I RECENTLY spoke on behalf of the Nordic model, of my lived experience as a prostitute who has exited the sex industry. It was a second public speech regarding “an unbuyable Bill” being manifested through the Scottish Parliament.

While women’s bodies are for sale, there will never be equality for or between women and men.

I use my professional experience to address concerns. Lived experience matters — and if society are to adopt effective policy towards prostitution, it is important to take the voices of those who have left the industry seriously, to pay attention to what we have to say. I will not glamorise what lies behind closed doors. I colluded with that lie for far too long before finally exiting prostitution.   

One of the best ways to prevent addiction, suicide, self-harm, dissociation, depression, anxiety, anger, debt, flashbacks and self-loathing… I now know was never to have sold my body.

It is not uncommon for women who are selling their bodies, on OnlyFans for example, to convince themselves that it is glamorous. I convinced myself, back then, that sex work was work, and easy money. How wrong I was.

Having been a prostitute, I do understand the claim that sex is work. I regularly proclaimed the belief myself that I was “empowered” to sell my body.

However, it was nothing like empowerment. I eventually dreaded sex with strangers, I dreaded being photographed, filmed and touched. At my tipping point I realised that a certain type of “feminist” view was not really feminism. I had handed over my body to men for money. This was indoctrinated misogyny.

My experience of “working” in a brothel, on the streets and from a remote capacity equated to unreported rape, spitting and strangulation. Once the money was exchanged, the door closed, I become the sex buyer’s property. Usually with one eye on the condom, in case he “slipped” it off, and another on my safety. Today, I remain hypervigilant and have complex post-traumatic stress.

Society is currently sending a covert, warped, neoliberal message to children and young people. The sex industry is being normalised in such a comprehensive, pervasive capacity that we are losing sight of our way.

I call for action to prevent and protect, educate all family members, daughters and sons — children as well as adults — that we do not pay for sex. Buying sex and pornography is disempowerment and it is not love. It is violent. Buying and selling sex is internalised misogyny.

There needs to be systematic prevention and awareness-raising interventions in the law and courageous conversations within  families, schools, police, universities, the NHS and other services and organisations regarding a change in thought and attitude. Changing behaviour will take time, through generations.

A change in law to criminalise men who buy sex would bring about an accountability of conscience, ethics and morality. It can challenge the idea that girls’ and women’s bodies are for sale and confront women’s internalised patriarchal beliefs that selling their vagina, anus and breasts for the pleasure of men is “empowering.” I say it is business-class grooming, on a global scale.

A change in the law is not enough. Exit strategies, as the Nordic model suggests, are required to run as a parallel process to support women. Education for both genders is needed.

For many women a lack of self-esteem and an inherent belief of generational myths prevent conversations with their partners about pornography use or buying sex. There is also a fear of retaliation and ridicule for being jealous or insecure. Women know that they will be blamed for “envy.” A lack of confidence, and/or education, fuels acceptance as society places men’s sexual desire as vastly more important than the wellbeing of women and children.

Many women are uncomfortable with their partners’ behaviour, however they go along with the myths of “boys being boys” and men having urges they cannot control — and accept it.

I have spoken with men openly regarding their views on pornography and prostitution. I have asked men how they would feel if men were paying to sexually abuse their daughters, mothers or sisters. I would want “better for my daughter” is a common reply.

My response is that we should want better for all daughters. All women and children, and better for our sons alike. Men may want better for themselves too.

I went on to to ask three questions.

“How are you going to talk about what we have been talking to you about today?” “How are you going to contribute to change?” “What would you suggest for men?”

We now have a generation of children and young people who are a cohort of oversexualised children who will reach adulthood in the mid-2030s.

Child sexual development research shows teenagers learning about sex primarily through pornography and prostitution, which normalises violence, coercion and commodification.

Young boys are now being charged with rape or registered as sex offenders. Young girls are beginning to report having fissure repairs of their vagina or anus. Many teachers have reported that education systems are crumbling as sexual violence is increasing. Exchanging, exposure and sending of nude images by children is common and becoming problematic for adolescent boys and girls.

Today’s children are exhibiting sexualised aggression and are following a trajectory. Society is experiencing peer sexual violence at unprecedented rates. A third of childhood sexual abuse in England is now child to child.

The “stepfather/stepdaughter” or “step-sibling” content referenced in pornography — and in my lived experience, talking with other prostitutes — were often requests of punters who wanted to “play this out.”

And economic desperation is associated with sexual commodification: as children reach economic stress in their twenties (around 2035), they will have been primed from childhood to view sexual commodification as normal and empowering, creating a massive pipeline into commercial sexual exploitation.

Children are learning sexual scripts through social acceptance of the right to buy sex, the right to make pornography. Children will reach adulthood with sexual objectification integrated into their sexual development.

There is a preventative time window in which we can change the law, as well as make a call to action for men and women to have brave conversations among families, friends and communities, challenging the status quo.

Think about it. Eighty to 90 per cent of women who sell sex experienced a form of childhood sexual abuse, that statistic includes myself. Children are watching and being exposed daily to sexual content and normalised messages, thus, experiencing sexual abuse. This is sexual abuse of children by proxy.

I doubt I will fully recover from prostitution, rape and abuse, but I will do my damnedest to continually work to prevent and protect others.

But the opportunity to bring about change is closing rapidly — intervention is needed now, before this children’s cohort of trauma responses and the economic and emotional cost to them and society become entrenched into adult behavioural patterns.

Nordic Model Now! is holding a TUC conference fringe meeting on Prostitution and the Trade Union Movement, today, Monday September 8, 6.30-8pm at the Regency Suite, Old Ship Hotel, 32-38 Kings Road, Brighton BN1 2GR. All welcome.