Free Pimp State Conveyed By Kat Banyard Provided As EPub

author obviously cares very deeply about some of the most vulnerable people in society, and is a real warrior for the cause she believes in.
However some of her points and statements in the book are just to generalised to encompass all those involved in prostitution, internet porn and brothels.

There is a deep sickening evil within these activities and those making money from it, however there is a deep hinterland from the seediness of "love Island" right across to sex trafficking of minors that makes it just to complicated to make generalised statements of the "all men are preditors" variety, particularly as she herself, speaks of women porn directors who are as aggressive and perverse in later chapters of the book.

The author states that those involved with controlling and harvesting the profits of prostitution are powerful and vicious, Surely to challenge these issues there is the need to create a determined coalition from the feminist, and faith communities and other fellow travellers to bring about change.

In the concluding chapters the authors solution appears to be "Make it illegal to purchase sex and the problem goes away", However experience should surely show us tha this just drives things deeper underground think the "Vorstead Act" and what happened there, even though it was legislated with the best of intentions.
A book full of harrowing tales from the sex industry,
The two days I spent reading it were like walking through a daytime nightmare daymare, A big trigger warning to all you with experiences of being abused, assaulted or raped! I'm not saying don't read it, just, be prepared for some seriously triggering shit.
Anyway even if the future, by chance, proves the experiences mentioned were only isolated incidents although I highly doubt it, it's still worth reading.

But the book reads to me more as popular science the arguments seem to lack certain depth, And, some stuff is simply weird, E. g. the author speaks about feminist porn, but suddenly jumps to womendirected porn, as if they were the same thing, So, it's either she equates those two, which sounds very unfeminist, or wants to cover up her lack of researching the topic I believe the latter's the case.

So, I'm not utterly convinced we should criminalize the buying of sex, but, thanks to this book, I'm definitely curious about other arguments for and against the case.
This book is a polemic, full of outrageous and harrowing tales, but ultimately it is unsuccessful,

It fails to convince because it tries to prove too much, Most annoyingly, when her argument gets the weakest, the author doubles down on rhetorical bombast and sad anecdotes, Never mind that to qualify as a myth a claim has to be completely untrue, not just something the author disagrees with, Never mind the occasional logical fallacy slipping through like the textbook equivocation she commits when she tries to dismiss the new phenomenon of feminist porn, but since she is relying mostly onyearold studies and has no data on this, she switches her criticism toward femaledirected porn and hopes the reader won't notice.
Never mind indeed the very selectivity of the data, or the unrepresentative nature of some of her own research e, g. , adprompted selfselected misogynist punters share their reasons, surprisingly they all confirm what the author wants to hear, quick, before you start doubting the logic, the author trots out another Jessie, Crystal or Mia and their tragic tale.
You sick fuck, arent you outraged

She does make valid points especially about the dissociative nature of much of the sex work today.
But instead of focusing on the fact that this might be due to the horrible, grueling, slavedriving conditions of the sex workers she is describing, women who dont have enough time to rest and recharge doing anything forhours every day all the time would probably result in serious psychological damage, let alone work this taxing, she insists it is because sex work is necessarily and always abuse, because real consent is impossible when money is in play.
This is the core of her argument and it's also where it falls apart,

Either she is saying that whenever commodification enters into human relationship, true consent is impossible and therefore we are witnesses to abuse which would throw in doubt the entire economic system as we know it, where people do things they normally wouldnt do for money teachers, miners, nurses, tinkers, tailors, lawyers, actors none of us do our jobs for the pure joy and benevolence to our fellow humans, or she needs to show that sexual consent is qualitatively different from other forms of consent, but that argument is completely lacking and with good reason, I suspect.
We consent to actions for various reasons, money being one of them, Background injustice can be a problem, but not the transaction itself,

Indeed, her decision to attack sex work wholesale and argue against it is an example of nirvana fallacy, Its the sad equivalent of describing early factories and the poor working conditions there and concluding that we need to abolish capitalism, It ignores the realistic options of dealing with much of the tragic problems she describes so vividly and shoots instead for the pie in the sky.


The book could have shown how sex work and conditions surrounding it drugs, trafficking, violence, crime, etc, are in dire need of more oversight, regulation, protection of the vulnerable, It could argue for reform royalties for porn, more regulated porn sets animals seem to have it better in Hollywood, sadly, employment and union rights for prostitutes, health and social services, committed work towards eliminating the background injustices that let women be exploited.
But that would require a different attitude, one that did not try so hard to make a dramatic splash, one that wouldn't stretch the concept of abuse.
instead she dismisses all of those options out of hand, noting the policy failures in countries that tried decriminalizing and legalizing but which, as she freely admits, did nothing to regulate and implement protections.


Eliminating sexual inequality and toxic misogyny is hard but worth the effort and no doubt some of pornography and prostitution as it currently exists contributes to these major problems.
But and I am well aware of the horrible “but not all” trope, though this might be the book that makes it apt not all sex work, not necessarily, despite her repeated and unsubstantiated insistence to the contrary.
review to come, but this is great and you should read it An enjoyable feminist polemic against the sex trade, both prostitution and pornography which Banyard argues is filmed prostitution, which is I believe a currently unfashionable position among the righton and 'progressive' circles within the UK.


In particular I enjoyed the insight as to how the sex trade has used rhetoric to shift public virtue into some form of acceptance and normalisation and how this is weaponised against feminists such as Banyard, or as they are currently skewered as, SWERFs Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists.


As always polemic should be read with a scepitcal eye, especially with the deployment of statistics and their validity and interpretation I did spot one moment

of scepticism directed at a statistic that undermined Banyard's thesis but then this was not replicated to statistics that were equally dubious that supported it.


In all this is an enjoyable read that whatever your view will provoke thinking about the subject and may cause you to reevaluate what you think about the subject.
It has done so with me, Banyards thesis can be summed up as follows: propped up by free market values and structural gender inequality, the gradual reframing of prostitution as “sex work” since the lates has legitimized and normalized the increasingly violent and exploitative sex industry.
Whats more the increased social acceptance of prostitution as a “trade like any other” has sanctioned the exploitation of womens social vulnerability to and real experience of genderbased violence on an unprecedented industrial scale.


Banyard argues her point across six chapters, each of which address a specific line of reasoning commonly held up by proponents of the “pro sex worker perspective”.

Ambitious in scope, Banyard sets out to debunk the idea that efforts across the Western world to decriminalise or legalise prostitution have somehow made women less vulnerable to sexual exploitation or that they have made sex workerss conditions safer or healthier.


To illustrate her point, she draws on recent legislation impact in the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand and Sweden, This was where I would have liked to see more critical engagement with more sources, Banyard would have done well to either narrow her scope or otherwise produce a text that is more extensive and show more engagement each case study.


Pimp State is a suitable gatewaybook to understanding the basics of prostitution abolitionism in feminist discourse, Banyard's language is accessible, impassioned and often rhetorical, Her tone can be more conversational than academic, which at times renders her thesis prone to dismissal over frequent use of anecdotes and emotional language.
This space may otherwise have been used to showcase additional data to build a more cohesive case more rigour and detail on the case studies, comparative analysis.
Her use of data improves somewhat towards the second half of the book,

Occasionally the reader might intercept an intersectional approach Banyard is vaguely receptive to classism and racism, still her analysis is mostly colorblind.


Crucially, Banyard argues that the concept of mutual consent has been hijacked and distorted by the sex trade and sold to the public as something it is not.
The struggle over the meaning of "consensual sex" is a hegemonic battle played out on the political landscape of womens bodies, According to Banyard, the brand of “consent” that is given in prostitution is qualitatively and semantically different to consent given freely and out of desire as opposed to what she calls “manufactured consent” consent appropriated in exchange for financial renumeration.


The deliberate reframing of “prostitution” as “sex work” is part of the linguistic and cultural strategy whose function is to give the sex industry an aura of credence and at once to underplay its inherent misogyny.
Commodified sexual consent as opposed to other things people do as work for cash is qualitatively different due to the often underplayed contextual injustices that underpin and correlate with prostitution pornography, understood as choreographed and midwived prostitution is included in this as a mass industry.
The agency of women is also mangled with my pimps, of who coerce the women they are pimping into degrading and unwanted "work" and yes, the overwhelming majority of prostitutes are pimped by men who also abuse them.


Banyards deconstruction poses a hegemonic challenge to the dominant, rigidly patriarchal, freemarket discourse of womens sexuality passive, receiving, available, functional, commodifiable,

Some quantifiable realities: the decision of the vast majority of women to enter the sex trade is made on the backdrop of a personal history of sexual abuse, rape, child molestation and domestic violence, often combined with a low level of education and unremarkable socioeconomic status.
Decisions made with agency, but with extreme vulnerabilities as prerequisites, In other words, the sex trade profits by exploiting existing social inequalities and then contributing to their perpetuation, Finding themselves in desperate situations, women are also a lot more likely to enter prostitution when they are able to do so legally, Many are trafficked into prostitution and are broken to believe that thats all there is for them,

I was somewhat taken aback at the extent to which the consumption and production of pornography fuels violence against women, “as well as an array of attitudes that minimize, trivialize and normalize it”.
This includes perceptions of women's sexuality that contribute to their continued sexual exploitation, as evidenced by “assessments corroborated across methods, measures and samples, ” It is, I checked.

However one tries to frame the sex industry as “sexpositive” or “empowering” for women, the patriarchal, marketdriven power structures within which this trade operates remain in tact trying to excuse the industry by citing fringe subsections of “feministporn” is a red herring detraction from the point in case and will, until dismantled, continue to dictate its content and packaging.
Feminism and prostitution, for Banyard, are incompatible,

Pimp State makes a compelling enough case to have stimulated serious reassessment of my conceptual understanding of prostitution, but I plan to read more.


TRIGGER WARNING for survivors of rape/child molestation/genderbased violence:

This book is triggering and I literally had to stop to hyperventilate and sob everypages.
Just putting that out there, Understanding the social and legal backdrop of rape culture is paramount to being able to cope with what and why happened to you, yes, but so is being kind to yourself.

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