Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality

"Kat Banyard is a dedicated and highly respected activist and this clear, well-researched study shows how the sexual exploitation industry has become normalised across the UK. Her focus is on the purchase of women by men for sex, the choices of ‘johns’ and ‘punters’ to do so and their justifications for doing so, and on the structure of the industry which enables them to do so. Banyard turns the focus of the debate on the sex industry onto the men, not the women within the industry, and asks: why does he choose to do that? She does not judge or stigmatise the women within prostitution and her clear-eyed study is all the more powerful for its restraint and its devastating accumulation of research. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter"