Barns for the ladies

Awwwww nice, Nate Berg at the Guardian tells us how awesome it is for cities to provide barns for sex workers so that man can have drive-through sex:

The city [Köln] reasoned that if sex work was going to happen, it should be in a safe and clean space. It was decided that sex work would be allowed only in certain parts of the city – and in order to encourage both sex workers and their customers to abide by this rule, in one of the permitted areas the city built a facility specifically for sex.

Located on the edge of town, the result is a kind of sex drive-through. Customers drive down a one-way street, into a roughly two-acre open air-space where sex workers can offer their services. Once hired, the sex worker accompanies the customer into a semi-private parking stall. For safety, each stall allows sex workers to easily flee if necessary – the stall is designed so that the driver’s door can’t be opened, but the passenger one can – and there’s an emergency button to call for help. Social workers are present on site and offer a space to rest, stay warm and access services.

[Updating to add the alluring photo]

The covered stalls of Cologne’s ‘sex drive-through’.

Henning Kaiser/AFP/Getty Images

So…the work is dangerous, the women who do it might need to flee at any moment, and if they can’t there’s an emergency button to push, plus there are social workers on site…but hooray all the same?

The attitude that if sex work is inevitable it should be safe has spread across the city.

Right. And if slavery is inevitable it should be safe. If child marriage is inevitable it should be safe. If female genital mutilation is inevitable it should be safe. If torture is inevitable it should be safe. If war is inevitable it should be safe.

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