I began to see the sheer breadth of people seeking connection — and the assumptions I’d internalised about desire, age, ability, and worth started to unravel. I spoke to clients in their 20s and clients in their 80s. One elderly gentleman in a wheelchair had his adult daughter arrange the booking for him. Another, a middle-aged man with motor neurone disease, needed help with logistics, but still sought intimacy. A respected psychiatrist would ask for “absolutely no talking”. A retiree just wanted to be cuddled and told that everything was going to be okay. Some requested elaborate fantasies. Others asked for nothing more than to feel normal – seen, desired, held.
It was, frankly, beautiful. And confronting. Because it shattered something I’d long believed: that only certain people get to be sexual. That desire is reserved for the abled, the attractive, the young. That illness cancels it out.
how does it make it illegal? it’s effectively a ban, sure, but it’s explicitly not illegal to sell sex, you cannot face legal charges for being a prostitute.
A transaction (like selling sex) requires two parties. If you make one side illegal, the act itself is illegal. The only distinguishing factor is who gets punished. Sex work can’t exist without people buying it, so sex work is illegal. Sweden has chosen not to prosecute people who sell sex.