Growing demand for sex shops, lapdancing, poledancing and escort agencies

Those familiar with my work know how resistant I am to participating in arguments about statistics.  In that game, advocates argue, for example, about how many sex-working migrants are trafficked. When people overstay visas and remain in a country they are visiting or use faked documents to get in, they join a category later called ‘undocumented migrants’, but per se their numbers are not recorded.

In the same way, people who work in sex industry businesses not recognised by governments, and thus excluded from formal accounting, cannot be counted. Therefore, when either side claims to know numbers for sex workers, they are only guessing.

The same claims are heard vis-a-vis numbers of sex workers and prostitutes. In places where prostitution is technically legal for individuals and/or where some kinds of sex businesses can register and thus be counted in formal government accounts,

So I was interested to see, in a Guardian article of 17 November 2008, a different sort of statistic.  The figures, based on 130 million calls to the UK’s Directory Assistance, compare requests for numbers from January to June 2007 with the same period in 2008. Figures show that requests for the telephone numbers of pole and lap dancing venues went up 469%, of escort agencies 40% and of sex shops 1,312%. 

The Guardian article predictably ties the increases to sexist culture ‘fuelled by a loophole in the law that enables the clubs to be licensed in the same way as cafes.’ But the article goes on to say that calls requesting the numbers of other leisure activities, such as karaoke bars, also increased.

 These figures only indicate interest in sex businesses, not definite buying of services, but they are better than the fantasies often spouted irresponsibly by all kinds of serious commentators. Since they tally the telephone numbers of businesses with landlines, they will take in both informal and formal businesses and blur the line between them – which I consider a good thing.

3 thoughts on “Growing demand for sex shops, lapdancing, poledancing and escort agencies

  1. Harry Brown

    Our home business was really affected by the Economic recession, we have to cut jobs just to cover up our losses. fortunately, we have already recovered. :

    Reply
  2. Tub Chair ·

    it is a good thing that we are almost out of recession, the economic recession really sucks ‘

    Reply

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