What did I learn from listening to survivors of prostitution? That school age girls are most in demand – and it’s not only for sex but ‘despoilment’
‘I’ve answered phones in enough brothels to know the most common question is always, ‘What age is the youngest girl you have?’ writes Rachel Moran, a survivor of the sex trade and author of must-read memoir Paid For: My Journey through Prostitution. Moran documents her lived experience of johns’ (men who pay for ‘sex’) demand for children in her blog post, Prostitution and the Commercial Value of Youth.
She was 15 when she became homeless and prostituted. When I went to hear Moran and other survivors of prostitution from Space International speak at the event, Prostitution: Behind the Scenes, one thread stood out: the demand for school age girls. One survivor tells us of one the world’s most popular pornography sites, Pornhub, offering a $25,000 college scholarship. Another tells of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Nevada auctioning off a girl’s virginity. Johns get off on having the power of being the first to deprave female innocence and the ‘unmarked’, as described on America’sNext TopBunnyRanchVirgin.com. ‘Demand for younger and younger girls is not only for sex,’ says Moran, ‘It’s about ‘despoilment.’
At the event, Moran also remarked on how it is the younger girls and women in society who are more accepting of prostitution, a mark of the success of popular culture and the pro-prostitution lobby to normalise the inextricably linked porn and sex industries – to sell them as a career choice. Teen role models from Kate Moss, Daisy Lowe, Kylie, Katy Perry and Billie Piper have all glamourised these industries, in music videos, Playboy and Belle du Jour. Britney just keeps it coming with her ad for new fragrance, Private Show. Boys and young men are told that being a john is part of being the man with hip hop music videos from Candy Shop to Ayo Technology. Teen channel BBC3 did a stellar job for the pro-prostitution lobby with the programme Prostitution: What’s the harm? Young viewers found out how to run a brothel in a rented apartment, referred to by the presenter as ‘where the magic is about to happen.’ They learnt they should prepare a nice bath for the john and leave a tray of tea and ginger nuts or a nice bit of shortbread for him while he’s having a soak. They learnt how to be an Internet sex worker – eat lots of nice crunchy yellow pepper and lettuce at home to look good. The lad mag era of the nineties helped to normalise pole dancing, lap dancing and ‘sex work’ with features on sex tourism and jokes about prostitution– seeing the number of British men paying for sex rise to one in ten. In countries that have adopted the Nordic model, which criminalises the buyer, decriminalises the seller and supports them to exit with viable alternatives, prostitution has reduced. France adopted the Nordic Model, recognising prostitution as exploitation, earlier this year. Send the message prostitution is not inevitable, not a right, and demand decreases, allowing gender equality to improve.
This month, campaigning organisation Not Buying It and the ASA will meet to discuss an end to porn and sex ads in the press, most notably in The Sport, which is almost all page 3 style pictures of women. In a recent issue of The Sport, one entire page is devoted to advertising 32 porn films of ‘babes in uniform’. School uniform.
In the teen section on Pornhub, ‘broken teens’ ‘get used’, gangbanged and tied up while masked men force ass to mouth (inserting something beyond the limit into the anus, then forcing the female to take it in her mouth) torture on them, whilst they are restrained, saying no, and making pained sounds. A generation of boys have grown up with gonzo porn – gagging, strangling, urinating on, getting off on women’s debasement as their Sex and Relationships Education. Male violence against girls and women in England and Wales has reached a record high with child sex abuse prosecutions rising by 15.4%. Police find perpetrators in possession of extreme pornography including the torture and rape of children. The Everyday Sexism Project is awash with school girls recounting the sexual harrassment they experience on the way to school.
End Demand UK has collated Home Office statistics including this: 50% of women in prostitution in the UK started being paid for sex acts before they were 18 years old. Child prostitution is a global epidemic, with demand rocketing during any big sporting event. Articles like this on the Rio Olympics offer a tiny window into the alternate reality. In prostitution, as in as in porn, the despoilment of the young female is all. This is not fantasy. The damaged, traumatised, raped and dead girls and women are the victims of this parallel reality we call ‘sex’.
Back Not Buying It’s campaign here.
Listen to survivors at Space International here.
Read about Culture Reframed, working to champion equal, consensual sex and highlight the harms of porn here.
Betty Bandit 