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.

[BombadierFritz]

It is very sad in a civilised society that pregnant children are not given foster care placements and encouraged to continue their education and given longer term foster placements so that later they do not feel they have only two choices: sex work or death. That is a false choice in a society with a half decent social care network.

[GayeDalton]

I have spent a whole lifetime trying to find ways to campaign for all sorts of people to have more valid (that word is important too!) choices...got little or nowhere...and until people DO have those choices it is cruel and destructive to make the last honest resort of so many even harder than it is already, because that is all they are going to have for the forseeable future. I am not having their blood on my hands for a "maybe one day" with no historic precendent!

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

True...my choice was actually suicide but I survived that against the odds.

Those were the only choices I had...

Never thought of it but I am sure I could have got an apprenticeship trouble is and apprenticeship would not have paid enough to provide me with a home and food. Apprenticeships are only affordable to people who have family and community supports...to somebody with no one they are useless.

By mentioning apprenticeship you bring up another trap some people fall into and I am one of them...intellect is not backwardly compatible. I am top 2% of the ability range ex KEHS and Duncroft. On that level it is not actually possible to fit in to an apprenticeship environment, cut glass Brit accent makes it even worse...(why mention that I am high function Autistic...I'd get lynched LONG before that even came into play).

What I am trying to show you is that sometimes the cards get dealt so that people are genuinely totally scr*wed...I was one of them, and so are many of the tiny percentage of the general population who use sex work to fight back and survive.

Until you can offer ALL of them something better, making sex work harder is just abusing them, and pushing their lives off a cliff.

[LauraLee76]

@LordyMe - do you seriously expect me to fund a High Court action by myself? It's been 7k so far, with another 8k on the horizon. Some people choose to support a fight for human rights, if you don't, then don't donate. It's that simple. I see Kat Banyard has a link to her current book for sale at the end of her piece. Are you complaining about that?

[TheRealPosieParker]

And if safer for those that "choose" it means more trafficked women that's okay?!

[LauraLee76]

@stubbornstains Thank you very much for your support.

[GayeDalton]

BombadierFitz

Can't go into details, I'll get us all into all sorts of trouble but my family used the system itself as a weapon of abuse. Plenty were willing to admit that to me, and that they couldn't afford to risk their jobs. They advised me (unofficially) to run and keep running.

I was given two choices a "mother and baby home" (with forced adoption and a general Magdalene Laundry ambiance) or back to the family, where my father would have kicked the baby out of me.

However, I did not sell sex for the first time until 7 years later, and the second time was 8 years later.

The sex workers around me helped me eat.

[TheRealPosieParker]

also in Northern Ireland in't there an in creased risk of an unwanted baby?

[GayeDalton]

TheRealPosieParker

It is not shouted from the rooftops but in sex work the supply of sex workers always teeters on the edge of exceeding the demand for sexual services.

The safer and more legal sex work is the less work there is per sex worker. So, if someone "did" own a string of sex slaves, the more decriminalised the environment the less they would be worth, that is simple, obvious economics.

[LauraLee76]

@Odfod I wasn't ridiculing anyone on Twitter at all. I simply made mention to TheRealRosieParker for her disgusting tweets about my parenting and discussing "dick in arse" with my child. Or the fact that I apparently laugh at trafficked women. On the contrary, I fight as hard as I do to bring the industry out of the shadows so that no woman needs to suffer again. None of us in the industry want to see that. For the record, the only laughing I did was when Rosie made mention to my "poor kid". LOL. At 15, she'd eat you alive. She's an active feminist just back from the Trump protest and gearing up for pro-choice and equal marriage protests in Northern Ireland, on the front line with me, her terrible parent. Now can you see why I was laughing? I'm immensely proud of her, and me.

[BombadierFritz]

That sounds a very tragic and hard situation. I would like all teen mums nowadays to be better supported through for example mother/baby foster placements, then the social security system. I think most are now. As someone with high functioning autism but without family support, you must have been even more vulnerable. I find it deeply troubling that this is how prostitution finds its workforce - amongst the most vulnerable in society. As we provide for those in our society (i like to think we are better now at dealing with teen pregnancy in situations such as yours), where does prostitution find its workforce? Abroad and via trafficking. It is built on exploitation.

[GayeDalton]

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.

Then you would be making a bit of a fool of yourself while insulting some women who didn't deserve it. Even the local abolitionists recorded the stress of criminalisation as a cause of sudden drug abuse at the time.

But more than that, so many of the street workers were involved in the "Concerned Parents" movement in their free time we could have had our own chapter. You don't remember '93 but paranoia about AIDS was really starting to bite, and, being human beings at heart the street workers were no exception. They drove of anyone they even suspected of involvement in drug taking and they were neither nice nor fair about it.

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.

That's nice...but you don't see me...

(I have already made it plain Laura Lee and I hate each other's guts so I think it's a bit much for you to hold me to account for her doings)

If clients have a point they wish to make then they should make it. I have nothing against them and found almost all of them many time more helpful and less abusive than the local rescue orgs...some are still valued friends, whereas the abusive antics of the rescue orgs have given me PSTD and I cannot be in the same room...

HOWEVER...

They are big boys, and we are only talking about their entertainment, we are talking about the futures families and lives of sex workers so they are never going to be my focus.

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.

I have no interest in gender politics. I do not identify myself with gender and I see that women in Europe have full equality in areas to which legislation is appropriate.

My political interests are quite different.

Nobody (in their right mind) buys a woman...what on earth would you do with her? Where would you put her? Sex work is about the purchase and sale of sexual services...which I never saw as anything but work. I do not regard it as sex. It is a task.

I don't think is is any business of any sane society if people buy and sell sexual services.

[GayeDalton]

TheRealPosieParker I am now convinced that you have no aquaintance with reality at all.

WTF do you think people live on on a 3 year benefit sanction?

...and you seem to have tied yourself in insane knots extemporising statistic that were BS in the first place...

Sex workers have to live in reality not your warped mind.

[Thomasisintraining]

Then you would be making a bit of a fool of yourself while insulting some women who didn't deserve it

Gaye there was a general explosion in drug abuse at that time outside of prostitution. I think you might be trying to rewrite history there. It is fairer to say that the surge in drug addiction increased street prostitution at that time.

[GayeDalton]

BombadierFritz

You raise good questions. First of all pregnant teens today are treated far worse. A lot of the babies are taken away at birth and forcibly adopted causing lifelong devastation.

"Vulnerable" is not a synonym for "dependent".

Social services are not fit for purpose and the NGO sector just profit from the disadvantage of others, quite ruthlessly...at 58 I have seen it too often to doubt it. Some people grow up learning how to best milk that for gain and become lifelong codependents.

Other people see it for what it is and cannot do that. In which case the system will only abuse and harm you. Sex work is one of the few "parachutes" that will let you solve your own problems without picking up a few more from the system itself.

...and do not worry, there will be more than enough people desperately needing that parachute until the end of time, as well as the women who sell sex just because it is the best of several options.

I have never managed to find the smallest trace of real trafficking (apart from the Wayne Foundation who deal solely with child sexual abuse that is a separate issue) and because of my family I have the contacts to check properly.

I doubt if it "sex slaves" will ever be much more than a profitable NGO battle cry...let me tell you why.

I was a street worker so you get business by being seen in person. Every PMS of the month my money would drop off dramatically...however well I was dressed, however positive I was acting (I had horrible PMS) - as thick as we think guys are they could definately pick up my negative frame of mind and avoid me. I cannot see how you would ever maintain a market for miserable, trafficked sex slaves from the same kind of men.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

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

Every time this topic comes up most posters are eager to say they are not judging women. It's always seemed a bit odd given that every other human activity gets judged on here.

I judge people for many reasons; UKIP voters, people who smoke near children, drunk drivers, people who think gollies are fun toys, factory farming and the happy hooker brigade who peddle this idea of "working girls" and the "sex industry"

No decent man, and I mean NO decent man, pays for sex

I want society to have as much , indeed more, contempt for them as decent people have for say drunk drivers.

[GayeDalton]

Gaye there was a general explosion in drug abuse at that time outside of prostitution. I think you might be trying to rewrite history there. It is fairer to say that the surge in drug addiction increased street prostitution at that time.

No it certainly wouldn't because it would be completely untrue! The surge in drug addiction occurred in a far younger generation for one thing.

I was there, you were not, and I do not do "rewriting history", call me a liar if you like, but you will still be talking twaddle.

WHP Survey 1995 about 18months after criminalisation when there had already been a slight surge (page 20):
www.drugsandalcohol.ie/5616/1/2030-023Women.pdf

Also note the funding and bias of the project.

[BungoWomble]

I will never support a system that encourages men to view all women as commodities to be bought and sold.

Am I the only person who thinks it's slightly questionable that women who claim they 'choose' prostitution as it is to then push for change to a system that then forces their 'choice' on the rest of us? Prostitution is not a job like any other. I don't want it forced on any woman by the DWP and benefit sanctions. Nor do I enjoy the increased harassment of women by men who feel entitled to use their bodies.

[SherbrookeFosterer]

Yes.

If it were legalised they could have a transparent tax history so in due course they could take out a mortgage on a home, or invest, etc, making their lives more secure as they get older.

Sex workers have to be very astute to do this currently.

[sillage]

"I cannot see how you would ever maintain a market for miserable, trafficked sex slaves from the same kind of men."

Have you somehow managed to never see any pornography? Have you never seen the words pimpographers use to sell prostitutes to men, emphasis all put on the pain and humiliation of the prostituted bringing pleasure to men?

[TheRealPosieParker]

Am nodding along with you Lass

[Thomasisintraining]

That is a pretty harrowing read alright Gaye but it cites the major source of stress for the women was getting found out by family and friends. It also cites widespread drug abuse among the interviewees at the time so I am not sure why you are linking it to back the assertion you made that the widespread drug use was solely down to the guards.

Btw you might have been there in the thick of it but I lived and worked in the North Inner City off Prussia St at the same time walking daily through Benburb St./Montpelier Hill and you are categorically deluded if you think that the women there were not heroin users because they absolutely were.

[TheRealPosieParker]

Gaye

Benefit sanctions are new.

According to you women choose prostitution. Now either they don't unless desperate because it's depraved or they gleefully choose and they're not desperate. Because I'm hearing you trying to convince us it's great and shouldn't be abolished....

Your unconvincing argument about allowing men to rent women is not having a devastating impact on individual women or on all of us is just revealing your inconsistency.

[FloraFox]

I agree with Lass. I judge Brooke Magnanti for her view that the risk of young women being lured into prostitution is a price worth paying for her witting career. I judge Laura Lee for her work on behalf of the pimp lobby and Gaye Dalton for her pernicious abuse of Rachel Moran.

I don't judge women in prostittuion through poverty, abuse, mental health issues or coercion.

[GayeDalton]

Thomasisintraining

You see any "widespread herion use" (as you specified)?

Do you seriously think that placing women (mostly mothers) under constant threat of arrest and imprisonment, in most cases for the first time in their lives, did not fray their nerves to tatters?

I don't do argument for the sake of argument, your obvious drug of choice.

[GayeDalton]

Sillage,

I can safely say that I have never seen anything resembling a "pimpographer" selling women to men in my life...and you are going to laugh but I genuinely cannot stand pornography...never could..

The language women use to sell themselves, whatever else you might say about it, NEVER makes them out to be miserable and scared...simply because that discourages business and it would be daft to pay for advertising to do that.

"Happy and Horny" are the key words to advertising, however honest or not they might be, because that is what men buy.

...and if you have been watching ANY pornography that shows women (or men) as miserable and/or scared I believe you may have been breaking the law.