Pimp State

Never before have prostitution, strip clubs and pornography been as profitable, widely used or embedded in mainstream culture as they are today. How society should respond to the rise of the sex trade is shaping up to be one of the Twenty-First Century's big questions. Should it be legal to pay for sex? Isn't it a woman's choice whether she strips for money? Could online porn warping the attitudes of a generation of boys? An increasingly popular set of answers maintains that prostitution is just work, porn is fantasy, demand is inevitable; so fully legalise the sex trade and it can be made safe. Kat Banyard contends that these are profoundly dangerous myths. Sexual consent is not a commodity, objectification and abuse are inherent to prostitution, and the sex trade poses a grave threat to the struggle for women's equality. Skilfully weaving together first-hand investigation, interviews and the latest research, Pimp State powerfully argues that sex trade myth-makers will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

Kat Banyard is the author of The Equality Illusion and founder of campaign group UK Feminista. In 2014 The Equality Illusion was used as a key text in the development of the play Blurred Lines, written by Nick Payne and directed by Carrie Cracknell, premiering at the National Theatre. In 2010 Kat was named in the Guardian as 'the most influential young feminist in the country' and in 2011 she was selected as one of the Observer's 50 contemporary innovators, described as 'Game-changers whose vision is transforming the world around us'.