‘It’s abuse and a life of hell’ | Guardian.uk As a world expert on prostitution, Roger Matthews has met women in the trade who have been stabbed, raped and beaten. He tells … why they must be given help to leave the sex industry for good.

As Matthews explains in his new book, Prostitution, Politics and Policy, he is entirely against liberal solutions to prostitution. The liberal approach is to think of the trade as simply another form of work, to be “non-judgmental” in dealing with it, and to set up areas, such as “tolerance zones”, where women can work without fear of arrest. Matthews completely disagrees with the notion of legalisation. Instead, he says, the punters should be deterred from buying sex, women in prostitution should be decriminalised, and a radical welfare strategy should be put in place to help them out of the trade.

I mean, aren’t we all, in a sense? Punters? In the sense that we, in a consumerist society, feast upon the images of women? Women’s bodies so intimately connected to the purchase desire. For hetero women, yes, it’s a sicker feast, one that makes it terribly hard to grow up. But men! What shall we do with you! This dark talent of yours for disconnecting body from heart and mind. Freud was looking in the wrong direction (as per usual) (so as not to look at himself) … the question is, Why do men want what they dot?

When what they want is the cause of so much heartbreak and harm?

How to be a good man, I should think, that’s the meditation for today. As well as—well, I’ve been asking this one for ages—when shall men begin to bond over what is best in them? How about a Men’s Women’s Movement, that’s what I’ve been waiting for.

Seems only fair, there’ve been movements over every other gross injustice in the world.

What of the arguments that often crop up, that prostitution is a necessary trade, that individual men need an outlet for their sex drive? “We know relatively little about men who pay for sex,” says Matthews, “but the available research suggests that most of them are married or have steady partners, and that they are not driven by an irrepressible biological need.

I didn’t think so. I never thought so. I mean, who would.

Tags: a woman's life, male thinking, punters, what money can buy

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