Il mito Pretty woman: Come la lobby dell'industria del sesso ci spaccia la prostituzione

by Julie Bindel, I. Baldini (Translator), C. Carpita (Translator)

Nel corso di due anni, Julie Bindel ha raccolto 250 interviste in quasi 40 città e Stati viaggiando instancabilmente fra Europa, Asia, Nordamerica, Australia, Nuova Zelanda, Africa orientale
e meridionale. Ha visitato bordelli legali, ha conosciuto papponi, pornografi, sopravvissute alla prostituzione e donne vendute da uomini considerati “imprenditori”. Ha incontrato femministe abolizioniste, attivisti pro sex work, poliziotti, uomini di governo, uomini che “vanno a puttane”.

Un’indagine approfondita, appassionata e sofferta che rivela le bugie di una mitologia tesa a truccare gli sporchi interessi di un’attività criminale fra le più redditizie, la tratta globale.
L’unico testo che tratta il tema a livello mondiale, in un momento in cui sono numerosi i governi che cominciano a interessarsi alla questione. Il libro uscito, nel 2017 (The Pimping of Prostitution: "Abolishing the Sex Work Myth"), è stato accolto con grande entusiasmo dalla critica e ha ricevuto eccellenti reviews da grandi firme dell’attivismo sociale, del femminismo, del giornalismo, una fra tutte, Gloria Steinem.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Politics, Sexuality, History, Prostitution, Philosophy

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Orla Hegarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do you really think about 'sex work' - a term that has become ubiquitous in media parlance and public discourse?

As someone who has been accused of 'whorephobia' I read this knowing I was in the choir cheering Ms. Bindel on for her tireless lifetime work on the liberation of women across the planet.

But you....you reading this review....do you wanna understand 'sex work' from another viewpoint? Then this book is for you. Ignore the sometimes hurried editing mishaps in this excellently researched book and realize the grossly underfunded path feminists must take in order to grab a moment to increase awareness on an issue that is rarely covered with balance in any media.

[Meghan Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for any progressive person. The propaganda pushed by the sex work lobby is relentless, but luckily so is Julie, whose research into the sex trade and the nefarious means used to promote prostitution as harmless or as a potentially empowering "job" for women and to smear those who challenge sexual exploitation is exhaustive.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is most extraordinary for its extreme level of dogmatism and lack of charity to any other viewpoint. Bindel sets up the very weakest image of her opposition (or flat out lies about it) and then repeatedly responds to that. She barely cites any studies aside from a few of her own (which are not peer reviewed). One of the only studies she cites Cho, S.; Dreher, A.; Neumayer, E. (2013.) Does legalised prostitution increase human trafficking? In World Development., does not even define "trafficking" and is basically useless. If you feel you must read this book, then please consider getting a used copy. I genuinely do not think it is worth the time or money at all. She reveals her dogmas early on. For instance she states that, if women and women were "equal" (I'm curious about what she actually means by that), then prostitution would not exist. She claims that men and women cannot be equal until prostitution doesn't exist. That seems kind of circular. I guess the definition in this context of equality is that prostitution doesn't exist. So, basically a translation is that men and women cannot be without prostitution until there is no prostitution...

She tells us she thinks that no woman would ever choose prostitution without a controlling male patriarchy. She repeatedly mentions cases of women who have awful stories of being abused and controlled. I certainly oppose women being coerced, mistreated and abused. However, the problem is that Bindel doesn't mention a SINGLE case of a prostitute who does not feel seriously mistreated by most customers. She mentions cases were a woman was manipulated and/or forced into
prostitution. She basically doesn't mention anyone with positive stories. Believe it or not, they are out there. There are women who chose to get into prostitution on their own and worked independently without a pimp. There are also women who worked with other women, an escort agency or even a brothel and found the experience generally positive. Just search the internet and find one of their websites. Bindel states that women who didn't have awful experiences that were abusive must be "tourists" who didn't do REAL prostitution. She states "The model of framing prostitution as labour, and decriminalising the entire market, would be the best model for the ‘tourists’ and is the sensible approach to take. But it would work simply because these women (and men) are atypical, privileged ideologues." She basically doesn't admit that any cases exist aside from horror stories.

She reveals how condescending she is toward those who disagree with her in the second chapter when speaking about a meeting of feminists where the sex worker rights movement was supposedly born, she wrote: "Prostitutes had gathered their still nebulous rage against their own lives and redirected it towards the movement of women who appeared to be summarily ‘eliminating’ prostitution: aka the means of their livelihood." Rage against themselves, eh? Maybe they just preferred to be sex workers and didn't agree with being told they couldn't do it by maternalistic ideologues.

She never clearly defines coercion. I would like to know her definition. I imagine it would be quite far from common sense. I mean, she accused one pro-sex work group, COYOTE, of having mostly members who were never really sex workers, but just some women who had guys buy them dinner on dates in college (she claims, at least). That got me thinking... that involves money. Is she okay with that? If we live in a patriarchy that makes it so women cannot really make choices and the exchange of money makes sex non-consensual (somehow), then paying for dinner on a date, then having sex later could be viewed as non-consensual (rape). Right? If not, how does one distinguish the case of a dinner date that leads to sex and paying for sex directly? This is the problem when you start trying to use words like "violence" and "coercion" in ways that fly in the face of rationality. Also, why is it not coercion for women or men to work at any job in such a case?

She talks about how some women have sex for money to survive. Most of use work at a job to survive. There is survival burger flipping, survival cleaning, survival car mechanics, etc. Those are okay, but when it comes to sex, it's not? Bindel doesn't really explain why. She just assumes it is a problem and she tries to tie ANY sex work to violence. She points out cases where women are murdered, raped, assaulted, etc. The thing is, the kinds of guys who will do that to a prostitute will do to a woman they met that at a bar or club. They will do it even if you make it so that it is only outlawed for men. Her logic that decriminalization doesn't provide increased access to police for women, but outlawing prostitution for only men does, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In either case, it is not legal for men to rape women (nor should it be). A woman can call the police if a man assaults her in a decriminalized setting. She claims that it is just viewed as an "occupational hazard" in such a case. No, that's not accurate at all.

Bindel's coverage of New Zealand's decriminalization is ONLY about anything negative she can find. The story is not as simple as she portrays it as there is disagreement regarding how well things have gone since the decriminalization of prostitution there. It is (predictably) conservatives who are fighting it and trying to use a smear campaign against it.

She calls those who support decriminalization "neoliberal." That's not accurate. Some of them are. I support decriminalization, but I am not a neoliberal. Far from it. I actually like certain aspects of a capitalist system with socialist elements. There are socialists who support decriminalization of prostitution.

She states "This whole industry is driven by men’s demand for unconditional sexual access to women based on their social, economic and gender power—in other words patriarchy ." That doesn't really make sense. Paying for sex is conditional. Women can set their own boundaries regarding what is okay and what is not. Paying for sex does not mean buying/renting a person or buying/renting "an orifice" as Bindel colorfully claims. It's a service. It is often framed as paying for a woman's time and she sets boundaries about what is okay or not. In reality, if you read the blogs of sex workers, they don't continue a session with someone when something is not okay with them. Granted, there are sex workers who don't approach things this way and that's a problem. However, that leads to an issue of the need for education, which is one of the things that unions or advocacy groups provide (she doesn't mention that). One could either focus on stigmatizing sex work or stigmatizing misogyny, patriarchy, being an ___hole, etc. Bindel conflates sex work with all of those things. I prefer to separate them and stigmatize mistreatment of women (or anyone else).

In one part of the book, she wrote "In my experience, those who consider it a priority to defend the rights of the individual as opposed to the rights of oppressed groups, can be the most difficult to convince that sex trade is a cause and consequence of women’s inequality and oppression." Isn't that interesting???? Why separate them (oppressed groups and individuals)? Individuals make up groups... The way a group is no longer oppressed is by giving the individuals of that group rights. Aside from that, one could say that sex workers are an oppressed group. However, she refuses to recognize their identity. She rigs the game, so to speak, to suit her own conclusions. She is focused on some utopia and things everything is awful until that utopia comes into existence. That is a dangerous way to think. It's what leads to mistreatment of people (the ends justify the means). In this case, it leads to mistreatment of customers of sex workers. She reports she is concerned about oppression and coercion, but she has no problem whatsoever having police physically assault a man for giving money to a woman for sex. She uses certain awful cases of clear coercion to claim that all cases MUST be that way or inevitably WILL be. So, violence is justified to her.

She wrote "The ‘rights’ discourse adopted by liberals and much of the human rights world is not progressive or leftist, but built on the politics of individuality. Organisations such as AI are clearly motivated, as we will see later in this chapter, by paternalistic male self-interest."

Hmm. Men don't want to be stalked, assaulted, humiliated, harassed and thrown in jail for a peaceful activity (paying a woman for sex). That's paternalistic self-interest? I don't want to see that happen to men. That's paternalistic self-interest? Women and men should have individual rights, yes. She claims that Amnesty International is mostly about the right to sex. I don't think that is mostly what they're getting at by supporting decriminalization. They are just thinking that, if a woman wants to sell sex and a man wants to buy it, that shouldn't mean that it's a good idea to have trained men with guns/clubs/tasers/etc stalk, harass, assault, humiliate or imprison either of them. That seems to make sense if one is focused on human rights.

If anyone cares to see other perspectives, please check out Maggie McNeill's blog The Honest Courtesan where Brooke Magnanti wrote a short review of Bindel's book: https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2...
Also, Laura Augustin: https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/sex-wo...
Brooke Magnanti also wrote a book where she looks closer at the data: https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Lies-Stati...

[Gabrielė Bužinskaitė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Selling your body is inherently DEGRADING, not empowering.

Anyone who claims “it’s her body, her choice” utterly fails to see the complexities of individual decision-making. Too many things influence us—especially things that are normalized, accepted and encouraged. Society plays a huge part in the decisions each of us makes.

This book only points out how we lie to young women. We mislead them. How? By normalizing the unnormalizable. To do that, we twist the language.

We must stop saying it’s “sex work” when we mean prostitution. It’s not “explicit content”; it’s pornography. It’s not “sex workers”; it’s WOMEN. (And no, a tiny percentage of men who practice prostitution doesn’t underline the fact it is a worldwide female issue).

We need to stop calling any sort of prostitution empowering when deep down, most of us know it is just the opposite. Think of the people with the most power—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and others. Why don’t they “empower” themselves more by selling their pictures in seductive underwear with pornographic facial expressions for $1.99 with 50% off on Black Friday Sale?

Because they actually DO have power in this world. Their decisions affect most of us. The prostitution empowerment lie is directed only at those without any legitimate power. We manipulate young women to willingly degrade themselves as if that’s a revolutionary act. What’s revolutionary about the oldest profession?

“The most effective way to sanitize any human rights abuse is to rename it.“

Although very academic and dry, the book covers all types of prostitution (webcamming, sex trafficking, mail-order brides, etc.) and the damage it does to most women (often the ones that are the least privileged). It is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand the flaws behind liberal feminist ideology.

[Alice Vachss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I had read The Pimping of Prostitution before I read Sold, I am reviewing them both on the same day because they are two very different faces of the same truth. Sold (by Patricia McCormick) is one young girl's fictionalized account of an evil that Julie Bindel has been investigating and reporting on for years. Bindel gives us the way to fight back. As is inevitable on this topic, Bindel makes and exposes enemies. Some of them write reviews. Before you accept their agenda-ized criticism, read this book for yourself.

[Mark Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not often a book changes my thinking on a topic so profoundly, but this one did. I'm not a fan of government intervention and think consenting adults should be able to do what they want. Decriminalization efforts that make the selling AND buying of sex legal just seem like common sense if you value civil liberties. And I've never understood why prostitution is illegal but if you put a camera in the room and call it porn, it's magically OK.

The author makes the case why prostitution that legalizes the johns/punters actually causes things to be way worse for those being prostituted -- with real-world examples, talking to women in the sex trade under decriminalization in places like Germany and New Zealand.

The questions are: Do you think there should be less prostitution or more, and do you want more or less of the negative effects of prostitution such as the murder of prostituted people? If less, then you simply can't support decriminalization of both sides.

What was missing from my personal analysis until I read this book was the power imbalance of those with money over those who need money -- often desperately. That makes consent impossible. And without consent, it's compensated rape. Plus she lays out in often-enraging detail how those who profit from prostitution -- brothel owners and pimps -- are the ones mostly behind pro-"sex worker" campaigns.

The author's position is a lot more nuanced than online haters allow. She absolutely thinks that those who are being prostituted should not be arrested or jailed -- in fact, she thinks almost no one should be jailed unless they're a serious danger to society, and this includes sex buyers. She wants deterrents other than jail.

She shows how countries that have implemented this preferred model for decreasing prostitution (called the Nordic model) have been successful at decreasing murder rates for women: Ireland, Northern Ireland, France, Norway, Sweden and Iceland.

Much of the book is devoted to laying out the various positions of the pro-prostitution side and where they get their money and how they successfully lobby governments and get the public to believe and champion the claim that, no, really being f***'d 15 to 30 times a day, 7 days a week is empowering.

What I wasn't expecting this book to be was an amazing work of reporting/journalism. The author tracks down business records, files Freedom of Information requests, interviews 250 people in many dozens of countries and continents, including huge numbers who have the opposite position than she does. As a reporter myself, I was in awe at some of the things she was able to uncover.

If you have an interest in feminism and so-called "sex work," this book is essential.

Here's an anger-inducing excerpt about my home state of Nevada and one of its most prominent businessmen (he owns the business park where Tesla's battery gigafactory is located):

Lance Gilman is a multimillionaire property dealer who owns two brothels, including the Mustang Ranch , which Gilman proudly tells me is modelled on a prison and used to refer to the women as inmates. Gilman’s partner Susan Austin runs his brothels. ‘As soon as you legalise, it turns the predators loose’, Gilman tells me. ‘You have to regulate. We have a stable of 1000 [women]. If Susan didn’t run this place with an iron fist it would get out of control.’ As with most other legal brothels, the women are not allowed out unless the manager gives them permission and they are accompanied by an assistant pimp.

Legal pimps are also not averse to selling-learning disabled women. At the Mustang Ranch I briefly met Sindy , although Austin told me I was not allowed to interview her. Austin described Sindy to me as a ‘nine-year-old trapped in an adult body’. According to Austin, Sindy grew up in foster care and was sold to the brothel by her boyfriend’s father, while the boyfriend was serving a 10-year prison sentence for possession of child abuse images. Sindy, who was 22 when I met her, had been with the boyfriend since she was 12 years old. Austin had taken over managing Sindy’s money for her and said she ‘refused’ to send the cheques to the boyfriend’s father. Many of the women in legal brothels are double pimped, with the brothel owner sending the prostituted women’s earnings directly to the person who brought them to the brothel.

Austin tells me: ‘I called the girls to a meeting and told them, we’re raising a child but she’ll never grow up. When Sindy parties [services a sex buyer], one of the girls will go and sit in the bathroom next door, to make sure the man doesn’t take advantage of her when he realises what he has’. I ask why, if Sindy is learning-disabled and vulnerable, Austin is pimping her at all'. Austin tells me she has made a pact with the other women to ‘look after’ Sindy, ‘otherwise she would end up on the streets of Florida’. There appear to be no laws in Nevada against pimping a learning-disabled young woman and why should there be? After all, under legalisation it is just a job.

[notgettingenough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have left a neutral number of stars so as not to impact upon its star rating either way. I'm not sure if I will get to reading this, but since the Adelaide legistature is in the middle of deciding whether bikies there need more legitimate business opportunities by being given legal paths to power over women, and noting that apparently bikie gangs are already buying up 'suitable' properties to use as their brothels, I record this review by

'Roger Matthews is professor of criminology, University of Kent, Canterbury, England. He is the author of a number of books and articles on prostitution including Prostitution, Politics and Policy (Routledge, 2008) and is the lead author on Exiting Prostitution: A Study in Female Desistance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He was also the advisor to The All Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution 2014-2015, and a contributory author of the Parliamentary Report “Shifting the Burden” (2015).'

THIS BOOK HAS TWO MAIN STRANDS. The first strand sets it apart from the existing literature on prostitution and the sex trade inasmuch as it provides a survey of most of the major contributors to this debate from around the world. In this way, the book offers a rare insight into the contours of the contemporary debate and serves as an invaluable resource to those who are trying to familiarize themselves with this highly contested area of inquiry. The second strand involves a tour de force of the main issues. In contrast to the bulk of the literature on prostitution, which emanates from the liberal/libertarian pro-prostitution lobby, this book aims to persuade the reader of the validity of the abolitionist position, which is committed to the eradication of prostitution.

In contrast to the banal assertion that prostitution is the “oldest profession,” Bindel argues that prostitution—like other social ills, such as violence, child abuse, and racism—needs to be confronted and ideally eradicated. This assertion may sound utopian, but the reality is that the abolitionist movement has gained considerable ground over the last decade or so. In particular, a number of countries including Sweden, Norway, Finland, Canada, France, and Ireland have adopted the so-called Nordic Model and have passed legislation to outlaw the purchase of sex.

Bindel argues that the liberals and libertarians see themselves as radicals supporting a free market in sex, but in fact, they are simply defending the status quo of male domination and exploitation. Defending the free trade in sexual services provides an invitation to pimps, racketeers, and criminal networks to exploit and abuse the women who get caught up in the sex trade.

Bindel argues that the options of legalization or decriminalization are both deeply flawed. She cites evidence from the Netherlands, where legalization is held to an absolute failure—even on its own terms. The closing down of sections of the “red light” district in Amsterdam is seen as testimony to the failure of legalization. Bindel suggests that full decriminalization, which is often associated with New Zealand, is an equally bankrupt model, since it leads to an increase in trafficking, encourages sex tourism, promotes violence against women, and facilitates the overall expansion of the sex trade.

Both legalization and decriminalization tend to create “the invisible man,” that normalizes and neutralizes the male buyer. Whereas the Nordic Model places the onus on the male buyer. The normalization of the buyer also tends to be promoted in the academic literature on prostitution, wherein the buyers are depicted as sad, lonely, older men, or as the “guy next door,” who is in need of sexual variety. This view of the male client, however, does little to explain the disturbing levels of violence that women involved in prostitution often report, or why prostituted women are twenty times more likely than their “normal” female counterparts to be murdered.

Bindel provides a hard-hitting critique of those male and female academics who act as apologists for the forms of male domination that are intrinsic to the sex trade. For not only do these academics in her view try to defend the indefensible, but some are actually involved in this unseemly business. A major offender in Bindel’s view is Dr. John Davies, who she claims has been directly involved not only in promoting the sex trade but also associating with a group of scholars who claim that sex trafficking is a myth and in reality, nothing more than a form of economic migration. These “trafficking deniers” have been influential in playing down the sex trafficking issue and by implication, discrediting many of its victims.

The book contains an impressive level of detail that is frequently based on interviews with those directly involved in the sex trade. The Pimping of Prostitution provides a refreshing contrast to the highly conjectural and half-baked assertions that are prominent in much of the existing literature on prostitution. It is a powerful, provocative, and highly original text, which will no doubt add some impetus to the growing abolitionist movement, and may even encourage the less doctrinaire members of the pro-prostitution group to reflect on their position critically. I believe that this book should be widely recommended and made available to students since it would at least help them to develop a more balanced view of these highly contested issues.

from: Dignity

For BBC with the author here: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-413...

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

...ew. Not only does Bindel have annoying anti-sex worker views (and she never really addresses arguments of pro-sex worker rights academics, she just keeps nattering on about how she thinks all prostitution is evil), she makes some pretty irrelevant ad hominem attacks against her opponents. And she makes everything so personal and acts like all of academia is against her/out to get her personally.

Maybe you're just boring and repetitive, Julie. Maybe you don't even really engage with arguments other than your own. That's pretty frowned on.

[Louise Hewett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found The Pimping of Prostitution a thorough, coherent and compelling book. Bindel's wide-ranging research ensures that we are not simply looking at a narrow band but rather at the global phenomena and all its variety, tragedy, and complexity, and at the language surrounding often polarised viewpoints and agendas - language which obscures, "seduces", and misleads. Highly recommend to anyone interested in the journey towards true human equality and societies of justice and peace.

[Eleanor Cowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bindel outs the tragic pimping of prostitution by worldwide humanitarian, government, and academic organizations that pretend to care about women’s rights. They don’t. Not at all.

For misogynists, it’s A-okay to rent the body orifices of strangers for personal pleasure. It’s nothing, no big deal to abuse the physical person of women or girls (the younger, the better). Physical slavery is a billion-dollar big business.

Defenceless women are betrayed by rich, educated men, poor, uneducated men, academic men, political men, clerics, and professional men in all manner of organizations, including, shockingly, Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, and more. “Few things bring men closer than the violence they commit against women,” comments prostitution abolitionist Bindel.

It’s easy to fool good-intentioned people into believing that prostitution is a profession, that it’s a real job. This deception is accomplished by one tool in particular, namely, vocabulary. Bindel charts the betrayal of women by a human rights org., one that has, in the past, successfully rescued political prisoners. Despite its laudable history, Amnesty International denies that women in prostitution are also prisoners in a jailhouse called patriarchy.

In 2016, Kenneth Roth, the then Director of Human Rights Watch and a supporter of Amnesty International, questioned, on Twitter, why sex work should be denied as an option for poor women. In response to him, Rachel Moran (author of ‘Paid For’) tweeted back to him, “Ken Roth, wouldn’t you say if a person cannot afford to feed themselves, the appropriate thing to put in their mouth is food, not your cock?”

Bindel states that “the language of human rights has been upended: people and organizations who ought to lead the way forward for human rights have betrayed their own principles.”
She shows how, for example, gender-neutral language can artfully hide the appalling reality of prostitution. The deceptive vocabulary can even sound noble and caring. Rather than call a spade a spade, Amnesty International refers to prostitution as business transactions between ‘consenting adults.” It also insults the physically impaired by stating that… “persons (meaning mostly men) with mobility or sensory disabilities or those with psycho-social disabilities that hamper social interactions need the sympathetic ministrations of sex workers (meaning mostly women) with whom they feel safe enough to have a physical relationship or to express their sexuality.”
What? Wheelchair-bound individuals cannot have meaningful love relationships? Most physically disabled men and women I know have no need or desire to pay a stranger for sex, thank you. It is true, though, that sadistic misogynists with ‘psycho-social disturbances’ have landed many unsuspecting women prostitutes in coffins. Why direct weirdos to be ‘serviced’ by unsuspecting prostitutes?

Chelsea, a woman from Auckland who escaped a legal brothel in New Zealand, shared with Bindel her response to all those who think that no harm happens in ‘decriminalized’ prostitution.
“…I’ve started inviting people to come prostitute with me. I’m telling all these privileged lefty ‘pro-sex-work arrogant fuckers that if they think being prostituted is just “sex work,” and they are for it, then they can come and work with me in the brothels and get a dose of reality. This was not a choice, like any other for us. It was a choice made in the absence of anything better.”

Here's a list of reworked and self-aggrandizing vocabulary by pimps or “business managers.”

Rape - a Contract breach
Pimping - Business practices
Disabled men buying sex - Facilitating disabled people’s sexual lives.
Violence, sexually transmitted diseases, rape - Occupational Health Risks
The ability to turn down undesirable clients (good luck with that) - Job Amenities
Sex acts - Affective/Erotic services performed by prostitutes
Pimps - Third Parties or Managers
Running a brothel or managing women - Sex Work Management
Pimps who target (and beat) girls under the age of 18 - Grooming Gangs
Mail order brides - International Marriage Community

I thank Bindel for her dedicated work, her worldwide research, for publicizing the shocking and terrible real stories of women and girls still forced and beaten into prostitution and the appalling list of pimps ‘business managers’ in universities and well-known ‘charitable’ organizations. Convincing. Irrefutable.
Let's work together to abolish prostitution, the world’s oldest form of systemic oppression.

Eleanor Cowan, Author A History of a Pedophile's Wife: Memoir of a Canadian Teacher and Writer

[Raine McLeod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julie Bindel knows what she's talking about.

This was the second time I read this and it's just incredible, the number of people she spoke to from all angles of this issue, the places she was able to access, the numbers she shares here. Even on a second reading, it's mind-blowing and infuriating.

You cannot purchase consent.

[Kate M · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I handed a chapter of this in for an undergrad essay, I would have failed.

[Ijg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bit of a strange book, but for reasons – it seems – of poor editing by Palgrave Macmillan, which distracted at times from what could otherwise have been an important modern contribution to this area of discussion. There were numerous typos and grammatical errors strewn throughout the book. Certain very short sections seems to float in the middle of chapters with little contextualisation or little indication of what exactly the author wanted us to derive from them. Surely a basic job of an editor is to fix little things like this, but I could barely see evidence of there having even been one. One found themselves ‘filling in the blanks’ a lot of the time in terms of what significance we should be giving to specific dates, quotes, etc.. At times it read almost like notes from which Bindel would ultimately write her book, but the notes themselves were published instead. The message of her book could have been powerful but I think it was diminished somewhat from poor communication. And considering the random little bits of information we WERE given – e.g. dates that specific small organisations were founded and by whom – there were some curious omissions. For example, the specific statistics re the expansion of sex trafficking under legalisation/decriminalisation regimes. I happen to know these statistics, because I happen to have read up on this issue before. There is easily accessible, reliable data on these questions. One wonders therefore why it was not included in the book, while other - far less striking and at times less relevant - tidbits of information were included. Had I not already read up on the issue, I might well have read the book and thought it an obvious hole. And I might well have wondered why the hole was being left. These issues were a particular shame because the book was clearly very thoroughly researched. Julie Bindel herself is without doubt a brilliant journalist and advocate, with a genuine passion and empathy for the women about which she writes. I will be recommending this book to others, because of the information that it does contain. And I will perhaps be asking them to look beyond the weird editing decisions mentioned above, and supplementing it with further information contained elsewhere.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really suffered from poor (non-existent?) editing. I have never read a published book with such an array of typos, repetitions, lack of structure, and generally blatant lack of 'finished-ness'. As another reviewer says, much of the book reads like the authors' personal notes that will be used... to write the actual book. I read the ebook, did people find the same issues in the print version? Either way, I don't know who is responsible for this, but for me it means that the book largely fails to live up to its potential.
And what a pity because the author has done an incredible amount of research into the topic, and the book does reflect that despite the fact that the data is poorly organised and never analysed in a completely coherent and conclusive manner - bits of information jump around between chapters, or are offered raw, stopping short of an actual discussion/explaining how it is all related. In short, it lacked a cohesive editing and structure that would have tied all of that information together in an accessible, clear, convincing book.

What I most appreciated is that Bindel's outspoken opinions about the sex trade are obviously informed by that direct knowledge gathered during years of research on the ground, talking to women in and out of the industry, as well as pimps and buyers. And that to me makes her opinion much more convincing than that of her critics, whom I suspect formed theirs when they found that the "right people" were endorsing the opposite view, but never got round to learning the facts themselves. ie, most of the people chanting "sex work is work".

The part I found most enlightening was the critique of "sex worker's rights" agencies, which took me completely by surprise. Learning that most sex workers' rights organisations are de facto run by pimps or ex-sex-workers-turned-pimps, with nigh an actual prostitute in sight, was an eye-opener, and helped me connect the dots between the enormous amounts of wealth generated by the sex trade, and the apparent lack of sex buyers/pimps lobby in the public realm. Turns out there is plenty of lobbying going on, but under the guise of representing and being led by "sex workers".

I would love for this book to get a seriously revised and polished second edition.

[Mairead · Rating 4 out of 5]

“While women all over the world fight to end male supremacy, there are men and women in leftist and liberal politics who appear to consider defending the rights of men to buy sex more important than the rights of women and girls to challenge that assumption.”

It goes without saying that movements for women’s liberation will be misrepresented and vilified. Would encourage anyone who has not engaged with the abolitionist perspective and does not understand it to read this to see it is not about controlling women, meddling in others lives or moralising.
This book is often very sharp and at times left me incredulous at the current state of affairs.

Chapter 8 is particularly illuminating as an Irish reader.

[Kati Higginbotham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the literary version of making an organic fruit smoothie and forgetting to put the lid on the blender. It’s well intentioned, healthy to consider, and good for us as feminists committed to ending human rights violations. But, it’s a hot mess with sloppy editing and none of the information seems very coherent.

[Lesley Semmens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent exposure of the realities of prostitution.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

a strong sense of blind christian values with a touch of marxism, backed up by a strong sense of self righteousness in the sense that "those stupid women are brainwashed by their pimps" and holy me knows better what is good for them. in short: freedom is what Julie says it's best for you

[Camz0r · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very in depth book. Gives you a lot of information and you really do start to wonder how you could have ever thought legalized prostitution would have been a good idea.

[Adriana Sth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A MUST READ!

[Strange Weather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flashbacks to my writing a fieldwork-based critique of prostitution to get into grad school, and an interviewer (a professor) who was clearly uncomfortable but didn’t have a clue what to say against data (since you can’t ideology your way out of data). At the time, I didn’t understand. This book is a reminder that academics are “pro-sex work” now.

Per usual, I want more cultural analysis and meaning and angles, but nice to have interview data from so many countries.

If you can’t understand the common sense that you don’t want your mom, wife or daughter doing “sex work” but it’s “ok for everybody else to be empowered,” then not sure you can take your head out of the sand at this point.

[Perrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is vital reading.

[katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this for a lit review I'm doing on sex work. While I can sympathize with few points listed in the book, I have to say I'm extremely disappointed in the arguments made. She introduces many anecdotes to convince the audience that it is the norm, and uses stats from organizations that my 3rd grade social studies teacher would've said is not reliable. I read the whole thing, cover to cringeworthy cover. As she so eloquently demonizes those who aren't abolitionists, I want to see more discussion of how religion and religious organizations have impacted the very idea of the sex trade, and I honestly want to see more than one page explaining how this isn't a white feminist take. I have to say that she wrote it like some kind of shocking expose that literally brought no new information to the table. I really hope she had positive intentions, and think that they mean all the best. I am concerned of the many voices left out of this narrative, and the very clear question that wasn't being answered- what is consent then? Why is prostitution such "degrading" work when selling other labor isn't? Furthermore- what about the many and increasing amounts of women who are the buyers? While the patriarchy has a large hand in prostitution, one cannot say it is an extension of it. There are so many oversights. She equates prostitution to poverty, to sex trafficking, and to the very lack of agency and consent.

[ToriBeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and excellently written.

[Briar Rose Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often there comes along a book that can function as a litmus test for whether or not you’re a monster, and this is one of them. If you can read this without sympathy and and not give Bindel’s arguments even a sliver of acceptance, then you are so fargone into a radical ideology that there’s no way back - not even when the collateral is lives and some of the worst abuse imaginable.

Harrowing and hard to read because there’s no sugar coating whatsoever…. But omg is it a powerful honest look at the worlds most exploitative industry and the disgusting damage to humanity that keeps getting carried out by “s3x workers rights activists.”

[Mubeezi Tenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really enlightening perspective on Sex work that prompts one to examine Sex work legalisation. I think it is a must read for feminists.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for any woman who believes sex work is sex work. It is always men buying the bodies of women to rāpe.

[Josh Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note: Couldn’t finish this one, review based on the first few chapters.

Politics makes strange bedfellows and nowhere is that more true in the convergence of views among between ‘radical feminists,’ and far right conservatives on sex work.

The Pimping of Prostitution attempts to make the case for “abolitionism” or the idea that governments should work to eliminate sex work. She contrasts this view with what she calls the Scandinavian model, in which sex work is legal and regulated and prositutes and afforded the same protections and benefits as other workers.

Bindel sees herself as part of a battle against a powerful and shady cabal run by powerful pimps. She acknolwedges that may be some misguided prostitutes out. there who support these arguments, but she also seeks to umask members of the sex worker movement who claim be former sex workers but who she believes don’t qualify. For example she describes a conference where one of the women speaking on behalf of legalization claimed to be former sex worker, but Bindel had it on good authority that she had only been a secratary at a brothel for six month. So Bindel proudly called her out at the end of her talk, demanding to know exactly what kind of sex work she’d really done. Most of the journalism in the book is about on a par with this.

Bindel also goes to some length to defend the abolitionist movement against claims that it is a patronizing attempt by white feminists to save downtrowned non-white women. Bindel’s response is to point out the author of article making this claim was a white trans-woman (who, she pointedly notes, was raised as male), and that there are a number of women of color who also support the abolitionism. Ok.

Bindel is inveterate sophist, and never hestiates to interpret the statements, research and intention of her opponents in as uncharitable a light as possible. For example she discusses the murder of a prostitute, which triggered protests by sex workers rights activists who emphasized destigmatizing sex work, and points out that “stigma doesn’t kill prostitutes. Men do.” Bindel is too smart to believe that this is actually a reponse to the point the sex workers were making. They obviously were not denying that (mostly) men kill prostitutes who are (mostly) women, they were pointing out that the illegality and social stigma associated with prostitution are a major cause of these murders and of the frequent failure of police to find and prosecute the perpetrators. Saying that stigma doesn’t kill prostitutes, men do, isn’t a response to that argument - it’s a long winded way of ignoring it. It’s like saying that poverty and persecution don’t commit terrorism, people do. It’s obviously true… but it completely misses the point.

Many of Bindel’s other arguments are of type with those I dropped out grad school to get away from. For example, she dedicates a section to a newspaper article about “a Turkish trans-woman who was murdered by a man posing as a client.” Bindel takes unbridge at the claim that the murderer was “posing as a client” - she claims he probably was a client (which seems plausible enough, though she doesn’t seem to have done any actual research to support the claim). She argues that this is a part of a tactic by pro-legalization advocates to “minimize or deny the violence inherent in sex work.” That seems like a lot to read in to phrasing that is almost certainly literally correct. Even if he had sex with the woman he almost certainly didn’t pay her, so it seems accurate enough to say that he was “posing as a client.” If you shoplift from Walmart and then murder the greeter on your way out can you really call yourself a Walmart customer? It a pretty dumb question and, unless you’re 19 and stoned out of your mind, it’s not a very interesting one.

Dave Chappelle noted that if you feel absolutely sure you’re right about something “you can get drunk off the feeling of how right you are. That’s why gay people are so mean.” Bindel reinforces both of these these stereotypes. She’s in a holy war against pimps and patriarchy and as with most people engaged in holy wars she has many legitimate grievances, but she also comes off as dogmatic, uncompromising an unconcerned with collateral damage.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's the kernel of a strong case here, but i didn't feel like it was well made. Like gambling and drugs, prostitution is something that brings with it a lot of social ills, and like both those things, attempts to ban or restrict it have tended towards making it more dangerous and more violent because its controlled by criminals, so the policy response needs to be thought through calmly with a view toward the sort of society you want to have. That's obvious: I mean it's illegal now, and we haven't exactly created paradise on earth, have we? So it's not just as simple as passing a law against the thing.

Bindel pitches her tent as in favour of "abolition" and in practical terms, to accomplish that, something called the nordic model which seems to be "it's fine for people (women, mostly but not exclusively) to offer sexual services but we will arrest your customers". I've always felt like this was a slightly lame cop-out, when you want to make something illegal but don't want to feel like you're being mean to women.

I guess, as compromises go, it's not terrible. It's a bit rough on the women who don't especially mind making their living this way and see it as better than many other jobs on offer, but maybe their rights matter less than the overall benefit you would get from squeezing out the demand that is driving people trafficking. Arguably. I don't feel like Bindel has represented their point of view well though. In order to make her case, she pretty much had to paint them as unwitting stooges of the patriarchy.

But that's a common trope in polemical arguments, especially in the age of intersectionality: the aim is to explain to the readers who are the good people who we should listen to and who are the bad people:
My side: activists, grassroots, marginalised, diverse, survivors, being unfairly silenced.
Your side: lobbyists, powerful, too white, paid by shadowy moneyed interests, unwilling to listen, bullies.

And so, the winner of the argument is not the person who has made the best case for their proposed policy, but the person who has trotted out the most stories of abuse, the most lurid claims of online trolling, the most examples of worthy, oppressed people in their own side and bad, privileged people on the other. You can see this happening on both sides of most debates.

I expected to have my views challenged and clarified, but it hasn't really made much difference: I don't particularly want to interfere with the women who freely choose this way of living and are able to chose customers and turn away douchebags, but I definitely do recognise that that's not the whole story, or even most of the story, and that pretending sex work is just like any other job is just naive and stupid.

So, still on the fence, basically. Maybe the nordic model is the least shit option, but it still relies on doublethink and I feel like it's only popular because it allows *all* the blame to be placed on men because women have no agency and are always and in all circumstances, victims even when they claim they aren't.

Ha ha , well as often happens, I've got to the end of a review and it comes across as much more negative than I originally intended. I maybe got less out of this than some people would because I'd already spent quite a lot of time thinking about it, but if you've been raised to think that sex work is real work and that swerfs are evil, judgemental prudes, then ignore all the above and read the fuck out of this book, because it's important to get both sides of a debate and not enough people are willing to make this particular case these days.

[Edmund Bloxam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the premise of this book. I agree with the arguments of this book. Eunice Wong's powerful reading of this helped a lot.

I don't like the presentation of the argument. I know I'm making it sound like I want a high school essay on such an emotive subject, but there isn't enough statement of the arguments themselves. Frequently, at the end of a section, in which the author has used a strong example to make a point, there is no explanation as to why this example is important. Instead, we simply move on to the next point.

This is deeply frustrating when you are trying to keep up with a range of points, and especially when trying to keep the big picture in mind.

In the end, I can't recommend this to anyone who doesn't already know the arguments. (And if you know the arguments, then you don't need to read this book...)

To reiterate, I managed to pick up the gist of the points, most of the time. But there are whole number of things I missed and, frankly, I'm not going to read it again. I suspect that 'Not A Choice, Not a Job' is a superior presentation of the core parts of the argument.

I also suspect that will be less thorough than this on the scale of the pro-prostitution lobby, in particular demonstrating the sometimes literally violent put-down of this 'opposing view' (as opposed to allowing for disagreement), and the almost complete dominance of one view in academia.

In addition, I wasn't really aware of what a TERF was - after all, I think Harry Potter is crap (!). The absolutely over-the-top reaction to Ms. Rowling's personal views are a good example of the way dissent is crushed. Yes, that even makes it into this book. The conflation of homosexuality and trans identity with prostitution is bizarre. I used to eat cheese and watch 'MacGyver'. Does that make 'MacGyver' fundamentally cheese-related?

I hope I've demonstrated that the arguments in this book are solid. Much of the time, I could keep up with the book, even though, with almost wilful aplomb, I was left high and dry on 'yes, but why is that important'? I'm certainly interested enough to read a better-written book. Perhaps I will return to this review and see what information is in it (that I can remember) that was not elsewhere.