Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution (17 page)

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reflects the difficulty involved in earning it. Chapter2o~ I LEGALISATION AND DECRIMINALISATION

Prostitution is an extreme form ofgender discrimination. Legalisation ofthis violence to women restricts women's freedom and citizenship rights. Ifwomen are allowed to become a legitimate commodity, they are consigned to a second-class citizenship. Democracy is subverted. DONNA HUGHES, MAKING THE HARM VISIBLE T hat, in Ireland, is it illegal to operate a brothel but not illegal to frequent one is just another display of the depressingly patriarchal structure of our world. It is also something that has for a long time caused great resentment among Irish prostitutes. I have mentioned already the clinic I would frequent in my early teens, which was local to the red-light district and open one evening a week for us to collect condoms and have a cup oftea or coffee. They also offered STD and pregnancy testing. There may have been counselling offered, I can't remember; I didn't avail ofit if there was. I'd collect some condoms and have a cup of coffee to break up the night and I'd sit there drinking it and listening to the older women talk. They were all unpretentious street-walking working-class women, almost all of them from Dublin, and they were much savvier about the social politics of prostitution than I was and I found their conversations interesting. One particular woman, Martina, regularly raged against the fact that the clients who used us were breaking no laws, yet we, when arrested, were subject to regular court appearances and fines. After the Sexual Offences Act of 1993, as before, men were cautioned and told to go on their merry way while women were hauled up before judges to be further demeaned in front of courtrooms packed with strangers. The first time this happened to me was also the last because I decided on the spot to move on to brothels and although I visited the streets sporadically for another couple of years, I never worked outdoors full-time again. I never had to show my face in court again on account of prostitution either. There will always be those whose interests it will serve to apportion a higher percentage of responsibility to women for the business of prostitution, but the first law of economics tells us that no market can survive without demand. That law made itself very apparent in my prostitution life. What I did as a prostitute was to make myself available to men. I responded to their advances. I never once approached a man looking for business-never had to-and I never witnessed another woman do so either. I have heard that prostitution operates that way elsewhere in the world, but during my time in prostitution at least, that was not an Irish practice. However obvious it was that men always initiated the exchange, we knewthat they would be afforded vastly different and far less judgemental treatment than the women and that was just a customary part of our world. It was a discriminatory situation and, for the most part, it still is. As far as legislation towards decriminalising the sale of sex is concerned, I hold the same views today that I held all through the 1990s when I was a working prostitute myself, and that view is no, I do not support that, because to support decriminalising the sale of sex would be to support prostitution itself. What I have always wholeheartedly endorsed is the criminalisation ofthe purchase ofsex. To say what's good for the goose ought to be good for the gander is a very balanced line to take, but when a situation is not grounded in equality, it is not balanced in the first place. This makes it difficult to justify taking an equal all-across-the-board legislative approach to it. You cannot, with any sense of fairness, criminalise someone because they have been exploited. I remember having heated debates with one particular prostitute, a friend ofmine, about the legal status ofprostitution. She felt that ifwhat .we were doing was legalised we'd be safer. Maybe we would, I responded, but any daughters we had would be at greater risk ofbecoming involved in prostitution if it were given the nod as acceptable by the State, and anyway, maybe we'd have been safer as far as black eyes were concerned, but no legislative power in the State or anywhere else could make us safe from the mental torment. We were both in our teens during that conversation. I don't remember ever directly discussing with her (or with any prostitute) the intricacy of the negativity that surrounded us, how it damaged in so many different directions, so I cannot offer anyone else's view on that, but I do know from scratches of many different conversations that some prostituted women are further removed than others from the concept ofprostitution as a deeply damaging practice; a practice in which we were unwitting conduits through whom negativity travelled outwards into the world as well as inwards into ourselves. I believe if a prostitute or former prostitute wants to see prostitution legalised, it is because she is inured both to the wrong of it and to her own personal injury from it. I see now that I was mistaken when I conceded in my debate with my friend that 'maybe' legalisation would have made us physically safer. For all of my time in prostitution I worked, as all prostitutes in Ireland still do, in an atmosphere ofillegality and I think I supposed that legality would have imposed some order on the prostitution experience. I supposed that the beatings would have come to an end, or been reduced, at least. I thought that legalisation may have led to a reduction in the general physical harm that was part of our daily lives. But I now perceive, in light of having access to international research which has been conducted since I left prostitution, that my suppositions were not at all true; in fact the truth is the reverse. The notion that decriminalisation and legalisation serve to protect the women in the trade is another of the myths of prostitution, and a particularly dangerous one. Since legalisation, the human trafficking of females has exploded in Australia,'8 for example, and the five hundred trafficked women documented working in Sydney almost a decade ago was only an estimate then, and probably a very conservative one. Today's figures on trafficking make for disturbing reading. An estimated 2.5 million people worldwide are in forced labour, according to UN statistics, and qf these, 1.2 million are children. A total of forty-three per cent of victims of human trafficking are used for 'forced sexual exploitation', and ninety-eight per cent of these victims are girls and young women.'9 In the case of Australia, the legalisation of prostitution in Victoria caused such an escalation in the number of brothels that it quickly outstripped the system's ability to regulate them, and these brothels became a hotbed of organised crime, trafficking, corruption and coercion. Far from being some sort ofsafeguard, international research20 shows that in fact legalisation facilitates the trafficking of women and children for prostitution. Motorists in Victoria today are met with the sight of huge motorway billboards advertising the services of brothels. Female business professionals are forced to work in an atmosphere where their male colleagues conduct their out-of-office business meetings in brothels/ strip clubs, thereby putting women in a position where they must choose between being excluded from the boys' club and enduring the debasement of their own gender. All legalisation has served to do in Australia, Germany and The Netherlands is paint a veneer of normalcy over prostitution, to familiarise it in the public perception and to sanitise it in the legal sense, while the human suffering of female adults and minors has escalated immeasurably at the same time. Most of these women have no public voice and wouldn't risk raising one anyway, for shame. There are people who will argue that in countries where prostitution has become legal, we have seen the eradication of pimps. This is not so. What we have seen is the transformation ofthe role of pimping into one 18 M LSullivan, and S Jeffreys, 'Legalisation: The Australian Experience~ Violence Against Women, 8, 9 (September), pp 114o-1148, 2002. 19 'Human Trafficking, the Facts', UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking. --.. -.. _.. . . .. --. . co-ordinated by local government. The governments are the pimps in these countries. For a long time, the only country I was aware of which had acted honourably in its legislature on this matter was Sweden. The Swedish attitude to prostitution is set out very dearly by Swedish legal expert and activist Gunilla Ekberg: 'In Sweden, it is understood that any society that claims to defend principles oflegal, political, economic, and social equality for women and girls must reject the idea that women and children, mostly girls, are commodities that can be bought, sold, and sexually exploited by men. To do otherwise is to allow that a separate class of female human beings, especially women and girls who are economically and racially marginalised, is excluded from these measures, as well as from the universal protection of human dignity enshrined in the body of international human rights instruments developed during the past 50 years.' GUNILLA EKBERG THE SWEDISH LAW THAT PROHIBITS THE PURCHASE OF SEXUAL SERVICES

Sweden introduced its ground-breaking legislation, which prohibits the purchase of sexual services, in 1999. But Sweden didn't simply prohibit prostitution; it did so while enacting measures that assisted the women in the areas of training, education etc. It was an admirable piece oflegis.lation. It was a full decade before any other country would follow suit. I am reminded of Ireland's workplace smoking ban that was written into law in 2004. Within a couple of years, several countries across the western world introduced the same ban on their own soil. Workers' lungs, apparently, are placed far higher in terms of importance than women's lives. It is shameful, in my view, and depressingly telling that it took so long for another country to follow Sweden's example; however, it is heartening to see that it has begun to happen. On the first ofJanuary 2009, Norway became the second country after Sweden to criminalise the purchase of sexual services. Later that same year, Iceland became the third. J6hanna Sigurdard6ttir, Iceland's female Prime Minister, subsequently said: 'I guess the men oflceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale'. At the time of writing, the Nordic Model is under discussion in Israel, Britain, Finland and France. I am deeply gladdened that a campaign has begun in Ireland to criminalise the purchase of sex. The Turn Off The Red Light campaign calls for the basic tenants of the Swedish law to be enacted in Ireland, and it calls for the decriminalisation of prostituted women as part of a broader legislative framework. Before now, when decriminalisation has been suggested in Ireland, the focus has been entirely on decriminalising the commercial act itself, with no emphasis on women getting out of prostitution and no focus whatever on the male role. This can be described as 'stand-alone' or 'blanket' decriminalisation, and wherever it is suggested, I will always oppose it. Decriminalisation of the sale of sex as presented in the Swedish context is one element of legislature that aims to eradicate prostitution and has clear benefits for the women involved; for this reason, it is legislation I would support and encourage others to support also. The laws relating to prostitution were the most widely publicised of Sweden's 1999legislati.ve changes; they were far from the only ones. Many other areas relating to the safety of women were concentrated upon and improved. A new offence (Gross Violation of a Woman's Integrity) was introduced specifically to deal with instances where a woman had been habitually battered or molested by a husband or partner. Annual financial support for domestic violence shelters was increased. The National Centre for battered and raped women received additional support. Prison sentences for those found guilty of genital mutilation were doubled. The National Police Board was charged with ensuring that female trafficking be prevented and counteracted. Neglecting to report the awareness of certain sexual crimes was made punishable in law. The definition of rape was widened to include the enforced entry of objects besides the penis and provisions to combat sexual harassment in the workplace were made more rigorous. It seems there exists in Sweden a far healthier attitude towards the rights of women than in Ireland and that is evidenced not only in Swedish legislation but in the relatively high degree of equality between the sexes there. Swedish women have an employment rate Of seventy per cent. Women's representation in Swedish government stands at fifty per cent; in parliament forty per cent; in county councils forty-eight per cent. . Women's general aversion to prostitution is clearly evidenced by the Swedish government's response to it. It is no coincidence that one of the few Western countries to have near-equal participation of women in government was also the first Western country to outlaw the commercialisation of women's bodies. Despite the relatively more evolved role of women in Swedish society and policy-making, it had been noted in the 1990s that the number of reported physical and sexual assaults against women there had increased markedly and the legislation of 1999 was a remedial response to that. However, anyone who assumes that Sweden neglects to focus on the sexual abuse of males is mistaken. Legislation was introduced in Sweden in 1984 to widen the definition of rape to include male-on-male rape and the rape of men committed by female perpetrators. Males are clearly equally protected in Swedish law and have been for a long time. The plethora of laws protecting women which were introduced in 1999 came about not because Sweden concerns itself more with the protection of its women, but because they were necessitated by the behaviour of some of its men. I am not wholly enamoured with Swedish policy, however. At the time of writing, it seems to me that there is still a divide between the way prostituted and non-prostituted women are protected in law there. Prostitutes are not protected by the legislation on Gross Violation of a Woman's Integrity, unless they have been abused within a relationship, as this legislation is afforded only to those women who have been repeatedly abused within relationships. A woman who has been repeatedly abused within prostitution can expect to see the client who has used her receive a sentence of not more than twelve months, whereas the woman who has been repeatedly abused within a relationship can expect to see her abuser receive a sentence of not more than six years. Added to that, the individual offences (beatings, rape, etc.) perpet. rated against the non-prostituted woman are still subject to prosecution as stand-alone crimes separate from the gross-violation offence. This means that a man will be tried for having committed a particular illegal act against a non-prostituted woman and also be tried for the separate offence of having violated her integrity. By contrast, a man who has bought and used a prostitute is legally accountable only for having done so; he is not held accountable for the separate offence of violating her integrity. For a long time I found it saddening to see that even in Sweden; where prostitutes were first protected more firmly than anywhere else in the Western world, they were still deemed unworthy of having their integrity respected in law on a par with non-prostituted women. I do not believe this situation has been fully resolved. As the 2010 Swedish Inquiry into the effects of the ban on prostitution states: 'One reason why priority is not given to sexual purchase offences is the low penal value of this type of offence'. The 'low penal value' referred to the very short sentences imposed for this crime, which at the time was not more than six months. 21 Overall though, Sweden is the first country in my awareness to have approached true gender equality. It does this by all the means I have outlined including the one that is most personal to me: by 'marking its attitude towards prostitution as an undesirable social phenomenon and �' by punishing those men who continue to exploit and promote it'. There is a simple and invariable truth here: for prostitution to be reduced, demand must be suppressed. Prostitution which is not suppressed can only expand, and, most particularly in countries where it is 'legalised, it will explode. A glaring example of this would be the presence of Pascha, a twelve-storey nine. thousand-square-metre brothel in Cologne, Germany, that services up 1 to a thousand men a day. During the World Cup of 2006, an enormous poster ofa near-naked woman was plastered down the side ofthe building, 21 Committee of Inquiry to Evaluate the Ban against the Purchase of Sexual Services. Chancellor of Justice Anna Skarhed, formerly a Justice of the Supreme