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Zeze Millz and Chidera Eggerue have divided social media after a conversation claiming that “marriage is prostitution”.

Bestselling author and podcast host Eggerue first rose to fame after her viral #SaggyBoobsMatter campaign in 2017. She told Millz on The Zeze Millz Show, that people who “chastise” women for prostitution, failed to see that marriage is essentially the same thing and comes at a price.

The exchange led to a divided reaction online, with a clip of the conversation racking up over 23 million views to date.

”This is going to be very controversial to say, but marriage also is sex work,” began Eggerue.

She said “marriage is prostitution” because the arrangement between a man and a woman comes from a place where each is “fulfilling a role”. The man is expected to provide “financially” whereas the woman is expected to “be some kind of homemaker” and raise children.

“You are partnering with him and sleeping with him in the hopes that the trade-off will be that you’ll get validation, love and upkeep,” she continued. “And the man understands and believes that if he continues to fulfil that role for you, then the arrangement works, because marriage is an arrangement.”

She added, “Now why I say it’s prostitution is because whilst it’s not necessarily on the surface, you’re f**king for a transaction or exchange. There’s something that you’re f**king for.”

Celebrity Big Brother contestant Millz disagreed, and insisted there is a difference between prostitution and marriage, with the latter built on “a relationship, friendship, [having] gone through a few things, families involved, maybe you might even have kids now.”

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She explained, “I guess the reason why prostitution is prostitution is it’s sexual, it’s nothing but sex. So you get the sex, you go.”

However Eggerue pointed out, “Once you stop being able to render that service [sex] to the man he leaves you.”

She pointed to examples of men leaving their partners following weight gain, a loss of libido, and becoming sick or disabled. In all instances, the loss of access to sex led to men abandoning their wives, she said.

A 2009 study in the Cancer journal found that men were six times more likely to abandon their wives following a cancer diagnosis, with 90 per cent of the abandoned partners being women. Although the instances were still small, in 2015, another study found that physical illness was a risk factor in divorce, with the study also pointing to men being more likely to leave.

Eggerue admitted, “I wouldn’t say every single man, but the majority of them.”

In a follow-up post on Instagram, she mentioned reports that Katy Perry gives husband Orlando Bloom oral sex when he does regular housework as a form of “intra-marital sex work”.

Actor and presenter Sarel called the analysis “One of the most categorically unhinged takes I’ve seen on the internet in a long time.”

She explained, “Sex work, is sex work, and if you partake in that, that’s okay. Marriage, is marriage, and if you partake in that, that is also okay… but the two are not, in any way, shape and or form, the same. No matter how you try to spin it.”

Social media influencer Danisha Carter added, “This rhetoric is incredibly dangerous for young women”.

“I do not understand why ppl discuss sex as tho its solely something given to a man for him to enjoy,” wrote another.

However, many were in agreement as they wrote, “I feel like she said marriage is also sex work and I AGREE.”

Another went further as the said, “Yes marriage is a sex work without [being] paid. It is slavery-sex work.”

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