Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
Tor which thou whipp’st her.’
Shakespeare, King Lear, 1605
[5W7 It’s a job and someone has always done it. Yet prostitution remains one of the most stigmatized professions, despite Щ, its continuing ability to drum up custom.
Facts and figures
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Estimated worldwide revenue for the sex and porn industry (2006): $97
billion; US (2006): $13.3 billion 4 ‘sex’is the number one term used on search
engine sites; ‘pornography/porn’ is fourth 4 Hollywood releases 11,000 adult
movies annually, more than 20 times its mainstream production 4 72 million
‘unique visitors’ clicked on adult websites per month worldwide in 2006; 40
million of these were Americans; 77 per cent of visitors to adult websites are
male 4 55 per cent of films rented in US hotels in 2005 were pom movies; 12
minutes was the average viewing time 4 The porn industry in California
employs over 12,000 workers, yielding some $36 million annually in taxes 4
Over 30 per cent of 1,500 companies surveyed have sacked employees for
‘inappropriate use’of the internet 4 In a 2000 Christianity Today survey,
33 per cent of clergy admitted visiting a sexually explicit website.
T believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome
things that money can buy.’ Steve Martin
A survey of 3,000 men in Britain by Club International in 2006 revealed that 7 per cent — the equivalent of 1.5 million men nationwide — visit prostitutes four times a year and pay about £61 a time. A third are constantly worried their secret will be discovered, while 90 per cent love their partners and, of these, 80 per cent say their sex life is dull and the reason they use hookers in the first place.