How does client criminalisation get to the root causes of those problems, as you see them?
The clients are almost all men. The abuse, rape and murder of women in prostitution is carried out by males. This is a gender issue. So the root causes of the problem are the patriarchy, economic inequality and an ingrained misogyny in our culture. As I see it, the men who use prostitutes largely know what they are doing and are capable of understanding the social context that leads women into exploitation, yet they either don’t care, lie to themselves and attempt to justify it (though they may feel ashamed 0f themselves), or simply enjoy abusing women (or they have been socialized into thinking it’s ok). Legalising prostitution legitimizes all of this. It lets men off the hook. The misogyny spreads and becomes more embedded in society, so generations of young men are brought up with these same values. Men’s right to buy sex is upheld over human rights. So yes, I do think these men should be held to account, made to take responsibility for what they do and be punished.
There must be deterrents and consequences, but also education, therapy and resources if we want attitudes to change. And we can all agree that poverty, austerity measures and benefit cuts make things infinitely worse for everyone and must be tackled. Governments and the police too must be held accountable for inaction and corruption, which is rife all through Europe and the rest of the world. No one said it would be easy. But worth fighting for? Certainly.
The demand doesn't just disappear
The sex worker lobbies never really go much deeper into the issue of demand, other than to say ‘it doesn’t just disappear’ - of course it doesn’t, we have to actually do something about it first. We have to work on reducing poverty and finding exit strategies and alternatives that offer real freedom of choice for those currently in prostitution or at risk of entering it, and from the other side, reduce the demand that feeds the industry (which, let’s face it, is growing to grotesque proportions across the world). Those two things have to be the long-term focus and the direction that policy has to go if we want to see any positive improvement.
Legalising/decriminalising prostitution increases demand, and it is the exploiters that take the greatest profits, not the prostitutes. This is exactly what has happened in the Netherlands and Germany for example. Even if you argue that there are many prostitutes who are acting out of their own free choice (which is obviously hugely problematic, and again overlooks the structural elements and social context in which they make that ‘choice’), there can never be enough of them to satisfy the huge demand – both the size of the demand and the nature of the demand (Rachel Moran said recently that the most common question she was asked when answering the phone in brothels was “what is your youngest girl?”). The only way to do that is trick, coerce, traffick and exploit thousands upon thousands young girls and women. The most poor and desperate and vulnerable. That’s why the involvement of organized crime and sex trafficking has increased in The Netherlands and Germany (and everywhere, seeing so governments have done so little to combat it and enforce anti-trafficking legislation), and that’s why the sex trade can never be reformed, but must be eradicated.
it seems totally reasonable and not at all 'defeatist' that sex worker activists might want to focus on how they can improve their lives in the present.
Maybe defeatism is the wrong word to use to describe what I’m talking about, but… That sisters uncut thing john posted seemed to be suggesting that staying in the industry and doing more sex work is the answer to escaping abuse and poverty – I mean, what if the abuser is your pimp or your client? What if you have become economically reliant on them? Why aren’t they focusing on the demand that has created this exploitative system in the first place? They seem to have it totally arse-backwards to me.
I feel that only focusing on harm-reduction is throwing away a lot of potential long-term strategies to deal with the root cause of harm, and ultimately only reinforces the system we already have in place (which practically nobody, except the exploiters and the punters themselves, is happy with). There is a sort of resignation to the idea that prostitution is an inevitable product of human nature. Just because something is old and ingrained in our culture, it doesn’t mean we should not try to change it, or that it cannot be changed. Prostitution is as old as patriarchy, as old as misogyny, as old as slavery. But women are not born to be oppressed by men, women are not born to be prostituted, and men are not born with the right to have sex with women for money. It is not something natural and inevitable, but something that has become deeply ingrained and normalized, and it may be possible to change it.
Of course for many pro-decriminalisation lobbyists discussing demand, men’s motivations and attitudes is not even on the agenda.
You need to back sentences like this up with stats.
You’ve already discredited all the sources I’ve stated so far (basically all radical feminists and anyone who disagrees with the NSWP), so I’m not sure you’ll accept studies by organizations like the POPPY project either. Fair enough, you can believe what you want and I have also discredited your sources (amnesty, NSWP and affiliates) for reasons I’ve outlined above (and which you haven’t responded to at all).
As you know, and as others have mentioned on the thread, getting anything like accurate statistics on organized crime and prostitution is practically impossible for obvious reasons. However, there is enough evidence out there to suggest that we are dealing with a massive problem. It cannot be denied that, globally, criminal organizations and mafias make huge amounts of money from sexual exploitation and trafficking (Lydia Cacho’s ‘Slavery Inc.’ and Victor Malarek’s ‘The Johns’ are good on explaining this). They control well-established international sex-trafficking routes that perpetuate and feed male demand. The ILO puts the illegal profits generated from commercial sexual exploitation at 99bn dollars a year, from around 4.5 million people in enforced sexual slavery. EC reports have recognized that the figures they have managed to obtain are likely to be woefully short, (23,600 human trafficking victims identified in Europe over a 3 year period 2010-2012. 62% of which was for sexual exploitation, of whom 96% were female), and are actually in the hundreds of thousands. And I suspect there is something at best, naïve, and at worst deeply dishonest about the downplaying of the role criminal groups have in practically every aspect of the sex trade industry.
I could equally ask you for accurate, reliable figures on how many completely independent (ie, with no involvement from pimps/organized crime/traffickers), non-coerced prostitutes are in existence in the UK, or anywhere in the world. I fear that the only thing we are ever going to agree on is that that there is some kind of problem, and that something must be done about it.
It’s clear that organised crime (and you can include governments and armed forces in some parts of the world) and the sex industry are inextricably linked almost everywhere in the world- a trade that runs through Japan, China, Cambodia, Turkey, Israel, Thailand, Burma, Mexico, USA, South America, Russia, Estonia, the Ukraine, Romania, Spain and all through Europe etc etc. Criminal organisations are still there, stronger than ever in countries where it has been decriminalized in the name of sex worker rights. Since at least the early 90s, with the fall of the iron curtain, the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women in europe by mafias has gone through the roof. It’s astonishing that people are still trying to downplay the scale of the problem and disassociate it from what the sex industry actually consists of and is built on. It can never be reformed and made a safe working environment, we have to try and get rid of it.
Then there are the smaller, independent escort agencies, perhaps with a veneer of ‘respectability’ –. ‘Managers’ and ‘organisers’ living (usually quite handsomely) off prostitutes earnings, while claiming they are selling ‘time’ with the workers rather than sex, and do not interfere with what may go on between consenting adults during that time. This is fundamentally dishonest and is still organized exploitation and pimping when it comes down to it. Frankly I think it’s shameful that it is tolerated to the level it is in the UK.
And to be clear, when I say it’s almost entirely based on crime, I’m obviously talking, not just about organized crime groups and mafias (as if that wasn’t enough), but also the clients. Those who abuse, rape and murder women. I think everyone accepts that prostitutes are at a much greater risk of violence. You don’t distinguish sex work from other forms of work in terms of its exploitative nature, yet I would make the distinction that sexual violence can and should be distinguished from other types of violence, and that prostitutes will always be at a disproportionately high risk of this type of violence in particular (making it very different from any other jobs) due to the very nature of the work. Unfortunately the reality is that tolerating violence and abuse is practically part of the job description. I think it’s vital to never underestimate and lose sight of the scale of gender-inequality, misogyny and violence against women in our culture as a whole. This is the basis for my conviction that abolition is the only answer.
