A look at the job advertisement offers clues. The first requirement is: “Practical experience from several years of visiting brothels”, and “experience with escorts is an advantage”. You’ll need a “clean, well-groomed appearance” and a “health certificate”. You have to “enjoy dealing with people” and have “no fear of contact”. The job description is simple: “You will test brothels for service, cleanliness and compliance with safer sex practices. You have fun having sex with the different ladies and then create an evaluation.” Something tells me only a man could do this job.

Many legal brothels employ undercover inspectors, a practice known as “test purchasing”. The aim is to assess the quality of “service” a prostituted woman is providing. If it is found that her performance is lax in any way — for example if she fails to convince the punter that she is enjoying herself, or refuses particular sex acts that he demands — she can be fined on the spot by the brothel owner. This is the reality of legal prostitution: it benefits the pimps and the punters and offers the women no protection whatsoever.

The advertisement for the brothel tester was on a website run by Kaufmich, a business that describes itself as a “social network for sex workers, customers, brothels and companies in the erotic environment”. If you are looking for any type of paid work in the German sex trade, Kaufmich is your go-to website. It also offers tips to punters on everything from the best local “gang-bang sex parties” to sourcing heavily pregnant women who are selling sex.

In countries such as Germany, Holland, and Switzerland — where all aspects of prostitution are perfectly legal — the women are marketed as merchandise, the sex buyers viewed as clients, and the pimps merely managers. At the heart of the project to sanitise the sex trade is the language used to describe it. In the Seventies, Carol Leigh, an advocate for blanket legalisation, coined the term “sex work” to suggest that prostitution is “a job like any other”. I’ve seen this phrase — as well as “sex work is work” and “blow jobs are real jobs” — emblazoned across placards and heard it chanted at rallies to promote legalisation. If prostitution is simply a job, then how can it be abuse? If it is merely labour, how can it be detrimental to wider society?

It’s a nice idea. But in practice, legalisation has left women terrifyingly vulnerable. In Germany, the current legislation imposes almost no rules on the punters. Condom use is supposedly compulsory, but as one woman in a “mega-brothel” pointed out: “Who, exactly, is going to enforce that rule and put one on his dick and stop him from taking it off, as they often do?”

Meanwhile, a high degree of control is imposed on the women. They are expected to be onsite for periods of up to 15 hours — until 3 o’clock in the morning — to allow brothel owners to confidently advertise that there are always dozens of different women to choose from. Partial or full nudity is required of all prostitutes while they’re on the premises. They don’t get to decide what acts they perform: management decides what “services” are on offer; whether “blow jobs are included in the basic rate”.

In German culture, prostitution has been whitewashed. There are many legal pimps on mainstream television. Michael Beretin, one of the pimps running the Paradise mega-brothel, had his own TV show, Redlight Experts, in which he reviews brothels. Beretin had seriously assaulted his then wife when he signed the TV contract. And in 2013, criminal investigators discovered that criminal gangs were operating within the business. Significant numbers of women had been trafficked from other countries. The brothel owners were sentenced to five years in prison.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. No other job on Earth exposes the so-called workers to such extreme violence, abuse and degradation. One 2018 study found that more than 60% had suffered a traumatic brain injury.

And yet, European authorities continue to enable the sex trade. In Zurich, there is a large “sex performance box” zone — a drive-thru outdoor brothel on the outskirts of the city — which is maintained by public money. Every day, local municipality workers empty bins full of used condoms, soiled tissues, and empty tubes of lube. The Swiss government spends more than $800,000 per year maintaining the booths. It is clearly keen to make it easier for men to pay for sex with financially desperate women. In 2014, it was revealed that inmates of La Paquerette, a social therapy department for prisoners near Geneva, were allowed to visit prostituted women being held in a local immigration detention centre. Members of End Demand, a feminist human rights organisation in Switzerland, tell me that the idea behind the visits was that the male prisoners could “let off steam” ahead of being released into the community.

Recent evidence shows that physical and sexual violence against women involved in the Swiss sex market is commonplace. Fortunately, there are moves, supported by a growing number of politicians in the country, to end legal prostitution and criminalise the punters.

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The problem extends far beyond Europe, however. The picture is just as horrific in Nevada, the only state in the US where brothels are legal. I have visited a number of them, and the conditions inside are nothing like the glamorous images that illustrate their websites. Many women both live and prostitute in a single room, where pornography plays on loop. They are not allowed any of their own personal possessions on display, and are only allowed to leave the brothels — which are often surrounded by metal gates — if they are chaperoned by an assistant pimp. This is in case they pick up a sexually transmitted infections from consensual sex.

There is no requirement for the punters to show that they are not carrying a disease upon entering the brothel, but the women are required to be tested every week. Brothel owners typically pocket half of their earnings, while the prostitutes are expected to pay for their own condoms, wet wipes, sheets and towels.

Of course, this is just good business. While in Nevada, I met with the late Dennis Hof (who died in 2018), America’s biggest pimp — he owned the majority of the legal brothels in operation at the time — who refused to accept the label, because he operated in the legal world. “I am a businessman,” he told me. “I have a license to do this.” For pimps, it is all about profit. The wellbeing of the women is irrelevant. All the prostitutes I interviewed in Nevada brothels spoke of using tactics aimed as dissociating from their feelings while having sex with punters, in order to cope. One woman told me she repeated the mantra, during each encounter: “I am not selling myself, but renting out my body for an hour”.

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Prostitutes desperately need protection, but every attempt to unionise these “workers” has failed. Pro-pimp organisations have long been masquerading as “sex workers’ unions” — in 2002, a London newspaper ran a front page with the headline, “Sex Workers To Join Trade Union”. People lobbying for the legalisation of the sex trade had persuaded Britain’s third-biggest union, the GMB, that prostitution was a job and that those selling sex deserved “worker’s rights”. The now-defunct International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW) was never a union; it is a lobby group for the decriminalisation of pimping. In the early days, its main spokespersons were two gay men — whose rather unrepresentative voices (at most, 20% of the entire sex market is men selling sex to men) became dominant in the “sex worker’s rights” debate. One of these, Douglas Fox, was co-owner of a large “escort agency” based in north-east England.

Another organisation that masqueraded as a union was the Red Thread, based in Amsterdam. Founded in 1984 — and funded, from 1987, by the Dutch government — even at its height, it had just 100 members, out of the nation’s estimated 25,000 prostituted people. It never fought a single case on behalf of a “worker” in court. What it did do was act as a propaganda machine for legalisation. The Red Thread only lost its government funding when the international media began to report on the evidence coming out of The Netherlands that legalisation had been an unmitigated disaster. Under this regime, Trafficking and pimping has increased, organised crime is rife, and women are not protected from violence.

Those who advocate for the legalisation of prostitution claim it makes it safer for the women. Those in favour of decriminalisation, including many liberals and some feminists, argue that “sex workers” can be protected by unions and health and safety measures. But prostitution is inherently abusive. There is no way to make it safe.

And, under legalisation, prostituted women are inspected and not protected. After all, if selling sex is the same as flipping burgers for a living, there needs to be quality control of the product. This is another gross example of legalisation benefitting men while betraying women: whoever the lucky candidate is for the brothel testing job in Germany, he can easily pretend it is regular employment, while he is encouraged to “have fun having sex with the different ladies”.

Who cares what those ladies are thinking, feeling and experiencing? When women’s bodies become commodities, they cease to be human, and the men who buy and sell them can no longer claim to be humane. That is what the legalisation of prostitution achieves.

Pornhub has a new category: “Ukrainian girls and war rape videos”; it is dominated by Russian soldiers documenting disgustingly brutal crimes. Domestic violence and street harassment have already spiked. Female refugees are falling victim to pimps and traffickers; official channels — the police, hospitals, legal systems — won’t help them.

Where women are concerned, “the foreign coverage of the war is concentrated mostly on women fleeing with children”, Maria Dmytrieva tells me. The Ukrainian feminist activist — a key member of the Global Network of Women Peacekeepers — believes this coverage misrepresents the reality of war for women, and the ways in which women specifically become targets for attack.

We speak via Zoom, and as night falls, she sits in darkness, so as not to be spotted by saboteurs. Although the Russians had not yet arrived in her small town, a few miles outside Kyiv, like everybody else in Ukraine she is in a perilous position.

Maria has been involved in the campaign to end male violence in Ukraine for more than two decades. I have visited her in Ukraine on several occasions and have seen her make powerful men in senior government positions quake when she rails against injustices towards women and girls.

One study from 2019 found that 75% of women in Ukraine reported experiencing some form of violence since the age of 15, and one in three reported experiencing physical or sexual violence. According to a recent statement by the United Nations, crisis and displacement has recently put women in Ukraine at increased risk of sexual and physical violence and abuse. There are no figures as of yet to show the levels of violence experienced by women and girls since the Russian invasion, but plenty of evidence is being amassed by women’s NGOs.

In many ways, the experiences of women in Ukraine echo the plight of women in wars throughout history: we face reduced protections from violence and often an increase of domestic abuse. The situation is exacerbated, though, by the fact that Ukraine is being invaded by a country which effectively decriminalised domestic violence in 2017. It is well-documented that, post-conflict, when traumatised men return home, levels of violence against women increase. But if Russia wins, the right of Ukrainian men to beat their wives will be enshrined in the law of the land.

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“So far we have felt as a nation, united around this common threat”, Dmytrieva told me. “But we are pretty much bound to have the growth of cases of domestic violence, of male violence against women, both during and after the war is over”.

Domestic violence is not the only threat to women in war. There is a “new wave of sexual violence”, with 11 reports from different women that they were raped by Russian soldiers in Kershon, confirmed by a local gynaecologist. Of those 11, only five survived. Other reports of sexual violation by troops are being picked up by the UK media, but, according to Dmytrieva, little is being done to help.

Rape victims will suffer consequences long after the conflict has ended — especially those whose violation is circulated on the internet. The existence of this sick revenge porn ensures that the women brutalised in it will never be able to return to a normal life. Even if they escape the conflict, it then ends, and they make it home, they are likely to be shunned by their families.

The videos are perfect ammunition for pimps and traffickers to use to control women and force them into prostitution. Displaced women and girls are often without any food, shelter or income, with many caring for children. Traffickers seize the opportunity to coerce women into selling sex, and soon they are trapped and held captive. “It is really terrifying how capitalism and imperialism are going hand in hand to exploit those who cannot defend themselves right now”, Dmytrieva tells me. “And it is truly terrifying to see that amongst all this surge in humanity in caring for other people, there are those who want to exploit this weakness and make money out of it. It is very disheartening”.

“Organised gangs [are] trying to abduct young women on the Ukrainian Polish border and we already have several cases in Germany where the girls have been abducted by pimps in the refugee camps”, Dmytrieva explains. Punters in Germany are delighted; feminist colleagues have seen screenshots of them “talking online with each other about how happy they are to have young fresh Ukrainian women crossing the German border”. With no home, no money, no job, no resources, and a very limited legal framework protecting them, these displaced women are among the most vulnerable in the world.

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Women are vulnerable to pimps within Ukraine as well. In the East, even before tensions with Russia escalated into a full-scale invasion, the local economy was on its knees. Previously high-tech industries had been stripped; machines and other valuable assets were carted, wholesale, back to Russia. Few options for employment were left. As a result, the number of women in prostitution in Ukraine before the war was around 80,000. That figure does not include children.

For now, the police have their hands too full “going around looking for saboteurs” to investigate or prosecute crimes against women. Dmytrieva understands the urgency. Terrorists are “placing bombs, explosive devices and shells in the basements … they are turning our country into a minefield”. But she is hopeful that the Russian invasion will be repelled, making space for better policy to protect women.

While authorities are too busy to consider the impacts of the conflict on women, those who do an international trade in children are taking full advantage of the situation. “Ukrainian surrogacy clinics are now advertising women through Facebook, even during the occupation”, Dmytrieva told me. The press in Ireland and elsewhere have reported on babies “rescued” from war-torn Ukraine by their surrogate parents, and on surrogate parents “in limbo”, because “their” children are stuck in the now inaccessible country. No word of the plight of the women who carried those children, postpartum and vulnerable in a war-torn country, sometimes literally “holding the baby” that they had made no plans to care for, as the Russians invade.

Ukrainian women are under siege, with profound threats on every front, whether they flee or stay. Of course, men are in danger too. Ukraine does not allow men between 18 and 60 to leave the country. This rule is, Dmytrieva told me, “reasonable”. But the women suffer a different and ongoing kind of violence.

Nevertheless, it is not only the ways in which women are victimised that is newsworthy. “There are a lot of women who have stayed, who picked up arms, who secure the logistics for our army. There have hundreds and thousands of women doing this work that makes it possible for the army to fully function”.

Nearly 17% of the Ukrainian army is female, one of the highest percentages in Europe. Dmytrieva is a pacifist, but I could hear the admiration in her voice talking about the women who have taken up arms. In the face of a foreign invasion, she is aware that “we cannot afford a weak army, because that is what brought us into this situation … with having Russia for a neighbour, we need a very strong army.”

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She is furious with the British feminists who campaigned to stop Johnson sending weapons to Ukraine to avoid “escalating” the conflict. “Maybe they are not aware that if Russia takes us over, there will be no women’s rights whatsoever”. She does understand these women’s desire for peace but thinks that it is “heavily misplaced”. When I asked her what feminists in Britain can do to support Ukraine, she replied, without missing a beat, “send aircrafts, lots of them!”

I can’t send Dmytrieva the fighter jets that Ukraine so desperately needs, to repel Russian air raids and artillery. But she speaks for me when she says: “As a feminist, I cannot turn a blind eye to the peril that women are facing in Ukraine, both on the front lines of armed conflict and when they come back home”. Local, national and international women’s organisations must confront the horrors faced by Ukrainian women; only then can they work out how best to respond to the Russian invasion.

In the meantime, Dmytrieva points out, there are no women at the negotiation table. Maybe because compromise is not what is being sought. “There is not much space for negotiation. We want them gone and they want us dead”.

I met this punter while investigating the sex trade in Auckland, New Zealand. It was said to be the gold-plated model for decriminalisation. While the men might have liked it, the women didn’t. “I have been raped more times and I can remember,” Lindsey told me. “Some of the bastards enjoy hurting us, the last one the punched me in the face after he’d finished and ran away laughing.”

Carly who worked in a large, busy brothel told me that even though there were house rules, all the punters ignored them: “What’s the pimp going to do? He just charges the men more for unprotected sex, because what they want, they get. Why anyone thinks that when you turn a pimp into a legitimate businessman that they will treat the girls better, I will never know. It’s made it much worse.” 

Most people assume that “decriminalisation” of the sex trade would make lives better for women in prostitution. It won’t. Along with its close relative “legalisation” it has made them worse. Which is why I am astonished that public money is going towards Decriminalised Futures, a highly politicised exhibition opening later this month at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).

“Full decriminalisation of sex work is the rallying cry that unites the sex worker rights movement across the world,” reads the blurb on the ICA website. “Under this banner, sex workers and their allies have fought tirelessly for strong workers’ rights, an end to exploitation, an end to criminalisation, and real measures to address poverty.”

This “celebration of the ‘sex workers’ rights’ movement” features 13 artists from countries including the UK, France, Germany and the US,  and highlights the history of the campaign to decriminalise the sex trade. 

It is no surprise to discover that one of the major supporters of the show is the Open Society Foundation (OSF) — the world’s biggest financial backer of the pro-legalisation lobby. Also involved is SWARM (Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement) which “aims to highlight the ways in which sex workers’ rights are inextricably linked to struggles for racial justice, migrant rights, anti-austerity work, labour rights, trans rights, and many other movements and campaigns”.

The debate is weighted heavily on the ‘“sex work is work/legalise it” debate, as this is the commonplace liberal position, but it is based on fantasy rather than fact. Prostitution is not work, and every attempt to legitimise the inside of a woman’s body as a workplace has failed. 

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I know the global sex trade well. I have visited legal brothels and street toleration zones in the US, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. I have spent time with the women selling sex, the punters, the pimps and brothel owners, and I know that the only benefit of decriminalisation for the women is that they are not arrested. And that pales somewhat when you realise the devastating effect of assuming that prostitution can ever be work, and that the punters are merely paying for a service.

The Netherlands, which legalised its sex trade in 2000, realised in short order what an unmitigated disaster that move had been. Dutch politicians began to publicly admit that none of the promised benefits had been realised: rather than tackling the illegal side of the market, such as trafficking of women across borders, underage girls, and associated criminality such as drug dealing, violence and murder of the women by pimps and punters, the opposite happened. Soon after legalisation, the US Department of State ranked the Netherlands as one of the top five countries of origin for trafficking victims worldwide.

Under legalisation, the illegal sector grew alongside legal brothels and street toleration zones, and pimps imported their human merchandise from other countries to meet the growing demand.  Something similar happened in Queensland, Australia, where it has been reported that up to four times the number of trafficked women have been discovered in legal brothels than in illegal ones. 

Neither decriminalisation nor legalisation will ever result in a reduction of or an end to prostitution. Instead, both approaches set in stone the idea that prostitution is an inevitability. And the gold standard today, according to pro-prostitution activists, including SWARM, is the New Zealand model that Lindsey and Carly are toiling within. 

In 2003, New Zealand became the first country to decriminalise its sex trade, passed by only a majority of one vote in parliament. The application form to open a brothel in New Zealand is just two pages long: three pages shorter than the form to apply to adopt a pet from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in London. 

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Freedom of information requests by anti-sex trade campaigners in New Zealand found that, despite the promises from local governments that legal brothels would be regularly inspected, there had been only 11 inspections between 2003 and 2015 across the whole of New Zealand, all of which originated from complaints from the public. Meanwhile, the women are getting younger and the men are demanding sex without condoms. 

Rachel Moran, author of the best-selling memoir, Paid For: My Journey through Prostitution and now actively campaigning to dispel myths about the sex trade is vehemently opposed to the ICA’s exhibition. 

“Art is its own thing, but there is a strong argument for it to be true to life when it’s presented in the service of a political objective and with public funding,” says Moran about Decriminalised Futures. “This exhibition warns that it contains ‘depictions of violence’ but there are no warnings about the exhibition’s political objective — to campaign for the full decriminalisation of brothel keepers and pimps. This unacknowledged agenda constitutes visually presented political propaganda.”

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The exhibition will doubtless be welcomed by the liberal feminists and the bearded dudes who chant “sex workers work” and “blow jobs are real jobs”, because they subscribe to a faux feminism that actually benefits men more than women. And it is telling that the majority of the artists whose work is featured in the exhibition identify as they/them, and at least one of the she/hers are trans women. The pro-prostitution and trans activists/queer identified activists have become so intertwined they sing from the same hymn sheet. 

But there should be no place for a sanitised, romanticised version of the sex trade in a city which is home to countless brothels full of abused women. While there is always room for debate about removing the harms from prostitution, a propaganda puff piece that legitimises and normalises prostitution is dangerous. In staging this exhibition the ICA is making a very strong, political statement about its acceptance of the world’s oldest oppression. It’s a shame the money wasn’t spent helping women out of the sex trade.