This essay first appeared in Cliterati on June 30th; I have modified it slightly for time references and to fit the format of this blog.
While the struggle for civil rights for some minorities has been largely unidirectional, moving steadily forward toward the goal, the war for sex worker rights has been a chaotic melee waged on many fronts. This is not to say that there were not setbacks in the struggle for women’s rights, racial minority rights, gay rights, etc; of course there were, and often serious ones. But an alien entity gazing upon humanity from afar would have been able to clearly discern that despite those setbacks, the big picture was steadily improving. That is simply not true for sex worker rights; without close and thorough study, our theoretical alien might throw up its tentacles in despair upon being asked to predict how it would all turn out. Even the fact that there is a struggle in the first place is a bit bizarre; while women and racial or religious minorities have always been second-class citizens for the majority of human history (and homosexuals were always reviled in the Judeo-Christian tradition), whores were never as bad off as we were in the 20th century. While most types of sex workers were generally outcast from polite society to one degree or another in most historical cultures, there were a few where we actually had more rights and respect than other women, and it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that widespread, systematic and violent efforts to suppress our profession entirely became the rule. In other words, during the years when the lot of other women was steadily improving, ours was worsening; and even today, most of the worst enemies of sex workers are other women.
As I explained in “Awakening”, the course of the campaign to win human rights for sex workers has been a rough and winding one since its beginning in the early ‘70s, and has only really picked up steam worldwide in the past 15 years. This of course frightened those who want sex to be a fearful, constrained activity controlled and licensed by those in power, and so the “sex trafficking” myth was developed in order to convince the public that the supporters of oppression were actually its enemies, and that the restriction of women’s choices is somehow “feminist”. This campaign of disinformation has been wildly successful in confusing a very large number of people, with the result that even those who actively campaign for sex workers to be hunted, hounded, shamed, ostracized, robbed, starved of income, evicted from their homes, caged, brainwashed and made targets for sick, violent men either in or out of uniform, represent themselves as wanting to “help” or “rescue” us. If the truth were told all but the most hopeless “law and order” or “sin and degradation” types would instantly turn on the prohibitionists and send them packing, but unfortunately they are accomplished liars and masters of misdirection, and many well-meaning people end up supporting evil disguised as justice.
And so the battles and skirmishes rage across the world; sometimes the goodies carry the day, and sometimes the baddies do. For example, late June saw the collapse of MSP Rhoda Grant’s proposal to impose upon Scotland the horrible Swedish model, which criminalizes men and infantilizes women; that’s very good news, but a few weeks before that the new single Scottish police force launched a campaign to harass, humiliate and rob sex workers, clients and associated third parties, and that will no doubt continue despite the bill’s failure. Meanwhile, on a neighboring island with a related population, the Swedish model’s fortunes are exactly the opposite; the Oireachtas “Justice” Committee has recommended it not only be implemented, but accompanied by a host of other monstrous injustices such as giving the police power to steal phone numbers which appear in escort adverts and treating the mere accessing of escort advertising sites as a “crime” equal in severity to downloading child porn. Though one prominent senator attacked the proposals, rightfully calling them “horribly sanctimonious”, they seem likely to be adopted in whole or in part by a government which is so deferential to the scheme’s chief proponents – the same nuns who ran the infamous Magdalene Laundries – that it refuses to hold them fully accountable for their past misdeeds, let alone bar them from having any control over sex workers.
In the US, where private, consensual sexual activity is so heavily criminalized a person can in some cases be imprisoned for years just for talking about it, there is a great deal of talk about “reforming” the policies and laws; however, “reform” generally means making the penalties even more draconian and the definitions broader, or condemning sex workers to involuntary “rehabilitation”, or persecuting clients in addition to hookers. The latter is usually publicized as “clients instead of”, but the only way for a sex worker to actually “escape” is to pretend to be “trafficked” and finger some supposed “pimp” to be sacrificed in her place (and possibly to submit to “rehabilitation” as well). But even here, the back-and-forth can be seen; the very same district attorney who recently spewed out such ugly, vile rhetoric against clients also supports the campaign to decriminalize the possession of condoms, and just to the north the country’s most culturally-similar neighbor appears set to largely or entirely decriminalize sex work.
But while Canada may be ready to decriminalize, sex workers in places where our trade is already decriminalized must constantly struggle against those who want to recriminalize it, at least to some degree. And in Europe, prohibitionists have made great advances even in the famously-tolerant Netherlands and Germany. In the long run, human rights must win: the trajectory of history has been for decreasing state control over individuals’ sex lives, and the number of health officials, human rights campaigners and other respected voices calling for decriminalization increases every month. But sometimes, when one is forced to look at developing history from the inside as we mere humans are, it can be awfully hard to tell.
I hope I’m not being too complacent when I say that it looks like decriminalisation in NSW is locked in and that other Australian states are slowly but surely coming into line.
Most credit must go to SWOP and the Scarlet Alliance of course, but I think the Australian cultural repugnance towards ‘wowserism’ has also played a big part.
It’s possible that when the other states are no longer providing such a bad example of how criminalised sex work pans out the momentum will begin shifting in the other direction, but I doubt it. A broad cross section of the community, especially those who work in health, are solidly behind the NSW example.
About a decade ago the propaganda of Sheila Jeffreys et al seemed to be getting a bit of traction among a small group of feminist academics at the University of Technology, Sydney and in some local media. It didn’t last long.
One of these days I’m going to blow my own horn by detailing in comments in this blog the modest part I played in that decisive slap-down and how it resulted in one of the proudest moments of my life – if I can bring myself to type while blushing.
Not even NSW is completely safe; read the last part of “Bottleneck“.
Oh the NSW laws sure ain’t perfect and never can be.
Licencing is already carried out at local council level – they are supposed to ensure sex work is kept a certain distance from schools and hospitals, that occupational health and safety regs are observed, that underaged sex workers aren’t employed etc. Brothels need to be registered with the local council and not all are, so there are still illegal ones.
A recent NSW Attorney General – whose Greek-Australian name starting with “Hatz” I will avoid mentioning for libel reasons – was corrupted by his relationship with illegal brothels in Western Sydney that were run by organised crime (I’m afraid it really does happen Maggie) when he was a Liverpool councillor and that compromised the rest of his political career and ultimately the legal apparatus of the entire state (not that it wasn’t thoroughly corrupt already). What’s more, when the NSW Police Integrity Commission’s ‘Operation Rosella’ ran across evidence of his corruption and that of another senior ALP politician it was quietly shut down without producing a final report – though not before it had taken the scalp of the police commander of the Georges River LAC who was in the pay of the same organisation that ran the brothels. Hatz’s job was mostly ensuring the ongoing harassment of street based sex workers operating along the freeway who were competing with the illegal brothels as well as keeping inspectors off their back (this was actually an improvement on the strong-arm tactics the brothel operators themselves had been using against the streetwalkers).
By centralising licencing at state rather than local government level the O’Farrell government will ensure that bribes go directly to it rather than to mayors, aldermen and council inspectors but I don’t think it will make much of a difference as to how things are actually run. In fact it will probably standardise sex work related corruption across the state and make it easier for brothel operators to know what is expected of them.
Don’t believe the guff about stricter health enforcement, crackdowns on ‘sex slavery’ or a serious effort to close unlicenced operations. It’s all about getting their fingers into a pie that is currently divvied up at local government level. It’s not even about grabbing the money directly from illegal operators but rather ensuring preferred illegal operators with good political connections gain a competitive advantage – the money will then flow via channels far more discrete than the brown paper bag to the inspector on the spot.
All of that said, the vast majority of sex workers in NSW will continue to do their jobs without undue harassment by authorities, many operating outside the brothel system entirely.
Hope I didn’t destroy anyone’s illusions about a sex work idyll in NSW, but it’s still a whole lot better than elsewhere in Australia and – as far as I can tell – just about anywhere else in the world.
Nobody said it didn’t, just like nobody said there was no such thing as sex slavery, no such thing as an addicted hooker, no such thing as a desperate streetwalker, etc. The problem is that people pretend these things are nigh-universal. There are also barbershops, bars and restaurants run by organized crime, but nobody uses that as an excuse to try to shut their entire industries down.
And licensing, by creating a bottleneck, makes it more likely for organized crime to take a hand. Criminalization is even worse, because it defines any organization involved as organized crime.
True, but without licencing (or an equivalent) there will be some who will abuse things enough to destroy public consensus on decriminalisation and open the way for recriminalisation.
There are abuses in all types of workplaces — but they haven’t led to any mainstream attempts (in the last century or so, at least) to outlaw assembly lines or farm work. This is partly a problem of who controls the media (and religion), but it also suggests a remedy — the formation of industry groups that try to police the behavior of their members, such as now exist in a variety of legal occupations, including many that don’t require licenses.
All workplaces are regulated in some way or another. I daresay if you removed all regulation from almost any industry market competition would soon push some players to such excesses there would be public outcry and calls for it to be banned.
But that is neither here nor there.
The sex industry is not like most other industries – not in the eyes of the public at least – but rather it’s a ‘vice’ industry akin to gambling and recreational drugs. As such it is far more vulnerable to criminalisation than assembly line or farm work (BTW, if I had my way much farm work would be banned in large areas of Australia in which it is currently carried out).
It would be nice if people saw giving head for money in the same way they saw picking tomatoes for wages and maybe after a few generations of regulated, responsible sex work they will, but my limited reading of history and anthropology suggests that would be very much the exception in human societies.
If you can point out a single industry in which self-regulation has ever worked – as opposed to leading to the externalisation of production costs (e.g. pollution and public infrastructure abuse) as well as cartels and exploitation of both workers and consumers (you have actually read Adam Smith I presume, rather than just citing him from a position of profound ignorance as do so many Randroid corporate libertarians) – I would be more than happy to take a look and see if its methods are appropriate to the sex industry.
In NSW under universal criminalisation there was a level playing field, so basically the most ruthless and unscrupulous players dominated the game. Under the current lightly regulated regime those who don’t want to play by the rules are penalised by having to bribe officials, giving a competitive advantage to those who do the right thing. If regulations were either abolished or substantially increased the advantage would go back to the shonks.
Bottlenecks are needed in industry for the same reason they are needed in bottles. Without them you get a godawful mess all over the place. It’s when you glue the cork in that people start smashing glass and making an even worse mess.
Just because a brothel is run by organized crime – it does not mean that the women are forced. When you prohibit an activity – then you ensure that criminals will get involved to perpetuate it for their own profit.
Absolutely.
I was in the thick of it in Eastern Sydney during the bad old criminalised days.
Every brothel on the Darlinghurst Rd/Victoria Rd strip was run by either Abe Saffron or Jim Anderson – with assistance from some rather nasty employees, many of whom wore blue uniforms.
There is still plenty of oppression of a subset of working girls in NSW but the licencing regulations aren’t the main source. It’s the immigration laws that are used to keep them under the boot.
The big plus that came with decriminalisation is that now police are pretty much out of the game.
Oh yeah, nice pic at the top of this post.
But for the life of me I can’t work out which salami is winning.
That’s exactly why I chose it. And I’m going to ignore that execrable pun. 😉
You do realizes that to us punsters, the word execrable is high praise, right? Means we’re right where we wanna be!
Reblogged this on Writings from a woman of pleasure.
Sexual politics has me pretty down lately. Mainly that’s due to the rise of sex negative feminism as the hip alternative to sex negative religion. It’s most damaging to sex workers, but it’s pernicious effects are felt throughout the culture. The genuine hatred of healthy, natural sexual relationships between men and women, and the way such relationships are constantly challenged by the broken, damaged people who seem to have such great political power is frankly wearying.
It makes it hard to be optimistic. I’m pretty old (a relative term, I know) these days, and feeling my age. I haven’t lived under this regime for my whole life, but I have for much of it. I try through sarcasm, parody, and mockery to mitigate the caustic effect it has on me, but those defence mechanisms only offer a certain amount of protection.
It’s not like any of us can just give up either, these are people who want to get into our bedroom during our intimate moments and pass judgement on us. They don’t let up and they don’t get away, and they have the marketing down cold and a lot of money behind them.
Oh well, just venting really, I admit optimism is probably a better motivator for political action and I don’t want to get into the mental habit of learned helplessness. Sometimes I just need a break I guess. Pity that for work I have to be on the computer practically 24/7, sometimes I think spending a week or a month offline would do me a world of good.
Words of wisdom from a Hindu Mini-Mart operator that I met on the Navy Base in Bahrain …
“The only day worse than today … will be tomorrow …”
I think that was his take on the Hindu meme that “Life is for suffering”.
We have worked a millenia to solve certain problems and they’ll never be solved until the next evolutionary leap (if then). And then there are the problems we DO solve … but then the law of entropy inserts it’s ugly face into the picture and screws up everything we’ve done.
It’s cyclical – everything swings on a pendulum. We can gain rights for sex workers – at some point they’ll be taken away again.
That’s why you have to look at it like this … it’s not about “permanence” – nothing is “permanent”. It’s about doing the right thing because it’s right even if you have to smash your brains into hamburger meat on a brick wall over and over again with little or no effect on the problem you’re trying to impact.
Wow krulac.
My mental image of you has just shifted from some bearded dude in camos with an ammo belt across his shoulder to a bald guy in robes.
Nicholas Cage in “ConAir” … I get that almost everywhere I go – even though I don’t buy it. I’m taller than Nick Cage, and a lot more bulky.
I don’t have as many women as he does either. 🙁
My tax liability is a lot better than his though!
You surely are not one-tenth as annoying as Nicolas Cage, either. Seriously, that man’s fame is one of the mysteries of life.
That picture of that cop in Houston with the balaclava and the full-combat gear is hilarious. Old dude is dressed up to take on the Taliban – but he looks too out of shape to hang with something serious like that – something where he’d actually have to RISK his life doing. There is absolutely nothing that infuriates me more than “bully-style” masculinity. It’s not masculinity at all and there is no honor in beating up on little girls.
To any police chiefs out there reading this … you DO realize how utterly ridiculous cops look when they’re dressed up as commando’s while enforcing laws on unarmed civilians don’t you? It’s terrible optics and bad “PR” for the cops … but, heh – I’ll take it … MORE PLEASE! 😀
It’s amusing up to the point where you or someone you know becomes the target.
The only reform that will work is to strip police of their immunity from prosecution, and of their monopoly on the right to prosecute — and even that may not be enough if cops are unwilling to enforce judgments against other cops. But certainly any lesser “remedy” will be a transparent joke.
Ultimately, though, I have faith that the sex industry will go on, no matter what oppressive measures are raised against it — because the demand will always be there, and Adam Smith’s invisible hand is a natural law that can no more be held back than the tide.
Invisible hands are an attribute of gods.
Maggie–If you have ever seen “The Last Saumari,” (one of the few Tom Cruise movies worth seeing more than once, IMHO) I will echo the words of Ken Watanabe’s character as Tom Cruise is holding him up while he is dying, and he sees the Cherry trees blossoming and says, “It is perfect. Perfect.”
I feel the same way about this article. It is perfect. Perfect. And I may borrow bits and pieces for the follow up to “making Sex a Crime.” With your permission and attribution, of course.
In China, there is a dispute whether “happy ending” massages are legal. A court in Guangdong province ruled in favor of their legality, while in Beijing they continue to be subject to prosecution.
Now, the significant thing is that 10 years ago, there was no dispute within the regime. The general trend is towards greater toleration.
I can’t predict where things will be in ten years, because that’s too soon. I can’t predict where things will be in a thousand years, because that’s too long.
But fifty years? Yeah, decriminalization in the US, and better conditions in the places it’s already legal. Some exceptions, I’m sure: maybe three states will have full criminalization, and Nevada will be one of them. Maybe Germany will have the Swedish model, and Sweden will be like New Zealand. But overall, it’ll be better in fifty years.
And some of us on this blog will still be alive to see it.