By Florence Jacquet
This article was originally published in two parts by Mouvement du Nid, on 2 December and 10 December 2023 – World Human Rights Day 2023. We are grateful for permission to publish this English translation.
1. Porn, a link in the prostitution system
Freedom and equality are for everyone or for no one
The prostitution system is a patriarchal organisation, the last bastion of a long history in which men’s desires have always taken precedence over those of women. Feminism is therefore abolitionist since it puts women’s desire and will back at the centre. As for abolitionism, it has never killed anyone, whereas the prostitute-killer system kills every day…
In the twenty-first century, the sex industry has become a sprawling market whose ramifications continue to grow with new technologies and the advent of globalised capitalism. It is a sector worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year and is based on the exploitation of human beings and their vulnerabilities (poverty, origins, migration, etc.).
Some people then try to make people believe that prostitution has always existed, that empowerment is possible, a form of emancipation. It is not very progressive to want to maintain a market of domination, violence and exploitation of the human person. It is more akin to sexual slavery.
Pornography and prostitution are two communicating vessels.
The sex industry, whether it’s strip clubs, erotic massage parlours, peep shows or escort agencies, is always the same. Pornographic images and films, which are increasingly accessible and even invasive, also participate in this prostitution system, because they have the same motives – see the report published in September 2023 by the [French] High Council for Equality between Women and Men or Nadia’s testimony.
New technologies are helping to trivialise the system and create a demand for vulnerable and increasingly younger women. Advertising is complicit, through its hypersexualisation. This trivialisation and pervasiveness contribute to the “sexualisation” of society and has a great impact on the sexual practices and self-esteem of young boys and girls. In porn, hundreds of thousands of women are brutalised and raped for the pleasure of the male audience, who then seek to reproduce the same acts in their own sexual relations.
Porn is not cinema!
Pornographic films contain real, unsimulated, physical, sexual or verbal violence against women. Rape culture, misogyny, unsimulated acts obtained by money: this is filmed prostitution.
More than 2.3 million children in France watch videos on pornographic sites every month! Viewer numbers are up sharply. The edifying figures of Arcom show that 51% of 12-year-old boys consume porn, compared with 53% of men. An increase of 36% among minors since 2017.
Pornography has become the school of sexism, as Sylvie-Pierre Brossolette, the president of the High Council for Equality between Women and Men, pointed out: “This school of sexist violence that is pornography must stop.” By trivialising and eroticising sexual violence, it trains future generations in rape culture.
But rape is violence, it is a crime. As Gisèle Halimi has said, “On rape, we have made progress, but it is a visible violence. Whereas prostitution is dressed up as a choice. And this is what we must fight radically”. This porno-criminal violence must stop, women victims must be protected, illegal videos (90% of content) must be removed.
We must say no to the porn industry, which cultivates rape culture, but also sexism, racism, torture, and LGBT-phobias. Many prostituted women mention the influence of pornography on the increasingly specific, and increasingly degrading, dehumanising demands made of them by johns. Before making the choice to buy a sexual act, every man should remember that prostitution kills every day in the world.
Faced with this persistent trivialisation, we, the survivors of prostitution and porn, have been asking for two and a half years for phase 2 of the French 2016 Nordic Model law, and above all for a real substantial budget for its full and complete application, not forgetting the johns without whom there would be no prostitution.
Let’s build a world without porn, without prostitution!
2. Porn and prostitution are neither work, nor sex
In its recent report, the Women’s Foundation estimates the minimum budget the French state should devote to the protection of victims of violence as 2.6 billion euros per year. It is time for the means to be put on the table!
More than 90% of people in prostitution want to do something else. We must support all these people, give them the opportunity to benefit from pathways out of prostitution, to build an egalitarian world.
There is no good or bad prostitution, there is prostitution. The prostitution industry is not at all concerned with the “well-being” and safety of prostituted women, it defends its interests. Being involved in prostitution carries the highest risk of death by homicide at the hands of johns and pimps. The risk of being assaulted is 60 to 120 times higher than it is for the general population. In addition, there is dissociation, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide…
Some speak of it as a transgressive activity… Where is the transgression? Maybe in denial!
We must stop the trivialisation of prostitution in the media, social networks and elsewhere. Prostitution is not a job. The term sex worker is a misnomer. As Albert Camus said, “To misname things is to add to the misfortune of the world”.
The law must be applied
Contrary to what its opponents say, the 2016 [French Nordic Model] law does not kill. It is the johns and pimps who kill. Without johns to buy prostitutes, there would be no market, so there would no pimping or sex trafficking. That is, no more prostitution.
But some don’t want us to touch the customers. It’s not surprising. Masculinists don’t want it, and neither does the sex industry.
International law and the European Parliament support the abolitionist model
Prostitution is a form of violence, an attack on human dignity, according to international treaties. Article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) states that States Parties shall take “all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of trafficking in women and exploitation of prostitution of women”.
The European Parliament also adopted a report last September, which calls on Member States to adopt the abolitionist model, as France, Sweden and Ireland are already doing. It proposed that they:
- Promote the decriminalisation of people in prostitution, and their access to exit prostitution programs.
- Criminalise the purchase of sexual acts and all forms of pimping.
It is this model that must be applied if we wish to succeed in building an egalitarian and united world without any form of exploitation, commodification of bodies, dehumanisation, violence against women and children, LGBT-phobias, discrimination, racism, anti-Semitism.
As I repeat tirelessly: States must finally put on the table the means to fight the sex industry, its networks and pimping, effectively, and put sufficient resources in place to fight against rejection, exclusion, poverty, precariousness and discrimination.
From an early age we must teach people that we do not pay for sex. There should be systematic prevention and awareness-raising interventions in schools. Changing behaviour will take some time, perhaps two to three generations.
One of the best preventions is to never start prostitution.
As long as prostitution exists, women and men will never be free from patriarchy, from capitalism.
Florence Jacquet. Feminist, abolitionist, humanist, survivor of prostitution