Julie Bindel: “Teenagers coming out as gay do not deserve to be told that selling sex is the same as celebrating their sexuality.”

Prostitution is a cause and consequence of women’s oppression, which is why so many feminists and other human rights activists campaign to eradicate it. But it is also an issue that affects a number of young, vulnerable men, some of whom are gay, and others who are labelled as such by the men that abuse them.

With pro-prostitution lobbyists piggybacking on LGBT rights, Stonewall has yet again been captured by a movement that rides roughshod over, rather than defends the rights and protection of marginalised people by signing up to a campaign to remove all laws on pimping, brothel owning and buying sex.

Why is it that so many gay men consider buying sex off vulnerable so-called ‘rent boys’ to be no different from popping out for a burger? I reckon it is because the pro-prostitution lobby has seen a golden opportunity to cash in on the rights of genuine liberation campaigns by way of conflating being prostituted with being gay – in other words to frame it as a sexual identity rather than sexual exploitation.

In my book The Pimping of Prostitution – Abolishing the Sex Work Myth, I outline the differences between sexual desire, identity and prostitution, which is a form of men’s abuse. Teenagers coming out as gay need our support and protection from bigots: they do not deserve to be told that selling sex is the same as celebrating their sexuality.

When my book was published in 2017, several of the launches attracted the blue-fringe brigade shouting about ‘transphobia’ and ‘whorephobia’. Their logic being that trans women often have no other financial option than to sell sex and, therefore, to critique the sex trade with an aim to shutting it down is to deprive trans women of an income. But as my friend Rachel Moran, a sex trade survivor says, prostitution is built on the backs of the most vulnerable within society, and the thing to do when someone is hungry is to put food in their mouths, and “not your cock”.

… the pro-prostitution lobby has seen a golden opportunity to cash in on the rights of genuine liberation campaigns by way of conflating being prostituted with being gay – in other words to frame it as a sexual identity rather than sexual exploitation.

The alliance between the ‘sex work’ lobby and the LGBT movement is about the pro-prostitution lobbyists building critical mass. Pro-prostitution campaigners are aware of the advantage of aligning themselves with a wider group of ‘subversives’. While the ‘sex workers’ rights’ movement sees an opportunity for wider support from this ever-growing rainbow alliance.

A number of gay men have told me that, in their youth, it was almost expected of them to supplement their incomes by selling sex to older men. While several men who no longer frequent gay bars told me they are sick of seeing adverts for ‘rent boys’ in gay magazines.

Porn-critical gay men have told me that the type of porn which shows the sex buyer as a much more dominant man who emasculates the smaller and vulnerable prostituted male, is simply the fetishisation of dominance. It is not improbable that men who pay for sex will watch such abusive scenarios and re-enact them with ‘escorts’. Is this the happy ‘rainbow alliance’ which certain proponents of prostitution speak of? Ultimately, there can be no ‘rainbow alliance’ in financial transactions that perpetuate a hierarchy of abuse.

When the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz, was discovered paying for sex from vulnerable young Romanian men in 2016, gay rights activist Peter Tatchell was quick to defend him. It was clear from the short piece Tatchell wrote for the Guardian that he does not understand about the power dynamic that exists between the buyer and the seller in prostitution.

“Buying sex is not an offence, the men were consenting adults, there was no use of cocaine and poppers are legal,” wrote Tatchell. “Vaz has supported gay equality and the decriminalisation of sex work. There is no contradiction between his public pronouncements and his private behaviour.”

Contrast this with what actually happened: Vaz referred to himself as the young men’s “pimp” and “bank manager”, asked them to supply him with drugs, and spoke about one of the young men as though he was a piece of meat, saying, “He was OK. He forgot the condom though. I had to fuck him without a condom.”

Vaz enjoyed support from much of the gay press in the UK and elsewhere following the scandal. His abuse of young vulnerable men was seen as a sexual preference rather than an act of sexual abuse. Yet the young men at the centre of the story have said that they understood what Vaz did to them was definitely exploitative.

Then there was Boy George who, in 2008, was convicted of the false imprisonment of a young prostituted man whom he tied to a wall in his flat, causing significant injury. The press referred to the young man as a ‘rent boy’. In 2018, Facebook was forced to remove ads offering young men rooms for sex, placed by men seeking “houseboys” or “live-in personal assistants”.

Whilst it is imperative that the selling of sex be decriminalised, we must not believe the lies told by profiteers about how much safer it will be for prostituted people to de facto legalise pimping, which is what Stonewall has just signed up to.

In many ways, it makes sense for the pro-prostitution movement to present itself as part of a proud social justice campaign because it helps perpetuate the myth that prostitution is liberating.

Whilst it is imperative that the selling of sex be decriminalised, we must not believe the lies told by profiteers about how much safer it will be for prostituted people to de facto legalise pimping, which is what Stonewall has just signed up to.

Nobody with real choices has an ambition to sell sex for a living. By ignoring the fact that young men who are rejected by their families and communities, and isolated by their peers, are at risk of homelessness and sexual exploitation, we are betraying our youth.

Julie Bindel is a journalist, author and feminist campaigner. She came out as a lesbian in 1977 aged 15 and has never looked back.