Men urged to ‘stop using prostitutes’ as MPs debate modern slavery

[IwantToRetire]

Sarah Russell said a “significant” number of women are brought to the UK under false pretences before being forced to work in the sex industry.

“If I could say one thing, I really, really wish that men – and it is predominantly men – would stop using prostitutes, could you just stop?

“Because the number of women who are being brought to the UK under false pretences, believing that they’re going to do a different form of work and are then put to sex work against their will … kept in physically confined situations, which they’re not allowed to leave, and having had their passports taken away from them is really, really significant.

“The other thing that happens is that some women, who come here knowing that that might be an element of their work, if they then complain about it or want to stop, are told that their children back home will be harmed if they do, so are unable to go to the police when they are being systematically raped.

“So please, please, men, stop using prostitutes.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jess-phillips-russell-home-office-mps-men-b1219328.html

Also this:

Jess Phillips said the Overseas Domestic Work visa, which allows workers to come to the UK with their employers for six months, was “servitude”.
https://www.perspectivemedia.com/minister-keeping-keen-eye-on-visa-that-allows-wealthy-to-bring-staff-to-uk/

There have been so many stories about how women trapped in this "servitude" are exploited, abused and isolated.

In NZ (decriminalisation since 2003), a sexworker was awarded a 6 figure payout after being sexually harassed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55298303

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/sex-worker-compensation-vindication-at-six-figure-settlement/C3O6SDYE6KFITA4WZ6QWYQU6OY/

Explain how that can possibly work, given her "job" is literally to have sex with people who ask her to and pay her money? Her boss is paying her money, so how can any request for sex from him be harassment?

Unless the harassment took a form other than requesting sex (e.g. comments about her appearance), in which case this case is irrelevant to my point, which is that providing sex could become part of anyone's job description.

Perhaps this is one (amongst many other) reasons why decriminalisation (in NZ, parts of Australia and passed by Belgium in 2022) of sex work is advocated by a long list of human rights orgs, health orgs, HIV/AIDs orgs, anti-trafficking and sex worker orgs.

Decriminalisation acknowledges that sex workers can in fact be harassed or victims of other crimes.

Nordic Model supporters seem to think "oh she's a sex worker, she can't possibly be a victim of harassment."

Nordic Model supporters seem to think "oh she's a sex worker, she can't possibly be a victim of harassment."

That is untrue and an example of the straw man fallacy. Being raped for money is the worst harassment I can think of.

Have you possibly confused de facto with de jure?

Any reasonable person considers being expected to have sex as part of one's job as de facto harassment. That means that it's harassment in reality, no matter what the law says. When I discussed how decriminalisation of prostitution and related activities allows the possibility of "give blowjobs" to be added to someone's job description, I was talking about how aspects of de facto sexual harassment would cease to be de jure sexual harassment.

men need to learn that they do not have a right to sex (there is no evidence men have a greater sex drive than women and it's about time we stopped suggesting they have and it needs containing - the Victorians justified prostitution by saying it protected respectable women from rape, which was and is a lie)

Amen!

If drug user didn’t buy, drug sellers wouldn’t sell…

Incorrect. There are plenty of women who are using local male prostitutes and there are thousands of women who travel to Caribbean
and African countries for male prostitution. How we should deal with these shity women? What would be the best punishment for them? Maybe genital mutilation as punishment would stop these women from using male prostitutes?

Do you have evidence to back up your claim of 'thousands' of women travelling to the Caribbean to use male prostitutes please? It's not something I've heard of.

Women very rarely use male prostitutes. We lack the economic power to do so, pregnancy is too much of a risk for us, and we tend not to orgasm when shagging strangers.

There are plenty of articles and videos on youtube and it is called female sex tourism, one of the articles see below
juliebindel.substack.com/p/female-sex-tourism-white-middle-aged

I don’t know how many women and how often use male prostitutes, but the fact is that some women do, as some women use female prostitutes too. Western women got plenty of economic power over third world men.

It would still be helpful if you attempted relative numerators first comparable denominators. It’s your claim so it’s your responsibility to stand it up beyond generalisations that resemble Barnum statements.

Sometimes couples hire a sex worker of either sex for the experience of having a 3some without any complications arising from asking someone they know.

Dropping in an example of sexual offences for which 850 men a month are arrested. We’re told that 80% aren’t jailed (no information about convictions) and that “830,000 adults in the UK, 1.6% of the population, pose a threat to children “. From figures like these arrest rates, the dominant majority is men but the language obscures this. NB that % should have been quoted as the adult population as per the linked source. So, that would indicate that 2.5-3% of adult men pose some degree of sexual risk to children.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/05/i-didnt-start-out-wanting-to-see-kids-are-porn-algorithms-feeding-a-generation-of-paedophiles-or-creating-one

I find this so concerning. Men will lie and cheat to get sex - I’ve recently dipped my toe in to online dating at the age of 45. So many are serial cheaters and liars. What is it that makes them think they are entitled to sex with a woman? Whether that is paying for sex or lying to get it.

Yep. And he is out there online dating right now. Has met a nice woman. He actually told me that she doesn't know what he's like yet. Gross.

I went on a couple of dates with a man I met on OLD recently. He wasn’t pushy, in fact he came across as lovely. But I couldn’t shake a funny feeling I had. My friend recommended I look for him in those cheaters FB groups. Glad I did, lots of posts from lots of different women - serial cheater, sex addict, volatile. And still married. In his home town it’s an open secret that he’s cheated on his wife for years. They hide it well 🤷‍♀️

Mine looked me in the eye and told me he never cheated and I was mad. This was after he admitted using prostitutes in court 🤦🏻

It’s not cheating if they pay for it. That’s how they justify it. It’s entitlement to sex, they don’t care how they get it.

She damn sure didn’t ask me or any of my colleagues/friends. We are not happy about her ridiculous & unsustainable request (more like beg) at all.
It’s not going to stop anything.

Rape is also notoriously difficult to prosecute, should we give up and make that legal too?

Within the past month a review of the Nordic Model in Ireland has been released. Since 2017 it has been illegal to pay for sex in Ireland. Demand has not been reduced. Women have not been helped to exit. It is a failure.

Department of Justice press release

Exactly this. Laws are as much about setting societal expectations of behaviour as they are about harm reduction. When you decriminalise the purchase of sex, you tell men that it's OK to treat women's bodies as commodities.

If you have a system that doesn't work, you need to replace it with a system that does work. The Nordic Model does not work at decreasing the amount of prostitution, as we can see more clearly than ever from the review of effectiveness of the Nordic Model in Ireland that came out last month.

The Nordic Model was intended to eliminate prostitution. When it was put to Jess Phillips on TV that was not happening she said no, but we can diminish it. She got that wrong, you're not going to diminish it, at least not with the Nordic model.

There are better ways of diminishing it. First of all, you spend money on the exit strategies that governments enacting the Nordic Model always promise but never do. I know people will say that makes it different from any other job but governments have always helped unskilled workers to move into skilled work.

We need to spend more money on helping with mental health and drug addiction. Not just for prostitutes but for anyone who needs it.

Next we need to understand that some women do choose to earn money through prostitution and some women are coerced. We need to focus attention on those women who are coerced. That will be difficult for the Radical Feminists and the Evangelicals whose ideological position is that all prostitutes are coerced.

I'm not looking for a Britain where prostitution is eliminated. That wouldn't be possible even if it was desirable. I want a Britain where there is less sex work and the ones remaining are the ones who choose it. They should be left in peace and not be hounded by the police.