Guest post: "As sex workers, our lives depend on decriminalisation"

[JosephineMumsnet]

I was 19 years old when I made the decision to sell sex. An unorthodox choice, certainly, but one which helped me get through university without crippling debt, and later, a choice which would allow me to return to university as a single parent and complete my second degree. Please don't fall into the trap of assuming that because I'm a white, middle-class, educated woman I can't possibly understand the abject misery that is sometimes seen in our industry. I stood on Burlington Road in Dublin in the dead of winter, often drunk or out of my head on cocaine, or both, selling sex at £30 a time. That's not privileged. Now, with over 20 years behind me, I can finally put that experience to use, and educate people about the realities of our industry, and what would make us safer.

As the debate around the sex industry gathers steam, there are two schools of thought. Punish the punters by making it illegal to purchase sex, or decriminalise the laws around sex work. Let's look at both.

The law that criminalises the punter was introduced in Sweden in 1999 and has been an abject failure. Its aim was to reduce prostitution by reducing 'demand', but the Swedish government admits there has been no change to the number of buyers, or sellers. So what has changed? Violence against sex workers has increased sharply, with police targeting their homes to arrest buyers, often resulting in their being made homeless. The most vulnerable sex workers on the streets cannot be reached by outreach services, to facilitate condom distribution or needle exchange, as they need to work away from police detection. Sex workers are refusing to report violence to police, as they know they place themselves at risk from the very people supposed to protect them. Stigma has increased, with sex workers in both Sweden and Norway reporting having their children removed, and deportation of migrant sex workers is rife.

One of the most infuriating strands to the current feminist discourse around sex work is the assertion that we are abused, or even raped, every time we sell sex. That statement is injurious and grossly insulting to those who have survived abuse and rape, and it also strips sex workers of our agency. As much as we campaign for the right to say 'yes', we absolutely reserve the right to say 'no'. I detest the use of the word 'empowerment' in any debate on sex work. My job is no more empowering than anyone else's; it allows me to support my family and pay my bills. But as a community, there is no doubt that we are more empowered to say 'no' when we are permitted to work together for safety.

Under current legislation, and even more so under the Swedish model, sex workers are not permitted to work more than one to a premises. If I ask a friend to share an apartment with me so I feel safer in accepting visiting clients, we can be arrested and charged with 'pimping' from each other. That practice is commonplace. As cash, mobile phones and laptops are often removed as 'evidence', the women concerned are left with nothing but a criminal record, simply for wishing to stay safe.

So what is decriminalisation? Not to be confused with legalisation, it refers to the removal of all criminal prohibitions and penalties on sex work. In doing so, it protects the human rights of sex workers, as acknowledged by WHO, UNAIDS, The Lancet and more recently, Amnesty International.

Decriminalisation allows us to work together for safety, which is crucial. Decriminalisation also makes it easier to access justice and support services, and facilitates a better response to true exploitation in the industry. When the police work with us, not against us, we are best placed to identify and report others in danger.

On June 1 2015, the Northern Irish Assembly made it illegal to purchase sex. I have launched a High Court challenge to that law and will take it to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. You may not like or be comfortable with the exchange of sex for money and that's fine - that's not what this debate is about. It's about our right to safety in the workplace. 154 sex workers have been murdered since 1990. We ask for your support for decriminalisation. Our lives depend on it.

Read Kat Banyard's post here.

[GayeDalton]

TheRealPosieParker
Kids are constantly being removed from safe homes, but that is another discussion entirely, and whether you believe it or not doesn't stop it happening much less lessen the devastation to parents and children alike.

Laura Lee knows perfectly well that sex workers keep safe homes for their kids, just as she knows perfectly well how often and how close she came to having her head dumped in the loo and chain pulled by older, wiser women who despaired of her silly, insufferable behaviour because they were sex workers with the misfortune to work the same street...

...oh and responsible mothers in their spare time.

[LauraLee76]

Thanks so much for all of your comments, I will answer as many as I can, but I'm in a muddy field at T in the Park with very dodgy signal. If all else fails I will answer on Monday when I'm back home. The purpose of the post was to encourage debate and I welcome that.

[GayeDalton]

TheRealPosieParker The "deluded author" doesn't engage because of her nervous disposition...so the big gun are here to engage in her place, and that is me :o)

[LauraLee76]

@Rosie Trafficking does not increase in a decriminalised state. It's a common and very deliberate conflation - trafficking and sex work. Trafficking is already an offence, as it should be. Rather than criminalise consenting adults, we should be looking at why trafficking enforcement is failing.

[GayeDalton]

sixinabed - good analogies but you missed one that requires no qualifications. You can't be forced to clean windows in a cradle 20 floors up either.

(NB I would throw up just looking as such a cradle on the ground!) nor can you be forced to dig graves.

Most sex work in UK and Ireland is self employed and the job centre cannot force you to take up self employment.

It is simply a matter of formal recognition that there are some job some people just cannot be forced to do, perhaps EVEN if they are qualified (remember "Doc Martin"?).

[LauraLee76]

@FloraFox I'm not spreading misinformation re the Swedish model. I'm speaking from experience, I was working on street in Dublin in 1993 and witnessed first hand the devastation criminalisation causes. I appreciate my stance is not popular, but it's based on reality, and evidence.

[LauraLee76]

@Ophelia a pinch of salt, really? Why is that?

[GayeDalton]

The Crafty Fox

I was teetotal as a sex worker (took up drinking 9 years after I got out...I suspect the trigger was Aldi, Lidl and decent affordable wine!).

Most of the women on Burlington and Waterloo Road at the time Laura Lee was there did not drink when working EVEN if they were alcoholics. They had learned that drinking at work can be problematic...not because of "male violence" so much as because the beer goggles are not a wise accessory when selling sexual services and can lead to all sorts of mortifying unpaid activities with men you would not be seen dead with in daylight...for instance, dinner and more drinks (or even MORE drinks). Drugs were, essentially unheard of and unthinkable to most of the women.

After recriminalisation in 1993 substance abuse shot through the roof because of the stress of also having to dodge the Police to make a living...which is exactly the same under Nordic Model (we do all realise that the primary objective of a sex worker is to generate income?).

I am not convinced by Sabrinna Valisce...she seems to be a lifelong aspiring fringe "performance artist" and had a page up on "GoFundMe" looking for $750k to buy her own village within 5 minutes of "coming out".

Women have to pay fees to "brothels", "escort agencies" and gentlemen's clubs anyway...over 60% under current English and Irish law. Under Irish decriminalisation (1984 - 1993) it was more like 20 - 25% in cash terms about half the fee you would hand over in more criminalised UK in same years.

Are you seriously trying to say that Dario Pionko would still be alive if she had to hide from the Police all the time? That is simply idiotic.

Many women sell sex because they desperately need the money. Under UK austerity a lot of women desperately need the money and as long as they still desperately need the money they have no choice but keep selling sex WHATEVER the law...the Nordic Model just makes their harsh lives impossible. Justify that!

[Batteriesallgone]

I don't like the way every discussion about prostitition focuses on the women.

Why do we not talk about the men? The sick fucks who don't care how they get access to a women's body as long as they do? Why are we not all shaking in our beds, afraid for our daughters growing up associating with such men, entering into relationships with such men...

Whether prostitition was illegal or not a man who overrides true consent with cash has his moral compass all skewed and sees women's bodies as something to be bought and sold. Where is the outrage at these men?!!

[GayeDalton]

Xenophile,

It is not an inaccurate article.

The only "research" supporting the Nordic Model is funded by abolitionist orgs and the Swedish government, and a lot of THAT outlines facts and statistics that show it have failed and twists them to a free floating conclusion that it is a success.

In his memoir Haggstrom states that it has caused a dramatic increase in the purchase of sex by young men...was that the objective?

[TheRealPosieParker]

Why should any sane society give men the go ahead to purchase women? And trafficking does increase... why is this being denied? It is very well documented and researched.

When I was younger anyone who slept with prostitutes was shunned and shamed, quite rightly, and thought of as a skank. Now you have blokes who thinking "whoring" is fun. They don't care when they get a blue cab and ask for whores that they get taken to a residential street full of Eastern European women.

People like this author want to make it fine and dandy, normal, to pay women to have sex with them. A little trip to punter net will tell you how men feel about prostitutes and other sex workers... it's vile. No decent man, and I mean NO decent man, pays for sex. Men that do want a certain kind of power play in which all they have to put in, aside from the obvious, is cash.

Who thinks buying the right to intimacy with a woman is okay?

[TheRealPosieParker]

This author is no better than twat Belle Du Jour. Peddling nonsense about the joys of sex work.

Inaccurate and poorly written article is unlikely to convince anyone not drunk on Koolaid.

[GayeDalton]

Dutch Courage You have left out one very important factor:

The way adult sex workers react to child abuse.

Anyone who wants to "supply child sex" must first find a way to hide that from adult sex workers, even MORE than from the police.

Enough said.

[GayeDalton]

Batteriesallgone The reason I focus on the women who sell sex is because they are far more important. They need the money, sometimes pretty desperately, which overrides all considerations about the men.

Frankly, who cares about them when a Mum has no other way to provide a home for her kids or someone like me has no other way to get the money to survive at all?

Also, when you have been a sex worker, you think of it as a world of women...where there are no men at all.

Men are the crop we harvest to survive. They aren't important enough to traumatise us, and they certainly aren't important enough to be a factor in legislation affecting our whole lives...as long as we are not abusing them.

[GayeDalton]

Lordyme,

There isn't always other work, or an other source of income...that was my position, sex work or suicide.

mymythbuster.wordpress.com/elliot-rodgers-turn-a-different-corner/

Do you disapprove of my decision?

[lordyme]

If someone is forced into prostitution then I feel nothing but sympathy but if people do it out of choice then, yes, I disapprove of it. I disapprove of anyone who pays for sex and who sells sex.

I think most people disapprove of anyone involved in the sex trade. Surely that doesn't come as a surprise to you?

[Thomasisintraining]

After recriminalisation in 1993 substance abuse shot through the roof because of the stress of also having to dodge the Police to make a living

Nothing to do with dealers flooding the street with cheap heroine then. I have to call bullshit on the notion that prostitutes getting addicted to drugs was because they were stressed by the police.

Why do we not talk about the men? The sick fucks who don't care how they get access to a women's body as long as they do? Why are we not all shaking in our beds, afraid for our daughters growing up associating with such men, entering into relationships with such men

Normally when I have seen Laura join a debate on various platforms in the past punters are not far behind to tell us what righteous beings they are and how we are all uptight prudes who are not down with women's rights.

Why should any sane society give men the go ahead to purchase women?

And this, really just this. How can you claim to strive for equality and then in the same society strive to condone men who see women as nothing more than a vagina to rent.

[TheRealPosieParker]

"Frankly, who cares about them when a Mum has no other way to provide a home for her kids or someone like me has no other way to get the money to survive at all?"

Where is this woman living? the 1900s?

If this was true every woman on a low paid zero hour contract would be a prostitute.

[TheRealPosieParker]

Between 50-75% of women in prostitution entered before they were 18, the average age women become involved being just 12yrs old

In the UK as many as 60 women involved in prostitution have been murdered in the last 10 years

As many as 85% women in prostitution report physical abuse in the family, with 45% reporting familial sexual abuse

75% of children abused through prostitution had been missing from school. (Source: Home Office, Paying the Price. A consultation paper on prostitution, 2004).

Only 19% of women working as prostitutes in flats, parlours and saunas are originally from the UK.(Source: The Poppy Project, Sex in the City: Mapping Commercial Sex Across London, 2004).

87% of women in street-based prostitution use heroin. (Source: M. Hester and N. Westmarland, Tackling Street Prostitution: Towards an Holistic Approach, Home Office Research Study 279, London, 2004)

[FloraFox]

I'm not spreading misinformation re the Swedish model. I'm speaking from experience

You are not speaking from experience of the Swedish model. As you said in NIA, you are only speaking for yourself.

There is very good evidence that decriminalisation increases trafficking - Google the LSE paper on the topic.

[Batteriesallgone]

Gaye but why not campaign for women to have more choices?

If your choice had been, sex work OR an apprenticeship OR suicide, and you had chosen sex work, that would be a freer choice.

You cannot claim you were not coerced and then later say it was sex work or death. How is that a free choice?

[GayeDalton]

Lordyme,

It does come as a surprise to me. Lots of reasons...the first sex workers I really knew were the older wiser women who tried to screw my head on straight when I was a pregnant 15 year old with a chronic addict for a partner (well I had to sleep SOMEWHERE, it was winter). So my first impression of sex workers was as people to be respected (if terminally unhip!). I had a morbid dread of the work they did for myself, but my impressions of them were without stigma...so I saw who they were instead of a stereotype:

Strong
Independent
Down to earth
Kind
Tough
Brave

I have never had any sense of sex work as a moral issue at all, so I cannot imagine how one would feel. I don't have much sense of sex, in itself as a moral issue, but I would cheerfully campaign for the death penalty for guys who cruise the nightclubs to play "feck 'em and run" - THEIR antics were cruel and degrading, but I respected my clients for preferring to pay for sex rather than use someone for it.

Of course people have their own morality and a right to that, but I think if more people spent time checking their compliance with their own morality and none at all trying to impose it on other people's choices, we would live in a far better world.

[LauraLee76]

@TheRealRosieParker At no time have I ever painted the sex industry as a wonderful place. Some people flourish in it, others go under, and suffer terribly. All the more reason to make it safer. It can be a dark and very dangerous place, I know, because I've been there.