Amanda Brooks of Bound, Not Gagged posts the story of a 40-year-old business owner and mother of three who was arrested while moonlighting as an escort. One needn’t favor legalization of sex work (as I do) to appreciate either her story or the following, really fucking critical point:
When I called the police after being beaten by my first husband, they refused to protect me. In fact, they blamed me for his drinking and womanizing. Even after the doctors told the cops that I was one blow from having my skull shattered, they blamed me. When I was brutally raped on a date rape, kicking and screaming, and went to the police, they did nothing. They blamed me because I’d been drinking. And, you know, for being female. Great. So now I’m happily making money, stimulating both the economy and the gentlemen of the area, and here they are banging down my door. Like the Gestapo. They told me they were “protecting” me. From what? As an escort, I could afford condoms, blood screens, regular medical checks. Gentlemen who are willing to pay for sex are, in my experience, much more respectful than the ones who expect it for free. The ones who raped and battered me were getting free sex. The ones who paid, were kind and respectful.
Point #1: the police (or, more correctly, society and its instructions to and constraints on police) aren’t particularly effective at protecting women from assault, abuse, rape, or battery. Consequently anyone who argues they’re trying to “protect” the sex workers they rescue is a liar.
Point #2: Considering the conservative bona fides of your average anti-prostitution activist, her words about the differences between men who pay for sex and the men who expect it for free ought to resonate with Über-conservative silverback Newt Gingrich’s repeated point that humans have an astonishing tendency to abuse and neglect that which they don’t pay for. I happen to believe Gingrich is mostly batshit insane, but that shouldn’t be a problem for conservatives. The point remains, though, that in the eyes of their abusers there really doesn’t appear to be much more consideration, nor less resentment, of sex workers who charge men for money, and “ordinary” sex-partners who don’t.
Point #3: How exactly is it the case that notifying a sex worker’s employer (who, fortunately in this case, was also her daylight-business partner) “protecting” her? The common reaction for employers (all too common!) is to find cause to fire the sex worker, with the result that her odds of leaving sex work go down. And her odds of having to return to sex work go up.
Point #4: None of this implies that all sex workers are hearty, happy self-determined entrepreneurs. Many are not. Many, in fact, not only don’t enjoy their work but are trapped either by circumstance, conscription, or outright coercion! It’s not exactly clear to me, however, how making their work or even their customers illegal improves anyone’s odds of getting out or moving on. Based on conversations with individuals who’ve made poor choices in the past, it’s not clear to me at all how an arrest record, let alone a conviction record, let alone a jail record, let alone public record of one’s activities, makes any form of employment other than either marginal/minimum-wage or criminal ones possible.
Point #5: If society and/or the police really were interested in protecting sex workers they’re fucking protect sex workers instead of, well, policing them. Instead of arresting them they’d let sex workers put their numbers in speed dial. Instead of arresting them they’d establish clear relationships with sex workers and sex-worker alliances to instead police of the very-large number of people who currently get away with raping, robbing, roughing up, and murdering sex workers (and, cough, non-sex workers.)
Point #6: As I said above, you don’t have to like prostitution to see the arguably-intractable problems with current policies regarding its legality.
From my conversations on the
Submitted by Clarisse Thorn (not verified) on Thu, 2010-07-01 06:29.From my conversations on the matter, it seems clear that it simply doesn’t occur to most people to wonder whether the police “protect” sex workers. They get as far as “sex work should be illegal” and leave it at that. Those who are willing to question whether sex work should be illegal may be willing to question whether the police are protecting sex workers; but those who are in the “illegal” camp usually have so much stigma built up (whether they admit it or not) that it doesn’t even occur to them to worry about sex workers’ actual safety (and often they’ve got the feeling that risk of assault is simply one of the “occupational hazards”).
[Hi Clarise. I agree that most people don’t think (enough!) about the status of sex workers at all — it’s stereotypes and folklore almost all the way down. But the people who do work to enforce don’t get to be that naive. And for whatever reason too many of them toggle between the languages of misogyny, of cynicism, or of fairly demeaning do-good-ism. They’re just people. Some of whom are in over their heads and need help, and others of whom aren’t. Basing policy on stereotypes just doesn’t help anybody, and, as shown repeatedly, can be overall pretty fucking harmful. Taking someone “off the streets” but then just leaving them with no other possible recourse — particularly leaving them otherwise unemployable! — doesn’t seem to do very much good. At all! Thanks! —fl]
In Sweden the police have
Submitted by Red (not verified) on Thu, 2010-07-01 19:11. In Sweden the police have come to really appreciate the “target the buyer” policy because it helps cut down on all kinds of crime.A few years ago, we had the
Submitted by Thaddeus (not verified) on Fri, 2010-07-02 08:18.A few years ago, we had the chief of police of Gothemberg here in Brazil trying to sell us this “target the buyer” policy. In the course of his presentation, two things became very clear:
1) Given the large number of foreign prostitutes in Sweden, the police routinely use ethnic profiling to figure out who’s a pro and who isn’t.
2) You don’t need to bust or imprison women for prostitution when you can get them on immigration and labor law violations.
In particular, the following comment by the Chief chilled me:
“All the women we arrest always say that they’re doing this of their own free will and so on. But let us work with them for a few days and they soon start changing their tune”.
Why?
Well, if you’re a foreign prostitute caught in the act in Sweden and stick to your guns regarding your agency, you’ll be held in jail until the immigration police come to deport you. However, if you decide to turn state’s evidence as a “trafficking victim”, you can spend up to 6 months in freedom (presumably working) before getting deported.
What was really sick about all this was an unexamined contradiction in the Chief’s rhetoric which fits nicely into Fig’s “Police don’t protect sex workers” post above. While the chief kept telling us all the time that these women needed to be leaned on in order to testify because they were the “slaves of foreign mafiosos” who would “hurt them and their families if they testified”, as soon as the Swedish cops manage to wring a confession out of these women in court, what do they do? Deport them straight back to the countries where those supposed “foreign mafiosos” are waiting to take revenge.
Sweden’s prostitution laws are complicated and many faceted, but one thing they clearly are is a nativistic and politically correct attempt to crack down on illegal immigration.
The Swedish police are no more interested in protecting sex workers than any other cops, despite their rhetoric of “target the buyer”.
Don’t fool yourself.
Oh, and by the way… When I
Submitted by Thaddeus (not verified) on Fri, 2010-07-02 08:19.Oh, and by the way…
When I asked the Chief and Sweden’s “Anti-trafficking ambassador” if there wasn’t a risk of buying false testimony with the way their policies were set up, both smiled and freely admitted that was the case, bat that this was a small price to pay in order to cut down on the scourge of trafficking.