Tag Archives: clients

Melissa Farley and the US government Want You to Stop Buying Sex: End Demand

This piece was originally published in Good Vibrations Magazine 19 July 2011.

Newsweek has released a report on Melissa Farley’s nasty new study on men who buy sex of all kinds, which was financed by the Hunt Alternatives Fund as part of their 10-year plan to End Demand for buying sex. Now the latest Trafficking in Persons Report reveals that End Demand is also part of US government policy, which means that some of the big spending – $109 million last year – on anti-trafficking programmes is going to anti-client projects. US Trafficking magnate Luis CdeBaca attended the Hunt planning meetings, so this development is hardly a big surprise. I recently wrote about a World Gender War in the form of campaigns against male sexuality: desire, penetration and the penis itself: an international trend, but money from a rich philanthropist certainly puts the US in charge.

The theory that if men stopped buying sex no one would offer it anymore is a breath-taking over-simplification of the many different services and desires involving money and sex and the multitude of social and cultural conditions involved. How people now selling sex as a livelihood would earn their living if clients disappear is never mentioned – which is disturbing. I appreciate that campaigners are talking long-term and utopically, but to never address economic and employment issues seriously? I hope they do not feel that preventing women from selling sex means saving them from a fate worse than death.

This notion of demand fails to square with some well-known client types, such as the one Thomas Rowlandson portrayed here around 1800, described by the Wellcome Library as A prostitute leading an old man into the bedroom and taking money from him, implying that her services will act like a tonic and preserve his state of health. I guess Farley didn’t manage to find any men like this to talk to.

Here is the End Demand statement from this year’s TIP, ridiculously called a Fact Sheet, when it is only a moral aside revealing the government’s wish that culture would change. Yes, they wrote the phrase new innovations.

Prevention : Fighting Sex Trafficking by Curbing Demand for Prostitution

A growing understanding of the nature of trafficking in persons has led to new innovations in addressing demand. Corporate standards for monitoring supply chains and government policies for eliminating trafficking from procurement practices are making new inroads in the fight against modern slavery. But the fact remains: if there were no demand for commercial sex, trafficking in persons for commercial sexual exploitation would not exist in the form it does today. This reality underscores the need for continued strong efforts to reduce demand for sex trafficking by enacting policies and promoting cultural attitudes that reject the idea of paying for sex.

Policies to Address Demand for Commercial Sex

Governments can lead both in practice and by example by implementing zero-tolerance policies for employees, uniformed servicemembers, and contractors paying for sex. If paying for sex is prohibited for those who work for, or do business with, a government, the ripple effects could be farreaching. Through their massive procurement, governments have an impact on a wide range of private-sector actors, and policies banning the purchase of sex could in turn reach a significant part of the private sector as well. At the same time, governments have the capacity to raise awareness of the subtle and brutal nature of this crime by requiring training of employees, contractors, and subcontractors about how individuals subjected to sex trafficking are victimized through coercion. Too often, trafficking victims are wrongly discounted as “consenting” adults. The use of violence to enslave trafficking victims is pervasive, but there are other more subtle forms of fraud and coercion that also prevent a person from escaping compelled servitude. A prostituted person may have initially consented, may believe that she or he is in love with her or his trafficker, may not self-identify as a victim, may not be operating in the vicinity of the pimp, or may have been away from the pimp’s physical control with what seemed to be ample opportunity to ask for help or flee. None of these factors, taken alone or in sum, means that she or he is not a victim of a severe form of trafficking. Ensuring that these facts are part of the required training for every government employee and everyone who does business with or on behalf of a government is an important step in shifting attitudes about commercial sex.

Moral Leadership in the Future of this Struggle

Strong policies are critical for ridding countries of all forms of modern slavery, but ultimately for encouraging a broader cultural shift in order to make meaningful progress in reducing demand for sex trafficking. This can only be achieved by rejecting long-held notions that regard commercial sex as a “boys will be boys” phenomenon, and instead sending the clear message that buying sex is wrong. Lawmakers have the power to craft effective antitrafficking legislation, but they also have a responsibility to represent values that do not tolerate abuses of commercial sex. Business leaders need to cultivate a corporate culture that leaves behind outdated thinking that turns a blind eye to the sex trade, including the adoption of codes of conduct that prohibit purchasing sex. And leaders in civil society – from teachers to parents to ministers – must foster the belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to reduce the demand for sex trafficking. It is especially important to reach young men with a strong message of demand reduction to help them understand the exploitation involved with commercial sex and combat the glamorization of pimp culture. It is every person’s individual responsibility to think about their contributions to trafficking. Laws and policies, partnerships and activism will continue to be critical to the struggle against modern slavery, but it will also be the day-to-day decisions of individual men and women that will bring an end to sex trafficking and carry forth a message of freedom for all.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington DC June 2011

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist


Conviction and punishment in Sweden for buying sex, 1999-2009

Back in March people in Canada contacted me to ask about Gunilla Ekberg’s claim, in talks given there, that there have been 3500 men found guilty under the Swedish law against buying sex (sexköpslagen) since it was passed in 1999. Why would Ekberg make a mistake about something that can be verified on the website of the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ)? The total is 757 over eleven years.

Until recently, the maximum penalty for those convicted of buying sex was six months in jail or a rather small fine. No one was ever jailed, as far as I can tell; jail-time is not mandated when penalties are minor. Therefore, the nearly unanimous vote in the Swedish parliament last month was about making it possible for a convicted person to go to jail, as a year-penalty pushes the crime upwards in importance. Perhaps one could say, then, that this apparently fierce vote was more about making the original 1999 law more coherent: if you seriously believe something is a crime, then you don’t want it to be never punished. If you see what I mean.

Numbers of convictions for buying sex in Sweden by year, 1999-2009

Source: BRÅ

Is this a large or small number of convictions? How many men were detained by the police but the case dropped? That information isn’t available. Activists and scholars tend to focus on the law’s rhetoric and presumptions, but it is never easy to put such a law into practice. Consider the document BRÅ published in 1999 on the subject of these difficulties from a policing point of view:

Evidential difficulties are the most common reason for the discontinuation of police investigations into suspected offences of this type. The most difficult thing to prove has been that the parties have entered into an agreement that sexual services will be provided in exchange for payment. It is an offence without a complainant and even though the prostitutes are obliged to give evidence, this obligation is limited since they are not obliged to reveal that they have themselves participated in an act of prostitution. Even if the prostitutes might consider giving evidence about the incident, it has been deemed difficult to reach them to obtain their co-operation in investigations since they often have no fixed address or telephone number.

So although the Swedish parliament recently raised the maximum penalty from six months’ incarceration to a year, the difficulty of getting convictions remains.

Thanks to Louise Persson for help with the numbers.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Europe’s anti-prostitution initiatives multiply: EU itself and now France

Anyone with romantic ideas about Europe’s sophisticated tolerance of all matters sexual is due for disenchantment. A Europe free from prostitution is the name of the European Women’s Lobby’s campaign, which I find questionable because they receive public funding from the EU yet several member states permit and regulate at least some forms of selling sex. But the EWL have always had a political commitment ‘to work towards a Europe free from prostitution, by supporting key abolitionist principles which state that the prostitution of women and girls constitutes a fundamental violation of women’s human rights, a serious form of male violence against women, and a key obstacle to gender equality in our societies.

Then last December the European Parliament passed new rules against trafficking that included the recommendation ‘to discourage demand, Member States should also consider taking measures to establish as a criminal offence the use of services of a victim, with the knowledge that he/she has been trafficked.’ This is a perfect example of the slide between anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution.

However, France has responded positively to the idea and is now the latest country to put criminalising clients of sex workers on the mainstream political agenda. Note that sponsorship of the law comes from both left- and right-wing parties (this is usual). And that France has prohibited indoor prostitution (maisons closes/brothels) for 65 years and persecutes migrant sex workers regularly outdoors. Forget the romantic cliché.

France considers making prostitution illegal – Excerpts from The Telegraph, 14 April 2011

A parliamentary commission of French MPs on Wednesday recommended treating the clients of prostitutes as criminals who should face fines of up to £2,500 or prison. The Socialist Danielle Bousquet and Guy Geoffroy of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP said that 80 per cent of the estimated 20,000 sex-workers in France were foreigners and victims of slavery or trafficking. [Note from LA: this claim from a UN report in 2009 has never been and cannot be substantiated.]

“To penalise clients is to make them understand that they are participating in a form of exploitation of the vulnerability of others,” said their report. Roselyne Bachelot, the social affairs minister, said she supported the proposals. “There is no such thing as freely chosen and consenting prostitution. The sale of sexual acts means women’s bodies are made available for men, independently of the wishes of those women.”

While proposals for a law could be drawn up this month, it is unlikely to reach parliament before next year. In France brothels have been illegal since 1946 and pimping is against the law as is paying for sex with a minor. But prostitution is not outlawed. Mr Sarkozy toughened prostitution rules in 2003 while interior minister in a controversial law forbidding women to loiter in prostitution hang outs in revealing clothes. Sex-workers’ groups in France regularly stage demonstrations demanding a proper legal status. A recent survey found six out of ten French men and women wanted brothels to be legalised. . .

Les deux cotés du debat, de Libération

Truckers, truck stops, lot lizards and sex trafficking victims: what confusion

The incredible double-messaging of US prostitution law finds perfect expression in two recent stories from the state of Oklahoma. In one, everyone agrees that prostitutes are a nuisance and a judge forces the owners of a rest stop to post signs, fix a fence, provide cctv and hire guards to arrest sex workers. (The name lot lizards presumably refers to how baking-hot people get hanging around on black asphalt in the sun.) In the second, truckers are admonished to understand that sex workers are victims of trafficking who are passively transported and need rescuing, the focus being, of course, on adolescents (who, we learned the other day, are mostly running away from home.)

One would almost think these stories are describing two separate groups, one that’s bad and one that’s good, but that’s not true, of course. All the people involved are selling sex in truckers’ rest stops. Some truckers are buying sex. Some owners of truck stops are willing for this trade to go on. For people who don’t want it to go on, however, there are two choices: blame the sex workers or rescue the victims. Very confusing.

Truck stop ordered to clean up prostitute problems

Jesse Wells, 8 April 2011, KFOR

Oklahoma City — An Oklahoma County judge forces a metro truck stop to clean up it’s act. . . “The Five Star was symbolic of the worst problem of prostitution in the city,” video vigilante Brian Bates said. For a long time, Oklahoma City police negotiated with the truck stop owners to curtail the illegal activity but got no results. That’s when they took the issue to court. “Prostitution had been running rampant at that business and the owner wasn’t doing anything to stop it,” explains Oklahoma City Police MSgt. Gary Knight.

The court order will now force the business to post additional “no trespassing” and “no soliciting” signs, repair and enhance the fencing, provide continuous video surveillance and hire security guards who can arrest prostitutes day or night. . .

Oklahoma truckers learn how to stop human trafficking

By Kristi Eaton, 25 March 2011, Associated Press/TheTrucker.com

Oklahoma City — It’s been nearly 30 years, but Mark Brown still remembers the face of the teenage girl who approached him at a truck stop in California. He’d just finished a long day of driving across the country when the girl, who wasn’t more than 15 or 16 years old, knocked on his window and asked if he wanted a date. He said he ignored her and let her proceed down the row of trucks, knocking on windows trying to sell her body for money. “I still regret that decision to this day,” he said. “I should have helped her.”

Brown now uses his position as assistant director of Driving Instruction at Central Tech in Drumright to teach new drivers about what they can do combat the industry’s hidden secret. He passes out wallet cards with tips and information to students and is going to distribute a training video to other schools across the country about human trafficking. And it’s all because of a partnership with Truckers Against Trafficking, an initiative that hopes to educate and raise awareness about domestic sex trafficking along the nation’s highways. The program by the anti-human trafficking organization Chapter 61 Ministries specifically targets young girls and boys who it says are transported across the country to prostitute at truck stops and plazas.

Lyn Thompson, who started Chapter 61 Ministries in 2007 with her four daughters and a family friend, said she developed the idea for Truckers Against Trafficking after learning the important role gas station attendants play in identifying victims of human trafficking. Taking it one step further, she began focusing on truck drivers. “Traffickers have to transport their victims, whether by plane, train, ship, bus, car or truck,” said Thompson, a Tulsa resident who acts as a national coordinator for the initiative. “So, all the transportation industries are first-line defenders against this crime.”

The girls and boys who work the trucks stops and plazas are called “lot lizards,” said Kendis Paris, a national coordinator for TAT based in Denver. She said the group is focusing on kids under the age of 18 because by law, they are victims of human trafficking if forced into the sex trade. “I honestly don’t think anybody wakes up and says, ‘I want to sell my body,’ but the kids really have no choice,” she said, adding that many are runaways who have been coerced into prostitution. By attending trucking industry events and meetings, Paris hopes to get the wallet cards in to the hands of every trucker in America. Trucker drivers can call a hotline number listed to report a crime or ask questions if they are unsure something illegal is taking place.

“The issue is difficult to police or get control of, so that’s why TAT’s effort is so important, because we feel like if we can educate the professional truck driver, nine out of 10 of them are going to want to get these people arrested who are doing this stuff,” said truck stop plaza owner Sam Smith, who has hung up TAT posters and distributed wallet cards to drivers at his Nashville, Tenn., store.

International marriage broking called trafficking, of course

There must be a sociological principle to describe the tendency for a wide variety of phenomena to be subsumed into a single reductionist label. Start a conversation about trafficking nowadays and ensuing comments will relate to rape, sex tourism, child abuse, organ sales, surrogate motherhood, egg donation and prostitution. At the Battle of Ideas, someone brought up ethnic cleansing, too: Everything becomes trafficking.

Marriages between older white men and younger less-white women, or richer men and poorer women, have long been condemned as trafficking, although research abounds on how the businesses work, even before the Internet made websites possible. The condemnation of this sort of relationship rests on the belief that there is a universal right way to meet and become a couple that is violated here, and the history of humankind, in which matchmaking may be an even older profession than selling sex, is forgotten. As is the fact that all marriages are financial arrangements. A lot of critics must also be forgetting that some of their own ancestors’ marriages were arranged by intermediaries, and sometimes brides travelled to another country to marry men they had not met before. The following report from a financial publication focuses on the male point of view about the prices involved, and there is no doubt that comments are sexist and women’s points of view lacking. Does it make sense for someone from NOW to call it all trafficking, however?

The Mail-Order-Bride Trade Is Flourishing

Teddy Wayne, Bloomberg Business Week, 6 January 2011

Times are good for Joseph Weiner. The former investment banker and Wharton [Bachelor of Science in Economics] lives with his wife of 27 years in a three-bedroom London townhouse. When he isn’t lounging in his private garden, Weiner spends his free time playing tennis at the exclusive Hurlingham Club and gliding around town in his Lexus. Though he doesn’t claim to be a philosopher, Weiner’s insight into the human heart has led to a lucrative second career as a matchmaker and packager of amorous adventures. “Every guy wants a beautiful younger woman,” he explains. “It’s the nature of us.”

Fourteen years ago, Weiner, 73, founded Hand-In-Hand, a London-based matchmaking agency that charges male customers up to $2,000 for a “supervised courtship”—a process that matches them with younger Eastern European women. Hand-In-Hand has since grown into a multinational operation with 30 satellite offices from the U.S. to Abu Dhabi. “We’re still opening up franchises, and business is booming,” says Weiner in his thick New York accent. “Financial problems are the biggest cause of divorce. There are more financial problems now. There are more people available!

In the age of globalization, the international matchmaking industry—still known in many circles as the mail-order bride trade—is thriving like never before. The Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit organization in Falls Church, Va., that protects immigrant women, estimates that the number of mail-order marriages in the U.S. more than doubled between 1999 and 2007, when up to 16,500 such unions were sealed.

International matchmakers are now a growing segment of the U.S. online dating industry, which, according to market research firm IBISWorld, racked up more than $2 billion in 2010 revenue. Since the recession began, “we’ve seen more men sign up,” says John Adams, the co-founder of Phoenix-based A Foreign Affair, which charges $4,000 for the right to attend champagne-soaked “socials” in various Eastern European cities. The company estimates it sparked nearly 1,000 engagements this year. “Men evaluate their lives a little more closely when the economy becomes more difficult. They look at what’s really important to them and try to find that one person they want to spend the rest of their lives with.” Adams would know. He met his wife, Tanya, at a 1997 St. Petersburg social sponsored by his own company.

Amid the proliferation of dating websites and matchmaking reality shows, venturing abroad for love has taken on a more acceptable mien. International matchmakers have succeeded, in part, by targeting middle-aged men who find dating troublesome—men who, according to Weiner, “don’t have the money to go out on dates and go on weekends to Vegas and Atlantic City. They want someone to take care of them.” While they might not have the means to secure a more conveniently located trophy wife, they must have enough money to travel to Eastern Europe and spend thousands for a shot at eternal bliss. Though love may be priceless, notes Weiner, “$2,000 to get a beautiful woman—it’s a bargain!” According to David L. Knabel, the owner and president of Louisville-based matchmaker A Volga Girl, “It’s no different than a dating site in the U.S.—except it’s international marriage.”

In 2007, Ben Baligad hit a dry spell. The divorced 53-year-old eschewed the San Diego dating scene after discovering Ukraine’s favorable gender ratio—0.92 males for every female between ages 15 and 64, according to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. After enlisting companies such as Global Ladies and Army of Brides, the insurance salesman made three trips to Ukraine. The third time was the charm: Baligad met his potential future wife, Natalya Chuprina, 18 years his junior. “I’m planning on bringing her to the U.S. as soon as I get my finances straight,” he says.

By pulling on the heartstrings of single men, the mail-order bride industry has at its disposal untold financial opportunities. In addition to membership fees—which run $29.95 per month at A Foreign Affair—and “romance tours” that can cost suitors thousands, many sites charge between $6 and $8 to translate each e-mail exchanged between interlocutors, and even more for phone and instant message translation. Some companies, like Hand-In-Hand, have also expanded into same-sex international matchmaking. “We’ve been doing gay business for about a year and a half,” boasts Weiner.

Though every site claims to police its users, scams are common. Les Vancil, the founder of Easy Ukraine, an Ohio-based site targeting men traveling abroad for matchmaking opportunities, says the problems lie with the Eastern European agencies contracted to recruit women. Vancil asserts these companies post fake profiles, ratchet up prices for translation, and sometimes impersonate women to ask for money.

When customers complain, matchmakers “wipe their hands clean,” says Steve Ewald, a Detroit accountant who stopped using such sites after several unsatisfying experiences. They blame the agencies, he claims, who blame the women. Ben Baligad says the agency that helped him communicate with his girlfriend skimmed 10 percent off the money he sent her for train fare and phone bills. He also suspects it posed as her in e-mails demanding he pay for a pricey apartment rental for his visit. He hasn’t brought it up with his girlfriend, though. “I think she thinks I will get angry,” he says.

The arrangement can be far worse for the women involved. After a few highly publicized murders of women brought to America through international matchmakers, the U.S. passed the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBRA). The statute requires background checks on U.S. citizens before communication via the matchmakers. Those who fail to comply cannot obtain a Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancé(e).

However, couples can get around this obstacle by claiming they met through other avenues. There also tends to be little enforcement of IMBRA when the agencies are based outside the U.S. (Hand-In-Hand, for example, is registered in St. Kitts.) “The mail-order bride industry is a softer version of human trafficking,” says Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women. Ossorio also acknowledges that some relationships work out—but perhaps not in a way that would please Betty Friedan. “A lot of people who are attracted to it are just looking for a woman who’s docile and obedient,” she says.

For some companies, such submissiveness is a selling point. Hand-In-Hand’s website trumpets the fact that its females are “unspoiled by feminism.” Company founder Weiner argues this form of chauvinism—like the mail-order bride business itself—is economically motivated. “You take a beautiful woman from the Czech Republic and you bring her into your home, she does all your cooking and cleaning and ironing,” he says. “At the end of the day, the service is free.” Hand-In-Hand estimates the potential savings of a homemaking wife at $150 per week.

Women from economically troubled regions also take part in order to secure an American visa. “People around the world still view the U.S. as a highly favorable place to live,” says A Foreign Affair’s Adams. His wife agrees. “I worked a lot before, but then I was waking up at nine in the morning and was like, ‘Whoa, what do I have to do now?’ ” says Tanya Adams, who remains a supporter of the company. “I even recommended it to my niece.”

Perhaps love can always find a way. Most sites claim a 75 percent or greater success rate, and this boundless quest for passion—one inflamed by hard times—continues to benefit matchmaking entrepreneurs. “Wonderful times for me,” Weiner says. “I can’t complain.”

Prostitute, Amanti, Protette: Berlusconi’s world and stigma against sex workers

Prostitute, amanti, protette

Giulia Garofalo, 28 gennaio 2011, Rivista Il Mulino

L’acquisto e la vendita di sesso non sono cosa rara, non solo in Italia, ma in tutti i Paesi europei, come ad esempio la Germania e il Regno Unito, che pure dall’Italia si distinguono, fra l’altro, per il basso livello di corruzione, l’accountability della classe politica e l’esistenza di meccanismi funzionanti contro la discriminazione e l’harassment delle donne nei luoghi di lavoro – soprattutto se sono luoghi dove si producono valori pubblici, come è il caso dei media e della politica. In altre parole, la prostituzione è cosa distinta dall’intrigo illecito di scambi in cui è immerso il nostro presidente del Consiglio.

Nel criticare Silvio Berlusconi, e le persone – donne e uomini – che con lui fanno affari, occorre essere attenti a non confondere i piani di analisi. Uno dei rischi è quello di riprodurre lo “stigma della prostituzione”, ovvero quell’insieme di opinioni, comportamenti, leggi che isolano, discriminano e puniscono chiunque scambi il proprio *sex work* in maniera esplicita contro denaro. Come affermato fin dagli anni Ottanta dalle organizzazioni delle-dei *sex workers* (in Italia dal Comitato per i Diritti Civili delle Prostitute), e come ormai ampiamente documentato dalla ricerca (si vedano ad esempio i molti lavori dell’antropologa Laura Agustín), le forme di questo scambio sono molte e diverse per regole e organizzazione, così come diversi sono i servizi offerti, che possono andare dai più “normali” ai più “creativi”. Prostituzione di strada, escorting, lavoro in appartamento sono solo alcuni esempi. A seconda dei valori che ci sono più cari, tenderemo a condannare alcune forme e forse non altre. Per esempio, chi tiene al molto citato “decoro” potrebbe essere felice di vedere criminalizzate (ed espulse se straniere) le donne e le trans che lavorano in strada, come prevede il disegno di legge Carfagna, e come già fanno negli ultimi anni molte amministrazioni comunali di destra e di sinistra. Preferirà l’idea di pratiche discrete e luoghi nascosti. Preferirà però per lo più non parlare seriamente di chi, come tutte le lavoratrici del sesso in Italia (comprese quelle che lavorano con clienti ricchi), può sì in teoria lavorare (se è di cittadinanza europea), ma in compenso è resa invisibile del dibattito pubblico, non è credibile di fronte alle autorità di polizia e giudiziarie, è punibile se lavora con altre colleghe, se si fa pubblicità, se impiega una segretaria, è sfrattabile se lavora in una casa che affitta, è ricattabile se ha anche un altro mestiere, è costretta a una vita di sotterfugi e bugie se vuole evitare che le siano tolti i figli, o il suo compagno arrestato. E la lista non è affatto completa.

Chi invece ha a cuore i diritti delle donne, concetto altrettanto mobilitato in questi giorni, condannerà le politiche di pulizia, perché è noto che non fanno che aumentare l’invisibilità dello sfruttamento (e del lavoro forzato), la debolezza contrattuale delle lavoratrici, il potere del racket. Eppure forse non saprà bene cosa pensare della  prostituzione in altri luoghi, perché il dibattito in Italia su questo è spesso confuso.

Per creare chiarezza, può non essere inutile ricordare qualche elemento di ordine materiale. Con la legge Merlin (1958, ancora vigente) chiusero le cosiddette “case chiuse”, strutture statali variegate che garantivano agli uomini di tutte le classi socio-economiche l’accesso a servizi sessuali ben organizzati e legali. Finì così la vergogna di lavoratrici prive dei diritti fondamentali, quali il voto o la possibilità di cambiare lavoro o anche solo luogo di lavoro, e dei diritti specifici del mestiere, come dire di no a un particolare cliente o atto sessuale. Finì il monopolio dello Stato, per cui ogni forma di scambio prostituzionale al di fuori delle case chiuse era perseguibile. Da allora, si è aperta un’epoca di maggiore potere per le molte donne (e poi, sempre più a partire dagli anni Settanta, anche trans e uomini) che si trovano a fornire servizi sessuali agli uomini in maniera così netta, trasparente e negoziata da non rientrare nella categoria (oggi più legittimata?) di “amante” o “protetta”. Sono loro le “prostitute” nel senso più neutro e corretto del termine: per una prestazione negoziata e definita chiedono una retribuzione anticipata, in denaro o beni materiali, ma in ogni caso non una promessa di “favori” e “appoggi”. Per questo la legge punisce e la società isola, come invece non fa con lo scambio di “favori” e “appoggi” contro sesso. Questo tipo di lavoro è spesso, per chi lo fa, la migliore delle opzioni disponibili in campo lavorativo, date le proprie aspirazioni.

Se non siamo disposti a considerare “vittime” o “incoscienti” centinaia di migliaia di donne, e se non siamo disposti a condannare le aspirazione di autonomia economica, di studio e di carriera delle donne, allora il problema politico della prostituzione, dal punto di vista dei diritti delle donne potrebbe essere solo quello della sua criminalizzazione, e delle poche altre opzioni per raggiungere queste aspirazioni – tra le quali si trovano il diventare “amante” o “protetta”. In ogni caso, acquistare servizi sessuali da una lavoratrice del sesso in maniera rispettosa e corretta, come risulta che sia nella grande maggioranza dei casi, non può essere assimilato al modo in cui in Italia politici, capi, professori, parenti ottengono sesso offrendo, o a volte solo promettendo, cariche, favori, contratti, esami o sostegno familiare.

Super Bowl fans greeted with End Demand (for paid sex) billboards in Texas

The Super Bowl of US football is approaching and I am pleased the media have largely not been disseminating the myth of the 40 000 itinerant trafficking victims who will soon descend. The police chief of the city of Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys, did try to get permission a while back to

ban convicted prostitutes from the entertainment district. The proposed exclusionary zone, which would have been the first in Texas, would have let Arlington officers arrest convicted prostitutes and their customers if they were found in the area without a permissible reason.

Since all buying and selling of sex is against the law there, this request might seem odd, but I suppose the wording would make arresting people easier. Permission was refused, but there have been all sorts of awareness-raising events about child sex slavery and now here are billboards warning men not to buy sex: Dear John, You Never Know! This Could Be You! These messages to End Demand have become a whole genre of public expression, this one belonging not only to the SHAMING variety (see Sevilla’s signs) but to the THREAT variety (see UK signs). Clients Beware.

Please do note a difference from the usual victimising of women who sell sex, though, as the story refers to prostitutes looking to cash in on big spenders from out of town. This is still the way a lot of people think about sex workers and at least grants them some agency in their own lives.

Arlington police using billboards near Cowboys Stadium to try to deter prostitution

15 January 2011, Susan Schrock, Star-Telegram

Arlington, Texas. There’s one souvenir that football fans probably don’t want from their Super Bowl Sunday experience — a police mug shot. Arlington police have posted mug shots of men convicted of or given deferred adjudication for prostitution-related crimes on electronic billboards near Cowboys Stadium to discourage would-be johns. The billboards, featuring four booking mugs and a message, are on Interstate 30 and Texas 360 at entryways to Arlington’s entertainment district. “We want people to think twice before they engage in that activity, because maybe they don’t want their face on a billboard,” Assistant Police Chief James Hawthorne said. More than 100,000 visitors are expected in the city for Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6.

The Super Bowl has brought a blitz of human-trafficking awareness events and enforcement activities to North Texas. Law enforcement personnel, volunteers and advocates have been concerned that the high-profile event will draw prostitutes looking to cash in on big spenders from out of town. The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force is teaming up with local officials to provide resources and training before the Super Bowl, which Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called “one of the biggest human-trafficking events in the United States.”

Arlington police have worked for years to combat prostitution around the entertainment district, which includes top tourist attractions such as the stadium and Rangers Ballpark. Recent efforts have included stings at budget motels and electronic message boards along roadways warning visitors about high-crime areas. The department had posted john mug shots online as part of its prostitution crackdown, but it had never bought billboard space, Hawthorne said. The space was bought with federal grant funds, police spokeswoman Tiara Richard said. The billboards also encourage residents and visitors to report suspicious activity.

“With prostitution, there is an element of human trafficking that exists. More than just addressing the criminal element, we also recognize the opportunity to rescue some of these victims who might be in situations where they feel trapped, helpless and unable to get out,” Hawthorne said. “We want as many eyes and ears on that issue so we can be effective in dealing with it.”

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Skarhed admits scientific method was lacking in evaluation of Swedish law against buying sex

Louise Persson and I have twice complained loudly in the Swedish media about the complete absence of scientific principle and method in the government’s evaluation of its law criminalising clients of sex workers. Anna Skarhed never replied, nor did anyone else who might be expected to want to defend the report published in July. Now it turns out that in December Skarhed admitted quite openly to a reporter from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention that she never cared about science or methodology the slightest bit.

Some have objected to the scientific validity of our investigation. Which is fine, but in my view we have been able to show that the law has had a effect in accordance to the objective: to show that we don’t want prostitution in society.

[En del har haft invändningar mot vetenskapligheten i vår utredning. Det kan man ha, men enligt min syn har vi kunnat visa att lagen haft effekt utifrån syftet: att visa att vi inte vill ha prostitution i samhället.]

It is wrong to refer to effect when you have done no research to find out if one even exists, but Skarhed’s meaning is clear: The goal of the so-called evaluation was never to evaluate anything but instead to demonstrate ideology: a typical End Demand strategy. So it is Orwellian double-speak to claim anything was actually investigated or evaluated. All they did was pretend, and spend public money on it.

This should be front-page news! Although I know that many Swedish people object to this sort of philistine arrogance, it is not so easy to dismantle a policy once it has become embedded in bureaucracy and forms part of a national brand. However, there are indications that more people than usual are annoyed – about which, more later.

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Campaigns against kerb-crawling are part of End Demand, an anti-prostitution strategy that does not support sex workers!

You would scarcely know that selling sex on your own is legal in England from reading this story about a town in the Midlands. Residents get annoyed by the sight and sound of interactions between street workers and punters, and contradictory laws make pleasing everyone impossible. But note how this particular ‘prostitution campaign’ is aimed at stopping it, at moving prostitutes on – to where? To nowhere.

How is this possible if it is legal to sell sex? Because a lot of other activities are not legal, including kerb-crawling, owning a brothel, working in a brothel and a range of promotional activities, including soliciting, loitering and putting up cards with contact information in public places. The result is that the person standing in the street looking for customers gets moved on, over and over.

Campaigns against kerb-crawling belong to the now-common End Demand strategy, which, in its most pretentious form aspires to stop everyone on the planet from ever buying sex from other people. Other techniques include attempting to shame world-be clients about their masculinity, as Spanish billboards illustrate. Kerb-crawling is a far more modest police target which only wants to stop cars from stopping to discuss sexual transactions with people in the street. Tactics include signs like these, closed-circuit television cameras, threats to post names publicly and the occasional street operation to arrest drivers, to which the media are invited so pictures will show how active the police are. Meanwhile, the sex workers are moved on. Here is the story from Luton.

Prostitution campaign is ‘successful’

24 December 2010, Luton Today

Police are hailing a four month long operation to combat prostitution in High Town as a resounding success. The number of complaints made to officers regarding sex workers and anti-social behaviour in the area have fallen dramatically say police, after an operation involving several other local authorities including Luton Borough Council, began in August. The three phased campaign was launched after mounting anger from residents.

It included an observation stage where officers talked to sex workers followed by high profile police action and publicity aimed at deterring kerb crawlers. The latest phase of the campaign, which lasted eight weeks, came to an end last week with the metal lamp post signs and billboard at Dudley Street being removed.

Regular patrols aimed at deterring and arresting kerb crawlers has seen the number of vehicles fall and far fewer people loitering on street corners. . .

. . . we think the three phase approach has really worked to deter the problem and at the last High Town meeting, residents said that they were keen to see the signs and billboard used elsewhere should it be necessary. Obviously, the sex trade has been and will continue to be, a longer term problem so the partnership is still actively responding to residents’ concerns. Where we’ve heard of sex workers loitering at new locations we’ve visited the affected residents, started observations and redeployed street cleaning services to remove litter and needles.

The Luton News exclusively revealed in September how Operation Turtle had seen police step up patrols in High Town asking sex workers to move on, issuing warning letters to kerb-crawlers and adding their details to the police Automatic Number Plate Recognition database so they could be easily identified if they reoffended. . .

Operation Turtle?

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Change the world by getting men to stop buying sex: Spain

Because YOU pay, prostitution exists. This campaign, financed by Madrid’s Equal Opportunity programme some years back, takes a bottom-line, you-are-guilty approach.

Are you worth so little you have to pay?

These two come from Sevilla’s anti-demand campaign, also from a few years ago. The men’s clothes apparently show that different types of men buy sex, and the idea is to dissuade them by saying buying sex is the sign of a worthless person.

Do professional psychologists advise how to word these messages? There is no way to know whether anyone is discouraged by them, but as with so many anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking campaigns, one goal is to demonstrate the correct gender-equal values. Taking away the source of income from women depending on these clients, and further consequences, are completely ignored. Before setting up such projects to end demand, abolitionists should be forced to come up with more, wonderful, available, good-paying jobs for women.

Buying sex abroad causes trafficking at home? Flawed reasoning about the sex industry from Scotland

The women in this kind of drawing are often described as prostitutes (or loose women, with the same moral value), which would make all the men potential clients. Is that a useful way to think about this sort of socialising? At the time, patriarchy was an overwhelming determining reality in the Europe pictured. But even so, I think it’s wrong to reduce such a social scene to a one-dimensional story: Men Exploit Women. In the following story, an obviously impressive person (described as ‘one of the world’s most respected legal brains’) talks about trafficking in a similarly unuseful way. My comments in italics interlaced with excerpts from the story, with the emphasis on her implausible assumptions.

Inquiry into sex trafficking in Scotland wants to hear from men who use prostitutes

Annie Brown, 30 June 2010, DailyRecord

An inquiry into sex trafficking in Scotland is asking punters who use prostitutes to talk to them – in secret. Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is heading the probe, said men who buy sex can help build a realistic picture of the extent of the trade.

How, exactly? Does Kennedy imagine they will have more than what is called anecdotal evidence? Or is this about guys who surf escort sites, so she thinks clients will be able to provide numbers of how many sites or escorts or what?

Kennedy said: “I want to hear from these men. I need to hear directly from people who have experiences of trafficking. I think if you want to have a proper sense of the problem, it is better to hear from witnesses themselves directly. It might be they are men who have used prostitutes and they have had an experience where they have been with a woman who was clearly coerced into prostitution. We need help to understand the scope of the problem but those who can do that are often the very people who, through shame or fear, don’t want to step forward. We will guarantee them absolute anonymity.”

The inquiry is into ‘sex trafficking’, so why does Kennedy want to talk with clients? As someone who understands legal language she must know that sloppy talk like this is confusing. Or does she think that clients meet people who’ve facilitated migrants travel? And why will talking to a few clients give her an idea of ‘the scope’ of the overall problem? On the contrary it will give her some anecdotes, a few new ideas about how it all works, a couple of leads.

She said: “Senior police officers do think that there has been a shift. Perhaps because men are travelling much more, certainly on stag weekends and buying sex abroad. They are experiencing sex in a more exotic way, activities that they don’t participate in with their wives and partners. It becomes something that they want here.

This is irresponsible claptrap, castles in the air. Everyone is travelling more, yes. What does experiencing sex in a ‘more exotic way’ mean? Having it with foreigners in a foreign country? What ‘activities’ is she imagining they engage in that they never do in Scotland? And she’s totally guessing that then they ‘want it’ at home – there’s no evidence for that. I’m sure she thinks it’s common sense but it’s just imagination.

The demand for so many different nationalities is perpetuating the horrific trade in human beings. Kennedy said: “This is the underbelly of globalisation. The same things that make global markets work, make black markets work too. You get international crime now in a way that we didn’t have before. Everything is marketable and sadly that includes human beings.”

If Kennedy is doing research, why is she telling us the results beforehand? There is no huge body of evidence proving that men are ‘demanding different nationalities’. Liking the idea of having sex with different sorts of people, maybe?

The size of Scotland is one of the reasons for holding the inquiry here. It will be easier to get a country-wide picture because there are fewer police forces, social work departments and agencies which deal with trafficking. Kennedy said that, contrary to speculation, the inquiry wasn’t rooted in Scotland because we have a disproportionate scale of trafficking. . .

She realises a truly accurate picture is virtually impossible because trafficking is a covert criminal business. She said: “This kind of human rights abuse is like a poison. Trafficking leeches into our society as a whole. We want to identify ways in which it is happening and ensure that weaker members of society aren’t abused in this way.” . .

What does it mean for ‘trafficking’ to leach (not leech!) into society? Again, the results seem preordained.

State Feminist shaming keeps Swedish politicians quiet about sex-purchase law

Sweden’s The Local invited me to write on the government’s evaluation of the sex-buying law (sexköpslagen). I’m reproducing the article here minus stereotyped photo of woman’s high-booted legs in street at night with red overtones. It is very hard to illustrate these stories, I know, but I do feel the media could resist the worst cliches. These jolly masked men might be sex workers’ clients, as might this ashamed man be.

Big claims, little evidence: Sweden’s law against buying sex

Laura Agustín, 23 July 2010, The Local

A new review of Sweden’s ban on buying sex has provided little hard evidence that the policy of prohibition has worked, writes Laura Agustín, but few politicians have dared to point out its obvious failings.

Every Swede knows that the famed law against buying sex – sexköpslagen – is a hot potato. Few politicians have commented one way or another on the evaluation of the law announced on 2 July, and only one government official claimed it proves the law is a success. Given that the report has been strongly criticised as empty of evidence and methodology but full of ideology in its very remit, debate has been curiously muted, even for the time of year.

At another period in history the sex-purchase law might have been considered a minor piece of legislation on a lesser social problem. Few people die, are maimed for life or lose their homes and jobs because of prostitution here; other threats to national security and happiness might seem more pressing.

But one feminist faction promotes the ideology that prostitutes are always, by definition, victims of violence against women. As victims, they can’t be criminals, so their side of the money-sex exchange is not penalised, whereas those who buy are perpetrators of a serious crime. This ideology, a minority view in other countries, predominates among Swedish State Feminists who claim that the existence of commercial sex is a key impediment to achieving gender equality. Such a dogma is odd, given the very small number of people engaged in selling sex in a welfare state that does not exclude them from its services and benefits. It is not illegal to sell sex in Sweden, just to buy it.

The evaluation leaned heavily on small-scale data about street prostitution, because that was the easiest to find. No one doubts that most street sex workers went somewhere else after the law came into effect, and no one knows where they went. But evaluators bolstered their case by claiming that street prostitution had increased in Denmark, where there is no such law, using information from a Copenhagen NGO whose inflated data was exposed in parliament last year. Street prostitution is known, in any case, to constitute a tiny, diminishing part of the whole of commercial sex.

The report confesses that ‘prostitution on the Internet’ was difficult to research but exhibits a poor understanding of the multiplicity of businesses, jobs and networks that characterise the sex industry. Asking police officials and social workers what they think is going on is no substitute for true research, and no academic studies pretend to know the extent of prostitution here. A government report from 2007 admitted it was difficult to find out much of anything about prostitution in Sweden.

The evaluation gives no account of how the research was actually carried out – its methodology – but is full of background material on Swedish history and why prostitution is bad. Only 14 sex workers were actually canvassed for their opinion of the law, seven of whom had already stopped selling sex. It is a rather pathetic display.

Several media commentators took the occasion to attack the law itself, since, despite regular government affirmations that the majority of Swedes support the law, opposition is fierce. In the blogosphere and other online forums, liberals, libertarians and non-conforming members of the main parties relentlessly resist a reductionist view of sexuality in which vulnerable women are forever threatened by predatory men.

But most politicians undoubtedly feel little good will come from complaining about legislation now symbolic of Mother Sweden. The Swedish Institute has turned the abolition of prostitution into part of the nation’s brand, what they call a ‘multi-faceted package to make Sweden attractive to the outside world.’ The SI, claiming to represent the most ‘socially liberal’ country on the planet, celebrates gender equality and gay love along with Ingmar Bergman, high technology and pine forests.

Sweden indisputably ranks high on several measures of gender equality, such as numbers of women who work outside the home, their salaries and length of parental leave. But other policies considered as part of gender equality are much harder to measure: cultural change, how people feel about sexual difference and, not least, the effect of a ban on buying sex. So it is hardly surprising that the government’s evaluation presents no evidence that relations between men and women have improved in Sweden because of the law. The evaluation’s main recommendation is to stiffen the punishment meted out to men who buy sex.

There was something new in Justice Minister Ask’s positioning of the law to the international media, however – a claim that it has been proved to combat organized crime, particularly the kind called sex trafficking. Citing no evidence, the report maintains there is less trafficking in Sweden because it is now ‘less attractive’ to traffickers.

Such naïve statements argue that without a demand for commercial sex there will be no supply, ignoring the complicated ways sex-money markets work in cultures with different concepts of family and love, reducing a wide range of sexual activities to an abstract notion of violence and brushing aside the many people who confirm that they prefer selling sex to their other livelihood options.

As for combating trafficking, there is no proof. Statistics continue to be a source of conflict in international debates, because different countries, institutions and researchers do not agree on what actually constitutes trafficking. It does not help that fundamentalist feminism refuses to accept the distinction between human trafficking and human smuggling linked to informal labour migration, as enshrined in the UN Convention on Organised Crime.

The Swedish government has proved nothing with this evaluation, and most Swedish politicians are keeping quiet, because they obviously know it.

Middlemen: between truck-driving clients and women who sell sex, Uganda

No figure is feared and misrepresented more than a man who facilitates the sale of sex for other people. Massive anti-prostitution generalisations about exploitation too often shut down attempts to understand how sexual cultures work by accusing all facilitators of being exploitative pimps and traffickers and ignoring different contexts and different meanings of the acts for those involved. Whether you want to regulate the sex industry or get rid of it, you have to understand how its many manifestations work. I advocate a cultural study of commercial sex, which you can read about here and here (with links to academic articles, too). Note also that talking about the variety of experience and subtlety of meaning within sex-money exchanges does not imply that everyone involved is happy, satisfied, unexploited or anything else. That middlemen are sometimes fair does not mean all of them always are.

Here are excerpts from an academic study* of one small place, a truck-stop in southwest Uganda. The authors situate what some might see as a conventional prostitution economy within general sexual culture that involves third parties.

Mediation customarily plays a central role in regulating sexual relations in local Kiganda culture. In selecting a suitable spouse, introductions, the process of betrothal through to the hand-over ceremony, the senga, or paternal aunt, played (and still plays) a pivotal role as mediator .  .  .

They then show how the middleman is seen as useful by both buyers and sellers in the commercial sex market of the truck stop.

Passing truck drivers usually do not have the time to Žfind themselves a suitable woman for the night because most must leave early the next morning, so they turn to a middleman to get them a woman quickly.

The driver pays the middleman according to a variety of factors, depending, for example, on who took the initiative, and how satisfied the driver is with the woman.

When the driver and the middleman know each other, or get along well, no payment is expected, but a gift may be offered, or they might share beer together. The middleman accompanies the driver and personally introduces him to the woman.

The most important reason women gave for using an intermediary is discretion. Although everybody knows that serving beer and food and cleaning are not the only work the women in bars and restaurants do, it is still necessary to keep up a certain degree of formal decency in such small communities. . .  Decency is maintained by outward appearance: it does not matter how many partners a woman may have, as long as people cannot see her actually recruiting them.

The driver spends the night with her and gives her an amount of money which usually exceeds the amount which she would get from men she contacted herself. Afterwards she gives a small part of what she earned to the middleman to show her gratitude and in the hope that he will send more men to her in the future.

The women also mentioned that when middlemen are involved, they can expect to receive more money than from the men who approach them directly. In this way, they meet men who are better off, who can afford to spend something on mediation.

The women saw mediation as providing insurance when establishing contact with a customer, as the clients are seen as being socially indebted to the middlemen. The transaction is also clearer from the start: frequently the clients tell the middlemen to inform the women that ‘money is not a problem’.

*Gysels, M. , Pool, R. and Bwanika, K.(2001) ‘Truck drivers, middlemen and commercial sex workers: AIDS and the mediation of sex in south west Uganda’, AIDS Care, 13, 3, 373-385.

What do sex-buying statistics mean? More anti-trafficking efforts, that’s what

Before anyone claims these statistics on arrests of traffickers and clients actually mean something, read this, published at The Other Swedish Model the other day.

Swedish sex-buying statistics: What do they mean?

We live in times where crime statistics are often used to try to prove some social theory or another. Swedish police have just announced that lots more people were caught buying sex in Sweden this year. Those who dislike Sweden’s law against buying sexual services might be tempted to say that these statistics somehow prove that the law is dysfunctional (which might suggest it should be scrapped, for instance). Alternatively, those who like the Swedish law might say that these statistics prove that the problem of men buying sex is much huger and scarier than anyone knew before (which might lead to the conclusion that the law should be strengthened, for example). Both guesses would like to correlate two facts but do not prove any cause-effect relationship.

Does the increase mean more people are buying or selling sex? No. It means the government has injected a large amount of money into trying to find customers, pimps, networks, websites and traffickers involved in sex markets. The same happens with any social phenomenon when there’s an influx of money to investigate: investigators find more, which is often interpreted as uncovering a new, more sinister reality.

Swedish police themselves reject any such interpretation. Note, too, that the Skånian statistics are ascribed to surveillance of the Internet that police hadn’t carried out before. Note these numbers describe cases reported, nothing else. We don’t know how many cases had to be thrown out, were completely unfounded, etc etc.

Big increase in prostitution reports

27 Jul 10, The Local

During the first half of 2009 a total of 148 people were reported for paying prostitutes for sex. The number for the same period this year was 770. A large part of the rise – 430 cases – was due to the discovery of a major prostitution ring in Jämtland county, north-western Sweden. But even when these cases are discounted, the figures had more than doubled.

But police said the dramatic increase was probably not due to a sudden rise in the number of men visiting prostitutes. Rather, they credit increased measures to tackle prostitution and human trafficking. An extra 40 million kronor has been allocated this year to pay for training and strengthening of the police’s operations against the sex trade. “The figures are absolutely a result of the fact that the police have been given the means to dive deep into this,” said Chief Inspector Kajsa Wahlberg, who advises the government on human trafficking issues.

The national pattern was reflected in Sweden’s major cities. In Skåne, which includes Malmö, some 20 cases of paying for sex were reported during the whole of 2009. So far this year, 50 cases have been reported. There, the extra money has been used to increase internet monitoring of the sex trade, which has resulted both in more reports of people paying for sex and in a fall in street prostitution.

Västra Götaland, which includes Gothenburg, also saw a big increase in reports: “I wouldn’t say that everything is hunky-dory. But it’s a big increase and it’s clear that we can be pleased with the good results,” said Mats Palmgren, deputy head of the police in greater Gothenburg.

Smoke gets in your eyes: Evaluation of Swedish anti-prostitution law offers ideology, not methodology

Louise Persson and I have published a piece in Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden’s major national newspapers. The topic was the government’s report evaluating the law against buying sex, sexköpslagen, issued recently and unsettlingly uncommented and uncritiqued in the mainstream media. There were ‘news’ stories, of course, reproducing the government’s line – publicity claiming the law has been proved successful. Given the very lively culture of debate in these same media on every other topic, the silence is noticeable. And given the unquestionable existence of a liberal/libertarian movement that hates the law and its ideas about sexuality and gender equality, one wonders what’s at work here: A genuine taboo? Gender equality such a sacred cow that everyone chooses to keep quiet about the report’s mediocrity? Sweden isn’t a police state and surveillance is low compared with the UK, for example. Critical blogging has been brisk, so what makes mainstream media commentators avoid criticising this evaluation, not on ideological grounds but because it is so badly done that it proves nothing at all?

That’s what we wrote about, the embarrassing lack of evidence to prove the law has had any impact at all on the buying and selling of sex. This is not an ideological argument; it doesn’t prove that the law is no good; it proves that the evaluation is no good. Significant because the world’s peabrained media have picked up the claim – Swedish Law Giant Success – without reading even the English summary of points that make it crystal-clear that evaluators couldn’t find any evidence of anything. That’s the story, and it’s one any researcher will appreciate!

The original is Tvivelaktig rapport om sexköp, Laura Agustín och Louise Persson, Svenska Dagbladet, 15 July 2010. Our own title was better, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when editors don’t think they can improve titles. Here’s the English translation Given a very small word limit, we could only mention key issues in a barebones fashion.

Doubtful report on sex-purchase law

Laura Agustín and Louise Persson, 15 July 2010, Svenska Dagbladet

Sex crimes go down in Sweden: The new evaluation of the law against buying sex is spreading the message round the world, but the report suffers from too many scientific errors to justify any such claim.

The report was delayed. It is hard to find evidence to explain why one can’t see sex workers where one saw them before: Have they stopped selling sex, or are they doing it somewhere else? Stigmatised and criminalised people avoid contact with police, social workers and researchers.

Street prostitution receives exaggerated attention in the inquiry, despite the fact that it represents a small, diminishing type of commercial sex that cannot be extrapolated to all. The inquiry mentions the difficulty of researching ‘prostitution on the internet’ but appears not to know that the sex industry comes in many different shapes being researched in depth elsewhere (escorts without websites, sex parties, strip clubs, massage parlours, students who sell sex, among others).

The report’s conclusion that the law has decreased prostitution is based on police reports, government-funded groups working on prostitution in three cities, a few small academic studies and comparisons with other Nordic countries. But police only encounter sex workers in the context of criminal inquiries, the funded groups mostly meet sex workers seeking help, small studies can only indicate possible trends and the Danish statistics on the number of ‘active’ street workers – used to show that Sweden’s prostitution is less – were publicly shown to be very wrong eight months ago.

The law is claimed to have a dampening effect on sex trafficking, but no proof is offered. Trafficking statistics have long been disputed outside Sweden, because of definitional confusion and refusals to accept the UN Convention on Organised Crime’s distinction between human trafficking and human smuggling linked to informal labour migration. The report claims the law diminishes ‘organised crime’ without analysing how crimes were identified and resolved or how they are related to the sex-purchase law.

All social research must explain its methodology. An evaluation like this one needs to provide details on the sample of people consulted, since even in a field as small as Sweden’s no study can pretend to speak to everyone. Methodological research norms require explaining how informants were consulted, under what conditions, what questions they were asked and how, what ethical apparatus was in place to help guarantee they gave their true opinions, how a balance of different stakeholders was achieved, how many people refused to participate, and so on. In this report, however, the methodology section is practically non-existent. We know nothing about how it the evaluation was actually carried out.

On the other hand, the report brims with irrelevant material: background on how the law came about, Sweden’s history with gender equality, why prostitution is bad, why international audiences are interested in the evaluation and how many Swedes are said to currently support the law. One single sex worker’s sad personal story takes up three pages, while the account of sex workers’ opinions is limited to the results of a survey of only 14 people of which only seven were current sex workers.

Research must try for some kind of objectivity, but the government’s remit to the evaluation team said that ‘the buying of sexual services shall continue to be criminalised’ no matter what the evaluators found. The bias was inherent.

The Swedish government understands that the law is of interest internationally as a form of crime prevention. What they don’t realise is how, when the report is translated and reviewed, the methodological errors and crude bias will cause researchers in the field to dismiss this evaluation.

The international trafficking debate has moved beyond the simplistic position presented in this report. More humility is needed from a small country with little experience of, and research about, undocumented migration and the sex industry. If one wants to present oneself as occupying a higher moral ground than other countries, one needs to do better work to understand complex questions. This evalution tells us nothing about the effects of the sex-purchase law.

We offered sources on the topic of flawed research not supporting extravagant claims in this field, but editors omitted them.

Socialstyrelsen. 2007. Kännedom om Prostitution. Another Swedish government report from just a few years ago that concludes little can be known about prostitution in Sweden:

Folketingets Socialudvalg, 20 november 2009. Socialministerens endelige svar påspørgsmål nr. 37 (SOU Alm. del). Question in Danish parliament about incorrect figures claimed for street prostitution.

IOM-SIDA. 2006. Trafficking in Human Beings and the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Swedish-funded research finding trafficking claims unsubstantiated.

BBC News Magazine. Is the number of trafficked call girls a myth? 9 January 2009.

United States Government Accountability Office. July 2006. Human Trafficking: Better Data, Strategy, and Reporting Needed to Enhance U.S. Antitrafficking Efforts Abroad.

Les Carpenter. 2010. Debunking World Cup’s biggest myth. Yahoo News, 10 June.

Svenska utdrag från Tvivelaktig rapport om sexköp

Laura Agustín och Louise Persson, Svenska Dagbladet, 15 July 2010

Den nysläppta utvärderingen av sexköpslagen sprider budskapet att sexbrotten minskar, men utredningen är behäftad med alltför allvarliga vetenskapliga fel för att man ska kunna hävda att lagen är framgångsrik.

Rapporten om sexköpslagen försenades. Det var svårt att hitta bevis som demonstrerar anledningarna bakom varför man inte ser sexarbetare där man sett dem förut: har de slutat sälja, eller har de flyttat någon annanstans? Stigmatiserade och kriminaliserade aktörer undviker kontakt med polis, socialarbetare och forskare.

. . . En grundprincip för forskning är att sträva efter objektivitet, men regeringens direktiv var: ”En utgångspunkt för vårt arbete har varit att köp av sexuell tjänst fortfarande ska vara kriminaliserat.” Det skapar läge för en partisk inlaga. . .

Vill man presentera sig med en högre moralisk nivå på den internationella arenan, krävs bättre underlag och förståelse för komplexa frågor. Den här utvärderingen säger oss ingenting om lagens effekter.

Behind the happy face of the Swedish anti-prostitution law

Wherever I go, wherever I live, I always meet people with critical, original and non-conforming views, and Sweden is no exception. Today’s special post comes from Louise Persson, whose book on ‘classical’ feminism came out last year and who has been blogging at Frihetspropaganda since March 2004. Her allegiance is to libertarianism, and she likes to call herself an activist. A longtime critic of the Swedish law criminalising the purchase of sex, Louise wrote the article below about the report on the government’s evaluation of the law, which was published on Friday. Links to numerous other Swedish critiques of the inquiry and report are at the end: many Swedes don’t like the law, but, since the government treats it as a symbol of Swedishness, these voices are rarely heard in public forums. Remind anyone of other governments we know?

Behind the happy face of the Swedish anti-prostitution law
Or, the success that is the Swedish sex-purchase law, or maybe not . . .

Louise Persson, 3 July 2010

‘We don’t work with harm reduction in Sweden. Because that’s not the way Sweden looks upon this. We see it as a ban on prostitution: there should be no prostitution‘, said governmental inquirer Anna Skarhed smilingly to the journalist attending the press conference on the release of the report on an inquiry meant to evaluate  the effects of the sex purchase law but not to question the law itself. And later: ‘Harm reduction is not the Swedish model.’ (long English summary pp 29-44, or key excerpts in English ).

Skarhed went on to say that prostitutes – women – are not marginalized. There are some who claim that, but ‘We don’t see that’.

The statement about harm reduction is highly interesting. A harm-reduction framework stands in opposition to moralistic laws, but Skarhed refused to acknowledge the law’s moral character, presenting it as merely a ‘ban’ on unacceptable behaviour. It isn’t really true either, that there is no harm reduction here. Sweden may be restrictive and repressive against users of illicit drugs and buyers of sex, but there are some pragmatic – harm reduction – programmes in Sweden. One might imagine that an expert on law appointed by government as an independent researcher would have some insight into the difference between pragmatism and ideology. You cannot assess the effects of the law without any understanding of harm reduction, it’s like assessing everything but the effects on the people involved.

The report’s claim that sexworkers are not marginalized is bafflingly arrogant, ignoring what many sexworkers say about how the law increases stigma and therefore their marginalization in society. See this video with Pye Jakobsson of Rose Alliance, as an example.

As a longtime critic of the law, I had low expectations, but this I didn’t expect: An astounding absence of objective and unbiased guiding principles, a lack of solid evidence and a confusing methodical picture that could mean outright guesswork. All the report’s conclusions are therefore questionable. I was prepared to focus on the fact that Skarhed wasn’t allowed to freely criticise the law, but the report itself is a worse problem. Now-familiar self-congratulatory references to Sweden’s higher moral ground compared with other countries are not missing: here the law is ascribed an almost magical power to eradicate patriarchy and sex trafficking, both.

‘Sources’ are mentioned, but absolutely nothing is explained about methodology. Sources mentions persons and organisations talked to, including ECPAT (although the child aspect of the law evades me) but there is nothing about how interviewees were chosen, why they were relevant, what questionnaire was used or how interviews were analysed.

Sexworkers themselves are listed as sources, but they seem to have been forgotten until quite late. They are called, in a discriminatory manner, ‘exploited persons’ (p. 126-127). A total of 14 persons from two organisations  filled out a  questionnaire: about half were active sexworkers from Rose Alliance, the other half former sexworkers from PRIS. The findings from this research were a foregone conclusion anyway: active sexworkers are said to be  unaware of their own exploitation and former sexworkers to be happy with criminalisation. The similarity is striking to the feminist idea that all women in prostitution need to be rescued and liberated. What Skarhed doesn’t mention is that PRIS’s very few members had already declared themselves in favour of the law. Rose Alliance, also a small organisation, have been critical of the law, but at least they made the questionnaire available online to any sexworker who wanted to participate. Few found it worthwhile, unfortunately.* The issue here is that it is inappropiate to take two small, local organisations and claim they represent all active and former sexworkers.

Maybe suspecting the report will be taken as the ridiculous rubbish it is, Skarhed chose to publish a long, personal, heart-rending ‘story‘ of one unhappy former prostitute. The implicit (ridiculous) rhetoric aimed at anyone criticising the law is ‘Hey, are you in favour of this suffering?’ But this strategy won’t hold up, because Swedes know that all sex workers are not miserable. Where the text says ‘people with experience of prostitution have complex needs’ (p. 93), Skarhed actually refers to this single story, as if all sex workers can be lumped together as miserable victims?. The text itself was written by PRIS, another indication of the report’s political agenda.

Moreover Skarhed claims (in chapter 4.3) that, on the one hand, they haven’t a clue about how many sexworkers there are in Sweden, and, on the other, that the law has successfully reduced street prostitution by 50%. But she also said the increase of services offered on Internet sites is no different from nearby countries’, from which she concludes fuzzily that this shows that the law has not contributed to any increase in ‘hidden’ prostitution. This is clearly an attempt to head off arguments from the law’s critics. The only actual conclusion is that the decrease of street prostitution in Sweden is a real decrease resulting from the law. Causation by confusion? It is indeed remarkable what conclusions can be drawn based on not having a clue, i.e any figures, a point already noted in another government assessment of prostitution in Sweden in 2007 (Socialstyrelsen-National Board of Health and Welfare).

Maybe there is a state of mind that can explain this. Skarhed stated at the press conference that the conclusions were obvious and the material gathered justified drawing them.

I think that these are quite obvious conclusions. But the important thing for the inquiry has been to try to, so to speak, get the basis for being able to draw them. And this is how we have worked.

That is a statement which in itself should raise serious questions about the methodology and empiric usefulness of the inquiry. The report also says (and this is the closest we get to a discussion of methodology):

The empirical surveys that have been carried out have, in some cases, had limited scope, and different working procedures, methods and purposes have been used. In light of these and other factors, there can at times be reason to interpret the results with caution. However, despite these reservations, we still consider that it is possible to draw conclusions based on the material to which we had access, and the results we are presenting based on this data give, in our view, as clear a picture as is currently possible to produce.

Another explanation lies probably, and most importantly, in the government’s original directive to Skarhed: the objective was to evaluate whether the law has had any deterrent function, which was the original ambition behind the law, and to recommend how it could be strengthened to meet that ambition. The directive stated that the law is important and that the inquiry could not suggest, or point in any direction other than, that buying of sex should be criminalised. Therefore, whether the law has been up till now a failure or a success, the only possible conclusions were either strengthening enforcement or leaving the status quo.

Academic work criticising the law from Susanne Dodillet in 2009 is merely mentioned in the reference section; nothing is noted about her findings in the report itself. The same applies to Petra Östergren, who pioneered a critical study and book in 2006 about the sexual moralism surrounding the kind of feminism that lies behind the Swedish law. Both are indirectly brushed off in a comment saying it is irrelevant to distinguish between forced or voluntary prostitution (p. 15). By including these books in the reference list but not actually addressing their criticism the report can, of course, feign impartiality without actually bothering to be impartial.

The evaluation’s task was to suggest possible changes to the law, and that is accomplished by proposing to raise the maximum penalty for clients of sex workers from 6 months to one year of imprisonment. Another suggested change was to grant sexworkers compensation as victims, which is currently not the case.

These changes in penalties would bring the law into line with those applied for violent crimes such as beatings, fitting exactly the radical feminist ideology that prostitution is a form of violence against women. The idea to compensate sexworkers as victims of violence was originally Catharine MacKinnon’s, thus far only supported in Sweden by the Swedish Feminist party (they published on newsmill together with MacKinnon in 2008; my Swedish response here).

Skarhed’s recommendations raise serious questions about her status as an objective observer. The fact that the quality of the inquiry was so poor makes it even more important to raise them.

With all that said, the inquiry does have one more point of interest that should be addressed.

It is claimed that trafficking for sexual purposes has been affected by the law. Yet again, this is based on the ‘notion’ (what people think and claim) that Sweden is not attractive to traffickers. This may very well be true, but the report does not ask how the law might have had this impact, with some historical comparison, since we don’t know whether Sweden ever was attractive before. The same kind of question applies to prostitution, but that would raise the need of hard figures, not easily obtainable in a country where prostitution is, in practice, criminal.

The inquiry now goes into a referral process, to get different opinions before making any decisions for a change of law. I hope the organisations, experts and authorities who are to assess the report see it for what it is, an ideological work in compliance with a preordained political stance (to ban a phenomenon), not a sound and helpful instrument for assessing the real effects of the law.

* I asked Pye Jakobsson, president of the Swedish sexworker organisation Rose Alliance, about her contact with the inquiry. She says they were sent a questionnaire last January and put in online, but very few sex workers took an interest in filling it out, because the questions were ‘idiotic’.

Other critiques in Sweden so far

An academic project on prostitution, NPPR, published a careful assessment of the report (in English), calling it endless fodder for proponents and critics of the ban alike to continue trading claims and counter-claims as to what the ban has (and has not) achieved since its implementation. A perhaps needlessly neutral way to say that it isn’t that hard to see the flaws. Other independent views from Hanna Wagenius, Niklas Dougherty, Sanna Rayman, Per Pettersson, Greta, Magnus Brahn, Hans Egnell, Emil Isberg and undoubtedly others as the days go on. Best title is Helena von Schantz’s: Practically Evidence-Free Inquiry. <-->

Swedish evaluation of law banning purchase of sex: unsupported claims

On 2 July 2010 I published excerpts from the English summary of the Swedish government’s evaluation of its law banning the buying of sex, just to make the material available. I’ve now removed those excerpts to avoid any impression that I accept the evaluation report at face value. On the contrary, I have published extensive criticism of the evaluation:

Big claims, little evidence: Sweden’s law against buying sex

Irresponsible use of trafficking data, or: Garbage in, garbage out

Doubtful report on sex-purchase law, Laura’s article from Svenska Dagbladet

Smoke gets in your eyes: Evaluation of Swedish anti-prostitution law offers ideology, not methodology

Swedish report based on wrong Danish numbers for street prostitution

Behind the happy face of the Swedish anti-prostitution law

Baby seats in the cars of clients of sex workers: betrayal of Family?

The other day, in a story about typical ‘police crackdowns’ on prostitution, this time in Montreal, a local policeman said ‘It’s businessmen and people going or coming from work and sometimes they have baby seats or car seats in the car.’ This led to a discussion amongst people I know about what baby seats might represent.

The first comment was

I would really like to say that I am hearing this ‘baby seats in the back of the car’ all the time as another way of making sex work and customers more scary and deviant sounding. Seems to be the logic is ‘baby seats’ stand in for ‘children seeing sex/being exposed to sex’ but would love to yell, ‘Hey you conservatives/police even if the customer has an empty baby seat in the car… it’s an empty baby seat! There is no baby in it!’

I answered that I have always heard this babyseat detail to stand for He is married, has a family, is betraying his wife.

To which the reply was

It makes sense to me that it would also be about ‘betraying the relationship’, but they harp on about the baby seats so much that it makes me wonder if it’s about children somehow.

So then I said one might say the client is Betraying the Family: his own and the whole institution. The babyseat means he’s not just a couple now but an institution himself.

Another commenter added

I also heard an economical argument to it. It is ‘wrong’ to use the ‘family money’ to buy yourself sex services, if you are are part of a middle class or poor family.

And yet another said

I take it to mean He’s just a schlub. He’s just another ordinary guy, could be anyone.

I wonder if it seems better or worse to people if the car – and thus the baby seat – are more costly and prestigious, as with this Mercedes Benz.

Is it way scarier because the seat is located right next to the driver??

Then came a new angle

My experience is cops use babyseats as a prop when soliciting/ communicating for purpose of prostitution to put girls/women at ease so she will think this guy is married so he will be safe, quick, and has a lot to lose so he will behave.

Baby seats as part of a sting – now that is abuse of family. Then the original commenter remembered a book where baby seats and sex workers figure in a story about

a Saudi prince in New York City, who enjoys driving around at night and picking up prostitutes while his 2-year-old son is sitting in a car seat in the back, so that the kid can learn from his father what women are really like in his eyes and how they should be treated by those in power. Basically, what it comes down to is that the prince hates women and wants his son to grow up hating them, too, so that he treats them all as objects and with no respect. – Wayne C. Rogers, The Book Nook

Here is the original story, complete with Rescue Industry tracts on the evils of buying sex.

Montreal police target prostitution

14 June 2010

Montreal police say they will hand out pamphlets explaining the dangers of hiring prostitutes. Montreal police have announced an action plan to crack down on prostitution in the city’s east end. The plan involves targeting potential clients, officials said on Monday. Six additional police cadets have been hired to patrol Ste-Catherine Street East, said police.

Officers will also set up roadblocks to hand out pamphlets, warning about the consequences of hiring prostitutes. Most of the prostitutes’ clients are not people who live in the neighbourhood, said Montreal police Cmdr. François Cayer. “In general, it’s common people,” said Cayer. “It’s businessmen and people going or coming from work and sometimes they have baby seats or car seats in the car.”

The problem in the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough has worsened recently due to construction projects in the city’s new entertainment district, said local officials. “You will find a lot of prostitutes, probably those prostitutes worked usually in the Quartier des spectacles and they are now in Hochelaga and we cannot accept that,” said Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough Mayor Réal Ménard. So far this year, police said they have arrested 74 clients.

Dopamine, a local group that works with prostitutes, said it is not fully on board with the project. The organization would prefer sex workers be given access to additional services, a spokesperson said. The borough said it wants to open a drop-in centre for prostitutes in the coming years.

Women are not children – remember? Flawed ideas about improving Sweden’s sex-purchase law

I wrote the following piece after some welcomed a parliamentarian’s suggestion that Sweden change to a regulatory regime that looks more like the 19th century than any progressive proposal for better Gender Equality. It was published at The Other Swedish Model. Note: sexköpslagen is the name for the Swedish law, meaning sex-purchase law or law on buying sex. Also note that the evaluation of the law, originally expected at the end of April, has been delayed.

Women are not children – remember? Flawed ideas about improving the sex-purchase law

Photo of Arhus brothel by Claus Petersen
Photo of Arhus brothel by Claus Petersen

Laura Agustín, 17 June 2010, The Other Swedish Model

Does sexköpslagen, the law against buying sex, work or not? Everyone wants to know. Camilla Lindberg is right that talking about the possibility that the law does not work is taboo in Sweden. The government’s official evaluation of the law has been delayed, probably because it has not been easy to find evidence to demonstrate the reasons behind an absence. That is, you may look around and not see sex workers and their customers where you did before. But you cannot know whether they have stopped buying and selling sex or, if they have not stopped, where they have gone.

Evaluators will question police and social workers, and maybe get to speak to a few sex workers, but none of these can give an overview of sex markets that operate via private telephones and the Internet, in the privacy of homes and hotel rooms. And evaluators certainly cannot say how many people are doing what. Street prostitutes are estimated in some countries to constitute less than ten per cent of all sex workers, so, even if there are few left to see, 90% are unaccounted for. When businesses that sell sex are outlawed, they hide, so government accountants are unlikely to find them – and, after all, many are just individuals working alone.

But if we want to discuss the whole sex industry more openly, we should not focus on the concept of brothels, as Lindberg suggests – particularly not on the idea of health checks for workers. This 19th-century French idea could not be more patriarchal and thus the very opposite of jämställdhet, sexköpslagens guiding principle. Basic common sense tells us that, if disease-transmission is a concern, all parties exchanging fluids have to practice safer sex – not ‘be checked’. And although laws in the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Nevada and parts of Australia allow and regulate brothels as one form of commercial sex, many people who sell sex in those countries prefer to work on their own, in small groups in flats or – yes – on the street. In France, organised sex workers vociferously oppose a proposed return to the old system of maisons closes with health controls that stigmatise prostitutes as (female) carriers of sexually-transmitted diseases.

Draconian legislation does not make sense because no single law can do justice to everyone who sells and buys sex, whether they are Swedish, other European citizens or migrants, and whether they are women, men or transgendered. The enormous variety of jobs and personal histories involved cannot ethically be reduced to ideological categories: neither free nor forced describes the complicated life histories of most people who sell sex. Neither exploiter nor violent describes those of all people who buy it.

After 15 years of studying the variety and multiplicity of the sex industry and the social conflicts surrounding it, I do understand the utopic vision behind sexköpslagen: a desire that commercial sex would simply go away, that men and women would have equal opportunities, power, money and everything else – and that everyone would have good sex. Whether such a utopia can be achieved through legislation I personally doubt; sexual markets have shown themselves to be extremely tenacious over history and efforts to prohibit particular sexual behaviours have not prospered.

Debates about legislative models focus on a simplified idea of prostitution and date from times when women were seen as subordinate, when men were allowed to control their destinies and when disease was conceived as someone’s fault. All such ideas are now passé. Women are understood to be autonomous actors, with responsibility for their actions. Sexköpslagen conceives of one group of women as inferior and needing protection. Lindbergs brothels conceive of them as needing to be specially controlled. But neither are adequate ways to think about the diversity of people involved – and when it comes to safety not everyone wants to be protected the same way.

Sexköpslagen was envisioned as a way to legislate jämställdhet – ’send a signal’ about what is right and wrong in sexual relationships. The problem is it requires all women to feel the same way about sex. Nowadays, arguments about sexual behaviour revolve around rights, the idea that people can choose for themselves what activities they want to engage in and with whom. As we come to understand the enormous diversity of sexual desire, so we need to accept that, for some, money has no special ability to ruin the experience. Everyone doesn’t feel the same way about sex: it’s an anthropologist’s truism but nonetheless true.

For those interested in women’s rights, the question is how to promote the autonomy of as many women as possible, not the achievement of laws that embody some correct ideological stance.

Anti-demand prostitution law called achievement of ‘gender equality’: Fiji

This decree brings about gender equality in our criminal justice system.’ – Attorney-General and Justice Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, on Fiji’s new prostitution laws.

So it turns out to be easy to bring about Gender Equality! Just pass a law saying that the buying of sex is a criminal offence and voilá, Women’s Rights are ensured.

Although simple hatred of prostitution is still given as enough reason to institute these laws (see comments in Israel’s Knesset last January), Gender Equality is increasingly given as the argument for legislation aimed at men who buy sex or facilitate its buying and selling (the vague categories pimps and traffickers).

As laws, they are difficult to enforce: it’s too hard to get the evidence to prove most cases and no police force is granted the immense funding that would be necessary to pursue every possible instance of sex-buying, and keep at it over and over, until consumption theoretically ceased. Socially, the laws probably just move transactions to less visible venues. And as possible promoters of cultural change, which is what people really want, these laws are impossibly crude (prohibiting people the fulfillment of their desires rarely works). All of which those in favour of these laws know on some level. But as symbolic moves aimed at performing Gender Equality, anti-demand laws capture the imagination across the globe.

Now, coming back to Fiji, here is the analysis of an economist there:

‘Prostitution is a social redistribution mechanism, and to try and forcefully stop it can lead to some dire consequences. ‘- Sunil Kumar, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of the South Pacific, Suva

‘While prostitution is looked down on by society, there are some positive outcomes from it that cannot be denied.’ He cites the example of single mothers who do not earn enough from regular work, or those who do not receive state social support. Some of them turn to sex work to feed and educate their children, he says.

The new decree now targets people who hire sex workers and all those who benefit financially from the trade. Even those living with sex workers are now liable under the new law, which took effect on February 1. Section 230 of the law’s prostitution offences says that a person living on sex-work earnings or persistently soliciting faces a jail term of up to six months. ‘Selling or buying’ minors for immoral purposes is now punishable by 12 years’ imprisonment. Brothel keepers face five years of imprisonment as well, or a fine of F$10,000 (US$5,000), or both.

Do Fijians feel more equal now, I wonder?

More at Fiji: Law enforcement approach to sex work falls short, Shailendra Singh, 12 April 2010, InterPressService News