Prostitution thrives on sexualizing and racializing poverty, targeting women, particularly those from minority and marginalized backgrounds. It is therefore not a coincidence that, particularly in rich countries, the prostitution system is supplied by migrant women from impoverished and war-torn countries. Attaching a payment – whether in cash or “in kind” – to women in prostitution reduces the latter to mere objects and normalizes the commodification of women and girls. The normalization of the purchase of sexual acts gives the sexual act a transactional value and places sexuality in the realm of the market. All women can therefore be regarded as having a price. In the Republic of Korea, it is estimated that 42 per cent of all men have bought sexual acts once in their lifetime. In a study of British men, 11 per cent had purchased sex at a brothel; and buying sex and engaging in pimping is rendered easier online, as it lowers the risks for pimps and sexual act buyers.
This increases a sexist social pressure on the most precarious women and girls to accept the provision of a sexual act as a livelihood alternative, regardless of the inherent violence of it.
In the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for example, it is now legal for a driving instructor to demand a sexual act from students as a means of payment, a practice known as “a ride for a ride”. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the University of Leicester issued a “sex worker toolkit” to its students while failing to develop any financial support dedicated to its most precarious female students.
The perceived right of men to purchase a sex act normalizes the systematic violence inflicted on women through prostitution, including in pornography, as it erases the boundaries between what counts as sex and what counts as sexual violence. The violence enacted against women in pornography, such as strangulation and defecation, is often re-enacted against girls and women by those who consume pornography in the physical world, such as strangulation and defecation. The increase in rape, including gang rape, can be linked to the increased male consumption of pornography. Studies also show that men who pay for sexual acts have a low level of empathy for women in prostitution and feel that they are different from other women. Sexual act buyers are well aware that women in prostitution
do not engage voluntarily, but they believe that absolves them of responsibility. A meta analysis conducted in 2015 found that exposure to non-violent and violent pornography resulted in increases in both attitudes and supporting aggression and actual aggression against women and children. More frequent users of pornography were also the most frequent users of women in prostitution. Many adolescent boys seek out prostituted women and girls to be “sexually initiated”.
Pornography generated by artificial intelligence further distorts what constitutes normal sexual interaction, encouraging viewers to adopt more harmful sexual attitudes. In one study, the terms “schoolgirl” (17.6 per cent), “girl” (9.6 per cent) and “teen” (8.8 per cent) were often paired with coercive and exploitative content, and the most frequent theme involved incest. Users of pornography require more novel, extreme forms of violent content to achieve the same level of arousal. Virtual reality pornography may make it more difficult to find pleasure in real-life sexual encounters.
The wide reach of pornography and its negative impact on shaping the sexual expectations of men and boys should not be underestimated. It is estimated that 28,258 users are watching pornography every second, and 35 per cent of all Internet downloads are related to pornography. A 2020 study by a digital marketing company noted that MindGeek’s Pornhub was the technology company with the third-greatest impact on society in the twenty first century. Globally, in 2018, the first exposure to pornography among males is at 12 years of age, on average. Pornography can lead to an increase in the sexual exploitation and prostitution of children. Girls are trapped into prostitution younger and younger, including some as young as 8 years of age. The regular exposure of children to pornography has also been linked to the quadrupling of underaged victims of sexual offenses over the past decade, where the victims are mainly girls.
It is frequently observed that women in prostitution in rich countries are disproportionately from minority ethnic groups, while sexual act buyers are from majority groups, reinforcing the racist dynamics at work. In the United States of America, for example, Black, latino, Indigenous and native women and girls are overrepresented in the prostitution system, and white men are overrepresented among sexual act buyers. Racist fetishization and stereotyping of women in prostitution by sexual act buyers is frequently observed and used as a criterion in the choice of prostituted women. For women and girls from certain minorities and Indigenous Peoples that are discriminated against, engaging in prostitution is normalized as being “part of their culture” and way of life. Prostituted women and girls
from specific racial and ethnic backgrounds are frequently dehumanized and subjected to social and cultural stereotyping, and slurs. Prostitution also allows the sexualization of racism against certain ethnic or racial groups to flourish.
The equal participation of women in society is impossible to achieve when prostitution is normalized and fundamentally based on an inequality between women and men. Women almost exclusively represent “the supply” in the prostitution system, while men represent almost exclusively the demand for prostitution. Prostitution therefore bears a deeply archaic and sexist vision of the role of women and of the relations between women and men, as women are reduced to receptacles for men’s sexual “needs”; as such, there has also been a strong correlation between men’s use of prostitution and rape. The existence and normalization of prostitution is also a fundamental obstacle to sexuality based on
equality.
Digital platforms facilitating pornography like Pornhub normalize and promote male domination over women and enforce patriarchal gender roles. One recent study found that 98 per cent of deepfake videos online were pornographic, and that 99 per cent of those targeted were women or girls. Many women and girls feel that pornography makes them feel uncomfortable and distressed by their “pornification” and sexualization. As men and boys feel a greater sense of entitlement due to consuming pornography, girls feel compelled to submit, and many women and girls feel conditioned to remodel their bodies surgically to bring them into line with the profit-driven pornography aesthetic. Young women are groomed into sexual self-exploitation. “Pornified” visual landscape indoctrinates girls and women into a patriarchal mindset that the only way to be visible – in fact valuable – is to be
sexually desired, “hot” and “pornified”. The media and some universities have played an important role in glamorizing prostitution and reinforced the objectification of women and girls.
Some 75 per cent of sex trafficking victims are now advertised online; prostitution advertising websites are the most significant facilitators of sex trafficking. For example, a search by the police in Scotland of online advertisements of the sale of sexual acts identified 1,800 o across four main websites in Scotland in a single day. Digital platforms rarely enforce prohibitions against trafficking, and non-consensual material or community guidelines. Just like buyers of prostitution, pornography users suspecting that women or girls have been trafficked will not report their concerns to law enforcement agencies.
Criminal networks capitalize on the anonymity and accessibility of the Internet to recruit and exploit victims, especially minors. Despite its prevalence, legal systems often overlook or inadequately address online prostitution. Cross-border prostitution presents a complex challenge, with criminal networks exploiting differences in legislation between countries to traffic victims across borders. At the core of the pornography business model is the facilitation of video uploads by users. Given minimum regulation, it contains a high percentage of prostitution and trafficking victims, rape, sexual violence, non-consensual filming and sharing of images, deepfake material, and child sexual abuse material. Videos and images are then copied, shared and circulated without possibility of tracking or removing them online, even after the perpetrators are convicted. Moreover, adult pornography can act
as the gateway to initially viewing and continuing to view sexualized images of children.
Artificial intelligence-generated pornography is also used to create child sexual abuse material. In December 2023, after a federal investigation in the United States, Aylo Holdings (formerly MindGeek) admitted that it had profited from sex trafficking, agreed to pay a fine of $1.8 million in order to avoid criminal prosecution for profiting from sex trafficking video on its site. OnlyFans also reportedly has accounts that indicate the individual is being trafficked, and plays the role of the pimp in a commercial exchange, while strives to increase the e-pimps in the supply chain. Virtual reality-generated pornography is becoming increasingly accessible and has grown massively, representing more than 10 per cent of the total virtual reality market.
From:
Prostitution and violence against women and girls
Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls,
its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem* (Human Rights Council – United Nations)
