Why don’t the people who support decriminalization work together with those who support legalization to fight criminalization?
The answer to that is simpler than you might think: it’s because nobody supports legalization. You may think that’s a bit glib, but it’s basically the truth. Every sex worker rights organization, human rights organization (including Amnesty International), health organization and academic who has actually made a proper study of sex work agrees that decriminalization (in which sex work is treated as a form of work rather than a type of criminal behavior to be “controlled”, and sex workers are treated as adults with agency rather than broken children to be managed by the state) is the best framework for everyone involved. Studies from New Zealand and New South Wales demonstrate that the decriminalized sex industry in those places is far healthier than in any place with heavy-handed government “regulation” of women’s sexuality by police. The number of sex workers who want themselves declared moral imbeciles in need of management by the state is vanishingly small; nearly everyone who supports “legalization” is a politician, cop, moralist or crony who stands to profit from the “legalized” system (such as Nevada brothel owners or the owners of STI testing services). In other words, the only people who support women being paternalistically treated like imbecilic disease vectors who need others to make decisions about their bodies for them, are those who stand to gain power (including the power to rape women who color outside the lines) or money from such a system. And many such people, such as Dutch “authorities” and pimps like Dennis Hof, are perfectly happy to spread “sex trafficking” propaganda and other lies in order to ensure that women are denied control over our own sexual and economic behavior.
Does that answer your question about why we can’t work together?
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
Dont beat about the bush, Maggie: Tell us what you rally feel about this issue!
I’ve often answered with a comparison/contrast with marriage equality, as I was involved with the efforts to bring that about here in Massachusetts.
Yes, those of us who worked for marriage equality were willing to accept civil unions as a temporary compromise, and to continue dialogue with its proponents. CUs provided same-gender couples with about nine-tenths of the benefits that full marriage provided, and there was no discernible difference from one jurisdiction to another.
Now, imagine that each state offered its own package of very limited rights, and only to certain couples, but each one referred to as a “civil union”. I can assure you, not one advocate of marriage equality would have found that acceptable in any way. It would give too little protection to too few people.
That’s the situation with “legalization” — a confusing array of models, each offering too little protection to too few sex workers and third-party associates. Not to mention that every legalization scheme is supervised by police, unlike any other business.
The only thing worse is when prohibitionists try selling the Swedish model as “partial criminalization” — despite the fact that it retains virtually every punitive law against the industry and its participants.
Oops! Correction — prohibitionists try to sell the Swedish model as “partial decriminalization” which it is far from being.
“Legalization” schemes are just like regulation of any other line of business. The proponents of regulation pretend that their aim is to protect consumers. But the real purpose, always, is to make entry into that business more difficult, thus stifling competition so that the entire industry is reduced to two or three giant companies, who can then act as a cartel and oppress the consumer. The “regulating” agency is captured by those giants before it is even born, when their lobbyists write the law and their “experts” become the commissioners.