If Prostitution is a Job Like Any Other, Objectifying “Service Reviews” are Par for the Course
In the average review, punters objectify “sex workers” and publicly disclose raping them. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that objectification is intrinsic to prostitution.
A prostitution review from “Stantheman15” on punternet.com.
Since the third wave of feminism, the liberal feminist view of prostitution as an acceptable, normal profession has been mainstreamed. This is in contrast to the understanding of second-wave radical feminist foremothers who were clear on this question: prostitution is not the world’s oldest profession, but the world’s oldest form of female subjugation. It’s been my experience, and the observation of anti-prostitution feminists at large, that what liberal feminists of the current day who promote, glorify, or apologize for prostitution usually miss is an even cursory glance at the male equation of the industry. Sex trade apologists largely ignore the men who sustain demand for the industry.
These are the men who, first and foremost, create demand for commercial sex buying. These are the “Johns” or “punters.” It also includes the men who own and run brothels, the pimps and sex traffickers — some of whom operate “sex worker unions” — and others involved who coerce women into prostitution. However, it also includes the broader male collective who groom women and girls into the industry through sexualized objectification, sexual harassment, and childhood sexual abuse. Liberal feminists often hyper-fixate on the women, obsessing over their purported agency to liberate their sexuality — seemingly, by having sex with men they have never met before, in exchange for money — while ignoring who is on the other side of the transaction.
It is not an accident that the Johns are erased. Examining the type of men who want to extract sexual services from women for pay means coming face to face with male choices, desires, and actions. This is instead of singling out the sex sellers and exaggerating how much power they have, insisting they take much enjoyment from being repeatedly fucked by men they do not know in exchange for money. When we examine men’s role in prostitution, we find that prostitution is underpinned not by the choices of women, but by the rapacious sexual entitlement of men. We come away with the nauseating misogyny innate to the system. (Abolitionists have done a good job of trying to highlight these men.)
If you’re familiar with radical feminist writings and online content on this subject, you’ll find I won’t be providing you with anything novel here. What I will say, though, is worth repeating — a hundred times over. If you are familiar with this debate, you may have heard of “John forums.” These are online sites where Johns review the “services” of women in prostitution. You can look at these forums yourself to see the average man a woman has to deal with, multiple times a day, when she is a “sex worker”. One such website is the now-retired punternet.com. (I found this site from Nordic Model Now, which analyzed the reviews.) The average review demonstrates that objectification is part and parcel of “sex work”.
One user, “Maglor”, reviewed “Hayley from Edinburgh”, saying “Twenties, blonde, and very large breasts, on tour from Bonnie Scotland.” In another review, “fredy poole” said about “Jasmine”, “Good looking girl with wonderful olive skin and a lovely smile.” “Stantheman15” reviewed “Crystal”, stating “Black lady. Aged 42 with big tits and she would say has a bit a stomach but not two many stretch marks after two kids.” Finally, “dr tony” describes “Helen”: “45 year old siren! Lovely boobs, legs, pretty lady and a lovely smile. WOW WOW WOW!!!” (These reviews were selected at random).
A prostitution review from “dr tony” on punternet.com.
These were reviews where the “clients” recommended the services of the women; they get worse, however, when you look at the ones giving negative reviews.
“niel” posted a review in which he described “Caitlin” as “Small, tattoos and piercings - what I wanted” — right before describing a situation in which the woman was clearly drunk and he “eased her onto the bed, fucked her and left within 20mins.” The details he provides indicate she seemed distant, either high or drunk, and had snot running down her nose, which he noted she wiped off on the back of her hand. “She had white powder on her face, I wasn’t sure if it was bad make up, snot or coke !” He goes on: “I paid her and reminded her to start the roleplay, she disappear to stash the cash & then came back into the room staggering. [...] She just stood there and put her hand out for cash ? I said that I had just paid her 2 mins ago and she put her hand down and just stood there.” As he implied, he raped her, leading her to the bed and taking what he paid for. “Didn’t seem to care about me leaving early or really understand anything,” he notes.
A prostitution review from “niel” on punternet.com.
Sex work ideology — that prostitution is a normal job akin to bartending, rather than a form of violence against women — renders this obviously highly vulnerable situation into mere “bad service”, the onus being on the “worker” to get her act together and provide the service she is paid for. This is instead of being respected enough not to have to endure what we can all recognize as rape, in the first place.
In a more recent review from puntersnet, “Silverf” clearly describes a woman he is buying sex from as crying, hiding from him, and trying to get help from the hotel. He portrays her as a con artist. He says of “Olivia Bahaduar of Bromley”: “I do not recommend visiting this escort. [...] I believe this wpman olivia is a con woman and thief, i booked a room in the bromley court hotel and awarted her arrival, she was late, i told her what room i was in, she came in I paid her and then without any warning she burst into tears and went into the bathroom and locked the door. I strongly believe that this was an act to just rob me she cried to when i tried to talk to her about her behaviour she cried and complained to hotel staff. At this point i should make it clear i did nothinh wrong. I left the hotel disgusted and later complained to cherry girls agency. This woman is clearly a con srtist robbing men.” I believe this review speaks for itself.
A prostitution review from “silverf” on punternet.com.
“alexforpunt” echoed a similar sentiment when “Sienna” indicated she didn’t want to do particular acts. “[...] tried to touch her she starts getting aggressive i am unwell today. no touching no kissing and said take off clothes and again she goes out and returns i felt she was on high on something. not at all normal behaviour. Next i lay on bed and ask for orals she was like i dont do i am unwell. then i said let me go down and i tried to go down she starts you are lickin with spit , i dont wnat to do this and goes out of the room and sends another lady to say she doesnt want to contune the booking. I put my clothes on and went out . Worst attitude and experience and i think she was has racist attitude and also high on something when working. Will never return and avoid her like plaugue. she dint even return my money and i got nhithing.”
A prostitution review from “alexforpunt” on punternet.com.
Here, we see that Johns demonstrate how the exchange of money bypasses consent. This is why radical feminists have argued that prostitution is not a form of consensual sex. Since he pays, it is not acceptable for her to disagree or dissent, to have any human subjectivity at all. She is expected to be an object, a doll, and a performer.
The fantasy liberal feminists, among others, have that “labour laws” can mitigate this and create greater allowances for women in prostitution to assert themselves is undermined by a few factors. For one, the type of men who want to take advantage of sexual services from women for pay are the type who, precisely, don’t care about women’s “agency”. Likewise, what makes prostitution valuable economically is the willingness to put out: Johns hand over money and get to readily experience particular behaviour from women, something they wouldn’t otherwise access. Once women have boundaries, fewer men will be attracted to the services, and women risk having fewer customers (if we are to use the logic of sex work ideology). There’s robust empirical data to show that both decriminalization and legalization make things worse for women, compared to a model that decreases demand while not criminalizing sexual sellers.
“John2024” demonstrates this sexual entitlement, as well, painting a picture of a woman clearly uncomfortable with being touched, which enrages him (“Jennie”, which he describes as “about 1.63 , very small breast. East Asian woman, face is not too bad but smallish eyes. age is about right according to her description on the website.)” He explains how the session went: “At first she is ok, a light frech kiss is offered and we touch each other for a while, so when we moved to the bed she did a bit of blow job then I ask to do 69 this is when things start to turn to another direction, so when I touch her pussy , she seems to be very sensetive and turn his body away, I didn't finger her just a little bit touch then she pushed my hand away, strange but ok then I asked to lay down then I started to kiss her face and down to her nipple, she seems very sensitive and start to push my face away , I looked at her, she seems like she lost her intrest all together, and then this put me off a bit I asked her why she is doing that, she relied " you don't know how to do the 69 and you just need to receive no need to do anything else" at this point I have been completely put off and I can't carry on, so I put on my cloth and left, I met so many girls in milton keynes escorts and this is the first time I am not able to finish the punt, if you are so sensitive of being touched by other men, why the hell you are doing this job? never again with this woman.”
A prostitution review from “John2024” on punternet.com.
***
How often are women told to assert themselves? To not “just lie there”? To speak up? To say no? In prostitution, this is simply not possible. “Sex worker unions” imply laws can fix this, ignoring what makes prostitution appealing to men to begin with. When women actually do try to retain sexual integrity, assert preferences (such as a no-kissing rule), they are then shamed by the very people they rely on for money. The fact that men can get sexual services from women for pay undermines female sexual integrity, to begin with.
If “sex work is work”, if prostitution is a normal job that should be fully decriminalized and reified, these reviews are necessarily acceptable. They’re just service reviews, after all. Yet, it’s clear to see these reviews aren’t even equivalent to uncharacteristically unhinged Yelp reviews for a coffee shop. These reviews are the norm, and they objectify women precisely because prostitution itself is objectifying. If we are to understand prostitution as worthy of normalization, we are forced to understand female sexuality as entirely comparable to the coffee in a cup someone orders from a coffee shop. That is, an object and commodity, something dead, something disposable, even if also commercially valuable in a twisted sort of way.
By normalizing prostitution, we earmark certain women as worthy recipients of objectification. (This isn’t even to touch on the other facts of life for exploited women, such as femicide, physical violence, torture, stalking, harassment, drug and alcohol dependencies, self-harm, and mental health issues such as PTSD.) We would not expect graphic, objectifying reviews like this when reading reviews of female corporate workers. This isn’t to say that corporate working environments are perfect for women, or have not famously had misogynistic and objectifying histories, especially with regard to dress codes and sexual harassment. But if reviews like this were given of corporate women on a publicly available site of clients, even liberal feminists would appropriately take issue with it. We’d recognize that even so much as mentioning a woman’s hair colour in a client review would be unprofessional and inappropriate. Why do middle-class, professional women deserve the right to be free from objectification in their line of work, but not other women? Women who are especially disproportionately working-class, immigrants, and women of colour?
Objectification in prostitution is not a bug but a feature. A woman’s body being objectified is intrinsic to the service. A woman being objectified is intrinsic to prostitution because female sexuality cannot be a commodity without two things happening.
One, female sexuality cannot be a commodity without a woman being separated from her sexuality. This happened because her sexuality has been turned into an extractable good for the economy, rather than being a secure, private, safe element of one’s life. This entails free exploration and realization (or not) without constraint, coercion, manipulation, pressure, or violence. Without this, women’s sexual integrity is undermined.
Two, female sexuality cannot be a commodity without a woman being bought. Sexuality does not merely involve our physical bodies and our sexual organs — it is itself a physical act, a physical experience, as well as a psychological and emotional one. By turning female sexuality into an extractable commodity in the economic market, prostitution separates a woman from her sexuality, and since sexuality is a physical experience and act, her body no longer becomes her own. Her ability to have agency over her body in any sex trade encounter is almost entirely undermined and constrained by the economic transaction taking place. This isn’t even to mention the presence of a man in the room, who typically has physical, social, and financial power over the woman being prostituted. Ultimately, buying a woman’s body is buying a woman. Though it’s not in the abject chattel-slavery form that was typical of most of human history — what comes to mind when we usually think of humans being bought — it doesn’t need to be identical for the point to be made. Prostitution is the selling of women, not just a service, her body, or her sexuality, because human beings are not separate from our bodies. We don’t merely “live” in our bodies: we are our bodies. Insinuating that we are exogenous to our bodies is to objectify our bodies and ourselves. When someone punches one’s face, the victim says not “My body was punched,” but “I was punched.” And when a woman is raped, we don’t say that it was just her body that was violated.
So, the next time a liberal feminist tries to sell you on a “sex worker union” that she fails to mention is literally run by pimps, in order to advocate for “sex workers” who experience rape, violence or abuse, what will she say? That the commodity a woman was selling, the service she was providing, was stolen from her? That it was extracted unfairly? Prematurely? That the “client” crossed the physical bounds of the expected services? (Expected by whom?) That it was manipulated out of her hand like a loaf of bread by a thieving customer? Or will the liberal feminist — and likewise, the chauvinistic misogynist — ultimately recognize that a woman was raped? Or battered and abused? That she suffers this abuse not as an object but as a human being — a fact that is irreconcilable with the underlying misogynist ideology of the industry.
The liberal feminist cannot recognize this. After all, the very “sex worker labour unions” she promotes and supports, or mentions in passing — almost as a metaphysical object for the sake of a talking point — can only consider rape in prostitution a mere contract breach.