Tomorrow the European Parliament will vote on MEP Mary Honeyball’s report on sexual exploitation and prostitution and its impact on gender equality. This report advocates for the so called Swedish Model, the criminalisation of the purchase of sexual services, to be promoted at a European level to all member states. The European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality already voted unanimously in favour of the report.
Tonight and every night men, women and transgender workers sell sexual services across Europe. They work alone, in twos or threes, in apartments, hotels, brothels, sex clubs, from behind a camera, on a phone, on the street and in cars. They sell sexual services for many reasons. Some like to be self-employed. Some like that their hours are flexible because they have children. Others do it because they have no qualifications and other work available to them just does not bring enough money in. People sell sexual services full-time, part-time, at times where there are extra expenses, in times of family crisis, at Christmas time or when their children’s tuition fees need to be paid. Some people sell sex because they don’t have the right documents to look for other work. Some people sell sexual services to put themselves through college or to pay off debt.
Too many people across Europe are subject to poverty, social exclusion and discrimination. Women are disproportionately affected, migrant women even more so. There are barriers of access to the labour market for many women and especially for migrant women. There are barriers for transgender people. There are barriers for single parents. There are barriers for travellers, and Roma. There are barriers for minorities who don’t look like the majority in the place they live.
Why? Stigma. Discrimination. Inequality.
The labour market in Europe is restrictive. It punishes and keeps down those who are not privileged enough to be born into a family or economic and social situation which allows them to take advantage of education and work opportunities. Some who are excluded and denied decent work were simply born in the wrong body. They cannot get work because no one will hire them. No one will hire them because transgender people face stigma. They are treated differently and discriminated against. They are excluded.
If you are excluded from work, which pays decent wages to support you and your family, what are your options? Avail of social protection? This is a laughable ‘option’ in many European countries. Even more so if you are a migrant, and denied access to state protection. Laughable if you are someone who has actually tried to live a decent life on welfare benefits. If you, as MEPs, can at least agree that there are massive restrictions to the labour market for many women and different minority groups in the EU then we can attempt to look at the root of inequality.
If you are a person who has not sold sexual services, does not know anyone who does and can’t stomach the thought of anyone doing it, fair enough. You grew up in the same world I did. We are told sex should not be sold. People who sell sexual services are to be pitied, looked down on and kept away from. What they do is disgusting. They are forced by another or force themselves to degrade their bodies to buy drugs or, if making a lot of money, to fuel an extravagant lifestyle on tax free earnings. They either don’t have a choice, or if they do, they are disgusting and amoral for choosing it. This whorephobic world? It is exactly the same racist, sexist and homophobic world we were all born into.
I am not going to discuss why all sex work is not forced or why all migrants who sell sexual services in Europe are not trafficked. If you can honestly ignore the thousands of sex workers in Europe who have agency and who are desperately trying to make themselves heard, then I can’t do much to inform you. I am not a sex worker.
If you honestly think a person trafficked for sexual exploitation, raped and controlled for someone else’s financial gain is the same as a person willingly providing sexual services for payment, then you have allowed yourself to succumb to lies and stigma. You have allowed yourself to be blinded by the anti-sex work rhetoric so prevalent in our society. Sex work and trafficking for sexual exploitation are two entirely different things. Sex work and trafficking for sexual exploitation are linked only in the same way that restaurant and agricultural work is linked to trafficking for forced labour. Exploitation, trafficking, violence, rape and force are the issues, not the work.
It might make you uncomfortable, even horrified that there are men, women and transgender people buying sexual services every day and night. There are a lot of things that make me uncomfortable and horrified. You know what really does? The murder, abuse and violence perpetrated against sex workers. The idea that a sex worker’s life is less valuable and more easily taken disgusts me. It disgusts me that when a man rapes a non-sex worker it is taken more seriously then if he rapes a sex worker. The words of, Tom Meagher, the husband of Irish woman, Jill Meagher who was raped and murdered in Australia in 2012, say it all:
“I’m aware his [Adrian Bayley] previous victims in previous cases before Jill were sex workers, and I’ll never be convinced that doesn’t have something to do with the lenience of his sentence. Put it like this: if he’d raped five people like Jill that many times in that brutal a fashion, I don’t think he would have served eight years in prison. It sends a disturbing message. What it says to women is if we don’t like what you do, you won’t get justice. What it says to people like Bayley is not ‘don’t rape’, but ‘be careful who you rape’.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-19/tom-meagher-says-justice-system-failed-his-wife/4766620t
You think buying sexual services is wrong. You think it is exploitative and abusive. You think people should be deterred and stopped from buying sexual services. You think the police should start arresting and charging any person who is attempting to buy sexual services. You think if the demand is decreased and hopefully completely diminished then no one will be forced to sell sexual services. You hope that criminalisation will send a message to buyers and society that buying sexual services is wrong. No one should be selling sex as those that do are harming themselves and are oppressed and exploited by buyers. You want society to understand that the whole sector is disgusting and abusive.
Do you think people who sell sexual services will thrive in this environment of moral judgement and disgust? Do you think sex workers will be liberated from all those barriers restricting their access to other work and opportunities? Do you think they will suddenly have options? Do you think they will suddenly decide they don’t like sex work after all?
Stigma kills.
In Ireland: http://uglymugs.ie/2013/07/20/list-of-sex-workers-unlawfully-killed-in-ireland/
In the U.K: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/19/woman-killed-prostitute-police-blame http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-26060144
In Sweden: http://www.thelocal.se/20130717/49120
It has killed before and it will kill again, if we pursue this exclusionary policy of criminalisation.
Criminalising clients may seem like a clever way to deter buyers and curb demand. It is not. It simply pushes the problem further from the authorities and support services. Do you think sex workers will cooperate and assist the police in having their clients arrested? Will that pay their bills and keep their children fed? If I was selling sexual services and I wanted to get paid I would do whatever I could to stay well out of the way of the police and authorities. My relationship with the police would probably be non-existent if I was selling sexual services in Ireland. The law obliges them to stop me working together with a friend and to arrest my boyfriend or male member of my family for living in my home or off the income I earn.
Just stop for a moment. Stop those ‘disgusting’ thoughts of your daughter or friend or sister selling sexual services. Stop conflating sex work with trafficking for sexual exploitation. Stop reducing complex, intersectional and difficult issues into black and white discourses. Stop allowing stigma to guide your vote.
Stop believing your own privilege, that allows you to represent and make decisions on behalf of your constituents, gives you the right to tell a person that you are going to dramatically impact their lives, put them at risk of violence and exclusion, for their own good.
If you haven’t met a person currently selling sexual services by choice, then everything you think you know about sex work is highly questionable. Your vote tomorrow will be illegitimate and unethical as you will fail to represent the views of those who will be affected by your vote.
Brussels is a city like any other. There are many sex workers in Brussels working tonight. Maybe they are spending time with your colleagues from the European Parliament or other European institutions.
I don’t expect you to get up from your hotel room or apartment and go out looking for sex workers to provide you with a mandate. But you can browse the internet and find all the sex workers out there discussing this vote, expressing their fear and anger, and sharing their experience. Listen to them. Don’t punish them for your lack of knowledge, understanding and whorephobia. Vote no on Honeyball’s report
Required Reading:
http://tinyurl.com/m8clchg
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/whore_phobia_ashton_kutcher_and_the_problem_with_banning_prostitution/
Click to access sexwork_brief-21feb2014.pdf
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/02/25/european-parliament-shouldnt-criminalize-buying-sex/
Conversation Limbo 