The Myth of the Happy Hooker

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Sally Kohn: I've talked about several times on this podcast, a woman named Aiella. She's the top earner, one of the top earners on OnlyFans and she makes something like $100,000 a month. And again, when I see that, I go, OK, well, who am I to say what she should make her a living? It's none of my business. What do they call a cami, a cangirl, something like that? Those are the questions we need to be asking if we're going to be adults about it.

Shermer and Moran discuss: her dysfunctional family background • her boyfriend who pimped her • the women who sell sex and the men who buy it • why other prostitutes have attacked her • agency and volition in prostitution: women and men • why “prostituted” as something done to women (instead of choosing it)? • what she thought about when having prostituted sex • drugs, depression, and suicide as responses to prostitution • the myths of prostitution • feminism and prostitution • how she got out of prostitution • the harm in consenting adult women selling their bodies for sex • what should be done about prostitution, if anything?

Rachel Moran is the Director of International Policy and Advocacy for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE, a leading non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography). Her work has been endorsed by Jane Fonda, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and many others. Her bestselling memoir, Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution, is regarded by legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon as “the best work by anyone on prostitution ever” and has been published in more than a dozen countries and numerous languages including German, Italian, Korean, French, and Spanish.