectification but argue that to talk about “women” at all is transphobic, because it minimises the experience of trans women. “Woman” is certainly a social construct of our society. Transgender people, who transgress this socially constructed binary, are deeply oppressed and must be wholeheartedly supported by socialists. But the oppression of women is also a very real structural phenomenon, baked into how capitalism organises the family and work. It affects a majority of the world’s population and is a key injustice of capitalism. The left must take women’s oppression seriously and oppose it with gusto. That means recognising the sex industry for what it has always been: a symptom and product of women’s oppression.

Second, individualism and neoliberal-inflected choice politics are elevated above the collective interest of working-class people. Sex work is seen through the prism of this individualism; as an identity category and personal choice rather than an element of structural oppression which has a negative impact on society and class consciousness.

Third, identity politics is intensely moralistic. This involves ranking the moral worthiness of groups based on how marginalised and stigmatised they are. This has led to the obsessive “platforming” of sex workers in progressive campaigns, particularly for LGBTI rights. Being pushed to the margins of society is a terrible symptom of oppression and discrimination. The marginalisation of certain groups is a social injustice to be fought. But it isn’t edgy or radicalising, and it doesn’t automatically bestow a liberatory consciousness on its victims.

There are sexist and anti-human assumptions at the core of the arguments put forward by defenders of the sex industry. They assume that prostitution is a natural part of life, that it has always existed and will always exist. Their most optimistic vision is for a world where women can freely choose to commodify their bodies without being shamed or repressed. This is a deeply regressive vision for humanity.

In its place we need a socialist vision, for a world without sexual exploitation or sexual oppression. In fighting for that world, the consciousness of ordinary working-class people matters. It is only by consistently opposing oppression that the workers’ movement can unite the oppressed in a fight against capitalism. That means being clear about the inherently sexist and exploitative nature of the sex industry.

References

Arrow, Elly 2018, “Compilation of Statistics on Sex Buyers in Germany”. https://ellyarrow.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/the-ultimate-compilation-of-statistics-on-sex-buyers-in-germany/

Australian Government (Department of Social Services) 2023, The Commonwealth Consent Policy Framework. https://www.dss.gov.au/sexual-consent/the-commonwealth-consent-policy-framework

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[1] Thanks to Louise O’Shea, who helped enormously in the early stages of writing, and to Jordan Humphreys, Diane Fieldes, Sandra Bloodworth and Grace Hill, who made helpful suggestions.

[2] Kollontai 1977.

[3] Red Wedge 2014.

[4] Smith and Mac 2018.

[5] Frase 2012.

[6] Banyard 2016.

[7] Australian Government (Department of Social Services) 2023.

[8] Moran 2013.

[9] Banyard 2016.

[10] See for example Gallant 2021.

[11] Levy 2006 (first published 2005).

[12] Brown 2022.

[13] Steven 2024.

[14] Story 2016.

[15] Kollontai 1977.

[16] Kollontai 1977.

[17] Gallant 2021.

[18] Gallant 2021.

[19] From an interview with Friedman in Chicago Life, 2006. Quoted in Banyard 2016.

[20] Taylor 2015.

[21] Banyard 2016.

[22] Howe, Shi and Clibborn 2022.

[23] The Scarlet Alliance 2023.

[24] McCauley 2015.

[25] Interview in McCauley 2015.

[26] Brown 2014.

[27] Walters 2010.

[28] Richters et al 2014.

[29] Magra 2018.

[30] Demand Abolition 2018.

[31] Donovan et al 2012.

[32] Goldmann 2013.

[33] Cited in Banyard 2016.

[34] Cited in Brown 2014.

[35] Cited in Banyard 2016.

[36] Leigh 2013.

[37] Cited in Valente 2021.

[38] Lenin 1913b.

[39] Diu 2013.

[40] Döring et al 2022.

[41] Public Health Agency of Sweden 2017.

[42] Farley et al 2015.

[43] Farley et al 2009.

[44] Arrow 2018.

[45] Willitts 2014.

[46] Lenin 1913a.

[47] Farley et al 2009.

[48] Swedish Institute 2010, p.5.

[49] Kuosmanen 2011 and Fein 2019. See Coy, Pringle and Tyler 2016, p.2.

[50] Coy, Pringle and Tyler 2016, p.4.

[51] Both studies referenced in Cox 2021, p.44.

[52] Neumayer 2013.

[53] Lorenz 2019.

[54] See New Zealand Ministry of Justice 2008.