As you may have seen in the news recently, there’s been a big furore about plans to open a “Fellatio Cafe” in London where, for £50, customers would buy a cup of coffee and receive oral sex.
[bctt tweet=”In London’s Fellatio Cafe, for £50, customers would buy a cup of coffee and receive oral sex”]
This follows plans to open a cafe like this in Geneva in December this year. In Switzerland prostitution is legal and it is ok to run a brothel provided that the establishment is properly licensed and the sex workers have the required permits.
There are already cafe’s like this in Thailand where the laws controlling consensual paid sexual activity are much more lenient.
Unsurprisingly, however, given the prudish nature of Britain’s lawmakers and our repressive legislation on the selling of sex, there is effectively no chance that such an establishment would ever be able to open or, even if it did, it would stay open.
Why would the Blowjob cafe never open?
It is extremely unlikely that the local council in Paddington would grant planning permission for this cafe and any application by the owners would be faced with a storm of protests from anti-prostitution campaigners, SWERFs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists who think that women should be free to do what *they* approve of) and NIMBYs.
There would naturally be an outcry from the hypocritical British tabloid media who consider themselves to be the country’s “Moral Guardians”, passing judgement on the length of a TV presenter’s skirt whilst, at the same time, splashing photos of celebrities in bikinis over their pages.
What if the fellatio cafe did get planning permission?
Even if, somehow, the operators managed to get planning permission, given that the Fellatio Cafe would be offering sexual services, it would be caught under the laws which forbid the running of brothels because there would be more than one woman offering these services at the same address.
Myles Jackman, a barrister and sexual freedom campaigner was quoted by the Vice website as saying: “While I have campaigned for and support the movement for sex workers’ rights on the basis of protecting sex workers’ safety,” he said, “I am struggling to see how multiple sex workers operating from the same premises does not constitute brothel keeping under the current legal framework prohibiting organised prostitution.”
Not only that, but the owners and, very probably, the staff who would be making the coffee (who are presumably not the same ones that will be offering the oral sex!) would be classed as “Living off immoral earnings” and therefore would be considered to be pimps.
What if the blow job cafe actually did manage to open?
If, by some incredible (or incredibly unlikely) confluence of circumstances, the cafe’s owners were able to overcome or bypass all of the above, it is certain that the staff and the customers would find themselves being harassed by anti-prostitution protesters as they tried to enter the establishment.
They would also be stalked and photographed by the media who would love to splash their faces (pun not intended!) all over the front pages of their publications with lurid headlines about “First Customer of Oral Sex Cafe” or daring expose’s about “I worked in the blow job cafe” from someone who sees this as an opportunity to make a quick buck.
What about an oral sex cafe for women?
Bradley Charvet, who intends to open this cafe, said that, at the moment, there were no plans to offer services to women at the moment, but if it was a success, then they would consider this.
The case for revising Britain’s laws on prostitution
It is a sad fact that, despite organisations like Amnesty International calling for governments to protect prostitutes as we blogged recently, regrettably that seems unlikely to happen in the near future.
Although, as we wrote in another blog post, Britain’s laws on prostitution need fixing, calls to introduce the so-called Nordic Model which criminalise the buyer, rather than the seller, will only make things more dangerous for the women involved because men will try harder to conceal their identities so women will not be able to identify potentially dangerous clients.
If that model was introduced in the UK, that would be another stick which could be used to beat the idea of the Fellatio Cafe with, since customers would be committing an offence by visiting the establishment.
The upshot (again, pun not intended!) of all this is that, until our repressive sexual climate changes, London’s Blow Job Cafe is never going to happen.
Update 8th December 2016
Since, unsurprisingly, the initial idea wasn’t going to go ahead, Bradley Charvet has now decided that he’s going to “staff” the cafe with Sex Dolls!
Seriously? Who is going to pay those inflated prices for a coffee and a session with a sex doll?
What do you think?
Should such cafe’s be allowed or is this just an excuse for men to exploit women? Are the laws regarding sex and prostitution in this country broken and need fixing to make women safe?
Post your thoughts in the comments below…