5 Myths About Sex Buyers
This article will debunk common myths about sex buyers that often go hand-in-hand with arguments in favor of legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution.
Myth 1: Sex Buyers Need Prostitution for Their Emotional and Physical Well-Being
Advocates for legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution (i.e. removing criminal penalties for sex buying, pimping, and brothel keeping) often claim that sex buying is conducive to men’s well-being. Some even going so far as to paint it as a form of therapy.
In Germany, prostitution is being reframed as necessary “therapy” or “healing” for men, and “sex therapy” is being pushed as a form of rehabilitation for convicted rapists.
Reframing prostitution as a form of “therapy” for men creates a classist hierarchy in which prostituted women are a lower class that become tools for “sexual therapy” for the most dangerous men. This class of women becomes disposable and subject to experimental therapies like these.
Further, even if it were true that prostitution has a positive effect on the well-being of men (which is highly doubtful, to say the least), the reverse is true for prostituted women. We should not have to sacrifice the health, well-being, and fundamental rights of women to fulfill this false narrative that men are entitled to sex.
