This essay first appeared in Cliterati on August 3rd; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
The Irish politician John Philpot Curran once said, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” Later orators repeated the aphorism and rephrased it into its current, less cumbersome form, but the main point is still the same: that governments and other would-be rulers are driven by the pathological need to control others, so those who value their freedom can literally never take that freedom for granted. Every politician, every prohibitionist, every social engineer and every naked ape with a title, uniform or badge is bound and determined to bring as many other people under his control as possible, and because this drive springs from his warped psyche you can be sure he will never relent as long as he remains above ground. It is therefore necessary for every free person to pay close attention to those who imagine themselves “leaders” or do-gooders, because every law or policy such people propose is intended to curtail others’ freedom in some way which they always insist is vitally necessary, yet virtually never is. Even after some oppressed group wins its rights after a long struggle, it can never again relax; as surely as night follows day there will come those who want to reverse that situation, either openly or subtly, usually under the guise of “helping” the group’s members or managing some sort of “problem” they supposedly cause the rest of society.
This is why I say that sex worker rights activism is not for the faint of heart. Imagine dedicating your energy, your industry, your time and your reputation to a war you absolutely will not win. Read that again, and understand that I mean it exactly as it’s written: the sex worker activists alive today will never see a final victory, not if they live to be a hundred. I’m not saying conditions can’t or won’t improve, nor am I saying that partial victories can’t be won in some places, nor that in the course of centuries people won’t look back upon sex work prohibition as an ugly form of collective mental illness. What I’m saying is that until and unless we completely discard the barbaric concept of consensual crime, every single hard-won right could be taken away practically overnight by some coalition of politicians and other self-interested petty dictators. Did you know that as the result of the 1980 political deal which settled the lawsuit Coyote vs. Roberts, prostitution was decriminalized in the state of Rhode Island, and remained so for almost 30 years? Yet it is not so today, because in 2009 an unholy alliance of cops and prohibitionists successfully convinced the legislature (which had resisted several recriminalization attempts) to once again turn sex workers and clients into police prey by using the excuse of “sex trafficking”. In New South Wales, which a 2012 study praised as having the “healthiest sex industry ever documented”, prohibitionists are scheming at this very minute to once again subject sex workers to the horrors of criminalization:
In 2010, Vicki Dunne prompted the [Canberra] government to hold an inquiry into sex work laws…[which] came to a predictable and reasonable conclusion that…decriminalisation…is effective…Three years later Dunne – this time with Gulia Jones on side – now pretends that the inquiry never happened. The two of them headed overseas with Peter Abetz and Christine Campbell (Victoria). These politicians took in sights of dubious usefulness in Sweden, and Korea, met with NOT A SINGLE sex worker group, and even threw in a trip to France for good measure…it’s a long way to fly to witness pieces of paper that one could download on the internet…sex work is work. Sex work is not a social ill that needs fixing. Sex work is not a political hobby horse for bored politicians. And sex workers are not Dunne or Jones’ rescue project. Sex workers don’t need interference in our lives from those who view us as victims…
Other politicians appear to understand the havoc recriminalization would wreak, but still can’t resist playing god with other people’s lives:
…Currently in NSW the sex work debate is centred around whether…licensing brothels is worth pursuing…Since it has already failed…in Victoria and Queensland you would think such a silly idea wouldn’t get very far. However the political lure of licensing as a ”solution” to supposed ”crimes” within the NSW sex industry has gained much more traction than it deserves. Licensing brothels does not replace the current regulatory work councils are required to do. Instead it adds an extra layer of bureaucracy…A licensing system sets up a series of hoops for brothel owners, staff and workers to jump through prior to being deemed ”legal”…Because licensing is difficult to comply with, the industry is divided into two: those who can meet the licensing standards become ‘’legal’’, and those who cannot are deemed ‘‘illegal’’…The idea that newer, harsher laws will somehow make regulation of sex work easier is flawed. And it has proven to be incorrect in the other states where it has been implemented…
Both of those essays were written by Elena Jeffreys, who (as a sex worker and activist in a country with different regulatory regimes in different states) is well-qualified to judge which work and which don’t. Most people are not so placed, and are thus easily led astray by imported “sex trafficking” myths and the cynical lies of anti-sex “feminists” attempting to corrupt the agendas of human rights organizations. Health officials, social scientists and all others who have studied sex work agree that the tyrannical Swedish model harms sex workers and society at large, while the New Zealand model of decriminalization helps sex workers and eliminates the coercion prohibitionists pretend to be so very concerned about. Yet even in New Zealand, held up as an example for the entire world, prohibitionists are working to destroy everything; one group wants imposition of the Swedish model, while another “merely” wants restrictions on where and how whores can work (including a suggestion that they be confined to brothels). Fortunately, activists in both New Zealand and Australia understand the need for vigilance and are fighting hard to abort these schemes before they can go very far; I hope they succeed, and that when our turn comes at last American activists can maintain the same level of watchfulness.
You put this in terms of rights and liberties–which makes sense from an individual or political viewpoint. From a Darwinian perspective though the fact that this battle is cyclical might have another depth of interpretation. The war might be unwinable because it represents competing strategies each under frequency dependent selection.
If this is true then a characteristic oscilation will almost always occur and sexual liberty will not be a linear progression. Viewed in these terms the rationalisations (e.g. “they need to be protected from themselves”) are just proximate mechanisms for increasing the success of that set of restrictive strategies (roughly either “make men commit” or “disengage with males almost entirely”)
I’m glad you wrote that – because it’s true for almost everything in life. Even when battles ARE won … they have to be continuously “re-fought” throughout history. We won the battle for Democracy in the US in 1783. Did that mean, that for all time, the US would be “Democratic”? Hell no.
Even maintaining civilization is a constant struggle. People really don’t realize how thin the thread is that civilization hangs by.
“Even maintaining civilization is a constant struggle. People really don’t realize how thin the thread is that civilization hangs by.”
Which is why I’m wary of calls for ‘burning the system down to the ground’. Thinking specifically about the American government but without naming specific programs, there are a lot of things that, rightly or wrongly, people rely on right now that causes them to decide to stay civilized.
Do we have enough trust in our neighbors that they’ll decide to stay civilized when the government subsidies and perks and checks stop flowing? If not, and we expect civilization to crumble, should we have any reasonable expectation of it coming back?
Unless it’s “burned to the ground” – I don’t see how it can get fixed. I’m not talking about taking physical steps to see it burn … but I voted for Obama in the last election simply because I knew he’d make things worse – and that plan has worked out smashingly.
You may not be able to rely on your neighbors … but you can rely on family and friends if you’re one of those people who still think those are important. If you’re one of those that relies on the government – you will have problems.
I’m ready to the extent that whatever happens … I can bug out of my current residence fast and get somewhere safe with other people. I think everyone should be. It’s gonna happen – we caused the problems and if it’s gonna happen – it should happen on our watch and not our kid’s.
“Unless it’s “burned to the ground” – I don’t see how it can get fixed. ”
So you don’t think it could be dismantled, piece by piece, just as it was built up over decades? With nullification, repeals, etc.?
“I can bug out of my current residence fast and get somewhere safe with other people. I think everyone should be.”
With 300 million people in this country I don’t think the US is big enough for everyone to be able to do that, even if they wanted to.
“We caused the problems and if it’s gonna happen – it should happen on our watch and not our kid’s.”
I’d rather it not become a self-fulfilling prophecy and happen on anyone’s watch. Of course that would take a person or a group of people that could come up with some ideas people would be willing to listen to about how to dismantle the system without the chaos that a sudden, complete collapse would cause.
And for the record, I don’t expect he, she or they to be found in the current Democrat or Republican parties. That’s why I didn’t vote for either Obama or Romney in the last election.
Minor quibble. While this sentence
“In New South Wales… …prohibitionists are scheming at this very minute to once again subject sex workers to the horrors of criminalisation”
is certainly true with the likes of Fred Nile holding some power in the NSW government, it does imply the ACT and NSW are the same. Vicki Dunne is a politician in the Australian Capital Territory government, not the New South Wales one. The ACT is a self governing territory in Australia that has its own prostitution law separate to that of NSW. While not quite as good as New Zealand’s or even NSW’s, it’s fairly liberal and the current government sees little need to make any adjustments, despite Dunne and Jones being bored.
The ACT has a fairly liberal population. Famously, the ACT was (until the internet, anyway) the only place in Australia where pornographic material was legal to sell, and supported a massive mail order industry for the rest of the country. (Possibly this was because the Federal politicians hang out here, and it’s always been one rule for them, one rule for everyone else.)
It seems quite unlikely that either Dunne or Jones will be in government for a long time yet; despite the age of the current Labor ACT government (14 years), they’re still the easy shoe in for the 2016 election. As I live here, I try to do my bit to keep vigilant here.
Ah, so the ACT is like the District of Columbia (Washington, DC) in the US. Thank you for explaining that!
… one rule for them, one rule for everyone else. -The mantra for government everywhere.
Burning it to the ground is not the answer. Right now the so-called “right-wing moralists,” every bit as reactionary as Joe McCarthy 60 years ago, are dominating the political discussion. Burn it down and it will make Plymouth colony look like a 60’s love-in.
Right now, the UN–of all groups–is in favor of decriminalizing/legalizing prostitution. As their Human Rights group states, only by legalizing non-coerced prostitution, do we have any hope of getting a handle on the illegal trafficking of individuals for sex.
Here are two URL’s to check out:
http://www.gaatw.org/statements/GAATWStatement_05.2013.pdf
http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=690
Totally disagree. The moralists are dominating the discussion, absolutely; but if you think they’re all “right wing” you must have one eye covered.
Maggie, I consider anyone who wants to impose laws and restrictions in the name of morality to be conservative, no reactionary, based on Russell Kirk’s in his book “The Conservative Mind.” The Neofeminists are really reactionary because the want a monolithic, all-encompassing feminine dogma to be adhered to by all women. For that matter, I consider Stalin to be politically conservative, although the he claimed to follow Marxist-Leninist doctrine economically.
Then you definitely define it differently from most. American “progressives” favor at least as many moralistic laws as “conservatives”, yet are widely considered creatures of the “left”.
Personally, I think the whole left-right fantasy is idiotic.
Agreed Maggie. The whole black-white, yes-no, good-evil dichotomy is rarely if ever reality in the real world. I suggest a small number of regulations for prostitutes plying their trade (no trolling in a school zone for example) after decriminalization not because I believe in them per se, but because they will: 1) make the general public more positive to the idea of prostitution; 2) take care of the prostitutes who have no common sense about such things; and you know there will always be idiots who push the envelope because they can.
Hi, Maggie. I’m a new reader of your blog, and I sent you an email introducing myself and asking a few questions. I was not able to find the instructions you mentioned for making sure that emails get past your filter daemon, so I thought I’d drop a note here asking if you had got it. Concerning your introduction, I saw through the Two Party Sham before I was old enough to vote. I definitely get where you’re coming from. I appreciate your determination. Have a nice day!