WUNRN
NORTHERN IRELAND – NEW LAW CRIMINALIZING BUYERS OF SEX
– PROSTITUTION VS. SEX WORK – DIVISIVE VIEWS
‘There has never been a society without those who sell sex and neither will there be. Once you’ve accepted that, your priorities should change.’ Laura Lee - Photograph: Alamy
Laura Lee: This legislation would force us to work
alone
The debate on sex work is heating up, and I’ve decided to challenge a new law in
Northern Ireland that makes it illegal to pay for sex. While
abolitionist groups scaremonger and selectively use statistics, I’m with the
sex work advocacy groups that are fighting for our labour rights with increasing
visibility in the media.
Prostitution
cannot be eradicated. There has never been a society without those who sell sex
and nor will there be. Once you’ve accepted that, your priorities should
change: the focus should be on maintaining the safety of those who choose to
stay in the industry while assisting those who want to exit, with real support.
This is where the “Swedish model” of making it a crime to pay for sex falls
down. Advocates for criminalisation will argue that “prostituted persons” (a
despicable term that denies our agency) will be decriminalised under the new
proposals. That’s not true: if we wanted to work together for safety –
something entirely justified and appropriate – then it’s possible we could be
arrested for “pimping” from one another under that system. And all the while
we’d also be viewed as “victims”.
The result is we’re forced to work alone, sitting
targets for would-be attackers who know that we are vulnerable, on our own, and
carrying money. No one would ask an A&E nurse to work a Saturday night
shift without any support, so why should we have to? Since 1990, 149 sex
workers have been murdered. I’m adding my
voice to those asking how many more of us have to die before the state
recognises that the real violence towards us comes as a result of its archaic
laws.
Julie Bindel: Prostitution Can Never Be Made Safe
The human trafficking and exploitation bill, passed
after some controversy last year, made Northern
Ireland the first region of the UK to make the buying of sex
illegal, following in the footsteps of Sweden, Norway and Iceland, as well as
South Korea. The controversy continues with claims that the legislation is a
breach of European human rights law. From where I am sitting, the human rights
abuses inherent to prostitution are against those who sell sex, not those who
buy it.
The “Nordic model” that Laura Lee is set to challenge
decriminalises the sale of sex acts and criminalises the buying. The Council of
Europe has named it “the most effective tool for preventing and combating
trafficking in human beings”.
The law in Northern Ireland is the only one in
existence that includes a pledge to provide exiting services in the body of the
bill. This came about because survivors of prostitution lobbied Lord Morrow and
explained that the majority of women wish to get out of the sex trade but are
rarely able to access the type of holistic support necessary to do so. Pretty
Woman is 25 this week. The myths about prostitution are far older. The feminists
and other human rights defenders calling for the Nordic model are human rights
activists, not anti-sex moralists.
Of course there are women and men who choose to enter
the sex trade and are happy to remain in it, but laws and policy are not based
on the experiences of a minority. The law to tackle demand reduces sex markets
and therefore reduces the violence and harm so inherent to it. Not one woman
involved in Sweden has been murdered as a result of her involvement, and yet in
countries where the sex trade is legalised, such as Germany and the
Netherlands, there have been significant numbers of fatalities.
Critics of this law claim that criminalising demand
puts prostituted women in danger. But prostitution can never be made safe. Research has shown that
prostitution is easy to get into but very hard to get out of. I spend much of
my time with other sex trade abolitionists, many of whom are survivors of
prostitution. In the dozens of interviews I have conducted with women, most
told me they would always say they loved their work prior to exiting, in order
to cope.
Men who pay for sex do not have a human right to do
so. One buyer I interviewed showed his
contempt for all women when he said: “Maybe if men could get [prostitution] on
the NHS, if they are disabled, it would prevent them from raping.” Another
charmer said: “In the beginning [the women] have emotions, but it becomes a
routine, they die off after a while.”
This same study found that most buyers would be
deterred from buying sex by very little, such as a small fine or a letter sent
to their home. It was also clear that many who pay for sex feel unhappy and
ambivalent about doing so.
By criminalising the buyers and offering exit
strategies for those who wish to leave the sex trade, the law sends the message
that women and girls have a right not to be prostituted.
Margaret Corvid: We Have a Right to Profit from
Our Sexual Labour
There’s a sort of feminism that thinks it can solve
patriarchy through prisons and police. It promises that “ending demand” is an
enlightened response to the so-called problem of sex work, but when 98% of Northern Irish sex workers agree that
it’s a bad idea, it’s a bad idea. In the Nordic countries, sex
workers say that the result of criminalising clients has been to drive sex work
further underground.
Criminalisation doesn’t end demand – it just
makes clients more afraid, and destroys any trust between worker and
client. It makes it difficult to screen our clients or to practise
safer sex. In street-based sex work, clients and workers now avoid
well-lit areas, and meet in isolated places or in the client’s home. In indoor
sex work, it’s harder to screen clients by phone, or with deposits, and our
clients can’t really trust us. How can this possibly help us?
We do sex work for the same reasons anyone works – to
make a living.
Austerity and cuts in benefits and social services
makes sex work an essential tool for survival for many. Sex work is the oldest
profession, and when all work becomes unnecessary, so will sex work.
Until then, if we truly believe women have a right to
their bodies, we have a right to profit from our sexual and emotional labour.
As a socialist and feminist, I’m astonished that anyone could have anything but
solidarity for sex workers. And we want decriminalisation. In New Zealand,
decriminalisation has improved safety and health outcomes for sex workers. They have the same workers’ rights and health
and safety rights as other workers. If you truly believe in feminism,
solidarity and safety, give us what we want.
Rahila Gupta: Reduced Demand Will Act as a Brake
on Trafficking
I strongly believe that the buying of sexual services
must be criminalised if we are to tackle the problem of human trafficking. I
therefore welcome the Northern Ireland legislation, the human trafficking and
sexual services bill, even though I share none of the Christian beliefs of its
prime mover,, Lord Morrow.
Only reduced levels of demand within the sex trade
will slowly squeeze the supply pipeline and act as a brake on traffickers, as
the evidence from Sweden, where punters are criminalised, suggests. Trade is
conducted so openly now that “slave” auctions have reportedly
taken place at coffee shops at Heathrow and Gatwick where brothel keepers are
bidding for women. We criminalise employers of forced labour in catering and
construction, so why should prostitution be a special case?
Supporters of the sex industry respond by denying the
scale of human trafficking because it undermines a key plank in their argument
that women freely choose to go into prostitution, and the state therefore needs
to butt out of their private lives. Laura Lee who plans to challenge this law
all the way to Strasbourg, claims most women in prostitution are single mothers
trying to earn a living in hard times. Economic hardship cannot be interpreted
as enabling a free choice of occupation by any stretch of the imagination.
Every prostitute who has left the industry describes the horrendous violence
she has faced from pimps and punters, an occupational hazard that characterises
this kind of work.
Imagine how much worse it is for women who have no
immigration status because they have been trafficked, who may not know the
language and have good reasons to fear the police and immigration authorities.
If deported, they are in danger not only of being re-trafficked but also of
being shunned by their families for dishonouring them.
The green light for traffickers must be changed
permanently to red. Despite the battery of laws designed to prosecute
traffickers, there are more victims of trafficking than traffickers in prison
for so-called immigration offences. If we want to shift the criminal burden
from vulnerable women, both trafficked and local, to men, we have to
criminalise the punters.