Being and Being Bought by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

While Sweden and Norway are now combating prostitution by imposing fines on the purchase of sexual services, other countries are doing exactly the opposite and institutionalizing it. Some states in Australia had already legalized prostitution (Sullivan, 2007). Since 1998, when the International Labor Organization (ILO) recommended that governments legalize prostitution so they could collect some of the revenue, Holland, Germany and New Zealand have taken this route. This brilliant exposé is written with a razor-sharp intellect and disarming wit and will make us look at prostitution and surrogacy and the parallels between them in a new way.

Ekis Ekman asks: why should this not be called child trafficking? In this capitalist creation story, the parent is the one who pays. Surrogacy becomes an extended form of prostitution. Turning to the practice of surrogate motherhood, Kajsa Ekis Ekman identifies the same components: that the woman is neither connected to her own body nor to the child she grows in her body and gives birth to. The story of the sex worker says: the Split Self is not only possible, it is the ideal. The men who buy sex are left out.ĭrawing on Marxist and feminist analyses, Ekis Ekman argues that the Self must be split from the body to make it possible to sell your body without selling yourself. And prostitution is always presented from a woman's point of view. Groups for prostituted women are simultaneously groups for brothel owners.

Grounded in the reality of the violence and abuse inherent in prostitution-and reeling from the death of a friend to prostitution in Spain-Kajsa Ekis Ekman exposes the many lies in the 'sex work' scenario. In 1998, Sweden passed ground-breaking legislation criminalizing the purchase of sexual services which sought to curb demand and support women exiting the sex industry.

Being and Being Bought by Kajsa Ekis Ekman