MYTH: Prostitution stops men raping women

Do we really accept that men can’t control themselves? Do we believe that when a man sees a woman or a girl, he can’t control himself and he has to rape her? Do we really accept that?

No of course we don’t believe that. That is infantilising men. It is insulting their humanity.

Like rape, prostitution is not only about sex. It is also about power and men using sex to gain personal power.

Punters tell us this in their own words on websites such as punternet.com where they can rate the women they buy. It is chilling and disturbing to read their accounts and to see each punter’s lack of awareness that the prostituted woman is a human being with the same needs and hopes and dreams as he has; to see how he never questions his right to expect and demand that she should be ready to satisfy his every whim regardless of her own feelings.

This is what prostitution teaches punters. It feeds their narcissism.

Prostitution survivors tell us the same story. In her powerful speech at Feminism in London 2015, prostitution survivor Rebecca Mott said that punters think their violence is not real violence because “they view the prostituted as sub-human sexual goods. It is nothing happening to nothing.”

Where do the punters go when they leave the prostituted woman at the side of the road or they walk out of the brothel?

They go back to their homes and jobs and leisure activities, carrying their prostitution-inflated sense of narcissistic entitlement with them. Along with their sense that women are other, sub-human.

Together these attitudes make it more likely that they will harass, abuse or rape the other women they meet in their lives. Not less likely.

So it is not true that prostitution stops men raping women. In fact the opposite is true. Prostitution makes the rape and sexual abuse of women and children more likely.

The Journal of Law and Economics study

The Journal of Law and Economics published a study in November 2022 that claimed to have found a causal link between the liberalisation and prohibition of prostitution and the incidence of rape. On the basis of this one study, there has been a flurry of posts on social media and elsewhere demanding the legalisation of prostitution.

For an excellent critique of this study, see Do prostitution laws in Europe affect the incidence of rape? – Analysis of a recent study.

A data scientist who wishes to remain anonymous investigated the statistical analysis of the report and found many serious issues that call its validity into further doubt. After trying but failing to get the editor to investigate the concerns, they approached Retraction Watch, which published a report.

The Journal of Population Economics study

The Journal of Population Economics published a study by Riccardo Ciacci in March 2024 that claimed that Sweden’s ban on buying sex had increased reported rapes by as much as 62%. This study has now been retracted as explained by Retraction Watch due to methodological and other failures. Here is a short extract from the report:

“‘The methodological errors appear to be the result of a lack of rigor in the study design and in the interpretation of the results rather than author bias towards the conclusions,’ the committee wrote in their October 2025 report.

The committee also called paper’s framing ‘reductionist and dehumanizing,’ writing that the study models male sexuality as a consumer demand ‘in which men choose between a partner, prostitution or rape based on costs and risks, without other alternatives for sexual satisfaction.’

‘[We] do consider that his research does not meet the standards of quality, rigor, and excellence that we expect from a Comillas researcher, especially regarding the lack of complexity in formulating his hypotheses, responsibility in establishing the practical consequences of his conclusions, and humility in acknowledging his errors,’ the committee concluded.”