In Denmark selling and buying sex is legal. Procuring or inducing others to sell sex is illegal, as is buying sex from persons under the age of Although the current legislation regarding prostitution dates back to , prostitution still occupies a contentious position in Danish society. It is a legal way to earn money and earnings are taxable, but selling sex is not widely accepted as a profession and sex sellers are not entitled to many employee rights such as unemployment benefits or holiday pay.
Selling sex involves risks, as attested to by many studies. All interviewees worked in indoor prostitution escort, clinics, private. Female sex sellers were involved in heterosexual commercial relationships whereas most of the men sold sex to other men.
Comparisons of men and women in prostitution are rare in international research. Nevertheless, studies tend to portray male sex sellers as more agentic and independent than female sex sellers who are typically depicted as vulnerable and exploited. Our research contributes to the very sparse tradition of research including men and women in the same study. Looking across all 36 interviews, principles of freedom and choice in prostitution were stressed by the majority of both male and female sex sellers typically exemplified by the ability to leave prostitution when you like, with the right to choose which customers to serve and which services to provide.
To a very high degree, control in prostitution was a question of how to control intimacy. For the male and female sex sellers applying the strategy of sexual reciprocity, prostitution was restricted to encounters with as much sexual pleasure as possible. Although female sex sellers in general described experiencing less sexual reciprocity than male sex sellers, many of our female study participants describes instances of sexual pleasure from prostitution.
That being said, many sex sellers men as well as women also used the ideal of sexual reciprocity as a commercial strategy because mutual pleasure was what the customers wanted from the encounters. The other strategy for maintaining control in their professional lives was to steer clear of any sexual and emotional involvement with their customers.
