Rebecca Reid in The Telegraph
The Institute for Economic Affairs has released a new paper this week from the sociologist Dr Catherin Hakim.
Hakim is a controversial figure, best known for her theory of ‘erotic capital’ - the combination of beauty, social skills, good dress sense, physical fitness, liveliness, sex appeal and sexual competence with which women should apparently barter their way through life.
A Katie Hopkins of the academic world, if you will.
No surprise, then, that her latest paper has already caused widespread controversy.
Hakim postulates that prostitution should be fully legalised – to many a perfectly reasonable stance on the debate. But it’s her reasoning that makes the suggestion painfully offensive.
Disinterested in the potential social, economic and health benefits of legalising sex work, Hakim suggests that prostitution should be legalised, because the empowerment of women has created what she terms a “male sex deficit.”
In short because men need sex and modern women aren’t providing it.
What selfish creatures we’ve become. All that working and voting and striving for equality? Well apparently it’s led to an international blue-balls crisis that only legalised prostitution can cure.
Dr Catherine Hakim says prostitution should be legalised because of the "make sex deficit" Photo: DAVID BEBBER
The pros and cons of legalised prostitution is an important and necessary debate.
Unfortunately Hakim has overshadowed that conversation by missing the point so spectacularly that one has to wonder if she did it on purpose.
Her theory hinges upon two beliefs.
First, that male libido outstrips female libido two to one; second that the availability of sex has decreased proportionately as women have become more empowered, because women have less cause to trade sex for gain. Offended yet?
According to Hakim, women (especially women over the age of thirty) don’t really like sex at all.
She writes: “Male demand for sexual entertainments and activity greatly outstrips female sexual interest, even in liberal cultures - this gives women an edge, although many are still unaware of it.”
Ah, the tired trope of the sexually disinterested woman. Sigh.
Hakim’s theory entirely ignores the fact that women experience desire and sexuality just as strongly as men. In fact, she’s wrong to compare the two. Male and female libidos do not have to be expressed the same way in order to be equal.
Her primary example of the disparity between our sex drives is strip clubs.
Well, she might be accurate in saying men more frequently attend strip clubs, but just because women don’t tend to enjoy stuffing fivers in thongs as a group activity, it doesn’t mean we don’t get horny.
The sex toy market (which has a predominately female customer base) tells a different story about female desire. In 2012, it was valued at £250 million in the UK, and $5.5 billion (£3.5bn) worldwide. Not to mention the 100 million copies of “mummy porn” Fifty Shades of Grey that have been sold.
Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades of Grey
Just because female libido is different from male doesn’t mean it’s non-existent.
Hakim believes that as women become more empowered, and therefore more financially independent, they are likely to withdraw sexual availability further. She writes that the “male sex deficit” is likely to grow in the 21st century, as women become increasingly economically independent and withdraw from “sexual markets and relationships that they perceive to offer unfair bargains”.
Which tells you everything you need to know about her attitude towards sex.
No wonder she wants to legalise prostitution. She seems to think every sexually active woman already is one.
But it’s not just women who should be angered by Hakim’s writing. Her representation of men is just as offensive.
“All the available evidence points in the direction of prostitution and erotic entertainments having no noxious psychological or social effects, and they may even help to reduce sexual crime rates”, she writes.
Here, she is hiding behind the illusion of being sex positive. She would like you to think of her as someone who understands male desire better than other women. But this is a woman who once likened male fidelity to being a “caged animal”.
She tacks a reasonable statement about a lack of evidence that prostitution is harmful, on to one that suggests prostitution would reduce the frequently of rape.
What Hakim is actually doing is reducing men to nothing better than animals. Sex mad beasts, unable to control themselves. She’s saying that male desire isn’t desire at all; it’s an untameable impulse that dominates rational thought.
How unbelievably patronising.
Photo: PA
By suggesting that access to the services of prostitutes would stop rape, Hakim is, however unintentionally, condoning rape as an act.
The message of that statement is that sex is something men need, and that rape is driven by necessity, rather than want. This theory portrays rape like stealing food when you’re starving: a necessary evil.
Perpetuating these myths isn’t just offensive, it’s dangerous. Women have been told for centuries that they don’t like sex, and that their sexuality only exists for someone else’s gratification.
Feminism has seen women take ownership of their sexuality and move towards an equality of gratification. How can Dr Catherine Hakim, in good conscience, promote the concept that a woman who enjoys sex is the exception, rather than the norm?
Worse still is the underlying message that rape is a consequence of sexual frustration. There are no mitigating factors and there are no excuses. Hakim’s suggestion that providing access to sex for money would reduce sexual abuse is no different from suggesting that providing child porn would decrease offenses of paedophilia.
When exploring the reasons that rape happens, the buck stops with the rapist. Just like short skirts, drinking too much or walking home alone, the “male sex deficit” doesn’t cause or entice rape.
Rapists cause rape. Much more than being offensive, it’s frankly terrifying that a supposedly educated and academic woman would try to attribute it to anything else.
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