That's men for you: Padraig O'Morain'sguide to men's health
Is the sex industry one which, by default, exploits the women (mostly) who work in it? Are those who buy the services of sex industry workers always the exploiters and never the exploited?
These questions are prompted by an e-mail from a reader who has provided support to women involved in the sex industry. She was angered by a recent TVScope column of mine about a Channel 4 documentary on stag and hen parties. The programme was about the degeneration of the stag and hen night from an innocent pub crawl to mini-orgies in Amsterdam or in sex clubs in Eastern Europe.
It suggested that both male and female partygoers were equally involved in this behaviour and it included interviews with female prostitutes, lap-dancers and male strippers.
In the review, I expressed my opinion that this behaviour is confined to a minority and, referring to the participants, I finished: "Does it do any harm? I'm not sure it does, despite the tone of disapproval in which Channel 4 told the story."
On the contrary, argued my reader, it certainly does harm to women working in the sex industry. "It does to the women who are every day sexually abused and exploited in brothels and lap-dancing clubs whether they are in Eastern Europe or Ireland or wherever."
When I suggested in a reply that "some" people in the sex industry were exploited and that others were in it of their own free will, my reader responded that "in fact the opposite is true, only some are not exploited. Also, one has to look at what exploitation means, it is not a simple definition of whether you are or aren't being raped for example.
"It is the control that is involved [and this is huge. It is comparable to the control that an abusive person has over their partner], the pressure to perform more and to engage in acts that you do not wish to participate in and which you were not initially 'signed' up to do.
"Once involved in the sex industry it is extremely difficult to get out of it," she adds. "The end result is hardly ever happy. And even if a woman does get out of it, it haunts her for the rest of her life impacting hugely on her, her partner and, very importantly, her children."
The sex industry is becoming normalised, she states. "The rate of women getting involved in and therefore being exploited [exploitation and violence is inherent in the industry] is very frightening and it is getting worse."
I would have thought, though, that there are women and men in the sex industry who are there out of a free choice, meaning not driven by drug addiction or being forced by thugs. During Stringfellows brief sojourn in Dublin, didn't women queue up to work in the place? I have never been in a lap-dancing club but the reports on Stringfellows did not seem to suggest that anyone was forced to work there.
I asked whether the client is not also being exploited? My reader responds: "A woman may be exploiting her client but at the end of the day, who is it that suffers? It is not the client. It is the woman."
Working in the sex industry is, I suspect, a really bad life choice. Does that make it exploitation, always and in all circumstances? I am not sure it does and I am not sure the only exploiter in the transaction is always the customer.
I am not talking here about people who are trafficked into the industry. Their situation is unimaginably awful and I would happily see their traffickers hanged. But I will leave the last word with my reader: "We really do need to question and challenge some of the myths which exist about how it [the sex industry] is harmless, not help to de-sensitise society and therefore give out the message this is okay."
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.