The Naked Anthropologist

Tag Archives: laws

Sex offenders and clients of sex workers: creating monsters

What do sex offenders and clients of sex workers have in common? To understand why my answer is a great deal, you need to look at how outsider sexualities are constructed so that some sex is deemed to be Good, everything else to be Bad and transgressors become monsters.

I read Roger Lancaster’s 1994 book Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua ten years ago when I was looking for ethnographic accounts of non-mainstream sexualities and gender identities. Lancaster has a new book, Sex Panic and the Punitive State, which I have not read, but I was struck by his ideas in the following essay about sex offenders. Men who buy sex occupy an increasingly similar social position nowadays: considered either monsters or perverts. This year’s TIP report and the End Demand campaign insist that these men’s desires and bodies are simply wrong. Clients are not yet placed on Sex Offender Registers, but schemes to name and shame them in the media approach that idea and I will not be surprised if calling them sex offenders is proposed.

Note in an example from the other day’s Vancouver Sun: Make human traffickers’ names public: law professor. Perrin opposes Judge Susan Himel’s decision last year to remove from Ontario Law significant barriers to safe sex work (he was on Melissa Farley’s side). Perrin is a law academic who loves the police.

And don’t imagine that men called sex offenders are really bad in a way that men who buy sex are not: it’s the process of demonisation you want to keep your eye on, and how society handles those demonised.

The essay is long, so I have cut it. About halfway through I highlight with bold techniques being used and suggestions being made for further stigmatisation of a wide range of people.

Sex Offenders: The Last Pariahs
Roger N. Lancaster, New York Times, 21 August 2011

. . . most criminal justice advocates have been reluctant to talk about sex offender laws, much less reform them. The reluctance has deep roots. Sex crimes are seen as uniquely horrific. During the Colonial, antebellum and Jim Crow eras, white Americans were preoccupied with tales of sexual dangers to white women and children McCarthy-era paranoia, stories of Satanic ritual abuse and other sex panics stirred pervasive anxieties about lurking strangers. Sexual predators play a lead role in the production of a modern culture of fear.

. . . The most intense dread, fueled by shows like “America’s Most Wanted” and “To Catch a Predator,” is directed at the lurking stranger, the anonymous repeat offender. But most perpetrators of sexual abuse are family members, close relatives, or friends or acquaintances of the victim’s family. . .

. . .Advocates for laws to register, publicize and monitor sex offenders after their release from custody typically assert that those convicted of sex crimes pose a high risk of sex crime recidivism. But studies by the Justice Department and other organizations show that recidivism rates are significantly lower for convicted sex offenders than for burglars, robbers, thieves, drug offenders and other convicts. Only a tiny proportion of sex crimes are committed by repeat offenders, which suggests that current laws are misdirected and ineffective. . .

Contrary to the common belief that burgeoning registries provide lists of child molesters, the victim need not have been a child and the perpetrator need not have been an adult. Child abusers may be minors themselves. Statutory rapists – a loose category that includes some offenses involving neither coercion nor violence – are covered in some states. Some states require exhibitionists and “peeping Toms” to register; Louisiana compelled some prostitutes to do so. Two-thirds of the North Carolina registrants sampled in a 2007 study by Human Rights Watch had been convicted of the nonviolent crime of “indecent liberties with a minor,” which does not necessarily involve physical contact.

. . . Newer laws go even further. At last count, 44 states have passed or are considering laws that would require some sex offenders to be monitored for life with electronic bracelets and global positioning devices. A 2006 federal law, the Adam Walsh Act, named for a Florida boy who was abducted and killed, allows prosecutors to apply tougher registration rules retroactively. New civil commitment procedures allow for the indefinite detention of sex offenders after the completion of their sentences. Such procedures suggest a catch-22: the accused is deemed mentally fit for trial and sentencing, but mentally unfit for release. Laws in more than 20 states and hundreds of municipalities restrict where a sex offender can live, work or walk. California’s Proposition 83 prohibits all registered sex offenders (felony and misdemeanor alike) from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, effectively evicting them from the state’s cities and scattering them to isolated rural areas.

Digital scarlet letters, electronic tethering and practices of banishment have relegated a growing number of people to the logic of “social death,” a term introduced by the sociologist Orlando Patterson, in the context of slavery, to describe permanent dishonor and exclusion from the wider moral community. The creation of a pariah class of unemployable, uprooted criminal outcasts has drawn attention from human rights activists . . . Several states currently publish online listings of methamphetamine offenders, and other states are considering public registries for assorted crimes. Mimicking Megan’s Law, Florida maintains a website that gives the personal details (including photo, name, age, address, offenses and periods of incarceration) of all prisoners released from custody. Some other states post similar public listings of paroled or recently released ex-convicts. It goes without saying that such procedures cut against rehabilitation and reintegration.

Our sex offender laws are expansive, costly and ineffective – guided by panic, not reason. It is time to change the conversation: to promote child welfare based on sound data rather than statistically anomalous horror stories, and in some cases to revisit outdated laws that do little to protect children. Little will have been gained if we trade a bloated prison system for sprawling forms of electronic surveillance that offload the costs of imprisonment onto offenders, their families and their communities.

This is the context in which End Demand campaigns are occurring. Writing on the wall.

On the panic point, I will be talking on a panel about sex scandals at the AAA in Montreal next month. Offenders, clients, scandals, panics: all related in ways I am trying to figure out.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Decriminalise sex work says Society for the Study of Social Problems

An impressively coherent resolution on the decriminalisation of prostitution and sex work has come from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which aims to promote and protect sociological research and teaching on significant problems of social life. They took this resolution in early October, which is written for the US context – one of the world’s hardest for people who sell sex. So despite the horrible reductionism and man-hating from people like Melissa Farley and Swanee Hunt, some mainstream folks understand the difficult complexity of this social problem and how to begin breaking it down: how pleasing.

RESOLUTION 3: Sex Work

WHEREAS the criminalization of prostitution and other forms of sex work negotiated between consenting adults perpetuates violence and social stigma against sex workers, including by law enforcement, and prevents trafficked individuals from seeking medical care or protection from law enforcement and holding custody of their children; and represents one of the most direct forms of discrimination against women, trans individuals, and other gender minorities;

WHEREAS the criminalization of prostitution and other forms of sex work denies sex workers basic human and civil rights, including healthcare and housing, extended to workers in other trades, occupations, callings, or professions;

WHEREAS the decriminalization of prostitution would lead to safer working conditions and better health for both the worker and client, and allow workers to report nonconsensual activities to law enforcement without fear of being arrested;

WHEREAS the decriminalization of sex work would allow sex workers to enjoy their lives and livelihood without having to hide, and thereby seek and receive the same legal protections enjoyed by workers in other trades, work, occupations, or professions against crimes such as sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and rape;

AND BE IT RESOLVED that the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) supports occupational support and sexual self-determination for adults engaged in sex work;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that non-consenting adults and all trafficked children forced into sexual activity (commercial or otherwise) deserve the full protection of the law and perpetrators deserve the full punishment by the law;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports international AIDS relief that allows access to reproductive health for sex workers and renounces anti-prostitution legislation such as the APLO, or Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath, which prevents U.S. aid from being allocated to health organizations that provide medical support for sex workers;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports non-profit organizations that supply housing and other resources to trafficked individuals in the sex industry without mandatory, moralistic, ‘therapy’ or diversion programs;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the SSSP supports: (1) bipartisan legislation to decriminalize prostitution (2) public education regarding the costs of policing sex workers and (3) normalization of the occupation.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Trafficking convictions in Sweden: tortuous laws about sex

I suppose in a dictatorship it might be possible to write a law aimed at punishing traffickers where no meaningful evidence was required. Then arrests and convictions could shoot up and prisons be full of men who might or might not have had bad intentions or done anything wrong. But despite the unpleasant rhetoric and complete lack of interest in evidence evinced by some of Sweden’s Gender-Equality Warriors, the Swedish legal system operates as (in)effectively as those in other contemporary democratic-style states. This was made obvious in police comments on the difficulty of convicting men for buying sex and now here on the subject of convicting traffickers.

The story below attempts to explain why there have been so few convictions of traffickers, but the impossibility of getting the law’s wording right is obvious. Legal language is often tortuous, but this quality is exaggerated when it attempts to pin down ultimately indefinable states of mind: Note, in the key paragraph (in green below) the use of coercion, deception, abuse, vulnerable. defencelessness, dependent, improper means, controls, exploit. The meaning of each of these key words changes completely according to context and moment and easily mean different things to migrant (or victim), smuggler (or perpetrator) and rescuer.

The story comes from Ireland, where some legislators who want to penalise the buying of sex sent a delegation to Sweden – which absolutely everybody does, it’s the in thing, but all they usually do is talk to government representatives in Stockholm, who tell them what the visitors could have read online without taking an expensive junket. Note that this entire analysis makes no mention of migration at all, which continues to be the fundamental issue despite protestations that it is not because now we are talking about slavery.

Human Trafficking: Concerns even as Swedish law is rewritten to get convictions, 04 January 2011, Irish Examiner

When one looks at the numbers of successful prosecutions for human trafficking in Sweden over the last five years, one could easily be forgiven for thinking there had been little return for its major investment in combating the crime. Between 2003 and 2008, there were just 10 people convicted specifically of human trafficking out of 133 cases brought. However, the low return is not reflective of the true impact the prosecutions have had. The ambiguous wording of the trafficking law in Sweden up to July 2010 made it exceptionally difficult to get convictions. But the authorities had good reason for not being in a particular rush to correct that ambiguity. The sentences for aggravated pimping — the crime just below human trafficking carried the same maximum sentence of 10 years as the more serious misdemeanour.

“A lot of cases end up as serious pimping instead of human trafficking, because it was easier for the prosecutors and court to have a sentence for it,” said Detective Inspector Jonas Trolle of the Swedish surveillance unit who is an expert in investigating human trafficking. “I think it was sad, because our legislation on trafficking in human beings is a very good legislation and has a lot of possibilities to get convictions, but it was too complicated for the prosecutors and courts. Therefore, prosecutors would not push strongly for the highest sentence possible for aggravated pimping.”

When that category is taken into account, the successful prosecutions shoot up. The number of reported crimes rise to 601 and the convictions rise to 127. Nonetheless, it simply was not good enough not to have clear and detailed legislation. The problem was that a successful prosecution for human trafficking required the prosecutors to prove the defendant had taken control of the victim.

“We had two trafficking paragraphs before, which did not work,” said Kajsa Wahlberg. “The second paragraph had so many tiny little things which had to be correct. For instance, it said that the trafficker must use improper means in order to recruit or transport the person but it also said the trafficker must have control. Improper means is very much related to control also. It was mixed up. It also said the trafficker must have the intention at recruitment that he is going to exploit the person.”

She cited, as an example, an instance where a Swedish man trafficked a girl from Slovakia to the southern part of Sweden. “He claimed she was his girlfriend, they had lived there and they decided to move to Sweden,” she said. “He said he proposed for her to go into prostitution and that he recruited buyers for her but that he had no intention to traffic her to Sweden when he took her from Slovakia. He said it was an idea that came up when they got here.

“So many of these types of people got loose because we could not prove intention to traffic. It was also viewed that the second paragraph did not protect children as it should. Because of the confusion, 16-17 year olds were not being regarded as trafficking… The court required directly that the trafficker must have used improper means. The paragraph did not require that.”

In the forward to the new clause which came into the Swedish human trafficking law on July 1, 2010, the authors wrote: “The requisite that describes the improper means should be given in somewhat clearer and more readily-understood meaning than they have at present.” Therefore, the relevant paragraphs were rewritten to state: “Anyone who makes use of unlawful coercion or deception, abuses someone’s vulnerable situation, abuses someone’s youth or defencelessness or abuses someone’s dependent status has used such a means that may result in liability for trafficking in human beings. “The current list of kinds of acts of trafficking covered shall be supplemented by the possibility of a person, who by some improper means controls another in order to exploit her, in him being penalised for trafficking in human beings.”

It is too early to say whether the new language will make it easier to achieve the full human trafficking convictions authorities crave. As far as Jonas Trolle is concerned, there may still be issues. “I am worried about the situation now,” he said. “They have removed the control part, but I am not sure it is easy to have sentences for human trafficking.” He has reason to be worried. Police estimate that between 400 and 600 women are trafficked to Sweden every year and of those 200 to 300 are destined for Stockholm.

Furthermore, there is concern that even the new version of the law does require the accumulation of a large swathe of evidence before a conviction can be sought. Kajsa Wahlberg admits that that often means victims might be moved on before the police can move in and arrest the trafficker.

“After surveillance for a certain period of time, you might assume there are 30 women being exploited, but you don’t go in and identify them all, because you will reveal your investigation,” she said, “We are not always sure what is going on; if all of these women are being exploited or if they have another role in the apartment. When we strike, there might only be three left because some of them are being transported back and forth and we are not always clear of each and everyone’s role. We can interrogate the three, but we don’t know about the other 27.”

They will keep trying to get this right, though, we can be sure of that.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Funding for EWL anti-prostitution campaign challenged in parliament

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

He seems more bored than disgusted. Alex

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.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Institutionalised arrogance: once again, the Trafficking in Persons report

CNN is calling it the Slavery Report, unhelpfully muddying all possible distinctions between different sorts of human experience. The ever-questionable Trafficking in Persons Report has come out again, complete with photos of Hillary Clinton cuddling brown girls and other colonialist preening. Before anyone says anything, I don’t believe it makes a whit of difference that the US now includes itself in the rankings. I first wrote about this in an editorial for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2007 and haven’t changed my mind since then (see Well-meaning Interference.)

The TIP bureaucracy is big now: 52 people are mentioned as employees of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, including, of course, Luis CdeBaca, whose excesses I commented not long ago. However, office staff are just the tip of the human involvement in producing these reports, which brings me to a discussion of what the report pitifully calls methodology.

When I read reports on ‘research’, I first turn to the section where methodology is explained. It doesn’t have to be the first section of a report, but it is what I check first. Methodology means the methods used to find information that you present to readers as results – the facts, testimonies and other data your research uncovered. That means everything about how you do the research, whether you are doing a high school paper, a Guardian investigative report, ethnographic fieldwork or a community survey. In 2009 I called the TIP the No-Methodology Report, saying

I want to know how the data was gathered, which sources were consulted, who was allowed to give information, whose estimates were deemed authoritative and how data were confirmed. I want to know precisely how researchers handled the considerable international muddle over definitions, since the fact that people mean different things when they say the word trafficking is a notorious source of conflict and confusion, not to mention that a lot of the English keywords cannot be reliably translated into all other languages (for example, abuse, exploitation, force, coercion).

Methodology also covers how you chose your research questions, how you located sources of information (human and non-human), how you presented what you were doing to people you talked to and how you worded the questions you asked, as well as how much of everything you did and for how long and where, and how you analysed it all after gathering information (computer software for data analysis? mathematical calculations?). If, like the TIP, you are doing international research, I want to know how language issues were handled (interpreters? translation machines?). And not least I want to hear what sort of ethics guidelines and protections were in place, since the framework for all this is about law, crime, criminals and victims.

Yet this is the entirety of the TIP’s Methodology section:

The Department of State prepared this report using information from U.S. embassies, government officials, nongovernmental and international organizations, published reports, research trips to every region, and information submitted to tipreport@state.gov. This email address provides a means by which organizations and individuals can share information with the Department of State on government progress in addressing trafficking. U.S. diplomatic posts and domestic agencies reported on the trafficking situation and governmental action to fight trafficking based on thorough research that included meetings with a wide variety of government officials, local and international NGO representatives, officials of international organizations, journalists, academics, and survivors. U.S. missions overseas are dedicated to covering human trafficking issues.

In other words, no information at all. It’s nice that people are invited to ‘share’ information, only how do recipients of these emails know that the information is any good? They are awfully paranoid about loads of other people making Internet contacts – those they call pimps, pedophiles, traffickers, groomers and all the rest. The TIP office apparently wants us to believe the whole business is covert, a sort of spy operation. One is simply meant to feel awe that they are Doing So Much.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Bedford v Canada: Report from the courtroom on prostitution law and sex work

Last October an historic decision was made in Ontario, Canada – suggesting that Canadian laws are antiquated, endanger people who sell sex and violate their civil rights. Immediately, opponents began crying about all the scary things that would happen if decriminalisation came to pass.

Here is an interesting report on last week’s events in an appeals court, in which the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network clearly supports sex worker rights. I added links to rights organisations.

Bedford v Canada: Report from an intervention

From June 13–17, 2011, five justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal heard arguments about the constitutionality of Criminal Code provisions relating to adult prostitution. This was an appeal of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision from September 2010, when Justice Susan Himel struck down the communication, bawdy house and living-onthe-avails provisions of the Criminal Code because she found they forced sex workers into more dangerous situations and contributed to a greater risk of violence and other threats to their health and safety.

Besides the applicants in the case (namely Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott — all current or former sex workers) and the Attorneys General of Ontario and Canada, seven groups were granted intervener status in order to assist the court with the issues before it. The seven interveners included a coalition of the Christian Legal Fellowship, REAL Women of Canada and the Catholic Civil Rights League; a coalition of organizations that included the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres; the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; the B.C. Civil Liberties Association; a coalition of PACE, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society (or “SWUAV” — both sex worker organizations in Vancouver) and Pivot Legal Society; a joint intervention from Maggie’s (Toronto sex worker organization) and POWER (Ottawa sex work organization); and a joint intervention from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE).

In their appeal, the Attorneys General of Canada and Ontario argued that the purpose of the prostitution-related provisions in the Criminal Code was to eradicate prostitution by discouraging sex work, an argument forcefully countered by Alan Young, a lawyer and professor at Osgoode Hall who represented the applicants. The Attorney General of Canada also argued that the law was not the cause of, nor did it facilitate, the harm sex workers face — an argument that did not seem to persuade the panel of judges.

Among the interveners, the coalition of PACE, SWUAV and Pivot was particularly compelling because it represented the perspective of street-based sex workers, upon whom the communicating provision has had a tremendously harmful impact in terms of safety and health. Counsel for PACE, SWUAV and Pivot as well as Maggie’s and POWER also decried the “asymmetrical” or “Swedish” model, whereby clients and employers of sex workers continue to be criminalized but sex workers are not. This argument, also endorsed by the Legal Network and the BC-CfE, submits that the asymmetrical approach fails to lessen or eliminate the risks to sex workers exacerbated by the current provisions. Under an asymmetrical regime, sex workers would continue to be prevented from screening their clients by negotiating in advance the terms of their transactions, since it would still be illegal for clients to engage in these communications. Also, sex workers would still be prevented from working indoors, where the work is safer, because the bawdy house law would apply to clients and others found on the premises. Additionally, it would still be illegal for sex workers to hire a bodyguard or a driver, since these persons could be criminalized by the living-on-the-avails provision.

The Legal Network and the BC-CfE argued that, in addition to the violence to which sex workers are subject as a result of the law, they are also prevented from taking precautions to negotiate and practise safer sex. The communicating provision, for example, hampers sex workers’ ability to negotiate condom use. Even more broadly, the criminalization of prostitution hinders sex workers’ access to health-care services, including HIV testing, education, prevention, care, treatment and support.

The impact of the prostitution laws on the health and safety of sex workers was a central theme at the Legal Network’s Symposium on HIV, Law and Human Rights held June 9– 10, where sex workers Émilie Laliberté (Stella) and Nikki Thomas (Sex Professionals of Canada) and lawyers Elin Sigurdson (SWUAV) and Alan Young were featured speakers. The timely discussion helped inform the pressing issue of “next steps” in the event of a positive or negative decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada. The road ahead is long, but one thing is certain: there is no shortage of passion, commitment and activism from sex workers and their colleagues to change the law to protect and promote the human rights of all sex workers.

New Zealand fails to exclude migrants from its sex industry

For many interested in normalising the sex industry, New Zealand’s legislation seems the best. A couple of years ago I pointed out how this good legislation was instituted at the expense of migrants, with a clause prohibiting their legal employment thrown in as a sop to anti-trafficking zealots. This aspect of the law has failed, unsurprisingly to those who know that prohibitionist laws have no successful track record when sexual practices are concerned.

The New Zealand Prostitutes Collective estimates a third of sex workers in the country are now migrants. That is a lot. Many are Chinese. In 2008 a man jumped out a Chinese brothel window (photo) and died, apparently panicking at the police’s Gestapo tactics during an immigration raid. The following story does not explain whether brothels referred to are licensed but employing undocumented migrants or illegal themselves. Either way, it is clear that the decriminalisation of prostitution law excluding migrant sex workers has made their situation as risky and raid-ridden as is it in countries with other kinds of legislation – and in the name of anti-trafficking. Note: CBD means Central Business District in Auckland.

Chinese prostitutes worry sex industry

By Lincoln Tan, 11 April 2011, New Zealand Herald

Candice, a petite Chinese girl, fusses over a customer as she pours him a cup of oolong tea wearing nothing more than a see-through blood-red coloured camisole and knee-high fake leather boots. But behind her smile and calm appearance, the 21-year-old sex worker on Auckland’s North Shore confesses to be living on the edge. “I have to look happy, but I worry all the time if there is an immigration check or even if my client is an undercover immigration officer,” she said.

Candice is one of the many illegal prostitutes who arrive in New Zealand either on a visitor or student visa to work in the sex industry. The arrival of illegal Chinese sex workers have driven an industry that has been decriminalised back underground, says the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. “We’re now looking at two industries – an industry which is supported by decriminalisation, and an industry which is having to be underground again,” said Catherine Healey, the collective’s national co-ordinator, when asked how Chinese sex workers have influenced the sex industry here. “Predominantly, the illegal part of the industry is Chinese,” she said.

Although prostitution was decriminalised in 2003, it is illegal for those on a temporary visa, such as students and tourists, to work in the sex industry. The collective does not record if a prostitute is working illegally, but Miss Healey said Chinese now make up nearly a third of the 1700 sex workers in Auckland – outnumbering Maori and Pacific Islanders, and behind only Pakeha.

Last year Immigration New Zealand, which only investigates when a complaint is received, found at least eight foreign sex workers working illegally. A client, who frequents a Chinese “massage centre” in Takapuna, says the $40-per-hour charge was the draw. “Even with everything included, it rarely goes beyond $80 with one of these Chinese girls,” he said.

NZPC Auckland Manager Annah Pickering said other sex workers charged upwards of $100 per hour, and her organisation has produced a Chinese leaflet urging sex workers to “value themselves” and charge higher rates. Miss Pickering said because of the large number of Chinese sex workers here, it was now an “integral part” of its operations to have many of its information and education brochures translated into Chinese. A Chinese-speaking staff member had been employed by the collective, but she died suddenly from an illness earlier this year, and a replacement was being sought. Miss Pickering said about a third of the brothels and massage parlours in Auckland are run by Chinese operators.

One of them told the Herald it was common to let sex workers “freelance” at his brothel in the CBD. “They are just like customers renting a room from us. We do not employ them or pay them a commission, their customers are their paymasters,” explained one central city operator. “We don’t know and we don’t ask about their personal details, including their immigration status.”

Chinese sex workers, who spoke to the Herald on the basis of anonymity, said money was the main reason they came here and none had plans to settle here. “Even when I charge $80, it is more than I ever earn back in China,” said a 21-year-old from Hunan, here on a student visa. Despite her illegal immigration status, she felt “safe” working here because the only offence she was committing is with immigration and not the police.

A 19-year-old said she found New Zealand “boring” and believed she could do more with the money she earned here back in China.

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.

Sex slavery scare called a waste of time in Kansas

How very interesting to read an anti-panicky editorial in the midwestern US state of Kansas. The common-sense argument here says no cases of sex slavery have been found in strip clubs, police should pursue such cases where they do hear about them and the morality of a few should not be legislated for all. The editor asks what lawmakers should be spending their time on, especially given that a similar effort was made by anti-prostitution campaigners last year. Dizzying reasonableness.

Editorial: Strip club bill wastes time

19 March 2011, The Topeka Capital-Journal

Republican leaders in the Kansas Senate see no reason to spend time working on a bill that probably would regulate adult entertainment clubs and stores out of business. Neither do we. A similar bill was introduced and subsequently rejected last year. There’s no reason to waste more time on the issue this year, especially given other important issues — including budget deficits — facing legislators.

Supporters of the bill — known as the “community defense act” — contend adult entertainment businesses, strip clubs if you will, are host sites for illegal activities ranging from drug sales and prostitution to sex slavery. We don’t know how much, if any, marijuana or cocaine is being sold at strip clubs across Kansas, but we’re pretty sure that putting the clubs out of business entirely wouldn’t eliminate one dealer or inconvenience one user. Anyone who wants to buy illegal drugs doesn’t have to go anywhere near an adult club to find them.

As far as the adult clubs in Kansas being hot beds of prostitution and sex slavery, we know of no one who has ever produced specific cases or statistics to back up such claims. Sex slavery is a heinous crime and any law enforcement officer who really suspects it’s going on anywhere should be conducting investigations and making arrests. No, the real issue here is that the adult clubs offend the morals of some among us. We understand that, and know their moral outrage is sincere. However, legislation that would force all to adhere to the morals of some is bad legislation. Granted, no one wants a strip club next to their home, their church or their children’s school. But those are zoning issues that can be handled by local governments without state interference.

The “community defense act” would prohibit full nudity at adult entertainment clubs, force them to close between midnight and 6 a.m., require performers to stay at least 6 feet from the customers and forbid contact between performers and customers. It also would require new clubs, adult bookstores, video stores, theaters, modeling studios and sexual device shops to be more than 1,000 feet from any church, library, park, school or day care center.

Proponents say the bill, which originated in the House and was passed along to the Senate, is not an attempt to legislate morality or regulate sexually oriented businesses out of existence. It is exactly that, and no more time should be spent on it. The clubs, book stores and shops will close their doors when they aren’t generating enough traffic to make a profit. But as long as communities are supporting them financially, the Legislature should stay out of their business and find other things to do. . .

Bangalore sex workers reject rescue by Supreme Court judge

In the hierarchy of the Rescue Industry a Supreme Court judge must rank very high. Here is one in India who surpassed himself whilst deciding on a murderer’s appeal. Not only should the murderer go to prison for life but all sex workers should be given vocational training so they can change occupations. Is this not truly daft? Ideology aside, I mean: there simply are not alternate jobs for everyone in the world who doesn’t have a super-nice one, particularly if you care about money. How does this 19th-century ‘alternate’ idea manage to hold on in today’s world? Sex workers in Bangalore, whose union is affiliated with the New Trade Union Initiative, explained succinctly why rescue and rehabilitation are not what they want: see below in red under Collective Power.

Rehabilitation cuts no ice with India’s sex workers

By Astrid Zweynert, 28 March 2011, TrustLaw

It was a noble sentiment when India’s highest court proclaimed that sex workers had a right to life and dignity, just like anybody else under the country’s constitution. Dismissing an appeal by a man sentenced to life for murdering a sex worker, the Supreme Court also directed the government to provide vocational training to sex workers to help rehabilitate them. “A woman is compelled to indulge in prostitution not for pleasure but because of abject poverty,” the court said last month. “If such woman is granted opportunity to avail some technical or vocational training, she would be able to earn her livelihood by such vocational training and skill instead of selling her body.”

Sex workers were not impressed. “This is feeble sympathy,” Veena, a transgender sex worker, told TrustLaw. Veena represents Karnataka Sex Workers Union in the southern city of Bangalore.

What many sex workers want more than anything is to have their work decriminalised. In India, selling sex is not illegal but activities around sex work, such as soliciting or running a brothel, are punishable with fines and even imprisonment. “If we can’t solicit clients without getting arrested, we will naturally rely on pimps to carry on our trade,” Veena said. “What we need are practical measures that free us from exploitation created by the law itself.”

The government has until May 4 to detail the steps it is taking to implement vocational training. But one thing is for sure among sex workers – forced rehabilitations carried out by the state in the name of “rescuing them from their plight” is not the way forward.

Collective Power

The idea that sex workers should be rehabilitated may be almost as old as the profession itself. It comes from a belief that every sex worker wants to get out of sex work. To be sure, many sex workers in India enter the trade against their will. Levels of violence against sex workers are high and they grapple with other problems, such as access to health care and high HIV infection rates. But campaigners argue that this does not necessarily mean they want to change their way of life and enter rehabilitation schemes that are based on the moralistic premise that sex work is immoral.

They also say such thinking does a great disservice to the collective struggles by the sex workers’ movement in India, which for nearly a decade has been demanding rights, not sympathy. . .

The right to have rights: Undocumented migration and health care in Germany

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.

The following are excerpts from the full article:

Illegal Migrants Languish in German Health Care System

Rajiv Kunwar, IDN-InDepth News

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.

—Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Texas prostitution policy sends sex workers to jail, costs taxpayers a fortune

Talking about human rights and pity goes nowhere with some people who want to end prostitution. What about how much it costs to jail them, then? Do the taxpayers of Harris County, Texas, really want to be spending $2.3 million a year housing and feeding sex workers? Do all Texas taxpayers want to use $8 million for this? It is inconceivable. This story quotes women who sell sex in order to buy drugs about their repeated arrests and how they feel about a new programme to help them get unaddicted. What’s missing are the figures on just how much the rehabilitation costs in money (leaving self-esteem, rights and all other humanist values aside), and how they calculate that cost. Such rehabilitation programmes are not for everyone, whether they are addicted to a drug or not, but it seems obvious that everyone in a prohibitionist context should get a chance to try it.

Millions of tax dollars spent yearly to incarcerate prostitutes

by Dave Fehling, 27 January 2011, khou.com

Houston: Every year, millions of tax dollars in Texas are spent on prostitutes. The money goes for housing hundreds of them in Texas prisons and Harris County jails. The 11 News I-Team found Texas has tougher laws for prostitution than most states, which can mean prostitutes can be charged as felons. That qualifies them for prison.

But the I-Team found one relatively new program in Houston that may be a far more cost-effective way to prosecute prostitutes. In researching the story, the I-Team talked with three former prostitutes about their previous lives and the punishment they faced.

“Do what you do, it’s over in a few minutes and you got this money,” said Loisteen Phillips. “You can go anywhere to find a customer,” she said of her time spent selling her services in Houston.
“If he looked like a treat, we tricked him,” said Alfonette Thomas.
“(It’s) the oldest profession on the face of the earth,” said Kathryn Griffin Townsend. Townsend and Phillips said they were repeatedly arrested. “Many times,” said Phillips. She said she had over 20 arrests.[The Harris County jail] became a home away from home for me, a revolving door,” Phillips said.

They were hardly alone. At the county jail recently, there were 130 inmates charged with prostitution. Assuming that number is constant for a year, and with each alleged prostitute costing just under $50 a day to care for, Harris County taxpayers are therefore spending some $2.3 million a year on them.

Then there’s the state prison system. The 11 News I-Team found that Texas is one of only seven states where prostitution can even get you time in prison (the other states besides Texas that make repeat offenses a potential felony are Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Illinois and Michigan).

The I-Team checked Texas prison data and found that in 2009, the state held over 300 female prostitutes at a total estimated cost to taxpayers of nearly $8 million a year.

“Three or more prostitution convictions, we’ll send you to prison five or 10 years. No other state even thinks about that,” said State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “I had no idea how severe the penalties were,” said former prostitute Townsend, who moved here from California. “I was terrified,” she said about getting sent to prison. She said she actually did spend one year in a Texas facility. It convinced her that she wanted to quit prostitution.

But here’s the thing: each of the women told the I-Team that prostitution wasn’t their real problem — drugs were. “I wanted my high, I wanted my drug,” said Thomas. Townsend agreed. “Drugs had become the pimp,” she said. Probation officers and court employees said it is the common denominator when they work with prostitutes. “The ladies are in prostitution to support their drug habit,” said Bernadine Gatling, with Harris County Community Supervision.

But as the I-Team found at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, there’s now a new way to prosecute prostitutes. It’s called the STAR court (Success Through Addiction Recovery). The court launched in 2003, and its aim was to exclusively handle addicts, male and female, getting them into treatment — not jail — so they hopefully wouldn’t come back. Of the women who began showing up in front of the STAR court judges, one thing stood out: the majority of them were, or had been, prostitutes. But now, instead of being sent back to jail, they’re getting drug treatment — closely supervised by a judge, who they have to report to weekly. The court has a vastly different decorum than what you might expect.

One of the judges who rotates through the court, Denise Bradley, smiled as she greeted the women, one after another, as they reported their progress to her in various recovery programs. After one woman told the judge about her arrest on cocaine charges and her ongoing substance abuse treatment, Judge Bradley told her: “You’re doing great, we’re very proud of you.” Then, the courtroom erupted in applause from the other offenders, as well as court personnel. “It’s so night and day from what it would be in a regular criminal court,” said Townsend. She went through the STAR program and said it saved her life. Phillips said the same. “They have people who come teach you about how to get a job, how to be a lady, how to talk, how to recognize your defects of character,” said Phillips.

The court staff who runs the program told 11 News it doesn’t work for everyone, but it sure beats just sending them to jail over and over and at a fraction of the cost. “I have quite a few ladies that are doing very well,” said Gatling with Community Supervision. Bradley agreed. “I’d say it’s one of the most effective uses of taxpayer dollars that occur here in the courthouse,” she said. Currently, the program can help only a fraction of the women prosecuted in Harris County for prostitution.

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.

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

Sex on Sunday: Porn, horror, brutishness, sex and law, damned law

In January 2009 it became an offence in England and Wales to possess images which depict in an explicit or realistic way acts which threaten a person’s life or acts likely to result in serious injury to anus, genitals or breast. This past week a case was tried testing that legislation. The prosecutor said:

This defendant accepts he viewed and downloaded and saved those images. We know the images were fake, we know it isn’t a knife in someone’s breast. The question is whether it is realistic or portrayed in that way. You have to be satisfied the people in those images are real. Plainly they are. The intentions of the persons within those images, the actors and actresses, are irrelevant. It is what is depicted in those images which is material.

So here is another nearly impossible standard to prove in sex law. And the government lost, thanks in part to testimony from two friends, Clarissa Smith and Feona Attwood (the three of us did a panel in Budapest last year at an event called Good Sex, Bad Sex). On the realism point, the experts compared the downloaded images to Hammer horror films and actresses ‘playing dead’. What larks.

Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex Related Crime: A Review

Milton Diamond, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 32 (2009) 304-314.

Abstract: A vocal segment of the population has serious concerns about the effect of pornography in society and challenges its public use and acceptance. This manuscript reviews the major issues associated with the availability of sexually explicit material. It has been found everywhere scientifically investigated that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased. It is further been found that sexual erotica has not only wide spread personal acceptance and use but general tolerance for its availability to adults. This attitude is seen by both men and women and not only in urban communities but also in reputed conservative ones as well. Further this finding holds nationally in the United States and in widely different countries around the world. Indeed, no country where this matter has been scientifically studied has yet been found to think pornography ought be restricted from adults. The only consistent finding is that adults prefer to have the material restricted from children’s production or use.

Brutish Male Sexuality, by the Sexacademic

The tired trope of aggressive male sexuality is a pervasive one. The story goes like this: because men are full of testosterone and sperm as well as unhindered by the consequence of pregnancy, their sexuality is naturally brutish and promiscuous. Testosterone fuels aggression, billions of sperm want hundreds of outlets and nature failed to offset these desires with physical dangers associated with reproduction. The compliment to this heterocentric sex story is that women, with their limited eggs, lack of testosterone and pregnancy burden are naturally chaste and self protective. Any sexual adventurousness or licentiousness is only done to please men and keep them around so they will help with the child rearing. A simple and neatly packaged explanation of human sexuality. But it’s wrong. Let’s do some debunking.

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

Helping Women Who Sell Sex: The Construction of Benevolent Identities

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.

Helping Women Who Sell Sex: The Construction of Benevolent Identities

Laura María Agustín, rhizomes.10, spring 2005

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 →

All the scary things a little decriminalisation of prostitution might cause in Canada

In September an Ontario judge struck down three provisions of Canadian prostitution law as causing sex workers’ lives to be riskier than other citizens’. If attempts to delay this new regime fail, soon three activities considered criminal by the law up to now will be allowed: operating brothels, soliciting and living from money earned by someone selling sex. The central government is decrying this decriminalisation, which applies only to Ontario, claiming all manner of dire consequences will ensue:

irreparable harms to the public interest
distinctions in the operation of the Criminal Code between Ontario and the rest of Canada
profound and immediate consequences upon communities, neighbourhoods and women engaged in prostitution in this province
legal uncertainty across Canada
the movement of prostitutes to Ontario from other jurisdictions
more drug trafficking, violence, garbage, noise and traffic from johns
red light districts will emerge
prostitutes’ lives will be in danger
authorities will be powerless to protect residents in vulnerable neighbourhoods
more prostitutes will likely be exploited by pimps
police would be forced to abandon all ongoing investigations
human trafficking, prostitution of minors, extortion and assault will go undetected
four pimps expressed concern that organized criminals will get involved in street prostitution and guns and gang violence will follow
a youth worker said pimps were making preparations to come out of retirement.
an increase of numbers of women on the street would make it easier to camouflage underage prostitutes among them
Canada will be plunged into a social experiment unprecedented in this country that will profoundly and irreversibly alter the status quo

In other words, they are afraid of Change. They are fantasising all the scary things that could happen, but they cannot provide any evidence that they will happen. Since the status quo on prostitution is dysfunctional in so many ways everywhere, an experiment based on sound judicial reasoning seems like a good idea. The government’s argument

that the laws that exist, exist to protect people and protect communities . . . We don’t want people to be lured into this area. We don’t want communities to be dealing with this. These laws have been on the books for a reason and for a long time.

is a weak argument. Think of some of the terrible laws that have been overturned as societies interested in social justice realise they are unjust. New Zealand, which decriminalised the sex industry in a comparable way some time ago, has not been plunged into social chaos, and I suppose Canada belongs to the same socio-legal universe as that country (settled by British migrants, originally, for one big thing).

The predictions, compiled from a number of Canadian media sources, would seem to indicate that this issue will end up in a higher, national court – which is presumably what the sex worker-complainants wanted.

Note on bawds: the Ontario law preserves antiquated language, so the brothel-ban is on bawdy houses, soliciting is known as communicating and avails are what no one is allowed to ‘live off’. The fact that these terms still describe the law was in itself a reason to consider revising it – not for the sake of updating language per se but because the concepts behind them indicate a social context that has changed. I did so appreciate Judge Himel’s analysis of the history of the laws.

– Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

%d bloggers like this: