Fake quotes: Why many supporters of a sex purchase ban in Germany refer to this unscientific study from the USA
TLDR: How Melissa Farley’s study on sex work is used as a justification for sex purchase bans – despite fake citations and a general disregard for scientific standards.
In November 2022, US scientist Melissa Farley presented her study “Men who pay for sex in Germany and what they teach us about the failure of legal prostitution” at a federal press conference in Berlin.
Since then, this study has regularly been used as justification for a ban on buying sex in Germany.
The CDU/CDU’s call for a ban on buying sex is also based on statements from Farley’s study. It is repeatedly cited as justification for stricter legislation in Germany.
In particular, the “ client quotes” mentioned in the study are used by opponents of prostitution as evidence of criminal tendencies of sex buyers in general. Farley herself, who is hostile to sex work, is considered an “expert on prostitution”.
This despite the fact that scientific standards were systematically disregarded in her study.
In collaboration with Doña Carmen, BesD has published a 53-page analysis. The most important points of criticism at a glance:
- The low number of clients interviewed.
96 men, who also only came from two southern German cities – Munich and Karlsruhe – do not allow any generalizations to be made about clients throughout Germany. - The interviews by Farley and her co-authors were neither audio-recorded nor transcribed afterwards.
The interview “method” consisted of opponents of prostitution interviewing clients and later writing down the contents of the interviews from memory. - Many of the “ client quotes” come from studies in other countries and were put into the mouths of German clients.
What the reader may think are original statements from clients in quotation marks are in fact constructs re-used by Farley and her colleagues.Example:
From Farley’s German client study from 2022:
“She’s just a biological object…who takes money for her services.”
„It’s like a cup of coffee that you throw away when you finish it. ”From Farley’s Boston client study from 2011:“She is just a biological object that charges for services.”
“Being with a prostitute is like having a cup of coffee, when you’re done, you throw it out”. - The role of street prostitution in Germany is overrated.
Contrary to Farley’s portrayal, prostitution in Germany does not primarily take place on the street. This was also the conclusion of an evaluation of the study “Health and Sexuality in Germany” commissioned by the Federal Center for Health Education and the Hamburg University Hospital Eppendorf in 2022, according to which 78.6% of the men surveyed had paid sex in brothels.
Doña Carmen has had the originally German text translated into English in order to allow international attention to the errors in Farley’s study, which itself has been translated into four languages.
Read the full analysis here:
