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For decades, the discussion about prostitution has been about the prostitutes. But the only reason why prostitution exists is because men are buying them. Men are the ones who are sneaking around brothels. Men are the ones harming and violating the prostitutes. Men’s demands are fueling trafficking. But it is never about these men. Only rarely does a man admit that he is one of those who buy sex. But a report from Denmark shows that 15.5 per cent of Danish men aged 18-65 years have bought sex. A high number of these didn’t care if the woman they bought had been forced into prostitution. –Tanja Rahm, Prostitution Narratives page 84 ...

People always ask me how the criminalisation of buyers would have helped me while I was in prostitution. My answer is this: If it had been a crime to buy women for sexual pleasure then I would have known that what these men were doing was wrong. For a long time I blamed myself, thinking that it was my own fault. I chose to be a prostitute. I gave them the opportunity to buy me. I took their money. How could I blame them? How could I blame anyone else but myself? But I am sure I would have left prostitution much earlier if the law had been on my side. Because then I would have known that what these men were doing was wrong. I took the blame for their numerous attacks. I felt that I had set up myself in this situation and therefore couldn’t blame them. There was no support or help to get out. I’m absolutely sure that a ban on buying sex would have helped me by sending a clear signal that the buyer’s actions were wrong. It is no use thinking liberally about prostitution if we want to help women out of prostitution. Because how are prostitutes ever able to open their eyes to the violent structure of prostitution when there is no social or political support for recognising prostitution as being violent and harmful? ...

When you are in prostitution you internalise the violence. You hear the same repulsive things over and over when you are being called a slut, a whore, stupid or disgusting. But still, you defend your ‘free choice’ and say that prostitution is just ordinary work, because realising the truth is so depleting. You dissociate yourself from the men and their actions, because no one has the psyche to be present in the acts of violence in prostitution. –Tanja Rahm, Prostitution Narratives page 80-81

But the men who buy sex are all the same no matter where they find you. They are men whose needs are more important than the safety of women. They are men who may seem like good men in other aspects of their lives but who let go of all respect and empathy when they buy access to women’s bodies. They don’t feel any responsibility for their actions, and show as little respect as they wish. They feel entitled to belittle and humiliate the women they have paid to satisfy their sexual needs. They violate them physically, psychologically, sexually, financially and materialistically. There are so many aspects of violence in this industry. And that is what you have to understand, that the violence in prostitution is complex. It’s not just being hit, kicked and raped. The violence is so much more. ...

I’m not telling my story in search of pity; none of us want your pity. I tell it as testimony to the bare truth of what prostitution is, the truth that every day is drenched in lies. I’m telling this truth not for myself but for all the women who are still suffering and all those yet to suffer in this climate of denial. That truth is this: women cannot be afforded human status in a world where prostitution exists; women cannot be afforded human status in a world where prostitution can even be imagined. ...

People sometimes say that we will know feminism has done its job when half the CEOs are women. That’s not feminism; to quote Catharine MacKinnon, it’s liberalism applied to women. Feminism will have won not when a few women get an equal piece of the oppression pie, served up in our sisters’ sweat, but when all dominating hierarchies - including economic ones - are dismantled. –Lierre Keith