How do you define prostitution?Sex between two
people: one wants and the other does not and a contract is established. Consequently, a person is paid to reject his desires and not decide with whom, when and how to be sex.

If someone accepts sex in exchange for money doesn't mean you want sex, what they want is money. In prostitution, sex is always unwanted and, therefore, the person who pays is doing something similar to rape, as he is touching a person who does not want and is having sex with her. This is the fundamental problem of prostitution and not the absence of towels or condoms, the non-payment of taxes or the ugliness of the client. And if we don't go to the center, we'll have millions of men in sex with women who don't want.

Can you imagine yourself or any of your friends making love with a man and answering him? “Look, I do not wish you, but if you give me a hundred euros, we will do it.”

What is bought in prostitution?Sex, among other things, but statistics on prostitution indicate that the majority of women who exercised prostitution were raped during the exercise of prostitution, so, besides sex, prostitution is violence in most cases: the right to treat and force the other as an
object.

Many women who have written biography after practicing prostitution claim that their clients do not buy sex, but power, along with sadism. That has nothing to do with man’s orgasm, ‘I bought this woman and with her I can do whatever I like.’ Not all customers are like that, of course, there are people who are going to make love and they're already there. There's everything.

Why do you say that prostitution is not work?
To see it as a work, we must apply labour law and in Sweden at least we have a law against discrimination, and it says clearly that no one can be discriminated against at work by claiming a certain sex, age or appearance. If you go to a cafe, for example, and the one that puts the coffee on you is ugly, you can't say, "No, you're ugly, I want the coffee to put a young gallardo" or "I don't want to be black, I want to be Asian." In prostitution, on the contrary, the most important characteristics are appearance, age and sex. If it really was work, you would buy a service and not the one doing it, and that person could not be required anything...

According to regulation, wage work is also exploitation. What do you say about the relationship between prostitution and wage exploitation?
Okay, but we do the work to live and sex to enjoy. Because, if sex becomes something we all do by obligation, how is it possible that women are always harmed? The inequality is that almost 100 percent of the clients of prostitution are men who go to their free time, not to work, but to have a good time, and then go back to work or home. Why is the obligation for a woman a pleasure for man?

Know the ‘Swedish model’ perfectly. What is it and what do you think?
This model was approved in Sweden in 1999 and consists of turning clients into those responsible for prostitution. It is a question of not always talking about women, because there is another side, the clients, and it is they who decide to buy or not to buy women. It is a means of making visible or punishing people who can really end prostitution, those who buy sex.

When the proposal was presented to the European Parliament, they laughed and said that it was impossible to put an end to the ‘oldest profession in the world’. Studies carried out since the entry into force of the law punishing prostitution – for example, the Honeyball report, produced by the European Parliament in 2014 on sexual exploitation and sexual prostitution and its impact on gender equality – show that the Swedish model is the most effective in combating trafficking in women and other countries have joined the same route, such as Norway, Iceland, France and Ireland.

But there are those who say that the Swedish model has done nothing but push into the underground an activity that has not stopped existir.La prostitution
has always been in hiding in some way, as people do not usually walk in the street and in the Netherlands, for example, women are exposed in the shop windows, but sex is always done in another room and clients do not accept police custody, they want to be alone with women. That's the nature of prostitution.

Another thing is that prostitution goes from the street to the Internet or to the floors, and that has nothing to do with our law, which was passed in 1999, when there was still no Internet. The spread of prostitution over the Internet has taken place around the world, not just in Sweden.

Has the number of buyers and prostituted women fallen?
Yes, but Sweden has never had a large prostitution industry. Those who are now engaged in prostitution do not reach one thousand, out of the 9.5 million Swedes. As far as sex buyers are concerned, one in eight was now one in thirteen. And most of them buy it outside of Sweden, when they go on vacation to Thailand or Colombia, or Germany.

The attempt to legalise a ‘sex workers union’ has sparked intense debate in the Spanish State. What do you think about this?
I haven't studied the specific case, but when I wrote my book, the unions I studied were very few. Most are prostitution organizations, behind which there are people of all kinds: pimps, neoliberal academics, social workers, sociologists, even states. Some of them work in these unions, but not in prostitution. These organizations have a couple of well-known people who act as spokespersons and try to convince them that they are a real union.

In any case, the important thing here is not whether or not such an organisation has to exist. Everyone has the right to organise themselves, of course, but to have a trade union you have to fight the industry and many of these groups do not, they are lobbyists who want to legalise prostitution. You will never hear them talk badly about those who get rich in prostitution, but about those who fight prostitution. This is truly surprising, because the unions usually do not speak well about their work, complain about their working conditions. These presumed unions, for their part, always say “My job is great, I don’t want anything more men stick to me.” It is a little surprising on the part of a trade union and, therefore, I have doubts.

Regulators insist that prostitutes should be listened to, but what is often given is the vision of so-called ‘happy whore’. He says in his book that he has spoken to many and many prostituted women. Where did they come from and what situation did they explain?
I did speak to many women who were engaged in prostitution, but when I wrote the book I only decided to use written sources, because I wanted everything to be verifiable and that nobody could say ‘But that person has invented’ or ‘I’m sure he has changed his testimony’. In the book I have received only biographies or published anthologies of women who have practiced prostitution.

Both in the old books on prostitution (based on testimonies collected by doctors studying prostitutes) and in the current books (from Australia, France, Africa, Thailand and other countries) I found a very hard element that was constantly manifested: the need to lock oneself in sexual activity, not to participate, not to suffer. All women mentioned this, both those who say they like their work and those who have left prostitution. There was no difference. And what does it tell us? That sex, created for the enjoyment of human beings and a source of pleasure and love, has become a duty for these women, and while they do, they must think of something else, drink alcohol or use another name or any other strategy to protect themselves from that practice. And that's very sad.

It goes far beyond laws, fines, jail, towels and condoms. It has nothing to do with that. We are talking about an activity in which two (or three or four) people can enjoy, but in prostitution there is always someone who does not enjoy. And what's the problem? I don't understand how so many people defend prostitution, if one of them brings with it that they don't enjoy sex. So simple and so basic. If you don't enjoy, stop!

A law has just been passed in Sweden — and I think it is also being analysed in Spain — which is very important, because according to her any sexual action without express recognition will be a crime. The man accused of rape will not be able to say 'But I thought he wanted'. And if we apply that law, there can be no prostitution, because women don't want that sex. We have only to take away the money and ask it. If you really want, you'll stay the same.

And what do you say about the rights of prostitutes? It is
clear that there are particular rights, because we are not all in the same situation, but sometimes that which is called right is not a right. This term is often used because the right word is fashionable: Who is against rights? It's like tolerance. Who is against tolerance? Who opposes the recognition of the other? We all have to be tolerant, but sometimes we have to look more closely at what is being asked, if what is being asked is to enslave millions of women, for that is not a right.

What is the process of dissociation suffered by women engaged in prostitution?
It is very interesting that Marxist theory and psychology have a term to explain the same phenomenon: in Marxism it is called reification and in psychology dissociation. They both describe the same thing, but from different angles. Hungarian Marxist György Lukács says that reification is something that happens at work, because what is sold is not a product, but the human capacity itself. It's your joy that you sell, your hands, and what you sell that alienates you, and you stop identifying yourself with your own hands or your own joy. In prostitution the same thing happens, but in a much more pronounced way, as it affects the whole body, the whole being. In prostitution, many women lose the desire to have sex because for them sex is not a pleasure, but a repugnance, an obligation, a rape, something terrible. Sex becomes something alien, not yours, but of the client, of man. And that's dissociation: sometimes not feeling touched by someone, even unable to feel your own skin.

Do you think there is a similar dissociation between clients that make a total abstraction of what prostitution means to women?
This question is very difficult, you have to ask them, because I don't know what they're thinking. I don't know if they're going too hot or they don't think, or maybe they don't see prostitutes as human beings. Many men are convinced that there are women who want to be prostitutes and that there is a kind of woman — whore — who, because of the love that sex has, wants to dedicate themselves to what they like the most. When you talk to clients who say that and talk to prostitutes, they explain very different things to you, and they talk about violence, dissipation, disgust, hate, but they're really good at pretending.

What does it tell me about the apology of prostitution that is made with free choice between some sectors on the left?I find it very
strange and, in my opinion, it has no place on the left. This trend has come from the United States and has spread throughout Europe, but it has not reached Sweden: here the supporters of prostitution are right-wing, of course, because they think that we all have to sell ourselves and that the rich have the right to buy us all. In any case, I do not understand that position that you mentioned, whether you are a Marxist, or if you are a Socialist, you have to be against reification. I would say that you have not read Marx or Lukács, because the Left is trying to expand the non-commercial space of life, fighting not to sell water and air, or not to commodify health or education. How can we simultaneously fight for the sale of human beings? It is an absolute contradiction.

What parity do you find between prostitution and womb rental?The
two industries, which sell women's bodies and market absolutely essential human capacities: sex and reproduction, are very similar. They are two sides of the same coin: one wants sex without reproduction and another reproduction without sex. They're based on the patriarchal mindset of men who don't see women as people. For them there are two categories of women: whore and holy. The former only exist for sex, but they would not allow children from a prostitution relationship, and the same is true of the womb rental industry: it is not based on sex, but on fertilization, but in an absolutely clinical environment, it is very important that the women who are rented do not get a slut.

It says that every belly rental is exploitation. Why?
First, because the womb is a woman. The stomachs are not like a car, a thing you can rent and have for nine months. You can't rent a belly, what you rent is a woman and that's exploitation. In addition, it breaches the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, as according to it all children have the right to know their origin and in this case they are denied the right to raise with their mother and even to know their name. It is therefore not only about women, but also about children.

Continuing with the commodification of the female body, what view do you have of the porn industry and its influence on the imaginary of men on female sexuality?
It's a very profound question. I have not investigated the porn industry in detail, as I have investigated prostitution and, therefore, I cannot give you a statistic about its concrete functioning, but, as I have seen lately, and as the Swedish Police explains, the demands of the prostitution clients are much more exaggerated than those of a few years ago, and that is precisely because of the porn industry.

On the other hand, boys often watch porn videos on their phones and find it very difficult to do the things they see in it a ‘normal’ girl of their age, as they are often painful and humiliating, resort to prostitution to satisfy their desires.

And that's very tired and hard for the women who engage in prostitution, because, as I've been told, before, in the 1970s, everything was going very fast, fast, fast, pounding the bell or eating the penis and ready. But today, with the spread of pornography, they are asked to act as porn actors. And we're not talking about magazines that show naked women. This debate is very boring to me, because in the 1950s, many of us act as if we were, and it's not. Today we see much higher levels of violence and exploitation, and that is in everyone’s hands. We must stop. In England, for example, violent pornography has been banned.