Comment: Sex work hurts the workers

Thursday 04 July 2019

The Guernsey Women's Alliance has responded to a recent comment piece penned by one of our columnists discussing sex work.

The original comment by Rebecca Lane can be read here:

Sex work is work - Rebecca Lane

In response, the Guernsey Women's Alliance said:

“Who is it hurting for them [sex workers] to choose to do such work?” asks your opinion writer, Rebecca Lane.

The answer is clear: those being hurt are sex workers. 

They are overwhelmingly women and girls and as many as a third were in care as children.  About half started selling their body before they were 18, and three-quarters were abused as children.  70% of prostituted women and girls suffer PTSD as well as depression, anxiety and mental dissociation. 90% are pimped, nearly always by a man, who takes the majority of the money.  In one study of 850 women in 9 countries, 89% of the prostituted wanted to leave the industry and 40% were physically forced into it.   Similar studies have yielded similar results.  What other line of work has such grim statistics?  

The sex worker is not just selling her labour, she is selling her entire physical and conscious self - her very being.  While it may be the case that a tiny minority of women selling sex do so out of choice without a pimp, this choice comes from a position of privilege and relative wealth, and does not exist in a vacuum.

The commodification of women’s bodies has ramifications for all women everywhere.  Whilst women are bought and sold to men for sex, then women as a class will be regarded as objects for sale. Prostituted women are routinely slapped, spat on, hit, verbally abused, strangled and suffer internal injuries. This is because clients demand the re-enactment of scenes from freely-available internet porn, which has become incredibly abusive, degrading and violent towards women.  Prostituted women and girls are increasingly brutalised during this ‘work’.

To claim that ‘sex work is work’ like any other is a dangerous misunderstanding.

The idea Rebecca advances is that, with a few legislative tweaks, sex work can be a job like any other, that decriminalising the industry makes the work safe, allows women to choose their clients and thereby ‘empowers’ them. 

Germany and New Zealand have such systems and they have had a devastating effect on the very women they are claiming to protect.   

In Germany (where 1.2 million men visit a brothel every day) and in New Zealand, the industry is completely monopolised by pimps who, like other brothel staff also come under the ‘sex worker’ umbrella.  Pimps can impose restrictive room rents on women and take up to 50% of their wages.  Women ‘protected’ by these laws are financially as well as physically exploited. If a woman chooses to sell sex because she can’t afford to eat, or because she is in fear of a pimp then is that really true and enthusiastic consent?  In practice, pimps ensure women are not permitted to choose their clients. 

Violence towards prostitutes has continued unabated in these countries.  Clients have been emboldened by their legal status and have become more violent. Bouncers in brothels are there to stop clients fighting rather than to protect women. 

There has also been a dramatic increase in street prostitution and a rise in the sexual exploitation of children and young people. The US State Department notes that since legalisation New Zealand has become a human trafficking destination. Similarly, the vast majority of women in German brothels are not from Germany. Human trafficking of vulnerable individuals supports ‘legal’ mega brothels.

The Nordic Model posits that women must not be criminalised for the exploitation they endure.  Instead, the people (overwhelmingly men) who buy sex are the ones breaking the law. This model seeks to reduce the demand that drives human trafficking and prostitution.  It combines the decriminalisation of exploited women with high quality, non-judgmental support to help exit prostitution and build a new life outside of it. This includes help to access safe housing, training and further education, childcare, legal, debt and benefits advice and general emotional and psychological support.

Rebecca’s selective example of a case in Ireland ignores the many facts surrounding that case. Space prohibits a discussion here but if she’d like to contact us we can explain why stopping demand is the best way to stop the harm done to women and girls.  

Stigma and prejudice against prostitutes continues despite industry legalisation.  If we want to help sexually exploited women and girls then across-the-board legalisation is not the answer.

That such legislation is presented as a feminist position is baffling to us at the Guernsey Women’s Alliance. The re-invention of prostitution as some kind of road to sexual liberation for women is anything but feminist. We often hear that whatever a woman chooses to do is a feminist act. However, there is a need to unpack the context and impact of these choices, many of which are not freely chosen but are in fact coerced.  Of course, women are free to do as they please, but let’s not dress up men’s sexual oppression of women as feminism. The fact that prostitution of women and girls has always existed is no argument for encouraging what often amounts to paid rape due to coerced consent. Slavery too has always existed but we do not use that as a reason to perpetuate it. 

So, is sex work simply work just like any other? 

We would say emphatically not, but to those of you who might like to think so, ask yourself if you would be happy for your daughter to take up prostitution instead of going to university.  Or perhaps sell her body to fund tuition fees.  Indeed, a stall at Brighton University’s Fresher Week recently promoted ‘sex work’ to female students as a way to make money whilst studying.

The feminist writer Julie Bindel wrote a book about prostitution and she observed that "during two years I travelled 164,000 miles, interviewing 250 people around the world. The biggest obstacle I faced was the well-oiled propaganda machine that takes the truth about the sex trade and represents it to the world in the form of sanitised sop". We’d urge Rebecca to read more deeply into this, to listen to the voices of prostituted women (rather than the mouthpieces of the industry) and to consider the living hell that prostitution is for so many of them. 

To contact the Guernsey Women's Alliance email: gsywomensalliance@gmail.com