Who owns your body?
I would think
you do.
And given that,
don't you have a right
to rent your body
to someone else?
I'm for rent. I'm not for sale.
This prostitute works at a legal brothel in Nevada.
This clip is from the HBO series Cathouse.
Everyone does it.
We're just smart enough to get paid for it
Now most people say,
women shouldn't be
allowed to sell sex
and those women are being exploited.
Julie Bindel runs a group that wants to end
all prostitution.
This is about the inside of your body being a workplace.
And some people say
that's okay.
I've interviewed a lot of sex buyers
and they talk about women
like they're human toilets
or spittoons for men's semen.
We don't need protection.
We're consenting adult women.
Christina Parreira is a PhD student
from the University of Nevada who,
to study prostitutes
became one.
I am a hooker.
Proudly,
you say it.
Very much so.
How can you be proud?
When people say
aren't you embarrassed to be a prostitute?
I say no.
I used to waitress and get hit on
and provide conversation and
that's kind of what I do now
except I'm serving sex and not food.
Also you get paid a lot better.
Oh well yes, yes.
Women working for Dennis make as much as
half a million dollars a year
for the top earners.
Dennis is Dennis Hof,
a man who owns seven legal brothels
in Nevada.
You're disgusting,
you're a pimp.
I am not a pimp.
I'm a businessman that works within the structure
of the state of Nevada.
This is a business opportunity for a girl.
She decides.
Christina decided.
She came to me said, I want to study legal prostitution.
I want to be the world's expert on it.
So I said well
then you better come to work here.
I was like what?
I did not plan this.
Will the Ethics Board at school approve this?
And they did.
And they did because it's legal.
What Christina learned surprised her.
I didn't know what I was going to find
when I started the study.
I was a little nervous.
I thought are the men pigs?
Like what am I going to find?
I assumed they just wanted sex.
They want conversation and companionship.
And they want texting in between their appointments.
They want the girlfriend experience
without the girlfriend hassle.
Companionship?
Companionship, right.
And maybe 20 minutes having sex.
Christina and many other sex workers say
sex work should be legal
because that will bring victims
out of the shadow.
Take it out of the hands of all these criminals
and put it in the hands of the professionals.
If God forbid
someone's going to assault you,
you can call the cops
you can hit the panic button.
If you're an illegal worker,
you're not gonna call the cops
if you get robbed or raped
because they're gonna arrest you.
They're so unrepresentative of the majority
of people in prostitution.
Bindel says prostitutes who fight for legalization
and those who speak to reporters
are a small minority of prostitutes,
that most are victims
held captive by pimps.
All women on the streets are there
because they have no other choice.
You could work at McDonald's.
Many people say
well, McDonald's is a rubbish job,
I'd rather be in the sex trade.
They have a choice
to get out of prostitution
if you don't want to do it.
I've never known anyone just stop like that.
Maybe they're liking it what they're doing?
You want to take that alternative away,
give them less choice?
I've never met anyone who's got out
who doesn't say they hated it when they were in.
Recently a California appeals court ruled that
legalization advocates have the right to challenge
California's prostitution ban.
During the hearing
a judge asked the state's lawyers,
why should it be illegal to sell something
that's legal to give away?
So a mother might decide to save her child's life.
She will give that child a kidney
right?
It's a bit different from having to sell it
and somebody buying it on the open market.
Why?
Because money is involved,
that makes it so terrible?
Because it's about
the human body being a marketplace.
Well, isn't it?
Boxers make money with their bodies.
So do dancers,
models,
football players.
The thing about the sex trade is that it is
that absolute connection
between the worst excesses
of patriarchy
and capitalism.
So you're just an anti-profit leftist?
I saw that prostitution was pretty much the worst thing
that can happen to women.
Police. Get on your hands.
The fact that prostitution is illegal
is so harmful to the women.
It's not saving them.
It's arresting them.
These woman by and large are happy.
They're all there consensually.
People say
this is degrading.
How is that degrading?
Or rather who is it degrading for?
Because she's getting paid a lot of money.
That feels good.
That doesn't feel degrading.
And he's getting his needs met.
So I always wonder who is it degrading for?
