For the past 25 years, we have seen an exceptionally profitable "sexualization" of many societies based on social ascendancy and bared witness to the industrialisation of prostitution, of the traffic in women and children, of pornography, and of sexual tourism. This once marginal market is an increasingly central aspect of current capitalist globalization. Sex multinationals have become self-determining economic forces quoted on the stock exchange sexual exploitation is more and more considered to be an entertainment industry due to massage parlours, escorts and the ‘Go Go’ of South East Asia and also the view of seeing prostitution a legitimate job.

The ever expanding size and centrality of the global sex industry helps explain why so many governments and agencies are adopting normalizing regulatory approaches in their attempts to address its harms. This is extremely evident in Holland where the red light district in Amsterdam is very open and is considered a tourist attraction.

However, this strategy is deeply flawed. The quickly expanding global sex markets exploit above all women and children, especially members of marginal and minority groups in the Third World and in the former "socialist" countries. A Chester Escort Agency owner commented saying the amount of girls and women from Eastern Europe looking for work in the sex industry is astounding.

This "leisure industry" is based on the systematic violation of human rights, for it requires a market in trading human beings and the complicity of pimps and clients who are prepared to buy and sell women and children.

Sex is being looked at as a commodity which is at the heart of the expanding sex industry. The only one among many varied instances of the trade of all of life which is a defining characterization of current neo-liberalism. Patents are now issued on genetic life forms (including human genomes) and all forms of traditional knowledge. Water is being privatized. In the name of environmental fortification and sustainable growth, markets are being fashioned to operate in CO2 and emissions credits (the right to pollute) (Kyoto Protocol).

The apparent "normalcy" of trade in human beings in this era has led to misguided dogmatic approaches in some quarters. Yet this very "normalcy" is what makes refusal of the sex industry as such, so essential. In this context, resisting or struggling against sex as a commodity especially against women and children in the sex industry becomes a main element in the struggle against capitalist globalization. Anything less is complicity.