{"id":213119,"date":"2025-06-25T12:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T12:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/213119\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T12:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T12:28:10","slug":"emma-thompson-is-trivialising-prostitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/213119\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Thompson is trivialising prostitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one has ever died from a lack of sex. Yet, according<\/a> to the actress Emma Thompson, the NHS should recommend it to improve everyone\u2019s health because sex is \u201cso good for you\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a screening of her 2022 film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande \u2014 about a widow who hires a handsome young man to give her the orgasm she\u2019s apparently been missing for decades \u2014 Thompson mused: \u201cWhat if when you\u2019re unwell, you can\u2019t make connections, but you need sex? You need sex because it\u2019s part of our health plan, if you like. It should really be on the NHS.\u201d She then admitted that some of her friends even hire escorts for this purpose.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly surprising that Thompson struggles to grasp the difference between wanting and needing. When jetting off from film sets to join climate protests<\/a>, the actress sails above the estates and alleyways where consent is sold by the hour to pay for heating, food or drugs.<\/p>\n

But unlike in her film, where a woman\u2019s use of a male prostitute is portrayed as a quirky form of self-care, the vast majority<\/a> of sex buyers are men, and the transaction is rarely tender or empowering. Oddly, it doesn\u2019t seem to have registered to Thompson that what\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d for one person might come at the cost of another\u2019s dignity. Her view is entirely that of the buyer\u2019s, of the \u201cservice user\u201d. But Thompson stresses she is all ears. \u201cSex workers are a little more vocal now,\u201d she says, \u201cand very strong on what they think needs to happen \u2014 and they\u2019re the people we need to listen to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to say we should \u201clisten to sex workers\u201d when you imagine they\u2019re all dominatrices with podcasts; the depressingly more numerous teens locked in flats above chicken shops aren\u2019t so easy to hear. And, unsurprisingly, women brutalised by the sex trade don\u2019t tend to moonlight as industry advisors on film sets. These are worlds that never meet.<\/p>\n

The framing of sex as a human right has been aired everywhere from incel forums to NGOs, and it\u2019s being taken seriously. Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, has long argued that sexual pleasure is a human right. To that end, she believes<\/a> all forms of prostitution should be fully decriminalised. It sounds broadly progressive \u2014 until you ask who\u2019s expected to provide it. Of course, it\u2019s never rich men volunteering to \u201cservice\u201d lonely pensioners. It\u2019s nearly always women: poor women, abused women, addicted women. The women who would never be invited to sit around a dinner table with Thompson.<\/p>\n

A cynic might suggest that the actress has settled on a conveniently sexy \u201cgirlboss\u201d cause. Ultimately, it is perhaps unsurprising that in an industry where the casting couch was venerated and women are forbidden from ageing, what passes for female empowerment is aping or excusing the worst excesses of male behaviour.<\/p>\n

But sex is not something that can be extracted from people\u2019s bodies. It isn\u2019t healthcare, nor a prescription for loneliness. And it certainly isn\u2019t a product to be dispensed to the entitled. For those cosseted by fame and flattery, who mistake indulgence for insight, the notion that some things \u2014 some people \u2014 should never be for sale must seem quaint to the point of being pass\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Thompson may believe that renting a body is empowering. But one suspects she wouldn\u2019t want her daughter earning a living by providing sex for the therapeutic good of lonely men. That sort of job, it seems, is reserved for other people\u2019s children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one has ever died from a lack of sex. Yet, according to the actress Emma Thompson, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,2766,50245,77,10213,498,11187,980,35252,4837,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-213119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-emma-thompson","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-feminism","13":"tag-hollywood","14":"tag-non-classifiu00e9e","15":"tag-optional","16":"tag-prostitution","17":"tag-sex-work","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114744007810082192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}