Moralising Sex Work

With the recent murders on sex workers in the UK (see previous blog post), BBC has published this article which discusses possible solutions to make sex work safer for the men and women in that line of work.

Currently in the UK, it is not illegal to sell sex, but brothels and selling sex on the street is illegal. There may be one person in one building selling sex, but no more. While there are justifications for this legislation, such as worries about facilitating human trafficking if brothels and street prostitution were to be decriminalised, and that street prostitution can be very unsafe, this legislation ends up offering little protection for sex workers.

The consequence of legislation that does not allow sex workers to meet customers on the street or in a brothel is that they either need to rent a room, hire a space or bring the customers to their own homes. The first two options could be expensive in the long run unless the sex worker would charge the client for rent or room hire, but the way that the market dictates business, the price increase could lead to a loss in business. The third option is just simply unsafe. Sex workers are at a high risk for sexual violence and other forms of violence as it is. If the sex workers would then be forced to reveal where they live to their clients, they could face serious danger, not to mention fear of being visited by the authorities and other people that would wish to make their opinions known about sex workers.

My personal fear is that our moral views impair our thinking when it comes to sex work and lead to unsafe legislation for the men and women voluntarily involved in that line of work. (As said before, trafficking is always, and should always be, viewed as a crime as there is an element of coercion/threat and/or debt bondage. More on that here.) Instead of providing them with safe places to run their businesses, the legislation punishes them because they are in a line of work that people do not agree with morally, and that people perhaps would not choose for themselves. So what we do, instead of working with these people, is to work against them.

Regardless of what view one has of prostitution - whether it should exist or not, or whether the need for it should exist or not - it exists. The reality is that people sell sex. The reality is that there is a market for selling sex, and people will sell sex. To legislate in a way that punishes these people and make their line of work highly unsafe and a high risk for violence in different forms is not going to change this - sex will continue to be sold. It is one of the very oldest trades and it will probably continue to exist for a long time yet, whether governments choose to let the trade operate in the open and regulate it, or keep it in the dark.

The focus therefore needs to lie on making this line of work safe for the people within it, rather than punish them or robbing them of their rights, or keep legislation in place that has proved itself not to make the situation safer for sex workers. Just because many people disagree with this trade does not mean that these people do not deserve the same rights to safety and freedom from violence and other abuse. It is a good thing that the police are putting a lot of focus on uncovering trafficking networks and trafficked people, but that does not mean that it is justified to neglect the people who are in the sex trade voluntarily. They are at high risk for abuse and sexual assault and should be offered protection accordingly. There is still a wide-spread belief that sex workers cannot be raped because they sell sex, but any sexual advance that has not been negotiated or agreed upon is still an offence regardless of whom it is done to. Unfortunately this leads to a stigma that is reflected in society and not even the police is safe from it.

It is a good thing that this is currently being discussed in the media, but let's make sure that it stays this way. Let's make sure that we do not let this topic disappear because we do not want to see the uncomfortable truths or that we want to pretend that these issues do not exist. Let's make sure that these people can also live safely without the fear of being used, abused and murdered, because all people deserve that right.

Sex Work Stigma Kills People

There is a great article in the Guardian today about sex workers and the vicious ways in which some of them are murdered and how a lot of them are in other ways violently abused.

I have written previously on my opinions on prostitution and highlighted some problems with legalising it as well as some problems with keeping various aspects of sex work illegal. This issue about violence against sex workers is one such example of why it is such an important discussion to have.

Sex workers are often stigmatised and ostracised from society. They are viewed as 'used' women, dirty puppets inevitably oppressed by the great big evil patriarchy and males' inherent uncontrollable sexual drive, leading people to believe that they are essentially flesh and blood rag dolls incapable of making their own decisions or having any kind of agency. There are many assumptions made about sex workers, about their motivations, about their lives, about their thoughts and about them as people; how someone must be, think and act to be a sex worker, as if they were all one and the same.

This homogenisation and association with uncleanness in appearance, manner and health leads to a huge stigma to be attached to sex workers. Because of these assumptions they are reduced to nothing more than second class citizens. If the view is not that they are doing something morally repugnant, the assumption is that they are not capable of civic virtues or performing civic duties and are thus in need of rescue. This is where we, the people who presumedly 'know better' have to step in and 'teach' these men and women how to live a life the way it is supposed to be lived.

There are several factors why people enter sex work. Where trafficking is the reason, it is clear that there has been a human rights crime committed, as trafficking per definition includes some kind of coercion or threat and some kind of debt bondage which severely impairs an individual's freedom to self-decision and movement. Trafficking is in every way a crime and should be prevented. But, trafficking does not equal all sex work, and the sooner we understand this, the better. There are men and women who enter the sex trade due to several different reasons, and these people do so voluntarily. If they later find themselves in debt bondage or under coercion and/or threat, it will classify as trafficking, but not all sex workers find themselves in this position, and some sex workers get out of such a position to pursue sex work independently anyway.

The problem with making a blanket assumption about the motivations and reasons why a person is in the sex trade whether it be moral (or as some people think, lack thereof), socioeconomic or other is that it does not make separations between the individuals and the people are all seen as one big lump of sex workers without agency, individuality or personal strengths/weaknesses. They are all made out to be one and the same, and often one and the same with one's own personal moral and philosophical feelings about the sex trade. We end up signing agency to them, or rather robbing them of it as we consequently make the decision (assumption) for them why they are a sex worker. The issue here being that society at large seems to have a great moral problem with sex for money, making the sex trade into a big taboo and so attaching stigma to it; a stigma which automatically follows with the sex worker and makes him/her out to be of less intelligence/capability.

When these assumptions are brought out into society, they become dangerous. People who are viewed as less in any kind of way (moral, intelligence, capability of decision-making over self and other things), they become less. These people are easy targets for violence and other sorts of human rights crimes, because they are not seen as fully human. Because a sex worker is already seen as dirty/dumb/incapable, it is more justified to violate such a person in any kind of way than it would be a person who was capable, or rather viewed as more worth. It would be a greater crime to violate someone who is valued as fully human.

These types of crimes, or rather power displays of people who believe themselves to have the right to assert power over other people they see as of less value stain our history. Race, religion, sex, occupation, bloodline - these have all been reasons why it is justified for one person of higher status to take advantage of or assert power over the one with the lesser status. Sex workers are no different, it is just another occupation, but also one that is seen as lowly, not worthy, only for people with problems/in poverty/of lesser intelligence, and the people in it can therefore be used and abused according to the ruling people's wishes, which in this case is anyone who enjoys higher status than a sex worker. Because sex workers enjoy such a low status in society, this means just about anyone.

People may have their differences about what prostitution/sex work represents, and whether or not it is selling your body or simply a transaction that involves sex, but the problems remain regardless: sex workers are used, abused and violated because they are seen as lesser, because people do not consider their full human value. This needs to stop. Sex work and sex workers need to be taken seriously and respected as human beings of a certain occupation, regardless of what anyone's personal opinions is about the line of work. Otherwise these people will continue to be stigmatised and reduced to second class citizenry where they will struggle to even access their supposedly universal human rights.

To finish off I will leave you with a quotation from David Wilson, professor of criminology at the University of Central England and the vice chair of the Howard League for Penal Reform, from the article above:

"There are always going to be a small but consistent group of people in our culture who will want to do the maximum damage to other human beings. They can't continue to do harm to other people … if they are stopped early enough, if the group of people that they initially targeted are valued enough in our culture for the police to take it seriously. We create the phenomenon of serial killing by not valuing this group of people enough."

Sex Work and the Logic of Business

Tonight I have been watching the US Senate hearing on the ratificiation of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Interestingly, USA is the only industrialised country that has not ratified the treaty since it was agreed upon 1979. No, not 2009, not even 1999, but 1979 - 31 years ago.

Not so surprisingly there were a lot of supporters and not many opponents. The only opponent debating was Steven Groves, expert at the Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think-tank. I do not wish to talk about exactly what was said for and against CEDAW in this hearing, as the ratification has not yet been voted on in the Senate, so I will leave that to be the contents of a possible later post. What I wish to discuss is something I picked out from his speech.

Groves had problems with CEDAW because of different points in the treaty he believes to be against US morals and views. He disagrees with CEDAW's 'social engineering', i.e. the points where CEDAW urges that changing and challenging gender roles are key to women enjoying full equality in any society. One of the problems he has with this is the CEDAW committee's encouragement of the protection of sex workers. They have at one point urged that it is important not to punish women in the sex trade as it is likely they are already in an exploited position, usually due to socio-economic reasons.

The problems, I would assume, he has with this is the moral implications of making sex into a trade, and that the women sex workers, through selling sex, encourages and fosters such an environment and thus, also, the eradication of the morals in society. This assumption is really interesting, because it implies an elaborate scheme on the part of these women to corrupt humankind. Somehow, along the lines of the evolving sex industry, which has survived as long as civilisation has, women have gathered and decided that they are going to use their sexual powers to corrupt men, and along with it, society.

I think it is quite clear that assuming such an elaborate conspiracy that has be inherited through history, with sex workers being completely unrelated to each other, is a bit far-fetched to say the least. It would require an organisation that women resorting to a highly stigmatised work simply do not have the resources for because they usually get involved in the sex trade precisely because they do not have any resources.

What Mr. Groves has completely failed to see here, or just intentionally neglected is that sex work, as any other type of work follows the simple logic of supply and demand. The supply continues to be there because the demand is. Now, as I have pointed out before, sex in itself is not an inherently bad thing, neither does sex work necessarily have to be, it is under the current power structures of society that it becomes a means of exploitation and power abuse. However, this is exactly the point. The morals are not being corrupted through some kind of mythical succubus prostitute; they are already in place. It is exactly the morals in today's society that allows a sex industry to thrive, and a great part and energiser in that is sexism. The rigid confines of our gender roles, including both men and women here, lead us to take actions within the framework of these.

Masculinity is the exact antonym to femininity. It is the absence of all that is deemed to belong to the feminine. For every masculine gender role there is a feminine gender role that corresponds just a little bit too neatly: calm/surging, weak/powerful, passive/active, nurturing/violent are just some examples. Therefore, in order to be masculine, or a man, one needs to be the exact opposite to a woman, which includes exerting power over them. If you can subject the feminine, then you are a man. These are the kinds of morals that society impresses upon us and, more crucially, have been for centuries.

I am not saying that every man and every woman adheres to these stereotypes - in that case society would be far more frustrating than it already is, but there is a force in society that steers us in the direction of respecting these presumed innate qualities and many of us simply have not stopped to reflect long enough about them to be aware of them.

Point being, these kind of morals and virtues have been in place for a very long time. Sex work is one of the oldest types of work known. Once it may have been the simple transaction of sexual favours, but it has long since evolved into something else. Prostitutes have been viewed to be dirty, cheap and less than human for a very long time. It is because we have these values that the sex industry can thrive, not because women have some innate corrupting capability as Groves would like to think. It is because these power relations are in place that CEDAW encourages countries to ensure that sex workers have some basic rights; the simple reality is that many of them are being exploited and abused. They are not paid nearly as much as they should be, and they are often victims of violence - both sexual and other. Prostitutes are quite often raped because the men who commit these acts see these women as a commodity. Yes, sex workers can be raped, even if you give her money after the act. There is still a lack of consent involved and her line of work is irrelevant in that respect. Where do those morals come from, Mr. Groves?

There is one thing Mr. Groves and I agree on - there are a lot of things wrong in the sex industry, but that is an even stronger reason to ratify CEDAW and ensure other women's rights laws are in place to help stop the exploitation and stigmatisation of women in this line of work.

The Prostitution Quagmire

I have thought about posting this and I have changed my mind several times. I am still not entirely sure it is a good idea, but I think, for the purposes of the debate, that it is important to highlight some of the problems with prostitution.

In my native country, Sweden, there seems to be a consensus that prostitution is inherently evil. It is a patriarchical expression of female oppression and cannot be anything else. In my most recent blogpost I touched upon victimisation and the dangers of it. The logic applies even here and that is what I am going to attempt to highlight.

Now, I am all for the freedom of choice. The liberal streak runs strong in me and I believe that anyone has a right to choose as long as it does not obviously harm someone else. This is where the conundrum with prostitution. Is it really inherently evil? Does it always harm the women or men selling their bodies for money?

I also want to point out that I am talking about women who enter the trade voluntarily so to speak, i.e. without any coercion or threat of violence or otherwise, so trafficking victims are not what I am writing about here. I am also not talking about women who are forced into slavelike positions through debt bondage. I am talking about the women who made a conscious choice to enter the trade, whether or not it was because of societal norms and/or pressures. I am also focusing this post on women, because this is the area of my knowledge and interest and while I am sure there are certain similarities between male and female sex workers, the societal views on the both genders differ greatly.

Some people argue that prostitution is indeed evil. It is a strong expression of men’s view on women as their commodity to use and trade as they wish. Women cannot make the choice to become sex workers, they are always forced into it by society, economic circumstances or force. Even if women openly state they are working in the sex trade voluntarily, it is only because society has forced the view upon them that women have to be at the disposition of males. Society requires them to serve men.

While there is some validity in that argument and I would not doubt that many women are forced into prostitution due to economic and social circumstances or, indeed, violence (in fact, I have read a lot of research that proves this), there is also a danger in it. By arguing that even women who voluntarily enter the trade cannot make that choice because there is this metaphysical veil of male oppression surrounding them, they are effectively denying any choice to any woman. Furthermore, by taking away the agency in this way, saying that men stand behind these women’s choices they are reinforcing the assumption that these women are not strong enough and thus need saving. They are essentially reinforcing the same gender stereotypes they are trying to battle.

I personally do not believe that I am one to say whether or not these women have made that choice or not. I am not them, I do not know of the potential circumstances that led them into the sex trade and I cannot answer for them the question of whether or not they are happy doing so. Only they themselves can answer that. This is where the quagmire comes in. Sociological and psychological research done on the topic can argue both ways, but essentially it is subjective, and dealing with something subjective, a researcher cannot always trust that she or he will get truthful answers from their research subjects. Point being, we cannot know the absoute truth as to what these women feel, all our assumptions are subjective based on our reality.

I do recognise that there are several problems with prostitution. Women and men all over the world are used and absued by people who buy sexual favours of them. Moreover, I have yet to hear a compelling argument that argues that female oppression is not reinforced by the current practices of prostitution. However, I also believe that it is a part of women’s liberation, not to mention sexual liberation, to make that choice to become a sex worker. If a woman feels content with her decision to become a sex worker it can be very empowering in the sense that she is able to break social norms and taboos and do what she chooses to do, just like the movement of women who burned their bras.

To answer the question I posed at the beginning of this entry: No, I do not believe that prostitution is inherently evil. On the contrary, as I just said, I believe that it can be empowering for women to take control over their lives and make a choice like that. Sadly, I also believe that in the current state of the world, this is not possible. The view on women needs to be improved before we can have a society that respects sex workers, that will not abuse legalisation of prostitution. Currently legalisation of prostitution generally means an increase in trafficking victims who are used and abused, sold, threatened and held in debt-bondage. There are men who seize the opportunity to reinforce their own views of women as near equals to cattle and society’s view on sex work is too riddled with old-fashioned morals that too oppress women in their own way. Until we can have a society where women are respected as decision-makers, as versatile individuals and as worthy of the same status and rights as men, this freedom is just harmful.