Callboys, Brothels, and the Question of Who's Actually Here by Choice

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I just watched a sketch on the German political satire show "Die Anstalt" (ZDF) about sex work in Germany — the segment is here. Sharp, satirical, but loaded with hard numbers: around 32,000 sex workers registered under the Prostitute Protection Act, more than 80% with non-German nationality (Destatis 2023/24). How many there actually are, nobody knows — estimates range from 90,000 to well over 200,000, but those are multiplier calculations, not measurements. The UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem warned in 2023 that Germany was on its way to becoming the "brothel of Europe." The topic sticks — because it's not a clean one.

Banning doesn't solve it

I'm not in favor of a ban. In the US, prostitution is mostly illegal — with exceptions: Nevada has licensed brothels in ten counties, and Maine decriminalized the seller side in 2023. Whether a ban actually leads to a more dangerous black market is contested. Some studies show declining violence under decriminalization, others see more trafficking under legalization. The data isn't clear-cut.

The Nordic model — buyer punishable, seller not — doesn't convince me either. Sweden introduced it in 1999; Norway, France, Ireland, and Canada followed. The official Swedish evaluation report from 2010 celebrates a drop in street prostitution; critics argue it missed the online and indoor markets entirely. Again: no clear finding.

So: keep it legal. Not as some naive libertarian stance, but pragmatically. Bans don't solve the problem and they make it harder to measure.

Still, "Die Anstalt" forces me to think. When the "model brothel" Paradise near Stuttgart got busted because the Hells Angels were funneling women in under duress — founder Jürgen Rudloff was sentenced to five and a half years in 2018 — what does that say about the brothels nobody knows about? When 70% of women in a government study supposedly feel comfortable, but that same study is explicitly not representative because forced prostitution happens in the dark — what do we really know?

The problem that poisons everything

Forced prostitution is real. In the police-registered light field, the BKA records around 400 victims of sexual exploitation per year; the dark field is, by all serious estimates, ten to twenty times larger. Over 90% of victims are female, about three-quarters of suspects male. This is exactly where the line "it's just a transaction between adults" falls apart.

For a man walking into a brothel, this means: you will never know for sure whether the woman in the room with you is there by choice. She won't tell you "yes, I'm being forced" either — that would be dangerous for her.

Better control — but how?

The honest answer: I don't know. The 2017 Prostitute Protection Act brought registration, health counseling, and mandatory condom use — protection on paper. In reality, only a fraction of the estimated workers actually registered, because many women are afraid of being officially listed.

As long as poverty, migration pressure, and organized crime remain the suppliers, you're controlling the endpoint of a system. That's like setting up buckets while the roof is wide open.

And escorts?

For escorts — the more expensive, often self-organized form of sex work — the likelihood of forced prostitution is probably lower than in conventional brothels. Higher prices, more autonomy, often their own apartment or hotel rather than shift work in a large brothel. But you can never rule it out. The escort market has its own pimp structures and agencies that pressure women — they're just less visible than in the classic brothel. The risk calculus shrinks, but it doesn't disappear.

And callboys?

This is where it gets interesting — and I'll be honest: this is my guess, not a finding. There are no reliable studies on the callboy market for women. The BKA registers male victims of sexual exploitation in the single digits or low double digits per year, almost all in male-on-male contexts.

My gut still says: forced prostitution is probably much rarer with callboys. In trafficking, the perpetrators are almost always men — that holds for female victims as well as the rarer male ones. A woman forcing a man into prostitution: it probably exists, but as a mass phenomenon it's hard to imagine.

On top of that: demand is much smaller. Small market means less money, less money means less incentive for organized crime. That's an economic plausibility argument, not an empirical one.

What might remain is something like poverty-driven prostitution — someone doing it because they need the money. That's a different category from someone being forced. Bad enough, but different.

Do women have it easier?

For booking without moral hesitation: pretty sure yes. Whoever books a callboy doesn't have to wrestle with the thought "is this person here by choice?" That kind of certainty isn't available to a man entering a brothel.

For physical safety, I'm less sure. Violence is theoretically possible in both directions, but that's true with any stranger. On a first date you also don't know who's sitting across from you.

What's left

I know men who have been to brothels. I don't judge them for it. It's not my path.

Prostitution isn't a normal service industry — Schröder's 2002 reform was supposed to make it one, and it didn't. And we shouldn't pretend a ban would solve the problem either. Both are nonsense.

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