I wonder whether some of these sex workers figure that if they fly in and stay close to the airport and then fly out again they can elude the Rescue Industry? More autonomy than this is hard to imagine, though I suppose some will say the women are forced to fly by their pimps. Cheaper air fares might be credited for helping people avoid exploitation, too, though.
Amsterdam – With the prospect of duty-free shopping, casino gambling and upscale restaurants, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has always had plenty to offer the weary traveler. However, a new pleasure is on offer to those waiting to board flights, according to De Telegraaf, which reported Friday that a fleet of prostitutes has touched down.
The paper says enterprising hookers are taking advantage of cheap air travel to jet into the bustling Dutch airport from Eastern Europe. Having arrived, they pick up male travelers and typically take them to a handful of budget hotels set up to allow passengers to rest and wash. As soon as they’re finished, the women simply hop back on a plane and fly home. They “can earn lots of money, much more than in their own countries,” the Amsterdam Prostitution Association told Radio Netherlands.
Schiphol Airport has not commented on the development although De Telegraaf said it had confirmed its story with several airport employees. Located a 20-minute drive southwest of Amsterdam, it is the main airport in the Netherlands and is Europe’s fifth largest, with around 45 million passengers passing through each year.
Recently I wrote about a man-licking-women video that supposedly depicts a man who does sex for money and feels oppressed by the job. The only sex we are shown, though, is oral, with the man kneeling on a floor between the outspread knees of women on their backs on a bed. The video, part of a campaign by the non-democratic European Women’s Lobby, has provoked interesting comments on my blog, not least from men who say the video’s message is not easy to grasp.
It seems the actual subtext of the video is that older and fat woman are disgusting and undeserving of sexual pleasure. matt
What the creator of this video did not realize was that clients love to lick women including the mature providers. Pohaku
It is a big boost for a man’s ego if so many women want to have sex with him, even if they are older women. Kris
The depiction of women who are older or a little bit curvy as disgusting? Talk about misogynistic. Erik
Oh, please. A job described as Help Wanted: male to lick anonymous pussies for $xx per hour, supply your own toothpaste and kneepads would have applicants lined up out the door. There would be plenty of candidates if it was a volunteer gig. ewaffle
Okay, bizarre choice of ad. That turned me on. Randy
These are just extracts; go to the comments directly if you are interested. The point is, the video itself, as opposed to the propaganda surrounding it, is open to a myriad of interpretations – some of them quite the opposite of what the EWL intended. Which is good.
The European sex worker rights movement objects to the characterisation of their lives in this way, of course, calling it anti-sex, woman-hating, sexist, discriminatory. But even more importantly, everyone asks how a campaign can be called Together for a Europe Free From Prostitution when several EU member states permit some sorts of sex work and prostitution (see this example from Italy’s Comitato per il Diritti Civili delle Prostitute). The issue is that the EWL receives public money – your taxes – from an EU programme called Progress, established to support financially the implementation of the objectives of the European Union in employment, social affairs and equal opportunities. I first questioned this use of public funds in April, so I am glad to see that the following question was submitted to the European Parliament on 1 July (note the EU’s executive body is called the European Commission):
Can the Commission explain if EU funds have been used directly or indirectly to finance an abolitionist “Campaign to put an end to prostitution in Europe” and “Together for a Europe Free from Prostitution”, promoting a “Europe free from prostitution” and calling on “individuals, national governments and the European Union to take concrete actions”, substantially on the basis of the Swedish model of legislation on the issue and with the aim of abolishing prostitution, which is presented as a form of violence against women? Have notably Progress funds been used for this? If so, can it explain how EU funds can be used to promote a certain legislative model, notably on a matter where Member States have different policies and sensitivities on the matter? If EU funds have been directly or indirectly used, if a campaign is launched to legalize prostitution and sex work or to promote a different legislative model, would the same EU funds be eligible for it? If not, why? Will the Commission request that EU funds are given back, if the campaign is funded without the Commission knowledge?
I edited a couple of words to make the English more understandable to an international audience; see the original form submitted at the bottom of this entry.
The current commissioner for Home Affairs is Cecilia Malmström (Swedish), and although she has not said anything publicly so far about the EWL campaign, she is getting close with recent pronouncements on sexual exploitation of children and modern slavery (where she mentions someone who was forced to have sex with 65-70 men a day, every day during five years, just as though it was the most typical story). I will keep my eye on her, both as an anthropologist of Europe and an anthropologist of Bureaucracy. Speaking of which, here is the original form submitted to parliament.
I was going to write about Extremist Feminism again but this latest is over the line into wackiness. By what twisted logic did the European Women’s Lobby decide that a film of a man pretending to lick a series of pussies would work to discourage other men from paying to lick pussies or have their own parts licked, or both? The incoherency of this End Demand product is mind-boggling.
The EWL, as noted not long ago in a post about European anti-prostitution trends, has been running a Together for a Europe Free From Prostitution campaign, despite the fact that some members of the EU legally permit and regulate some branches of the sex industry. The EWL is not run democratically, however, instead picking names from member countries willing to go along with their insider fiats. Yet the European Commission funds them just as though they truly represented all women in Europe. It is an old scandal, and if I am not in possession of all the facts then that is because the EWL provides none on their website. I am also told they accept money from other parts of the world and would not be surprised to find that Hunt Alternatives is a source, since the international End Demand campaign begins there.
Europeans will like to know that their money has gone to make versions of this video in many languages besides EN (BG, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FN, FR, HU, IT, MT, NL, POR, RO, SE, TR) with voice-overs and/or subtitles in a bunch and subtitles only in others. And we are in a financial crisis? What a boondoggle.
In the one-minute video, the man (meant to be a sex worker though he looks anything but) doing the licking acts out feeling sickened by it. He brushes his teeth a lot. In contrast, the women throwing themselves back on his bed look quite pleased. Just how is this meant to discourage men from paying for sex? It seems possible that women seeing the film will think how great it would be if they could hire someone for oral sex, though they are always said to want a lot of cuddling and romancing first (which is a silly essentialising of ‘female’ desire). In any case, the psychology of this campaign certainly shows how anti-sex the campaigners are.
This time I think they’ve outwitted themselves, these anti-everything campaigners. For all their money, this approach can only backfire, as I imagine more women starting to search for . . .
Otra vez las trabajadoras sexuales de Porto (Portugal) están con otros trabajadores en la marcha del primero de mayo. Sigue un editorial de Alexandra Oliveira sobre la manera de estigmatizar a las mujeres que venden sexo, por parte de gente que debería saber mejor (por ejemplo los comunistas). Apunta Alexandra:
No desfilo do May Day aqui no Porto, a União de Sindicatos do Porto que pertence a essa central sindical, queria impedir a nossa palavra de ordem “Trabalho sexual é trabalho”. O nosso grupo não deixou e levamos a nossa faixa.
– Anna Simone (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli): “Punire il sesso. Dal DDl Carfagna alle ordinanze anti-prostituzione”
– Pietro Saitta (Università di Messina): “Politiche del decoro e della moralità nella città neoliberista: traffico, lavoro sessuale e discorso pubblico”
– Laura Maria Agustín (the Naked Anthropologist): “Sex at the Margins: Cosa dicono le/i migranti che svolgono sex work sul proprio viaggio”
II sessione- ore 17 e 30
Intervengono:
– Thierry Schaffauser (sex worker, attivista, autore di “Fiere di essere puttane”: “Perché è importante sindacalizzarsi e come”
– Giulia Garofalo (attivista, ricercatrice su genere, minoranze sessuali e sex work): “Orgogliose/i di cosa? Capire chi parla di resistenza e sovversione nel sesso commerciale”
I realise that many people love Mary Magdalene, but the use by any contemporary project aimed at helping prostitutes of the name Magdalene evokes terrible associations. I see that a proect in Nashville, Tennessee, is doing just that, from an NPR story called Relapse And Recovery: A Tale Of Two Prostitutes. For those who have forgotten what Irish Magdalene laundries were (and the outrage that was felt when the truth came out about nuns enslaving fallen women), here are excerpts from an interesting story about Ireland called Red-light Alert, 10 April 2011, The Independent. Note the author calls these Rescue Industry folk the church’s lay stormtroopersin a religious war which, in this time and place, is not about evangelical Christians but Roman Catholics.
Bella Cohen’s brothel in Monto
Monto was, by all accounts, the biggest and busiest red-light district in the Europe of its era. . . In Ulysses, Joyce refers to the place as Nighttown. The young hero Stephen, his friend Lynch, and the middle-aged cuckold Leopold Bloom end up there after an evening’s boozing. Stephen and Lynch go for the fairly straightforward experience. But Bloom is there for the sexual humiliation via a dominatrix at a joint run by “Bello”. Bello was the real-life Bella Cohen, who actually did run an establishment that provided for the kinkier end of the trade in Monto. Around the corner in Montgomery Street was the top-end-of-the-market brothel run by Annie Mack, whose beautiful young women attracted rich clients including, it is rumoured, the then Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, who indeed was a frequent visitor to Dublin. At its height it is said that 1,600 women worked in Monto from the lowest and cheapest houses . . . to the most expensive . . .
. . . Its demise is well documented. That happened within only a few years of the foundation of the State and the accession to power of the Roman Catholic church. The church’s lay stormtroopers, the Legion of Mary, did the job, led by its inquisitor-in-chief, Frank Duff. War was declared on Monto. The new Catholic state stormed into action and a force of gardai and legionnaires raided Monto at midnight on March 12, 1925, and literally threw the women working there out on to the street and into the Church-run slave-labour laundries. Offended Catholic sensibilities were put right and the women were cast out.
The saddest street in Ireland was, and, to this day, remains Railway Street, off which Bella Cohen once ran her S&M joint, and where the rear walls of the Magdalene Laundry remain, a crucifix still standing over its jail-like entrance. That’s the place for them hussies, the paedo priests must have thought to themselves. The laundry was the last of the Magdalenes to close, in 1996. Up to the Seventies, young ‘fallen’ women were still being imprisoned in this hell-hole. It had official recognition from the Government as a remand prison. The girls — “penitents” — were given assumed religious names just like the nuns and enslaved, often never to see freedom. There are places like that today in the world, in Iran. Many of the Irish girls who went into this or the other laundries never came out. Some 133 unmarked graves were found in another Magdalene in Drumcondra a few years ago.
No one would ever countenance that sort of thing here again. No one would ever think that the religious orders of nuns who ran these concentration camps would do anything other than spend the rest of their days repenting their crimes against humanity. No one would, surely not? Magdalene, the fallen woman rescued by Christ. Magdalene, the laundries run by nuns from four Catholic religious orders: The Sisters of Mercy, The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, The Sisters of Charity and The Good Shepherd Sisters.
Strangely, prostitution did not disappear in Ireland. Those girls who escaped the laundry became streetwalkers around the Grand Canal and St Stephen’s Green. As is the case with streetwalkers, they were often beaten, robbed, forced to perform free for corrupt gardai and occasionally murdered.
The Rescue Industry has a song The Rescue Industry has entered the lexicon and now has its own song: Rescue Two-Step, described as ‘an anti-criminalization anthem...
On the subject of sex, Denmark has traditionally positioned itself as less like its Nordic neighbours and more like Germany. Hamburg is not far away, which perhaps explains why the organisers of an abolitionist, anti-prostitution event in Copenhagen would name it Grosse Freiheit, a street off the Reeperbahn in St Pauli, Hamburg’s red-light district. After an embarrassingly late jump onto the Rescue Industry bandwagon, CNN recently accused Denmark of being the Brothel of Scandinavia (reported here in puppet-fashion with the usual dumb photo).
Grosse Freiheit, Hamburg
Or do the event organisers want to imply the event is about the great freedom prostituted women will enjoy once they are saved from slavery? Whatever they mean, Grosse Freiheit?, scheduled for the weekend of 7/8 May in Copenhagen, promises to club attendees into submission with back-to-back speakers who agree that prostitution should be abolished and clients of sex workers should be jailed. I don’t use the word conference for this sort of thing because no actual analysis, not to mention differences of opinion, occur: Revival meeting, campaign event, movement marketing are more descriptive (readers of Sex at the Margins may recall that I attended a 3-day version of such an event in Madrid a decade ago – sleep-inducing but very illuminating).
Two non-Nordic prostitution-haters, Janice Raymond and Julie Bindel, are on the agenda. Raymond hates transsexuals and transgender people, too – I imagine a lot of this event will be about hating, now apparently a central facet of Extremist Feminism (which I briefly discussed in Something Dark). Hate is how local Danish protesters refer to the appearance of Raymond and Bindel (more from modkraft here.) Swedish state feminists will also speak, but note that Danes would be very annoyed by the implication that they are being over-influenced by Sweden.
The event is part of a wider campaign which saw Danish feminists marching on International Women’s Day through an area of Copenhagen associated with street prostitution and drug markets, where they made a loud protest against even the idea of sex work. The egregious Anne-Grethe Bajrup Riis, who recently screeched at a sex worker on national television (and was deliciously satirised afterwards) led the march. A so-called Danish Modelis promoted by the organisers. Only real insiders will detect any difference here with other Nordic regimes – who wants to try?
Danish men opposed to sex-buying are part of the campaign. At the SIO event I spoke at in Copenhagen on 31 March, a couple of young male politicians intervened, making uninformed, purely ideological allegations and completely ignoring anything said back to them. Nothing quite so boobyish as Ashton Kutcher’s video mishaps about Real Men Not Buying Sex have been undertaken so far, but who knows what the future holds? I am told that the proposition to criminalise the buying of sex will probably be made – again, by certain leftists – but is unlikely to pass, given political coalitions in parliament. But the campaign to bring in such a law perhaps explains why just another anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution event has such a big profile.
Note how some leftist politicians wish to distance themselves from transphobia whilst simultaneously associating themselves with the abolition of prostitution . I have no sympathy for them. The Danish sex worker rights organisation SIO is of course opposed to the whole event. And no, although I sometimes live only a half hour from this event, I won’t be attending.
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 traffickingthat 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.
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. . .
I wrote about hate and hating last year in a somewhat jocular tone, noting that I maintain a sort of parallel cv in which Important Enemies appear as a category (note that readers’ comments were highly entertaining). I also noted that some anti-prostitution activists question the right of people even to disagree with them. Then not long ago ex-movie star Sorvino attempted to stop me from talking on a BBC World Debate where I was a panelist – without succeeding, but her sense of entitlement is amazing (BBC editors softened the effect of her attack considerably in the published version).
Here is an example of another actress, Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis, making a nasty attack on a mainstream Danish television show (Go’ Morgen Danmark, TV2). Here no editing has softened the full effect; even without subtitles, even with the sound turned off completely, you get the gist. Bjarup Riis feels entitled to scream at and interrupt the other guest, hog screen time and use insulting language (fissehul = cunthole). The object of her attack is Susanne Møller, spokesperson for SIO, sex worker rights organisation in Denmark. Sus reacts to the attack by smiling and remaining calm.
Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis’ pinlige optræden på Go’ Morgen Danmark, TV2
The attack backfired, since SIO got lots of positive attention from viewers who did not appreciate Bjarup Riis’s behaviour and, especially, from those who repudiated her claim that she speaks for all women. This is a perverted version of feminism, to put it mildly. A parody was soon made of the encounter which is quite funny, and this time the presenter has a way to turn the screeching off.
Live fra Bremen 4 – Diskussion om sexarbejderne – Nyhederne sådan cirka!, DKWebTV
27 februar 1300 – 1800 Festival begins at Jemtelandsgade 3, Kvarterhuset, near Amagerbro Metro station (the metro to and from Vanløse to the airport). Map.
12:30 – 13:00 – Ankomst – Kom gerne i god tid
13:00 – 13:15 – Velkommen – Eini Carina Grønvold fra De røde paraplyer byder velkommen og fortæller om dagens forløb
13:15 -14:00 – Antropologen Laura Agustín taler om migrante sexarbejdere
14:00 -14:30 – spørgsmål og debat
14:30 – 15:15 Sexarbejderaktivisten Pye Jakobsson taler om forholdene for de Svenske sexarbejdere
15:15 – 15:45 spørgsmål og debat
15:45 – 16:00 Pause
16:00 – 16:30 Historikeren Nina Søndergaard vil kort skitsere op hvordan prostitution er blevet opfattet og reguleret i Vesteuropa gennem de sidste 150 år.
16:30 -16:45 spørgsmål
16:45 – 17:15 Talskvinde for SIO, Susanne Møller, vil fortælle om SIOs kamp for sexarbejderrettigheder
17:15 -17.45 spørgsmål og debat
17:45 – 18:00 – afrunding og og tak for i dag
1 marts kl 18:30 – 20:30
Filmaften i Virus Bio på Valhalsgade 4, 2200
Der vil blive vist film, der tematiserer sexarbejde fra forskellige vinkler. Efterfølgende debat. Entré 20 kr.
3 marts kl 17:00 – 19:00
Festivalen slutter d. 3 marts hvor vi vil markere Sexarbejdernes Internationale Rettighedsdag med en demonstration FOR sexarbejderrettigheder og IMOD sexkøbsforbud fra Rådhuspladsen til Halmtorvet. Alle er velkomne!
At an event at the British Academy in London the other day I used the term Extremist Feminism to describe the sort that convicted a man for buying sex in Sweden although evidence was lacking to show he had bought it, on the ground that he should have known that someone must have paid. The court assumed the female playmates in a hotel room to be prostitutes because of their appearance and their foreign-accented English. Dismal stereotyping of women going on there – not so different from the comment about disreputable women made with impunity by a hotel magnate in Luxor. Extremist also describes feminists who evaluated the sex-buying law without doing any actual investigation but declared it a success on purely ideological principles. And who then proceeded to propose increased penalties for clients convicted. Extremism means assuming men have bad intentions towards women and seeing their sexualities, and in fact their bodies themselves, as inherently exploitative. Others have used extremist to refer to man-haters like Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, and people throw around ruder terms like feminazi. But I prefer not to sound like someone trying to discredit all sorts of feminism.
I usually use the term fundamentalist feminism, referring to a stream of feminism that wants to go back ‘to the roots’, by which they mean early 1960s universalist feminism, the idea that Woman can be known through a biologically female body and Women are all ultimately alike. Authoritarian Feminism is another possible term, this time putting emphasis on the tendency of fundamentalists to decree that their view is the only correct one and must be followed by everyone. Theory calling itself radical feminism in the 1960s has moved in a direction Orwell might have called Big Sister Feminism, where no disagreement is brooked. This particular feminism happens to hold power in Swedish government bureaucracy. It is State Feminism (coming from government employees empowered to set policy on women and gender), but there is no reason why State Feminism should have to be extremist; this is just how history has played out in Sweden. This view of women and men exists in every country I have lived in, and that is quite a few. And my, how many extremist feminists wish it would play out the same way in their countries! Here is the review of the BA event from Something Dark, in which government attempts to censor and silence were discussed in detail.
A UK academic organisation, the Onscenity* research network, hosted a seminar at the British Academy, London, on 1 February to draw attention to increasing state regulation of sex in relation to media, labour and the internet.
Julian Petley, professor of screen media and journalism at London’s Brunel University, chaired the seminar, and introduced it with his own presentation, “Censoring the image”. Petley is a veteran advocate of free speech, and he once again demonstrated his detailed grasp of a broad range of censorship and free speech issues in the United Kingdom.
Petley began his delivery with the sobering declaration that there were many UK laws limiting freedom of speech; he then tabled an overview of these laws, their history and their socio–legal impact today. He drew particular attention to the evolution and problems of the Obscene Publications Act (OPA), various child protection laws, and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008.
He pointed to how the typology of child sexual abuse imagery adopted by the UK legal system regarding the mildest category, “level 1” – which refers to “images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity” – had led to “controversy”, for example, by allowing for “police bullying” of galleries exhibiting the work of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe [see the feature articles concerning Mapplethorpe from page 28 in SomethingDark webmagazine issue 1, beginning with “Twenty years later: Mapplethorpe, art and politics”; see also our Latest News entry of 9 July 2010, “Further viewing – the art of Robert Mapplethorpe”].
Regarding the CJIA 2008, specifically the sections criminalising simple possession of “extreme pornographic material”, Petley repeated the oft-quoted charge of critical specialists by stating the law was so vague and subjective that it is impossible for anyone to know whether a great body of material will be regarded as illegal or not. He summarised the approach of regulators as one that tends to “collapse” the offensive into the harmful, “as if being offended is the same as being harmed”.
The first speaker, Martin Barker, professor of film and television studies at Aberystwyth University, in his presentation “The problems of speaking about porn”, outlined the difficulties faced by individuals, including academic researchers, in dealing with themes of sex and pornography due to the stigma often attached to critics of heavy-handed regulation by the advocates of such regulation.
Barker referred to “the politics of disgust” and summarised the results of a survey he had conducted on print media coverage of issues concerning pornography. He said tabloid press coverage of “pornography” had increased since 2000 but had fluctuated within this trend, and consisted of two attitudes: (a) a “prurient fascination”; and, (b) an exaggerated morality that proclaimed certain categories of sexually oriented material as kinky and unacceptable.
Revealingly, Barker spent more time on broadsheet coverage, particularly on a steady increase in their use of the term “porn” as a metaphor with a range of negative connotations. He maintained the evidence suggested that the individual and subjective, emotional response of disgust automatically authorises commentators to adopt a simplified, morally superior position when dealing with complex issues such as pornography, and that “the politics of disgust” was driving public discourse and regulation.
Yaman Akdeniz, formerly at the University of Leeds but now an associate professor of law at Istanbul Bilgi University, outlined his work in legal campaigns to reduce the growing censorship of the internet by the Turkish state. He emphasised his concern at the potential for a “domino effect” that would see developing countries seize upon internet- and website-blocking policies, either already implemented or proposed, in developed Western countries such as the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia as justification for furthering their own, already relatively severe, censorship of the internet.
Turning his attention to the case being made for restricting internet access in the Western world, Akdeniz stressed the increasing prominence of arguments claiming that child protection demanded more robust, state-enforced internet regulation and censorship that targets all forms of sexual content, not just child abuse material. He cited an article in the Guardian newspaper from December to illustrate the pro-censorship argument being furthered in the United Kingdom, in this case as advocated by the UK parliamentary under-secretary of state for culture, communications and creative industries, Ed Vaizey.
Laura Agustín, a consultant anthropologist and author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007), focussed on attempts to regulate sexuality and society based on exaggerated claims regarding the extent of human trafficking in the international sex industry. She had recently counselled lawyers for Julian Assange of Wikileaks notoriety, who sought her advice on Swedish rape law in preparing their client’s defence against extradition to Sweden. Agustín, who has lived and worked in Sweden, criticised “state feminism” in the Scandinavian country, describing it as “extremism” that “has gone too far”. She went on to discuss Sweden’s “sex purchase law”, which criminalises those who pay for sexual services – a law that, using unsound and concocted, ideologically driven research, was last July evaluated by the Swedish government as having significantly reduced prostitution and prevented trafficking. It is a law that has been marketed with some success to other countries, including the United Kingdom.
Agustín narrated her experience as a panelist at the BBC World Debate Can Human Trafficking Be Stopped?, held in Luxor, Egypt, on 12 December 2010, which she likened to a “religious revivalism” meeting for “the rescue industry”. This industry, she maintained, bases much of its fervour on enthusiastically publicised – but bogus – statistics on the numbers of trafficked women. She emphasised the fact that sound and genuine research on the subject does not exist, but this does not deter the rescue industry from what is, in effect, a misguided and unrealistic attempt to eradicate prostitution globally, with damaging social consequences at ground level in individual countries [see Laura Agustín’s blog entry, “BBC World Debate on Trafficking Online: Sex, lies and videotaping”].
Clarissa Smith, senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sunderland, rounded off the seminar with a summary of the issues and the work that lies ahead in contributing towards the realisation of a more mature society.
Onscenity is a research network dedicated to developing new approaches to the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. It draws on the work of leading scholars from around the world and is working to map a transformed landscape of sexual practices and to coordinate a new wave of research in relevant fields. The body was founded in 2009 with funding from the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). “Sex and Regulation” was Onscenity’s second seminar.
Kein Mensch Ist Illegal: No One is Illegal reads the German pavement art. When I was doing research on migration in Spain, it was understood amongst NGOs and activists that undocumented migrants did indeed have the right to health care from publicly-funded institutions (public health clinics, notably). This right was not advertised anywhere, however, nor did any government spokesperson come out and say it in public. To know that you would be attended if you showed up at a public clinic, someone else had to tell you first – either another, more clued-in migrant or some person in solidarity with migrants.
I have doubts about the concept of rights in general, myself, and in particular that of human rights, but the academic author of an article denouncing Germany’s situation accepts them unquestioningly. The conundrum rests in the fact that migrants don’t legally exist in countries they have entered without documentation. Since they don’t have citizens’ (legal residents’) rights there, human rights to health are claimed, in tandem with arguments that in the country under discussion health care is considered a right.
Germany’s immigration policies focus mainly on combating illegal immigration, without any attention to the rights of undocumented migrants. In principle, there are certain minimal rights available to undocumented immigrants in Germany, including a reduced level of medical treatment. Several studies, however, have shown that in practice these migrants are hardly in a position to avail of their right to seeking medical care. The exclusion from full social benefits stems from the Government’s fear of creating any additional pull factors which might encourage further immigration. Undocumented migrants’ human rights are in no way sufficiently protected in Germany where the access to healthcare is governed by highly restrictive regulations. Medical assistance to this segment of the population is hampered as well as criminalised through the legal framework. Paragraphs 87 and 96 of the . . . Residence Act) . . . require public institutions to report illegal immigrants to the foreigners’ registration office. While hospitals and independent physicians are not obliged to do so, social welfare offices have to adhere to this law. This dismal situation is putting tremendous pressure on healthcare professionals and social workers who often work with limited resources to defend migrants’ fundamental rights to healthcare.
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.
Smuggling migrants from Turkey, often known to insiders as the sheep trade: excerpts from an academic research article describe how smuggling is carried out, which a lot of people don’t know when they engage in anti-trafficking or anti-migration tirades.
The Sheep Trade
In contrast to the well-known tourist destinations along the Turkish Mediterranean coast, Ayvalik is an almost sleepy resort situated only a few kilometers from the Greek island of Lesbos. When we visited Ayvalik in 2003 our host told us right away that only last week a ship sailed out with 23 migrants on board and capsized somewhere nearby. Only three survived. He said: ‘The coastguard doesn’t bother to raise the sunken and stranded ships any more because there are so many of them. I can take you to one.’ The journey did not lead to a stranded ship but to another person who knew the ‘sheep trade’ from personal experience. Just a few years ago the man had helped 800 migrants to board a tanker. It happened the way it always does. He got a call from Istanbul to let him know that his help was needed. He actually succeeded in transporting the 800 people to the sparsely populated coast and from there to the tanker, which was to take them directly to Italy. A day later he got the news that the coastguard had captured the tanker.
The transport service began very small in the late 1980s and in the middle of the 1990s the Kurdish migrants began to show up. In the beginning they all traveled by public transport; then they were brought in minibuses and eventually in three or four big buses —until the police began to notice. Now they are moved in trucks, squashed together like ‘sheep’, as our host put it.
. . . With increasing and more sophisticated technologies of control, the situation has become much more difficult. The main effect was that small smugglers such as the fishermen are losing the race and well-organized smuggler networks are taking over. Another smuggler in Greece told us of his experiences with the practice of border crossings: ‘The payment only comes at the end of the deal.’ That’s the security that the customers or their relatives have. The deal is always a verbal one. When the captain has been contacted and the agreement has been made, the date is set, the ‘heads’ are counted, and finally the price and method of payment are determined. The price varies according to the number of ‘heads’ and the type of journey. The captain can earn up to €15,000 per ‘transport’.
Plus ça change: Smuggling migrants in 1949 I’m reading a lot of older noir fiction these days and noting references to informal migration, however it’s talked about....
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.
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. . .
What’s interesting here is the ordinariness of smuggling as part of the plot. Le Carré wouldn’t think of making such a banal activity The Crime in one of his own novels. Rather, the mechanism of the key character’s getting into the country is just one more detail to be investigated and explained by the spies. Denmark and Sweden as countries smugglers have to cope with are unusual. Note the randomness – the migrant hoped to get to Copenhagen and would’ve liked Gothenburg but ended up in Hamburg. Although this is fiction, it’s a plausible account.
‘Didn’t you know that they treat refugees worse in this town than anywhere in Germany?’
‘Hamburg will be my home, sir. It is where they bring me. It is Allah’s divine command.’
‘Who brought you? Who’s they?’
‘It was combination, sir.’
‘Combination of what?’
‘Maybe Turkish people. Maybe Chechen people. We pay them. They take us to boat. Put us in container. Container had little air’. .
‘We? Who’s we?’
‘Was group, sir. From Istanbul. Bad group. Bad men. I do not respect these men.’
‘How many of you?’
‘Maybe twenty. Container was cold. After few hours, very cold. This ship would go to Denmark. I was happy.’
‘You mean Copenhagen, right? Copenhagen in Denmark, the capital.’
‘Yes . . . to Copenhagen. In Copenhagen, I would be arranged. I would be free from bad men. But this ship did not go immediately Copenhagen. This ship must go first Sweden. To Gothenburg. Yes? . . In Gothenburg, ship will dock, ship will take cargo, then go Copenhagen. When ship arrive in Gothenburg we are very sick, very hungry. On ship they tell to us: “Make no noise. Swedes hard. Swedes kill you.” We make no noise. But Swedes do not like our container. Swedes have dog.’ He reflects a while. ‘”What is your name, please?” What papers, please? You are from prison? What crimes, please? You escape from prison? How, please?”‘ Doctors are efficient. I admire these doctors. They let us sleep. But God willing I must escape. To escape to Sweden is no chance. There is NATO wire. Many guards. But there is also toilet. From toilet is window. After window is gate to harbour. My friend can open this gate. My friend is from boat. I go back to boat. Boat takes me to Copenhagen. At last, I say, In Copenhagen was lorry for Hamburg. Sir, I love God. But the West I also love. In West I shall be free to worship Him.’
‘A lorry brought you to Hamburg?’
‘Was arranged.’
‘A Chechen lorry?’
‘My friend must first take me to road.’
‘Your friend from the crew? That friend? The same guy?’
‘No, sir, was different friend. To reach road was difficult. Before lorry, we must sleep one night in field.’ He looked up, and an expression of pure joy momentarily suffused his haggard features. ‘Was stars. God is merciful. Praise be to Him.’
Wrestling with the improbabilities of this story, humbled by its fervour yet infuriated as much by its omissions as his own incapacity to overcome them, Melik felt his frustration spread to his arms and fists . . .
‘Where did it drop you off then, this magic lorry that showed up out of nowhere? Where did it drop you?’
People-smuggling from Turkey: the sheep trade Smuggling migrants from Turkey, often known to insiders as the sheep trade: excerpts from an academic research article describe how...
Plus ça change: Smuggling migrants in 1949 I’m reading a lot of older noir fiction these days and noting references to informal migration, however it’s talked about....
Young people selling sex or its illusions resist victimisation by a typically tut-tutting reporter who not only asks them the facts but also tries to get them to feel bad about their jobs. Someone should make a compilation of just the reporters’ side of these conversations, with their disapproving expressions and head-shaking as they reveal that moneymatters to people (golly, do they really think most people get to have such neat jobs as theirs??) while at the same time other things than money matter, too. The kids win the show hands down, even though the reporter gives the impression that he Knows Better (latest nomination for Rescue Industry reporter of the month). See the site for two videos, both involving girls, that I cannot copy. In one of them, the escort admits someone once pinned her down and she didn’t like it. Horror from the reporter: That’s rape! (trying to get her to cry on camera, was he?) The escort says I am okay now. Reporter reiterates his personal shock at what she’s said. Feh, I hate this stuff!
‘Butlers in the buff’ Ben and Alex are in for the money
My journey starts in Bristol with students Ben and Alex, both 21 who say their Saturday job is “cheekier” than most. It’s a dream job. We get paid to go to parties, says Ben. We head to a party where the boys have been booked for a few hours. They make their big entrance wearing nothing but a tiny apron, bow tie, and cuffs. They’re butlers in the buff. In my first year I worked in a bar, in order to earn 50 quid, I’d have to work 10 hours. Now I can do that in two hours at the weekend, says Alex. The boys say they love the attention, but admit it’s all about the money.
Topless on TV
Next, I go to meet twins Preeti and Priya, who work for Babestation – one of the UK’s biggest adult TV channels. The girls take calls from viewers while they are topless and say it’s their choice of career. We both left school with good grades. We had a lot of possibilities open to us, says Preeti. They say job satisfaction is the main reason they chose to work in the sex industry over other careers but admit there’s a potential to earn a lot of money. If you work hard you could be earning up to a hundred grand a year. But don’t think, ‘I’ve never done this job before and I’ll walk in and they’ll say that’s your salary’, it doesn’t work like that.
Someone who has used her body to become rich and famous is glamour model Keeley Hazell. However, she says going topless isn’t always the best way to achieve her kind of success. I was lucky to be in that 1% of people that get that, and become really successful. Keeley believes people who want to go into glamour should ask themselves why: If it’s for money, then I’d probably play the lottery.
‘Not prostitution’
I end my journey by meeting a former teenage escort who worked under the name ‘Hannah’. Aged 18, she was preparing to go to university and owed her family and friends £4,000. A friend suggested escorting as a quick solution to her debt. An overnight stay would cost £800, she says. Hannah doesn’t consider what she did as prostitution because she didn’t stand on street corners. Although she misses the money, she stopped because she became obssessed about catching STIs and couldn’t cope with the nightmares she was having. I don’t feel like I degraded myself in the sense of my naked body being plastered up on a billboard saying, ‘Call this number for good times. But I did degrade myself in that my body was no longer just for people who loved me.
This is a long academic piece but useful to understanding the beginnings of what I came to call the Rescue Industry. The links between reference numbers and endnotes go via the original publication’s website (rhizomes). If you use them you just need to click the back button to return to this page.
Abstract: Social interventions aimed at helping the group positioned as most needy in Europe today, migrant women who sell sex, can be understood by examining that time, 200 years ago, when ‘the prostitute’ was identified as needing to be saved. Before, there was no class of people who viewed their mission to be ‘helping’ working-class women who sold sex, but, during the ‘rise of the social,’ the figure of the ‘prostitute’ as pathetic victim came to dominate all other images. At the same time, demographic changes meant that many women needed and wanted to earn money and independence, yet no professions thought respectable were open to them. Simultaneous with the creation of the prostitute-victim, middle class women were identified as peculiarly capable of raising them up and showing the way to domesticity. These ‘helpers’ constructed a new identity and occupational sphere for themselves, one considered worthy and even prestigious. Nowadays, to question ‘helping’ projects often causes anger or dismissal. A genealogical approach, which shows how governmentality functioned in the past, is easier to accept, and may facilitate the taking of a reflexive attitude in the present.
This article addresses the governmental impulse to name particular commercial-sex practices as ‘prostitution’ and its practitioners as ‘prostitutes.’ Although it is conventional to refer to ‘the world’s oldest profession,’ the term prostitution has never described a clearly defined activity and was constructed by particular social actors at a specific time for specific reasons. [i] Within feminism, the phenomenon called prostitution is the centre of an intransigent debate about its meanings, one aspect of the conflict revolving around what words should be used to describe women who offer sexual services for sale: prostitute, sex worker, prostituted woman, victim of sexual exploitation. The use of one label or another locates the speaker on one or the other side of the debate, which essentially asks whether a woman who sells sex must by definition be considered a victim of others’ actions or whether she can enjoy a degree of agency herself in her commercial practice. In the prostitution discourse, those who sell are women and those who buy are men; it is a gendered concept, despite the enormous numbers of transgenders and men who sell sex and the transgenders and women who buy it. The anxiety to define and classify concerns the position of women, and this anxious debate should be seen as a governmental exercise carried out by social actors whose own identities are at stake. Academics and other theorists and advocates for one or another vision define themselves as good feminists or caring persons through their writing and advocacy. Being ‘right’ about how to envision women who sell sex is necessary to these identities, which explains the heated, repetitive nature of the debate. At the same time, for most of those who actually carry out the activity that excites so much interest and conflict, the debate feels far away and irrelevant.
Nowadays, much of the discourse targets migrant women who sell sex, particularly in wealthier countries. I have written in other places about the construction by outsiders of these contemporary subjects as prostitutes, sex workers or victims of ‘trafficking’ when their self-definitions are different (2005a), the construction of victimhood in general (2003a, 2005a), the disqualification of other elements of their identity (2002, 2004b, 2006), the obsession with certain of their sexual practices to the exclusion of everything else about their lives (2003b), the difficulty on the part of many feminists to accept the agency of working-class women who sell sex (2004a) and the voluminous quantity of interventions designed to help, save and control them (2005b).
The social sector desiring to help and save women who sell sex is very large indeed. The proliferation of discourses implicated includes the feminisation of poverty, closing borders and immigration law, international organised crime (especially ‘trafficking’ and modern forms of slavery), sexual-health promotion, the control of contagious diseases, debt bondage, non-recognised economic sectors, violence against women, women’s and human rights, social exclusion, sex tourism, globalisation, paedophilia and child labour, as well as policies aimed at controlling the sale of sex. Attendant technologies have also proliferated, including safe houses, rehabilitation programmes, outreach projects, drop-in centres, academic research, harm-reduction theory and a whole domain of ‘psy’ theories and interventions concerning the causes and effects of selling sex on individuals. People positioned as experts on the subject constantly lobby governments, write and speak at conferences on the subject, with the result that women who sell sex are pathologised as victims daily.
All these preoccupations and apparatuses provide employment for large numbers of people, the majority women. These social-sector jobs are considered dignified, sometimes prestigious and may even be tinged with a sacrificial brush—the idea that those employed in ‘helping’ are unselfish, not themselves gaining anything through their work. The fact that their projects are governmental exercises of power is ignored. There is strong resistance to the idea that rescue or social-justice projects might be questionable or criticised in general, and the internecine feminist conflict focussing on whether the activity called prostitution is inherently a form of violence or can be a plausible livelihood strategy distracts from any real reflection on the usefulness of the projects. Yet, despite the abundant efforts carried out on their behalf, there has been little improvement in the lot of women who sell sex since the whole helping project began two hundred years ago. ‘Programmes presuppose that the real is programmable,’ said Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller (1992: 183). In this case, ‘the real’ is too often a woman designated victim who does not want to be saved, so it is little wonder that programming does not work. This article therefore explores the beginnings of the identification of a pathological activity (prostitution) and the labelling of its practitioners (prostitutes), the governmental projects that resulted and the social effects on both groups involved. Continue reading →
The question of statistics on trafficking continues knotty. Earlier this year various news services reported that the German chief of police had announced sex trafficking had increased 11% over last year and 70% over a five-year period. But almost immediately that claim was shown to be wrong – by which I mean that I found out right away because I know people who keep an eye on these things.
Now here are the German Federal Criminal Police’s own statistics that show the opposite to what the chief said – there is no increase in victims of trafficking:
2000 – 926 victims
2001 – 987 victims
2002 – 811 victims (German law regulating prostitution enacted)
2003 – 1235 victims
2004 – 972 victims
2005 – 642 victims
2006 – 775 victims
2007 – 689 victims
2008 – 676 victims
2009 – 710 victims
Cases have fallen since 2003, which does not prove that decriminalisation caused the drop but hardly shows it has had the dire consequences claimed. How this particular lie got started, why the police chief should have said it when his own numbers contradict it, is hard to understand.
Given the considerable confusion about Julian Assange’s sex with a couple of women in Sweden, perhaps what I wrote last year about Swedish rape law can be clarifying.
As regular readers know, I’m trying to figure out how the lovely utopian goal of Gender Equality landed us in a future I never expected, where ‘progressive’ and ‘feminist’ could be associated with policies that position women as innately passive victims. Activists interested in sex-industry legislation usually cite Swedish prostitution law as the fount of all evil, with its criminalisation of the buying of sexual services. This law is a cornerstone of an overall Swedish policy to foment Gender Equality, and so is rape legislation that has led to bizarre statistics commented on in this story published in Sweden’s English-language daily The Local.
Rape is a complicated crime. A research project funded by the European Commission’s Daphne programme reveals that Sweden leads Europe in reports of rape. At 46.5 per 100,000 members of the population, Sweden far surpasses Iceland, which comes next with 36, and England and Wales after that with 26. At the same time, Sweden’s 10 percent conviction rate of rape suspects is one of Europe’s lowest.
The report’s comparative dimension should probably be ignored. Instead of assuming that there are four times as many rapes in Sweden as in neighbouring Denmark or Finland, as the figures suggest, to understand we would have to compare all the definitional and procedural differences between their legal systems. It is significant that Sweden counts every event between the same two people separately where other countries count them as one. Most of Sweden’s rapes involve people who know each other, in domestic settings (Sweden report here).
The countries reporting highest rates of rape are northern European with histories of social programming to end violence against women. In Sweden, Gender Equality is taught in schools and reinforced in public-service announcements. Should we believe that such education has no effect, or, much worse, an opposite effect? Raging anti-feminist men think so, and raging anti-immigrant Swedes blame foreigners. Amnesty International says patriarchal norms are intransigent in Swedish family life. Everyone faults the criminal justice system.
In contemporary Sweden, women and girls are encouraged to speak up assertively about gender bias and demand their rights. Public discussions have revolved around how to achieve equal sex: Gender Equality in the bedroom. We can consult okejsex.nu, an official campaign whose homepage shows pedestrians obliviously passing buildings full of scenes of violence, suggesting it is ubiquitous behind closed doors. Okejsex defines rape as any situation where sex occurs after someone has said no.
In many countries, and in many people’s minds, rape means penetration, usually by a penis, into a mouth, vagina or anus. In Swedish rape law, the word can be used for acts called assault or bodily harm in other countries.
That may be progressive, but it’s also confusing. You don’t have to be sexist or racist to imagine the misunderstandings that may arise. If younger people (or older, for that matter) have been out drinking and dancing and end up in a flat relaxing late at night, we are not surprised that the possibility of sex is raised. The process of getting turned on – and being seduced – is often vague and strange, involving looks and feelings rather than clear intentions. It is easy to go along and actively enjoy this process until some point when it becomes unenjoyable. We resist, but feebly. Sometimes we give in against our true wishes.
Sweden is also proud of its generous policy towards asylum-seekers and other migrants who may not instantly comprehend what Gender Equality means here, or that not explicitly violent or penetrative sex acts are understood as rape. That doesn’t mean that non-Swedes are rapists but that a large area exists where crossed signals are likely, for instance, amongst people out on the town drinking.
Discussions of rape nowadays use examples of women who are asleep, or have taken drugs or drunk too much alcohol, in order to argue that they cannot properly consent to sex. If they feel taken advantage of the next day, they may call what happened rape. The Daphne project’s Sweden researchers propose that those accused of rape ought to have to ‘prove consent’, but attempts to legislate and document seduction and desire are unlikely to succeed.
What isn’t questioned, in most public discussions, is the idea that the problem must be addressed by more laws, ever more explicit and strict. Contemporary society insists that punishment is the way to stop sexual violence, despite evidence suggesting that criminal law has little impact on sexual behaviour.
We want to think that if laws were perfectly written and police, prosecutors and judges were perfectly fair, then rapes would decrease because a) all rapists would go to jail and b) all potential rapists would be deterred from committing crime. Unfortunately, little evidence corroborates this idea. Debates crystallise in black-and-white simplifications that supposedly pit politically correct arguments against the common sense of regular folk. Subtleties and complications are buried under masses of rhetoric, and commentaries turn cynical: ‘Nothing will change’, ‘the police are pigs’, immigrants are terrorists, girls are liars.
Is it realistic or kind to teach that life in Sweden can always be safe, comfortable and impervious to outside influences? That, in the sexual sphere, everything disagreeable should be called rape and abuse? Although the ‘right’ to Gender Equality exists, we cannot expect daily life to change overnight because it does.
Something to celebrate: Leaving Morality Debates Behind and instead considering commercial sex as a field: to study, to be interested in, to struggle about – but not to address in terms of Is it bad or good that people sell sex? It’s five years since I published the article presenting this theoretical framework – already familiar to people who know that you cannot research something well if you come to it with Big Moral Issues.
Leaving Morality Debates Behind: The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex
With the academic, media and ‘helping’ gaze fixed on women who sell sex, the great majority of phenomena that make up the sex industry are ignored. People who sell sex tend to be examined in terms of ‘prostitution’, focussing on transactions between individuals and personal motivations. A cultural-studies approach looks at commercial sex in its widest sense, examining its intersections with art, migration, ethics, service work, consumption, family life, entertainment, sport, economics, urban space, sexuality, tourism, informal economies and criminality, not omitting issues of race, class, gender, identity and citizenship. The object is to study the everyday practices involved, to reveal how our societies distinguish between activities considered normatively ‘social’ and activities denounced as criminally and morally wrong and to look for ways out of a seemingly intransigent social conflict.
I wonder whether some of these sex workers figure that if they fly in and stay close to the airport and then fly out again they can elude the Rescue Industry? More autonomy than this is hard to imagine, though I suppose some will say the women are forced to fly by their pimps. Cheaper air fares might be credited for helping people avoid exploitation, too, though.
The 
