Sex worker rights are human rights, and there can never be too many voices speaking up for them, nor too many occasions on which to speak. – “Never Too Many”
It’s that day again: Friday the 13th, the day on which I ask non-sex workers to speak up for us. As I’ve explained many times before, there is no possible way we can ever hope to win our rights without the help of allies; since only about 0.3% of the female population are whores at any given time (about 1% over their lifetimes), we simply don’t constitute a large enough voting bloc for politicians to give a damn about us, especially at a time when the popular fad is to pretend that we’re passive victims in need of “rescue” from our own choices. As I explained two years ago,
…the gay rights movement didn’t really take off until the friends and families of gay people got involved, and…we’re going to need [similar] help to make our voices heard. We need all the sex workers (such as strippers, dominatrices and porn actresses) whose fields aren’t currently criminalized, and the sugar babies and [others] who have informally or indirectly taken money for sex…We need all of the men who hire us at least occasionally…[and] all of the women who recognize that…laws which can be used to arrest us will also work to arrest you. We need all of those who love porn, polyamory, BDSM or kink, because even though policing of sex usually starts with harlots, it never stops with us. We need all of the public health and human rights experts who understand the necessity of decriminalization…all of the libertarians who recognize that governmental prohibition of consensual behavior is both indefensible and dangerous to individual liberty, and all of the feminists who recognize that a woman’s right to control her own body and make her own sexual and economic choices is the primary feminist issue. And we need all of the decent human beings who don’t fall into any of those categories, but are simply disgusted by the idea of armed thugs arresting, humiliating and ruining people for the “crime” of consensual sex…
Over the past few years, the number of voices supporting us has grown by leaps and bounds; decriminalization is now supported by every major human rights organization (including Amnesty International), every major health organization (including the WHO), several UN organizations (including UNAIDS), and literally hundreds of other groups concerned with law, labor, women’s rights, individual liberty and many other subjects. Every academic who has made a methodologically sound and ideology-free study of the subject has reached the same or very similar conclusions, and after the ill-considered raid on the gay escort site Rentboy, even most gay rights organizations and activists have come over to the side of individual rights and self-ownership. But that’s still not enough; stupidity, ignorance, prudishness, statism, control-freakishness and bigotry run deep in human society, and it will take vast resources and millions of voices to beat those back into the outer darkness where they belong. We need everyone to speak up for us, not just today but every day; however, today is a start. Please say something in favor of decriminalization today, either in person or online; if it’s online, link it in a comment below and call it to my attention on Twitter so I can signal boost it. And if you can do a little more than talk, such as by making a donation to my work or that of a local, national or international sex worker rights organization, today would be a great day to do it! And when the day at last comes that we win our right to live and work free from state violence, you will know that you helped that happen.
Nice to see many more people stepping up to defend sexworker rights – Amnesty International being one of the bigger guns of late. Although it seems that politicians are somewhat reluctant to stick their necks out unless their hand is forced by the courts – as evidenced by the ongoing ESPLERP challenge in California (a cause worth contributing to), and by the one in Canada even if the Government subsequently ignored and repudiated the Supreme Court ruling on the case.
However, while I certainly support the campaign towards decriminalization, I kind of think that many sexworker activists, though not all, are trying to put all their eggs into that basket without being willing to address a number of other problematic aspects of their profession. For instance, a Canadian study (1) of some 1300 “johns” found that while the incidence of being victimized by sex sellers was fairly low, it still found that some 365 respondents had been victimized – “not receiving services paid for”, robbed, or assaulted – one or more times. While I will readily concede that various licensing schemes can be or have been found to be draconian or problematic, I kind of get the impression that if sexworkers wish to be regarded as professionals – or maybe they don’t – then they should be making some efforts to police or limit those types of abuses.
But while I certainly don’t know enough about the industry or profession to make any hard-and-fast recommendations or suggestions, even if I’ve been a “john” off-and-on over some 30 years, I kind of think that, as a minimum, some combination of licensing and a “better-business bureau” approach might go some distance in reducing the incidence of such abuses. The British politician Stanley Baldwin, in the context of tendering an insult of a colleague, said that “power without responsibility [has been] the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. Assuming that there’s some truth to the claim, and it certainly seems plausible, if sexworkers continue to give evidence for it then it certainly is understandable why society would be somewhat reluctant to provide any more power, particularly absent any evident willingness to accept the attendant responsibilities.
Further, I think that failing to do so, to accept those responsibilities, is, to be frank, tantamount to shooting yourselves in the feet. As I’ve argued (2) during the course of Canada’s debate on the question, part of the stigma that attaches to the profession – which acquired the hashtag #StigmaKills during the debate – is, I think, due to a quite understandable perception of irresponsibility that leads to “the inference that sex workers are less worthy of value than other members of society.” Hardly conducive to promoting your cause, and only adds “no small amount of grief that seems an unfortunate concomitant of the industry”.
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1) “_http://www.johnsvoice.ca/docs/JOHNS_VOICE_GENERAL_RESULTS_EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY_FINAL_DIST.pdf”:
2) “_http://impactethics.ca/2014/07/08/evidence-not-ideology-a-critical-assessment-of-the-protection-of-communities-and-exploited-persons-act/comment-page-1/#comment-4076”;
Frankly, this line of argument is asinine. It pretends that sex work, once decriminalized, can never be reversed; history has shown that to be false, and right now politicians in NSW are trying to reverse decriminalization there. “Licensing” for sex workers is nothing but a ploy to create a rape & arrest list for when a future regime re-criminalizes, which is why so many sex workers in regimes which require licenses (90% in Queensland, 95% in Greece, 97% in Turkey, >99% in Nevada) prefer to work illegally rather than set themselves up as targets.
The study by Atchison shows a small level of violence as you point out. It is important to point out that this is in the context of criminalization. The Supreme court came to the conclusion that violence against sex worker was made worse by the criminal laws, and that would certainly be also true for violence against clients. Law that criminalize clear communication increase the odds of misunderstanding and lead to more arguments that can turn violent. When you make something illegal, disagreements will not be resoved through the legal chanels.
It is also important to note that most of the aggression reported were fairly minor and rarely physical violence. The frequency of people who get one such bad experience once with a seller (“not receiving services paid for”, robbed, or assaulted) may not be much different from what you get in many other businesses. Thousands of people have been robbed by crooked finance advisors, for instance. Or did not get service paid for by some contractor.
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