The reason why sex workers left behind
their traditional workplaces, street corners and brothels, was largely due to laws
regulating prostitution. In some Western countries, like today in the
Scandinavian countries, where sex workers could and can gain tremendous profits
through the sale of sexual services, prostitution (and its consequences human
trafficking and crime) became so widespread that these rich countries had to do
something to clean their public places, streets and parks from the hustling sex
workers. First, Sweden introduced a new model to regulate prostitution that has
criminalized sex-purchase and sanctioned it with significant punishment, though
it has not penalized the sale of sexual service. This had a direct effect on
the fact that the sex business had to be taken to such a place where it was not
visible to the authorities. As a consequence, the public spaces, the street
corners became depopulated, the brothels were closed, and the truck parks were
used only for rest and sleep. The sex business itself was forced into an
environment that was safe from the curious eyes of the authorities for the sake
of sex-purchasing customers. In Sweden, when the new law was introduced in
1999, the public spaces where former sex workers had sold their sexual services
suddenly became empty, but that this immediate result was not enough for the
Swedish authorities was shown by the fact that the police set up a new
department in charge of surprising clients in the act of sexual services. Their
methods are varied, ranging from public observation to bugging hotel rooms,
from the direct catch in the act to the careful and time-consuming evidence
collection of a crime. All these processes have led to the fact that the sexual
sale business has become completely indoor i.e. it takes place only in an apartment,
house, or a private tenement where everything is organized from procurement to
the implementation of sexual service. In other words, the sex market has lost its
old peculiarity that a customer selects the sex-provider with the help of the direct
display of her feminine charms on the street or in a brothel. This was promoted
by the technical and communication developments mentioned earlier in the previous
chapter, that the advertisement of sexual services has become more and more
virtual, i.e. the potential sex buyer does not muster his or her sex-ware in a
real-time and -space market at a brothel or on the street, but in a virtual space,
which is most often provided by a special site for sex workers and clients. Of
course, the space for the implementation of sexual services is still real,
although there are some tendencies thanks to technical developments that try to
place sex more and more in the artificial reality dimension and replaces real,
meat-and-blood sex workers with the illusion of virtual reality and the sex
work with stimulation structures, but this is still in its infancy. For the time
being, the sex workers’ main concern was/is where to carry out sexual services
in safe circumstances.
From dangerous public spaces the
location of the implementation of sex work had to be taken to a privately owned
house, flat or tenement in order to protect the sex buyer, and in this way, the
sex business from the authorities. When a sex worker who had previously worked
on the streets or in brothels decided to continue to sell her sexual services
in her own home, house, or tenement, advertising it on the internet, that is
when we can consider the beginning of modern escort prostitution. Although the
name ‘escort’ is not faithful to the original meaning because it does not always
include the classical escort role of giving a company or an understanding
partner, most sex workers have to be referred to by this term. On the other
hand, it is also true that escort services often include non-sexual services such
as the mentioned ones for the sake of the denomination, because, to tell the
truth, most escorts are not at the intellectual level to be able to fulfil the
classical role of an escort. For this role, there are luxurious prostitutes and
escorts, who provide the highest quality in the sex service business.