The World Is My Brothel
Prostitution cannot be contained in one small corner of the culture. Once we accept and endorse the sale of women for men’s sexual use and abuse, the ideas and practices of prostitution bleeds into all layers of society.
Germany shows us how. In 2002, Germany gave state-sanctioned approval to the sex-trade and made prostitution a legal and legitimate industry in cities and towns across the land.
Researcher, writer and public speaker Elly Arrow tracks and reports on all aspects of prostitution in her homeland of Germany and around the world - and in this hour, Elly talks to Elle about what it was like to come of age as a young woman in a pro-prostitution culture, how it has affected relationships between men and women in her country, and how the normalization of prostitution has bled into other sectors - housing, employment, labor, children’s rights, local and national politics, immigration, policing and more.
We also talk about the debate that is now being had in Germany about whether to adopt the Equality Model, whether to try to rein in the 20-year prostitution industry that has exploded across the landscape - or to continue being “Europe’s brothel”.
Episode Links
Contact Subject To Power
Website: https://www.subjecttopower.com/
Instagram: @subject2power
Email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com
Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Elly Arrow
Activist, Podcaster & YouTuber
Elly Arrow is a German activist, podcaster and YouTuber focusing on commercial sexual exploitation, i.e. prostitution, porn, stripping and BDSM dungeons. She runs the German "sex buyer” quote project which has published hundreds of quotes by men from Germany, Austria and Switzerland regarding their use of all areas of the so-called sex industry.
She works part-time for the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women where she investigates the policy approaches of different countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand in regards to prostitution, with a particular focus on the men whose money enables the “sex industry”.
Elly is a co-founder of the Red Light Exposé podcast, a project run by a group of exploitation survivors & allies, that seeks to highlight all the relevant intersecting issues underpinning commercial sexual exploitation, including but not limited to male entitlement, female poverty, homelessness, intimate partner violence, war, pop-culture and religion, as well as potential ways out of the intolerable status quo.
Elly is currently completing her M.A. in Political Science.