The society girl meets more dangers than the girl on the stage. There is more danger at a tango tea than in the theatre. – Lillian Russell
The world is an imperfect place, and anyone who favors endlessly-increasing nanny-state laws under the battle cry, “One is too many!” is doomed to disappointment because no system, no matter how perfect, can prevent every single problem (especially from those who purposefully work to circumvent that system). Any job in which one has to deal with people exposes one to the possibility of violence from customers, and as I discussed in my column of one year ago today that’s more true of prostitution than of many other jobs, largely due to criminalization. Largely, but not entirely; most people if asked to list dangerous jobs probably wouldn’t include waitress, teacher or Wal-Mart greeter, yet people are killed in those jobs because, as I said, the world is imperfect. So even though working in an Australian brothel is generally safer than working as an independent escort (and dramatically safer than working as a streetwalker), there are always exceptions…especially when the brothel’s management ignores the safety of employees and allows a dangerous situation to develop. This story appeared in The Melbourne Age on July 13th and was called to my attention by a friend who lives in Melbourne:
A prostitute who had a gun pulled on her for refusing to have unprotected sex plans to sue a suburban brothel for failing to protect her. The woman…said her former workplace, “Butterflys of Blackburn”, had turned a blind eye to workers having unprotected sex, creating false expectations and a sense of entitlement among clients. It also failed to video record people coming and going from the premises and did not have security guards. She said this partly led to a man assaulting her last August when she persistently refused to have sex with him without a condom…[which] caused the man to aggressively grab her, flip her onto her back and attempt to rape her. Although she escaped, the man pulled out a gun before leaving and threatened her. “He pointed it at my head and said he could do anything to me. He said, ‘No one can stop me’,” she said.
The woman has since been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, whiplash in her neck and a torn muscle in her shoulder. She said although other brothels provided excellent security for their workers, Butterflys had allowed workers to charge extra for unprotected sex, creating an impression that clients could get whatever they wanted. “It never used to be a big issue…but about 12 months before I got attacked, it became a regular occurrence. More and more guys were coming in asking for sex without a condom. They were under the impression that most of the girls in that place would do it,” she said. “If they didn’t let that happen, I wouldn’t have been attacked.” While it is illegal for people to have unprotected sex in brothels, Butterflys’ website says its aim is to provide clientele with ”everything they may desire and more”…
No reputable brothel or escort service anywhere in the world allows its employees to have unprotected sex; it endangers both girls and customers and feeds into the “dirty whore” myth all professional sex workers want to dispel. But there are unethical members of every profession, and if the woman is telling the truth Butterflys is run by such. Failing to have proper security procedures is bad enough, but allowing desperate girls to provide “bareback” is completely unconscionable. The bad economy is almost certainly behind this; the woman says the problem started just over a year ago, and her weekly income is listed later in the story as A$1000 (not terrible but not all that great either), so I suspect Butterflys is struggling along with many of its employees.
The really important thing about this story, though, isn’t that there are some bad brothels (just as there are bad examples of any business); what’s important is that the prostitute had recourse, unlike her sisters here in the United States. She was able to report her employer for unsafe working conditions without fear of arrest, and has filed a grievance as any other employee in any other industry might; the later part of the article even mentions that she is now collecting unemployment since she cannot work at present. Australia’s version of legalization is about as close to full decriminalization as any country has without actually being there, and prostitutes there are treated almost exactly like workers in any other industry; thus when the rare problems do crop up, as in this story, they can be dealt with properly instead of becoming fodder for the sick fantasies and wild exaggerations of prohibitionists as they would in the United States.
im sure prohibitionists will use this story to prove that no prostitute is provided with safety, even if the work is legal(they will conveniently omit the part where other brothels have security) ,that its a job for desperate girls only,who are willing to compromize their health for cash,that men who visit them are always violent,vile creatures.And this will be completed by how its a job that noone ever wants to do,because”no little girl says i wanna be a prostitute when i grow up”(probably the most annoying line ive ever heard for sex work,do little girls know what a prostitute,porn star etc is,not to mention that if every little boy or girl grew up to be what they wanted to as children,the world would be full of ballerinas and astraunauts).anyway,congratulations to australia for being one of the few countries that know what human rights is.
You’ll probably enjoy my column of last October 10th. 😉
Failing to have proper security procedures is bad enough, but allowing desperate girls to provide “bareback” is completely unconscionable.
In calling women who are willing to have unprotected sex in exchange for more money “desperate”, you are succumbing to the language of the prohibitionists, are you not? We’re all “desperate” in some sense to have food, shelter and other necessities, but using that kind of language is one step away from calling workers “exploited”, after which their infantilization is complete.
Isn’t this a matter for any two people to work out on their own? How can any person C have the right to tell A and B that they can’t engage in any voluntary trade they please with each other? In my book, A and B should tell C to pound sand.
This example is tangled, because private businesses can draw up rules as they please, and if a business has promised its employees to adhere to a standard which protects them, then fails to adhere to that standard and something bad happens as a result, employees definitely have a right to sue for breach of contract. If that’s true in this case (as it appears to be), a lawsuit is appropriate. But the sentence I’ve quoted above goes much farther.
To be clear, I’m not trying to promote “bareback” sex, which is without doubt highly dangerous for both parties. BUT if a client and a prostitute are willing to negotiate a price for it, I think that’s nobody’s business but their own.
I’m using it because it’s the truth; only a girl who is desperate will risk her life for a measly few hundred bucks. It’s that attitude among escorts which is the reason our rate of STIs is only 1/160 that in the promiscuous part of the general population.
“anyone who favors endlessly-increasing nanny-state laws under the battle cry, “One is too many!” is doomed to disappointment because no system, no matter how perfect, can prevent every single problem ”
No, they aren’t doomed to disappointment. They WANT to have a constant excuse for ever-changing restrictive regulation. They aren’t about safety. They’re about CONTROL. They are exactly the same kind of scum as the Slaveholders of the Old South or the Aristocrats of the Middle Ages. They deeply and fervently believe that they were placed on Earth by Divine Providence to control the lives of Lesser Mortals.They may CLAIM good intentions, but they don’t have them. They are exactly the same, barring purely cosmetic differences, whether they are ostensibly Left or Right.
*whew*
Sorry about the rant, there. I get very tired of arguments that grant these authoritarian bastards any high ground. They aren’t MISTAKEN in their methods, they are EVIL in their goals.
No need to apologize, CSP, but I should point out that I didn’t mean control-freak politicians but rather the misguided people who support them in the sincere (though foolish) belief that they really are helping to solve whatever-it-is.
“Because they’re evil” is seldom a real answer. Evil people do evil things because they expect to benefit; seldom is it “For the glory of EVIL!!” {insert maniacal laugh}
You mentioned the slaveholders of the Old South. Slavery is about as evil as it gets, but the slaveholders didn’t hold slaves because they got a tingle from the sheer evilness of it all. They held slaves because the slaves picked the cotton. The slaveholders talked a lot about “well you know we’re saving their souls and all that,” or maybe “well you know the poor beasts could never manage without us,” because such lies helped them to feel less evil.
That’s why such lies are dangerous: it lets people be more evil than they otherwise would.
A big part of the problem in Melbourne (and the rest of Victoria) is that the brothel licensing system is quite onerous and there is an incentive for brothels to operate illegally. There is disagreement on the numbers but wide agreement that illegal brothels outnumber legal brothels by a significant margin. One of the consequences of this is that there are fewer legal brothel jobs than there are sex workers wishing to work in them, which undermines the ability of legal brothel workers to demand safe working conditions.
I don’t think it’s accurate to speak of an “Australian version of legalization”. Australia’s laws vary (widely) by state.
Thanks for the info, Wendy; I did read that there was considerable variation in the laws but I forgot that when writing this column; mea culpa!
As for the regulations, of course that’s exactly why New Zealand went with decriminalization rather than legalization, and why we advocate for it as well. The second one criminalizes a widespread activity, one creates an underground which can result in harm that could have been avoided with less onerous laws.
Here’s a brothel owner in Austrailia that was very concerned for the health and welfare of her gals … as well as their reputation of service …
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/02/1019441406441.html
I was in this battle group, when we pulled into Perth. You cannot believe the calls I got from the wives of Sailors waiting back at home when this story hit Hawaiian news!
“laida
im sure prohibitionists will use this story to prove that no prostitute is provided with safety, even if the work is legal”
Yup, you got it in one. Check it out:
http://safetyatworkblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/brothel-safety-gains-new-media-attention/
And then for the icing on the cake, we have this delightfully ridiculous piece of drivel from the “academic”
http://safetyatworkblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/academic-clarifies-objections-to-sex-work/
Enjoy.
If I ever go to Japan, I’ll be the one saying, “Hey Sailor… Mercury.” 😉
OK, with that out of the way: yes, the big difference here is that the girl can sue, she can call the cops and describe her attacker, and if she found out one of her co-workers was underage, or coerced, or trafficked, she could report that, too.
Her American counterpart would risk arrest, unless of course she worked in a legal Nevada brothel.