Being and Being Bought

Stockholm born, Kajsa Ekis Ekman writes for the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and is on the editorial collective of the anarchist magazine Brand. She has an MA in Literature from Södertörn University and is author of Skulden - eurokrisen sedd från Aten (Leopard Förlag 2013). She has founded the network delete comma, Feminists Against Surrogacy and the climate action group, Klimax.

It may seem outrageous to many of the proponents of commercial surrogacy that we might compare the position of the prostitute to that of the surrogate, but Ekman does an effective job of explaining the very real parallels.—Grazyna Zajdow, Arena Magazine

• Acknowledgments Preface, 2025Preface, 2013PART I ProstitutionChapter One: The Story of the Sex Worker or How Prostitution Became the World’s Most Modern ProfessionThe ‘Sex Worker’ and the Feminist Sexual OrientationThe Victim and the SubjectA Slippery Slope: From the Independent Escort …… to Human Trafficking …… and ChildrenThe Invulnerable Person The NarratorThe Cult of the WhoreThe World’s Oldest Profession: RegulationThe Drainage ModelChapter Two: An Industry is Born–1970 to presentThe 1970s: The Sex Industry Expands—and Gets Into TroubleThe 1980s: Holland Takes Up the ThreadThe 1990s: HIV/AIDS—Money Comes ThroughThe New Millennium: ‘Unions for Sex Workers’The International Union of Sex Workers—PimpsLes Putes/STRASS—The MenThe International Committee of the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe —The ResearchersÁmbit Dóna—The Social WorkersThe IndustryFalse FaçadesRhetoric from the Left—Money from the RightPower Transformed—The Legacy of 1968Chapter Three: The Self and the Commodity in the Sex Industry“My body is not my Self” “Sex is not the body”Reification—When Sexuality becomes a CommodityThe Struggle for the WomanThe Buyer’s DilemmaThe Postmodern Story: A False DialecticThe Way OutPART II Surrogate MotherhoodChapter Four: The Reality of SurrogacyBackgroundThe Buyers and the Bearers of the BoughtChapter Five: The Story of the Happy BreederHappy FamiliesA ‘Revolutionary Act’The ‘Feminist’ ArgumentsProstitutionChild TraffickingSold with Fatal Relativism Turning the Law of Demand and Supply into a Human RightOn the Term ‘Surrogate Mother’The Capitalist Creation Myth‘For a Friend’s Sake’ – About Altruistic SurrogacyChapter Six: Inside the Surrogacy IndustryUterus Pimps – About the AgenciesThe Most Surrogacy-Friendly Courts in the World“If I do feel sad after the birth, I won’t show it”The Ultimate ReificationThe Virgin Mary in the Marketplace Women who Change their Minds: “I am not a surrogate; I am a mother”BibliographyIndex