Kajsa Ekis Ekman

“And here we arrive at the core of prostitution: the buyer’s paradox. He both wants and doesn’t want prostitution to be work. He wants to be able to buy sex, but he doesn’t want the woman to behave as if she is being paid to perform the act. The buyer wants prostitution to exist, but he doesn’t want it to resemble prostitution. The more it resembles a routine chore—the more the woman acts like a cashier at a grocery store—the more displeased he becomes. No matter how much he wants her, he knows that she is doing it for the money. He therefore constantly demands something more, something genuine, something real. He wants to possess her whole body, her whole person, her whole Self. The buyer finds himself in a constant state of self-deception, which continually leads him to desire possession of what cannot be bought.”
― Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self

“What characterizes the neoliberal definition of the victim, however, is that victim has become a characteristic. It means that a person is weak, that we can be either passive victims or active subjects. We cannot be both. In this way, the victim is depicted so negatively that the concept must eventually be abolished completely.”
― Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self