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301These situations of vulnerability among the women may lead one to wonder why men are not nearly as present as women within this industry In this instance we are able to draw attention to the fact that this debate is taking place within a society characterized by imbalanced power relations between men and women particularly in terms of financial and economic resources These relationships continue to influence the sexuality of men and women and perpetuate the image of men buying sexual services from women In addition to reinforcing gender stereotypes sex trade work is thus also seen as an expression of the idea that men have potentially unlimited access to women s bodies and to sexuality corresponding to their level of economic power It also conveys the idea that sexual needs are a kind of right vested in every individual male We see this when we look at what has now been called the Weinstein effect The term refers to a global phenomenon of people who came forward to accuse powerful people that were mostly male of sexual misconduct The Weinstein effect inspired the hashtag MeToo which encouraged people to share their repressed experiences of sexual assault
This created a series of accusations in a multitude of industries that caused the rapid expulsion of men in positions of power globally For feminists against sex trade work this line of work can therefore be seen as damaging to the advancement of women human rights and equality between women and men According to a study published in 2014 by the European Parliament it can be said that in international law and in the literature sex work is hardly separated from sexual exploitation and trafficking in human beings They argue that sex work and sexual exploitation are highly gendered issues with in most cases women and girls are selling their body either by coercion or consent to men or boys who pay for this service Accordingly the majority of those trafficked for sexual exploitation are women and girls Sexual exploitation is a lucrative business that enriches a globalized sex industry The groups most vulnerable to sex trafficking are minors and those involved in the sex industry i e dance clubs massage parlors escort services etc As stated by Professor Richard Poulin if we look at things from an economic point of view the goods provided by sex workers are doubly valuable because bodies are both a good and a service In her text Wesely states that when looking at what she calls superficial visible identifiers that is to say anything that might be considered a form of body technology such as breast augmentation liposuction other cosmetic surgery hair colour or even simply one s skin colour the bodies of women become depersonalized dehumanized and commodified