Sex industry

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Sex shop in Paris

Sex industry is a slang term for the industry in which goods and services in the field of sexuality are produced and offered. A precise definition of this industry is difficult to make and the term is used differently in different contexts. Those employed in these areas also include sex workers .

definition

The sex industry is not an industrial branch in the usual sense of the production and processing of certain material goods or goods in factories and plants. Rather, it encompasses the planning and design, production, trade, distribution and sale, as well as the mediation of a variety of very different products and services with sexual content. The industries involved can be as diverse as the production of film and print products, the production of pharmaceutical products, medical technology and the production of textile products, plastics and metal processing, the electrical and electronics industry, telecommunications , housing and hotels -, restaurant and spa industry , the tourism , the event management or the wholesale and retail, u. v. a. m. include.

Prostitution and pornography as well as sex toys and sexual hygiene products such as condoms and aphrodisiacs are among the core areas of the sex industry . The Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality of the European Parliament defined in his "Report on the consequences of the sex industry in the European Union" in 2004 the sex industry as "activities that aim [,] legally or illegally To market and / or sell sexual services / products in an organized manner and to sexually exploit people - whether children, women or men - for profit ”. For this purpose, the committee also includes organized prostitution - for example escort services , call girls , operation of brothels , street prostitution , internet prostitution, massage institutes, strip clubs , phone sex , marriage bureaus, sex tourism , pornography , and sex fairs .

Depending on the socio-cultural moral concepts of societies that have evolved over time and their sexual and gender-political legislation, the sex industry can therefore include both legal and illegal products and services. Due to the illegality and moral devaluation of certain sexual practices such as homosexuality , BDSM , masturbation or prostitution, parts of the sex industry may a. be spatially and functionally closely linked to criminal activities through the red light district . Examples of this link are forced prostitution and human trafficking , illegal pornography and organized drug and gang crime.

scope

The sex industry and its offers have been one of the main driving forces behind the use of the Internet and, according to an estimate by the British newspaper Daily Mail from April 9, 2012, accounts for around 30% of the global transmission volume.

Of the £ 252 million spent by European internet users in 2001, 70% went to sites with pornographic content.

According to the report of the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) of the European Parliament of February 3, 2014 on "Sexual exploitation and prostitution and its impact on gender equality" (Honeyball Report), the revenue amounts to from prostitution worldwide to an estimated US $ 186 billion per year.

Germany

There are no official figures on the overall extent and profits of the sex industry in Germany.

There is no reliable information from statistics or on a scientific basis on the number of prostitutes in Germany.

The Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth publishes a frequently cited (e.g.) estimate from 1988, which refers to the Berlin prostitute counseling center Hydra e. V. goes back. According to this, there are up to 400,000 prostitutes in Germany and up to 1.2 million customers every day. Other estimates or projections assume lower figures.

In Germany, more than a thousand porn DVDs appear every month; the turnover with porno films in 2007 was estimated at around 800 million euros annually.

According to an analysis by the online researchers at Similarweb in 2013, 12.5% ​​of all website views in Germany consist of access to pornographic sites. Followed by the USA, Brazil and India, Germany takes the top position worldwide.

United States

Prostitution is illegal in almost every state (compare prostitution in the United States ). The San Fernando Valley is considered a spatial focus for the production of pornographic films .

Although the US sex industry is far more transparent than the industry in Europe due to a large number of publications, numerous adult webmaster forums and the specialist magazine AVN (Adult Video News), the data on the real economy fluctuates considerably and seems to be influenced by the respective political point of view be. The sex industry as well as representatives of a liberal attitude emphasize the economic importance for the state budget and the turnover is correspondingly high. Conservative and religious circles as well as declared opponents of pornography, on the other hand, estimate the economic importance of the sex industry to be low and accordingly rate the turnover lower. The various sales estimates of the sex industry in the USA differ by more than 6 billion US dollars.

While the New York Times Magazine assumes a total turnover of 10 to 14 billion dollars in an article from the year 2001, the magazine Forbes puts the turnover in the same month at 2.6 to 3.9 billion US dollars. Forbes relies on an industry report from 2001. According to this study, the quantified sales are distributed among:

  • $ 0.5 - $ 1.8 billion from the sale and rental of pornographic videos,
  • US $ 1.0 billion from Internet offers,
  • $ 1.0 billion from pornographic print sales and
  • US $ 128 million from the "Pay-Per-View" payment method.

However, other high-turnover segments such as prostitution, mail order and the direct sale of sex toys were not taken into account.

Author Lewis Perdue estimated total taxed sales at $ 16.2 billion in 2003. Due to the extensive prostitution bans in the United States, assuming 500,000 prostitutes, he assumes total additional illegal sales of 15 billion US dollars.

According to an estimate by the industry magazine Adult Video News (AVN), sales of the US sex industry in 2005 were said to have been 12.6 billion US dollars. Buying and renting pornographic videos alone accounted for $ 4 billion of that.

criticism

Inna Shevchenko, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian women's rights movement Femen , criticized EurActiv.de against the background of the European Football Championship 2012 in Ukraine and Poland, for having observed an expansion of the sex industry in Ukraine in the run-up to the European Championship: “There were many new ones before the championship Brothels opened for tourists with English advertising. The sex industry is modeled on the fast food industry; it is cheap, readily available and widely available ”.

Sexual exploitation, pornography, prostitution by and trafficking in children, adolescents and young adults are problematic. In 2007 the Council of Europe adopted a convention on the protection of children from sexual exploitation and abuse . Human trafficking for forced prostitution generates $ 32 billion in profits annually and includes 2.4 million people smuggled, 140,000 of them in Europe.

The 2012 World AIDS Conference concluded its meeting in Washington with the focus on the sex industry. It was emphasized again "how important it is for workers in the sex industry to have protected sexual intercourse", because according to the AIDS program of the United Nations 80% of HIV infections are caused by unprotected sex. Men who have sex with men, transsexuals, drug addicts and people who work in the sex industry would have to suffer and would be confronted with discrimination and injustice.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rahel Gugel: The tension between the Prostitution Act and Article 3 II of the Basic Law - a legal-political investigation . 2010 ( online [PDF]).
  2. ↑ Haeberle, Erwin J .: dtv-Atlas Sexualität. Munich, December 1, 2005. ISBN 978-3423032353
  3. ↑ a b Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities of the European Parliament: Report on the Consequences of the Sex Industry in the European Union, online
  4. ↑ Franck Düvell: "European and International Migration: Introduction to Historical, Sociological and Political Analysis". June 16, 2006. LIT-Verlag. ISBN 978-3825895419
  5. ↑ DailyMail Online, 2012 ( online )
  6. ↑ Honeyball Report Online
  7. ↑ a b Empirical data on prostitution in Germany ( memento of the original from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated January 2, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmfsfj.de
  8. ↑ http://www.sw.fh-jena.de/dat/publikationen/Schriftenreihe_2_Prostitution.pdf
  9. ^ Prostitute project Hydra (Ed.): Profession: Whore. Galgenberg, 1988, ISBN 3-925387-38-2
  10. ^ Prostitutes Project Hydra (ed.): Freier. The secret goings-on of men, 1994
  11. ↑ Spiegel ( online )
  12. ↑ Online portal of the daily newspaper “Die Welt” from December 21, 2013
  13. ^ Frank Rich: "Naked Capitalists: There's No Business Like Porn Business". New York Times online May 20, 2001
  14. ↑ a b o. N: "How Big Is Porn?" Forbes Magazine, May 24, 2001. online
  15. ↑ Adam Media Research, Forrester Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, IVD. Quoted from: o. N: “How Big Is Porn?” Forbes Magazine, May 24, 2001. online
  16. ↑ Lewis Perdue: "EroticaBiz - How Sex shaped the Internet". iUniverse, 8. December 2002. ISBN 978-0595256129
  17. ↑ Convention of the Council of Europe for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. ( online )
  18. ↑ Forced prostitution: the sex industry is booming
  19. ↑ World AIDS Conference in Washington deals with the sex industry