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.

Equally, the fact that very few women have a sex drive that can derive satisfaction from casual sex with a stranger does not stop men being desperate for money to survive, so men turn to hard crime or suicide...

So why do desperate men not turn to gay male prostitution? You are the one who keeps saying it's a job not sex (except in every second post where apparently it is sex)

PlentyOfPubeGardens
"It is easy for you to sit in your comfortable life googling this stuff at leisure."

You know nothing about me, Gaye.

But I managed to guess that bit right, didn't I?

The one thing I agree with you on is that the benefit system is crap. I know this both first hand and professionally. I also know that if you have children the options are never just starve or turn to prostitution.

Then you haven't been paying attention to reality...some turn to worse things, shoplifting is a common one

Benefit cock-ups are very common. Amazingly, very few claimants turn to prostitution to survive.

Usually only those with secondary and tertiary problems like no family support system, or a special needs child.

Maybe all those who don't take this route could offer advice to those few who feel this is their only option?

Absolutely, they could and should, but I have spent a lifetime looking at similar advice with a heavy heart because I am fully aware of the situations to which it does not apply. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be available...just that it will not always solve anything.

Here's a suggestion - how about, instead of putting all this energy into defending the rights of men to wank into the bodies of desperate women, you direct your efforts towards campaigning to reform the system?

Do keep up...I think I have already explained that I spent years "{putting all this energy" into various areas of reform to the system with absolutely zero effect...why waste any more time that way?

I don't do this to pass the time or make friends, I do this because I cannot stand the thought of the harm you people WILL do to some very innocent people who do not deserve it.

That way all the women who are too old or ugly to get clients would also benefit, and disabled women, and the under 25's (who you've said are too young to cope with the 'job'), and all those poor suicidal but tragically straight men ...

Nobody at all benefits from wasted effort on zero effect...but real people really benefit from every moment I can hold you off from taking their last resort way.

I do not work from a standpoint of "what do I feel like giving" I work from a stand point of "what is most achievable and genuinely needed".

It is not about me...it is about the people you want to inflict greater suffering upon.

LassWiTheDelicateAir

You are now tying yourself in knots so well without my assistance any more would be overkill!

I do not work from a standpoint of "what do I feel like giving" I work from a stand point of "what is most achievable and genuinely needed".

And that is making it easier for punters to buy women?

Creating a climate where pimps and punters can exist free of moral opprobrium?

Elevating prostitution as a difficult but ultimately rewarding career?

I'm out of this thread now. I've read rubbish before on MN, but not quite to the level here.

LassWiTheDelicateAir

At the risk of repeating myself:
You are now tying yourself in knots so well without my assistance any more would be overkill!

Now I have other things I need to do with Sunday than hang out my real name for ye horrible (totally anonymous - HOW BRAVE) lot to try and use as a punchbag...

Bye

Who is tangoman?

Just PMd me.

It's always good when quoting stats to do two things-
(a) go back to the original source (you may have to go down a long tree to find the source)-abolitionist web sites (which seems to be the source of your "facts"often do not give these
(b) engage the brain-or apply the sniff test-to see if what is said could possibly be true.
Lets just take the first of your "facts" "Between 50-75%.......the average age being just 12." Now engage your brain-and I will simplify the logic. If the average age were 12 then for every woman who stated prostitution at 20 there must be a woman who started aged 4 -so the sniff test says this cannot possibly be true. What could plausibly be true is that SOME began as young as 12-but it cannot be the AVERAGE age.

In fact the 50-70% entered before 18 is also untrue. There is a small scale study(Melrose 2002) of street prostitutes who began before they were 18-50-70% of THAT SPECIALLY SELECTED GROUP some did start before 18-but that was not a selection of ALL PROSTITUTES. Melrose says "“The data on which I am drawing in this paper was generated by in-depth interviews with forty-six women, all of whom had become involved in prostitution before they were 18” A study for the Home Office (Hester & Westmarland 2004) found (again from a mostly street worker based sample) that 20% entered prostitution before they were 16 (table 3.1 p61), that is 80% entered later.

If you look at properly conducted studies of all prostitutes in the UK you will find that the majority began after the age of 20 (see for instance Church et al (2001) Violence by clients towards female prostitutes in different work settings: questionnaire survey BMJ 322 p524.which inter alia shows that the mean age of entering street prostitution is 19.6yrs and of off street 22.7 yrs. See also the Wellcome trust funded researchuknswp.org/um/uploads/Welcome-Trust-Working-conditions-and-job-satisfaction-survey.pdf

I could go through the rest of your stats but I am PMing you so you don't embarrass yourself in future

Dear big fat orange man,

The source was the governments site.

Nice that you're super invested in prostitution.

One angle of this, which as a survivor of CSA I struggle to swallow is the fact that many similarly hurt and damaged women enter prostitution. That is NOT right, that is not to be encouraged. You are defending as an option for women a choice that reinforces previous mental and emotional trauma, misconception of self worth, displacement of identity, and skewed sexuality as a part of their experience.

How can you possibly justify this?

How can you possibly justify this?

You can't.

Prominent "sex workers" want to have their cake and eat it. One one hand, the claim is made that it is "choice" to enter prostitution. Which implies that they could have done something else for a living. This is used to talk people out of supporting the Nordic Model.

One the other hand, we are told that without "sex work", those women would starve on the streets. Which implies that no, it is not a choice.

Only one of those claims can be true for an individual person. If she had a choice, then why does she need a right to prostitute herself? She could just as well flip burgers. Other people's jobs aren't protected by the government, either. If the general population doesn't like your job and outlaws it, that's your problem.

And if she didn't have a choice, then where is the problem with an abolition following the Nordic Model, where help, financial and otherwise, is provided to get out of prostitution?

In NZ it has been a disaster for women and girls

Hello, as an on-and-off sex worker since aged 18, I am vehemently opposed to the notion that decriminalization is the best for sex workers (or society overall).

I have heared all arguments from:

"decriminalization makes us safer"
Debunked. In Leeds male violence towards women soared after the UK's first legal prostitution zone was lauched, they have since abandoned the project.

"Decriminalization makes us earn more"
Debunked. Prices dropped as low as €10 for a job in Germany soon after decriminalization.

"Prostitution is a job choice like mining or being a bus driver"
Debunked. Imagine your daughter pretend-acting as a prostitute not a bus driver. Imagine your son growing up ambitious to be a prostitute rather than a miner. Imagine being sent on a job interview for a job as a prostitute by the job centre. Nope.

It's a symptom of male power and how it holds women in both economic and sexual subservience to men. This works to man's advantage in many ways, while women only find advantage for themselves whilst compliant to men.

Vestalvirgin makes a good post above, brilliant.

Under Nordic Model, men are held accountable. Their actions towards WG's however "minor" are subject to legal action. Take any disrespectful behaviour towards a prostitute (and by extension all women) any questionable behaviour at all is bang to rights illegal under NM (such as asking more than once for services not on offer or taking a condom off half way through).

This model DOES NOT reduce prostitution women still earn lots, work lots, and men still willingly pay but it reduces street work which is the worst, and reduces trafficking which is the biggest cause of both wage compression in industry, and obviously abuse.

Decriminalization is an open door to free hell.

This model = Nordic Model.

It's harder for a man, he usually isn't lucky enough to have hetrosexual sex work as a last honest resort

The notion of prostitution as a privilege for women is utterly preposterous. You are degrading women's sexuality with your attitude that heterosexual women could have sex with any man. That puts women as the passive recipient of sex rather than an active participant.

But even if it were true, what about old woman, unattractive women or disabled women? How do they fit into this notion of prostitution as benefits / better than benefits you put forward?

Someone else on MN posited, rightly, that a service provider's value increases with experience. If your value decreases with experience, you are the product, not a sevice provider.

Re: TheRealPosieParker

“Trafficking increases when laws are relaxed, that is a known fact.”

I would appreciate if you provided a source (or sources) for this statement. Thank you.

Where Germany is concerned, where sex work was already legal before 2002 (but not associated acts such as brothel keeping), your statement doesn’t apply. Despite greater activities by the police, the annually compiled reports by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) show no significant increase in the number of persons trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation that would indicate an expansion of the phenomenon as a result of the prostitution law taking effect.
In the year 2003, one year after the adoption of the Prostitution Act, the BKA registered altogether 1,235 persons presumed to have been trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, an isolated spike in numbers compared to previous and following years. Ever since, the annual average is 675, and the only time there were more than 800 cases were detected was in 2004, when 972 cases were detected. Although the most recent figure showed a slight increase of 3%, it still represents a certifiable decline of nearly 55% since 2003.

As the government stated in 2013, from a quantitative viewpoint, the risk potential of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in Germany is limited. What did increase, however, is the number of media reports about human trafficking, and thus the impression that the phenomenon itself increased. In this context, one should also note the police’s high clearance rates of crimes against sexual self-determination (rape and sexual coercion) and against life (murder and manslaughter), the former consistently above 80%, the latter above 95% (BKA data from 2008 to 2014).

www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2012/12/Legalised-prostitution-increases-human-trafficking.aspx

FloraFox

This is interesting:

But even if it were true, what about old woman, unattractive women or disabled women? How do they fit into this notion of prostitution as benefits / better than benefits you put forward?

1. I personally know two women much older than me (I am 58) who are still selling sexual services successfully.
2. A lot of clients prefer quite homely women, they feel more comfortable with them. There is a whole market in "big beautiful women" and almost all men prefer women with a good deal more weight than the fashion industry uses to market to women.
3. Sex work is the only kind of work some disabled women have a hope of making a real living from. I am disabled myself, very much so. Sex work was possible for me, very few other things are. I have been surprised to find out how many other women that applies to.

Where is this focus on "benefits" coming from? UK benefits were below subsistence before the crash. Now they are impossible...that was particularly so for single people and childless couples until the benefits cap was introduced....

....and here's another thing. There are a lot of people with ethical objections to claiming benefits. People who would rather sell sex than claim benefits just because they feel claiming benefits is morally wrong. What about them?

If your value decreases with experience, you are the product, not a sevice provider.

So are models, actresses, soldiers, firemen and cops.

You're deluded on all those points.

The other thing to remember about trafficking is that it is a much broader phenomenon than the TV docu-drama picture of women from outside the EU brought in by people smugglers and having their passports withheld. I know someone who works in public health in close collaboration with the police on child protection/trafficking issues, and a lot of their case load is older men who've persuaded a young teen (below the age of consent, 16, and below the age for legally engaging in prostitution, 18) to run away from home to be their "girlfriend" - often as close by as the next town - then pimp her out.

Thanks, Ophelia.

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

This.

Perhaps you should ask why it is that men cannot make much money with "heterosexual sex work".

Perhaps this has something to do with the risks that being a dick receptacle encompasses, versus the risks that sticking one's dick into another person encompasses.

And the enjoyment derived from both.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that heterosexual sex tends to be not that great for women.

Women prostituting themselves for men, and men prostituting themselves for men has much more in common than men prostituting themselves for women.
And there's a reason there is not as much of a market for the latter.

Someone else on MN posited, rightly, that a service provider's value increases with experience. If your value decreases with experience, you are the product, not a sevice provider.

That's a great quote. Really says it all.

Re: FloraFox and the oft-cited LSE study

With regards to the LSE study by Cho, Dreher and Neumayer, you might want to look at both the data they used and what the authors themselves have to say about it.

“The papers’ authors caution against treating its conclusions with too much weight, noting that ‘the quality of data is relatively low’, and that more research ‘will require the collection of more reliable data to establish firmer conclusions’, but I think their data is actually way worse that they’re letting on.”

Source: A favourite piece of research for Swedish model advocates throws up a few surprises wp.me/p1NLSO-hM

(By the way, I later did the same research the author of the above article did and came to the same conclusion where the mysterious origin of the data about Germany is concerned.)

In a detailed interview (available in German only) with Axel Dreher, one of the authors of the LSE study, he stated:

“Nothing at all can be proven with the data used here.”

(„Beweisen“ lässt sich mit den vorhandenen Daten hier gar nichts.)

When asked if he thought that the prosecution of human traffickers and protection for victims was better in countries where sex work was criminalised, he replied:

“No. But an appropriate regulation of prostitution can also help fighting trafficking.”

(Nein. Allerdings kann eine geeignete Regulierung der Prostitution auch im Kampf gegen den Menschenhandel helfen.)

Note: “appropriate regulation” – not prohibition.

In the interview, Dreher went on to state:

“Personally, I am unequivocally against the criminalisation of prostitution. The average connection between legalised prostitution and human trafficking does not mean that legalisation is always and in every country harmful. On the one hand, the connection can be prevented through appropriate laws, and on the other hand, human trafficking is just one aspect of legal prostitution. That does not mean, however, that one needs to prohibit it.”

(Ich bin persönlich eindeutig gegen die Kriminalisierung der Prostitution. Ein im Durchschnitt positiver Zusammenhang zwischen legaler Prostitution und Menschenhandel bedeutet doch nicht, dass die Legalisierung immer, in jedem Land und zu jeder Zeit schädlich ist. Zum einen kann der Zusammenhang durch geeignete Gesetze und deren Umsetzung verhindert werden. Zum anderen ist der Menschenhandel nur ein Aspekt der legalen Prostitution. Das heißt doch nicht, man müsste sie deshalb verbieten.)

“As we explain in our article in the Fair Observer, the positive aspects of legal prostitution outweigh [the negative ones]. Liberal societies must create rules that prevent exploitation but voluntary exchanges between adults should only be prohibited in extreme cases. In my view, prostitution is not one of those extreme cases.”

(Wie wir in unserem Fair Observer Artikel erklären, überwiegen die positiven Aspekte der legalen Prostitution. Eine liberale Gesellschaft muss Regeln setzen, die Ausbeutung verhindern, darf aber den freiwilligen Austausch von Erwachsenen nur in sehr extremen Fällen verbieten. Die Prostitution gehört meiner Ansicht nach nicht zu diesen Extremfällen.)

Source: Ein Interview mit Axel Dreher wp.me/p1wtlK-yB

In the Fair Observer article Axel Dreher mentions, he and his co-author Alexandra Rudolph state:

“Legalized prostitution and human trafficking go together. They do not have to. Human trafficking is not a natural feature of legalized prostitution, but is the consequence of badly regulated prostitution and surprising ignorance regarding other means of fighting trafficking.”

Prostitution and Human Trafficking: The Middle Road of Regulation
www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/prostitution-human-trafficking-middle-road-regulation/

So, since you brought it up, maybe you would like to look at that LSE study a bit more closely and listen to what its authors actually think about the subject and what their recommendations are.

You are confusing the results of the study with the political consequences. The authors rightly state that there are other factors that are relevant to whether prostitution should be decriminalised. This is in stark contrast to most studies promoted by the pimp lobby who typically look at narrow issues and dodgy data then draw broad political conclusions for decriminalisation.

Matthais.

Google is your friend. I'm not here to furnish those who wish to promote the sale of women with statistics.

Florafox

You're deluded on all those points.

Again, interesting...and how big a part do you think that strategy of informing people they are deluded when they say something that does not suit you (even about their own life) should play in giving sex workers real alternatives to sex work?