In-depth discussion of why prostitution can never conform to modern workplace practices and legislation. Read More
Can prostitution ever conform with our employment laws, regulations, and practices?
Open letter to The Lancet
Text and list of signatures to an open letter to The Lancet in response to their editorial calling on the EU to adopt full decriminalisation. Read More
Do prostitution laws in Europe affect the incidence of rape? – Analysis of a recent study
Searing critique of the recent Journal of Law and Economics study that claims rape rates go down after countries legalise prostitution. Read More
Why Andrew Tate’s indiscretion riles the pimp lobby
Esther reflects on the hypocrisy of sex trade advocates condemning Andrew Tate, when they are essentially advocating for the same things: male entitlement and female degradation and servitude. Read More
The only way to reduce the sexual exploitation facilitated by commercial sex websites is to shut them down
Esther, sex trade survivor and activist, explains the institutional failure exposed by the decision of the NPCC and the National Crime Agency to collaborate with the University of Leicester in “research” into how websites that facilitate sexual exploitation can “address” sexual exploitation. Read More
Supporting the pimp lobby so it doesn’t come for your children
Prostitution survivor, Esther, talks about the Killing Kittens “sex parties” she used to be paid to attend and explains that they were in fact brothels. She asks whether the social connections of the facilitators are a factor in the police ignoring them. Read More
Sex trade regulation in England & Wales: Property, hypocrisy and the ballot box
This article, by Esther, who was herself in prostitution, explains the law relating to prostitution in England and Wales, and the stomach churning hypocrisy that accompanies it. Read More
The Law of Diminishing Returns
In this insightful article, Esther, who was herself in prostitution, reflects on the finding of the Médecins du Monde study that the income of people involved in prostitution in France has reduced since the Nordic Model law was introduced there in April 2016. She explains how such a reduction in income has been observed in several European countries and suggests it is related to the increase in the number of women entering the sex industry through “choice,” coercion, trafficking, and the fallout from the banking crisis from 2008 and the subsequent implementation of “austerity” policies – and the normalisation of BDSM practices through the mainstreaming of porn. Read More
PODCAST: The Colonisation of Intimate Life – The Mainstreaming of Sexual Violence and Hazard
In this podcast, Esther, who has a longstanding interest in research on legal and public policy approaches to sexualised violence and domestic abuse, uses her own experience of porn and prostitution to reflect on consent, the global reach of depictions of sexualised violence and what this means for women and girls. Read More
The Colonisation of Intimate Life
“The global onslaught of online sexualised violence, competing for clicks with acts of destruction, torture and murder, its enactment against prostituted women and men, and its mainstreaming as part of a ‘bucket list’ of steps in a sexual apprenticeship dictated by untouchable, global corporations, has severe consequences for both women and men…” Read More
“Murder Porn”
In this ground-breaking and harrowing article, Esther, who was herself involved in prostitution and the making of porn, shows how the eroticisation of cruelty in both the political and personal arenas is fed by the global sex industry’s violence and cruelty, and she reveals the hypocrisy of those who insist that ‘sex work’ is a private matter of no consequence to anyone else and who wilfully ignore its devastating consequences for both individuals and society. Read More
Legalisation of brothels and the carceral state
In this important article, Esther, who was herself in prostitution, draws parallels between methods of mass control and subjection introduced during the industrial revolution and the control of women and their widespread subjection to practices of sexual torture during the current technological revolution. She exposes the hypocrisy of the human rights organisations and capitalists who argue for the blanket decriminalisation of the sex trade, which would open up legal mega-brothels such as are found in Germany, and draws on her own experience to argue that the sex industry is rife with racism, sexism and classism, preys on the most powerless women and girls and is inherently traumatising. Legalising brothels benefits only the punters and the profiteers, not the women. Read More
Miseducation – This is not a love song
Drawing on her own experiences in porn and prostitution, Esther asks that we break through our cultural denial and open our eyes to the brutal reality that easy access to online porn and anything goes prostitution has unleashed: The everyday sexual, bodily and psychic torture of women and girls throughout the world and the presentation of this to children as if it were normal sex and not fraught with danger, not only for the individual but for our very social fabric. Read More