Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes of Minas Gerais, looks for clients along a street in Belo Horizonte, November 5, 2013. A group of sex workers are taking English classes once a week in preparation for the World Cup. They hope these
Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes of Minas Gerais, looks for clients along a street in Belo Horizonte, November 5, 2013. A group of sex workers are taking English classes once a week in preparation for the World Cup. They hope these lessons will help them communicate better with soccer fans coming to Brazil who might use their services. During the classes, they not only learn basic vocabulary like the days of the week, but also sexual words and phrases that they use on the job. Picture taken November 5, 2013. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares (BRAZIL - Tags: SPORT SOCCER WORLD CUP EDUCATION SOCIETY) ATTENTION EDITORS: PICTURE 10 OF 13 FOR PACKAGE 'BRAZIL 2014 - DOWN AND DIRTY ENGLISH LESSONS' TO FIND ALL IMAGES SEARCH 'SEX MINAS GERAIS'

A new paper by sociologist and author Dr Catherine Hakim, published by the think tank Institute of Economic Affairs, is proposing that prostitution in Britain be decriminalised to provide sex to men. The proposal is not only controversial because of its push for the sex trade but also because it blames feminism why men are sex-starved.

The Telegraph reports that with the empowerment of women by employment, it became “inevitable” that men pay for sex as their spouses or girlfriends has lesser time for intimacy. It also downplayed the link between prostitution and trafficking.

Hakim argues that legalising the flesh trade would reduce rapes and other sexual crimes against woman. She previously wrote in a book that men and women should be free to engage in extramarital affairs to give them freedom to explore their wild side. Hakim also compared faithful spouses to caged animals who need to be freed.

Citing international sex surveys, Hakim points out that male sex desire is twice stronger than female, causing men to want sex twice compared to women and leading her to state that “Demand for commercial sex is therefore inevitable and the sex industry is likely to continue to flourish in the 21st century.”

However, Sarah Green, acting director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, says that difficult and costly enforcement of criminalisation of the sex trade is not the same thing as reducing harm to women when prostitution is decriminalised. She accuses Hakim of picking evidence on a one-sided way and dismisses her claims that men have greater interest in sex, which would necessitate for males to pay for sex, as laughable arguments.

Telegraph writer Rebecca Reid debunks Hakim’s argument on sexual desire, saying that female desire is as strong as male’s. She cites as proof the $5-billion global sales of sex toys, which has females as majority customer base, and the 100 million copies sold of “Fifty Shares of Grey,” considered a mummy porn.

Reid says men should be angry at Hakim for reducing males “to nothing better than animals. Sex made beasts, unable to control themselves.”

She belies Hakim’s thesis that decriminalising the flesh trade would reduce sex abuses by equating it with the argument that making child porn available would result in lesser paedophilia offences. Reid says that Hakim is not just offensive but terrifying because she is “a supposedly educated and academic woman [who] would try to attribute it [rape] to anything else.”

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