Common myths
MYTH: Prostitution is regular ‘work’.
MYTH: Pimping websites make prostitution safer
REALITY: Prostitution is violence against women. Giving a person money - or food, accommodation or drugs - on the condition that they perform sex acts is sexual exploitation and abuse.
MYTH: Criminalising paying for sex would drive the prostitution trade ‘underground’, rather than reduce the scale of exploitation.
REALITY: There is a logical fallacy underlying claims that outlawing paying for sex would simply drive it ‘underground’. Sex buyers have got to be able to locate women they can pay to sexually exploit. If sex buyers can find women being exploited, so can the police and support services.
MYTH: Criminalising paying for sex is pointless because it hasn’t ended demand for prostitution anywhere.
REALITY: Laws against murder and rape have not eradicated those crimes, yet we recognise that having laws against them is critical. Criminalising paying for sex is vital for deterring demand for prostitution, holding abusers to account, and enabling women exploited in the sex trade to access justice and support.​
REALITY: Pimping websites enable and incentivise sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. These commercial websites, which host adverts for prostitution, expand the scale of sexual exploitation, enabling anyone on the internet to anonymously access the phone numbers of women being advertised for prostitution. Pimping websites are routinely used by sex traffickers and there is no realistic way that the website operators can prevent this.
MYTH: Decriminalising the entire sex trade and recognising it as work would enhance women’s safety.
REALITY: Making brothels, pimping and paying for sex legal would state sanction sexual exploitation and abuse, incentivise sex trafficking, and place legal and financial burdens on women exploited through prostitution.
MYTH: Criminalising pimping websites would displace the problem, rather than reduce it.
REALITY: Pimping websites incentivise sex trafficking. They are a market expanding force. The websites make it easier and quicker for any would-be pimp or trafficker to advertise their victims across England and Wales. Disincentivising sex trafficking, and reducing its scale, requires outlawing the pimping websites that facilitate it.