THE sex industry is big business. The Office for National Statistics calculates that prostitution alone contributed £6.4 billion to British GDP in 2024.

That figure does not include the $7.2bn global revenue earned that year by OnlyFans, a company based in Britain.

Nor the revenue generated by the rest of the pornography industry. Nor the takings from the multitude of lap dancing and strip clubs that blight our cities. By comparison in 2024 the UK fishing fleet made a paltry £1.15bn and even the steel industry made only £1.7bn.

You may be thinking that means a lot of money goes into the pockets of the marginalised women who make up most of those selling sex. But that is not how the sex industry works.

According to the ONS, those selling sex receive only about 24 per cent of this bonanza. The rest, 76 per cent, is taken by the pimps, brothel owners and other third parties.

Given this gold mine for profiteers, it’s not surprising that there is a powerful lobby seeking to reduce government oversight of this industry ever further and trying to persuade us that prostitution is just a normal job that should be treated like any other. They insist that running a brothel, for example, should not be treated differently than running a hotel or cafe.

They call this decriminalisation (“decrim”), which they say will make the women involved safer. But what they seldom explain is that this would not just decriminalise those selling sex but also the entire system — advertising, pimps, brothels and punters — and would magically transform pimps into “managers” and legitimate businessmen.

They can then say with a straight face that no, it wouldn’t decriminalise pimps — because with a sleight of euphemism, pimps no longer exist.

Large swathes of the trade union movement have fallen for these mental gymnastics. Several unions have formal policies of support for decrim and others are being lobbied hard to follow suit.

This is a terrible capitulation by the trade union movement. A continuation of the shameful record of so many trade unionists working against equal pay for women.

Prostitution is a feminist issue. Upwards of 99 per cent of sex buyers are male and most (around 85 per cent) of those selling sex are female. It is something that men do to women and those they treat as women. It is where men learn that they are masters and women are servants, or even slaves.

Promoting prostitution as a normal job grooms our young people; grooming girls to think that what’s important is how they look, pleasing men and attracting male attention, so they become ideal fodder for the industry, while grooming boys to become its perfect consumers.

Paying to sexually use a woman is not akin to paying for a hotel room or for someone to serve you coffee. And being paid to remove your clothes and endure being sexually used and penetrated is not like any other job. To suggest it is, is a category error — “a logical or semantic error where something belonging to one category is wrongly presented as belonging to a different, incompatible category.” If we’re honest we all know this.

Why did so many male trade unionists work against equal pay for women? Because earning twice as much as the women in their community and family gave them power? Power to make decisions, to have their own way. And it kept women in their place — subordinate, submissive, subservient. Trapped.

I would like to suggest that there are many parallels with why so many male trade unionists campaign for decrim.

Prostitution is a cornerstone of the patriarchal system. It defines men as masters and women as servants. It says that men’s needs are paramount and women’s are more or less irrelevant. It says, men, you can have your own way. It keeps women trapped.

But what about those claims that decrim makes women safer? Surely we all want women to be safe?

First let’s remind ourselves of what prostitution really is. I turn to Andrea Dworkin, who was herself in prostitution as a young woman.

This is how she described it: “Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one man and then another and then another and then another and then another. That’s what it is.”

Now tell me how you can make that safe for women? Is a woman’s body designed to be used like that, day after day after day? What would that do your body and soul?

And tell me how can we make it conform with modern employment and health and safety norms? In any other occupation where there’s a risk of exposure to body fluids, workers are required to wear masks, gloves, goggles, and protective clothing.

Condoms do not come close to reducing the risk for those in prostitution to a level comparable with those faced by workers in, say care work or nursing, because condoms slip and break, and punters refuse to wear them.

And condoms don’t protect you from the punter’s saliva, sweat and other excretions; or from damage to orifices and internal organs caused by friction and prolonged and heavy pounding; or from deliberate violence.

What does making women safer in this context really mean?

Shouldn’t we be looking instead at the successful union campaigns to close down other industries that could not be made safe? For example, the asbestos industry?

Is this not the model we should be aiming for rather than pretending we can bring prostitution up to modern employment standards when that is self-evidently impossible? Wouldn’t it be better to work to end this cruel traditional practice, while offering those caught up in it genuine routes out and viable alternatives? This is exactly what the Nordic model aims to do.

Anna Fisher is the co-founder of Nordic Model Now! nordicmodelnow.org.