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New UK sex-work legislation proposals

  
  

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Closed for Business Time
09:19 / 20.11.08
Jacqui Smith, UK Home Secretary, is proposing new legislation which will outlaw the buying of sex from persons (clearly mainly women) who are trafficked, pimped or otherwise "controlled for another person's gain". Perhaps the most controversial part of the new legislation is that clients will be charged with rape if they buy sex from controlled/pimped/trafficked prostitutes, EVEN if they have no knowledge that this is the case.

Now, I have some issues with these proposals. Let me first of all state that I believe the intent behind these proposals are in many ways admirable. I do however believe that they are not going to work, as well as violating the rights of both a good chunk of sex-workers and their clients.

Let me state from the outset that my position is that consenting adults should be able to sell and buy sex. Furthermore, I believe that there should be legal arrangements in place that make it possible for third parties (pimps, madames, maids, "business owners") to enter into the sex-trade, as long as these arrangements are transparent to the public, of benefit to the sex-workers themselves, and of such a form as to allow independent monitoring and policing - i.e. I'd like to see brothels, parlors, agencies and other sex businesses set up ways that would enhance the safety and security of both sex-workers and their clients. Anyway, back to the proposals.

How can prospective clients verify beyond any reasonable doubt that the sex-worker they are approaching is not, in fact, coerced or controlled? It seems to me that under these proposals it will be practically impossible for the clients to prove their innocence under the new rape charge statutes.

Should not trafficking/coercion and selling/buying sex be separate for legal and ethical purposes? Again, the point is consent between adults entering a business arrangement. In the former it doesn't obtain, in the latter it does IMO.

Following on from that point - why isn't more being done to counter trafficking, when that is clearly one of the biggest problems for the sex work industry?

Finally, it's worth noting that sex-workers themselves seem divided on the merits of the proposals. Some welcome them, especially those who have experiences of coercion and violence while. Others are angry, saying that they are being infantilized and stigmatized even further.

What do you think?
 
 
Evil Scientist
11:15 / 20.11.08
How can prospective clients verify beyond any reasonable doubt that the sex-worker they are approaching is not, in fact, coerced or controlled? It seems to me that under these proposals it will be practically impossible for the clients to prove their innocence under the new rape charge statutes.

Well, most likely they can't in the current situation. My personal suggestion would be that if someone is unable to tell whether the person they about to have sex with is being coerced or not then they shouldn't engage in sex with that person.

I'm unfamiliar with the sex industry and statistics relating to it, but it seems likely to me that men who regularly use sex-workers may well have done so with unwilling partners who've been coerced by a third party. I could be wrong of course.

Should not trafficking/coercion and selling/buying sex be separate for legal and ethical purposes? Again, the point is consent between adults entering a business arrangement.

Not surely when the point of (a) is to force someone into (b)?

The point is consent. Currently it is extremely difficult for someone purchasing intercourse to know whether or not their partner is a free agent of the Belle'de'Jour variety or a slave who is only consenting to avoid worse punishment from their controllers. So, therefore, until such time as the system is changed it is the resonsibility of the purchaser to either be 100% certain they're not about to effectively rape someone or go and have a cold shower and brisk jog instead.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
11:56 / 20.11.08
if someone is unable to tell whether the person they about to have sex with is being coerced or not then they shouldn't engage in sex with that person.

Well I can agree with that – but then the question becomes: does the failure to do so warrant a charge of rape? I’m struggling to come up with analogous situations, but let’s try this one out (criticisms and refinements welcome). Say an employer in the cleaning business is hiring new staff. S/he takes on a new non-British nationality staff member having checked their documents and finding these reasonably veridical for employment purposes. It later turns out that the person is an illegal immigrant that has been smuggled into the country, given false ID documents, and is working to pay off the huge sum that their trafficker has demanded as payment for getting them into the country. Do you think it is fair that the employer should be charged with slavery for unwittingly colluding with criminals? (Note: trafficking for forced labour is definitely a problem in the UK – see here (pdf) for a report from Anti-Slavery International.) AFAIK there are no comparable penalties for companies unwittingly employing forced labourers. That said, I’m not defending the large proportion of UK companies that clearly exploit migrant workers, and are doing so in collusion with gangmasters and traffickers.

And then you end with: So, therefore, until such time as the system is changed it is the resonsibility of the purchaser to either be 100% certain they're not about to effectively rape someone or go and have a cold shower and brisk jog instead.

Where again I can agree with the sentiment expressed, but which I also feel skirts the central question – does failure to be certain beyond reasonable doubt that the sex-worker is not coerced or trafficked warrant a rape charge in every case? It also begs the question of how? How can a potential client satisfy this knowledge requirement in any meaningful way? How can anyone know with 100% certainty that there is no coercion?
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:16 / 20.11.08
Well I can agree with that – but then the question becomes: does the failure to do so warrant a charge of rape?

Well that isn't what the law is saying is it? The law is saying that, if you pay for sex and the person you are having sex with is actually doing so under coercion then you are criminally responsible. A person would not be prosecuted if they transacted with a free agent. But ignorance is not an acceptable excuse in this case just as it wouldn't be if someone had slept with a person who they "thought" was over the legal age limit.

Say an employer in the cleaning business is hiring new staff.

Not an applicable comparison. The employer is not performing deeply intrusive violations on their cleaning staff for their own pleasure. The "John" is part of the abuse being inflicted on a coerced sex worker.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
12:25 / 20.11.08
Hmm. I'd think that it is applicable - in that the employer is an (unwitting) accessory to a deeply intrusive crime (slavery) by virtue of pursuing profit, which is the analogue of pleasure in the market.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
12:29 / 20.11.08
And I do mean accessory in the legal sense of the word:

"In AG's Reference (No 1 of 1975) (1975) QB 773, Widgery CJ stated that the words in s8 should be given their ordinary meaning.

Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted, and punished as a principal offender.

The natural meaning of "to aid" is to "give help, support or assistance to" and it will generally although not necessarily take place at the scene of the crime. It is not necessary to prove that there was any agreement between the principal and the alleged accessory, nor is there a need to prove a causative link between the aid and the commission of the offence by the principal."

From here
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:53 / 20.11.08
in that the employer is an (unwitting) accessory to a deeply intrusive crime (slavery) by virtue of pursuing profit

That's incorrect. Your example indicates that the employer is paying their workforce and is not restricting their freedom, ergo not slavery. The employer is not an unwitting accomplice if it can demonstrate that it has done everything the law requires it need do to confirm the status of its employees. A client of a sex-worker is engaging in an act which, if not consensual, then is defined as rape so they had better be 100% sure that the act is consensual.

The employer could be prosecuted for not obeying the law with regards to adequately checking that they are not employing illegal immigrants, but that is really a discussion for another thread.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
13:08 / 20.11.08
That's incorrect. Your example indicates that the employer is paying their workforce and is not restricting their freedom, ergo not slavery.

But surely the payment - which in my example would primarily be used by the employee to pay back their debt to the trafficker - constitutes an unwitting, un-agreed aid to the trafficker/slave-holder. The very act of employing and paying forced labour aids the principal offenders in restricting the employee's freedom, no? And that's why I'm reasonably positive these are analogous cases.

The employer is not an unwitting accomplice if it can demonstrate that it has done everything the law requires it need do to confirm the status of its employees. A client of a sex-worker is engaging in an act which, if not consensual, then is defined as rape so they had better be 100% sure that the act is consensual.

This is interesting. I think some of my misgivings about this law as far as I understand it regards exactly how clients must satisfy themselves that there is no coercion. And I note with some bemusement that you seem to avoid that very topic, even though I stressed it a couple of posts above.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:35 / 20.11.08
And I note with some bemusement that you seem to avoid that very topic, even though I stressed it a couple of posts above.

Not avoided as such, I just don't have a solution in the current situation. One would presume that legalisation and licensing of the industry would be a possible solution.

But surely the payment - which in my example would primarily be used by the employee to pay back their debt to the trafficker - constitutes an unwitting, un-agreed aid to the trafficker/slave-holder. The very act of employing and paying forced labour aids the principal offenders in restricting the employee's freedom, no? And that's why I'm reasonably positive these are analogous cases.

Well no, the payment is irrelevant. If an employer pays someone to perform a job it isn't the responsibility of the employer what happens to that money once a person has been paid. It is the act of sex itself in the case of a client/sex-worker interaction that is relevant to the change in law which, as I have pointed out, if not consensual, is illegal.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
14:10 / 20.11.08
Well, as far as rape goes, money is irrelevant too. The fact that money changes hands is AFAIK irrelevant to the illegality of buying sex from coerced sex-workers. So, even if no money had changed hands (as when payment is deferred until after service is rendered/rape has taken place) it seems like the client would still be charged. To be fair - I'm engaging in a bit of speculation as regards this point.

So, to clarify again why I think the analogy holds here's a breakdown of the example I gave:

1a. A woman is trafficked into the UK and coerced into prostitution.
1b. A person is trafficked into the UK and coerced into forced labour of a non-sexual kind.

2a. A client paying for (or even bartering for or promising to pay for) sex with a coerced woman is under the proposed legislation to be charged with rape even if he does not (or even cannot it seems) know that the woman is not in fact consenting.
2b. A company that unwittingly hires forced labour faces no charges (that I know of - happy to be corrected) for aiding what amounts to slavery - ie work that the worker does not meaningfully and freely consent to.

I can't really see that this isn't comparable, outwith the perspective that there is an inherent moral or ethical sharp divide between non-sexual and sexual forced labour.
 
 
trouble at bill
16:25 / 20.11.08
one thing which seems to me mighty unclear in the media coverage is exactly what would happen to the johns - some journos are writing of "rape charges", others "fines", and that's quite a big difference... how much of this legislation is fixed in advance and how much is being mooted for discussion? More to be said on this but I'd like to know that before I do so.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
16:59 / 20.11.08
I think some of my misgivings about this law as far as I understand it regards exactly how clients must satisfy themselves that there is no coercion

You know I heard a rumour that sex workers can speak in the same way that anyone else can.
 
 
Chiropteran
17:32 / 20.11.08
You know I heard a rumour that sex workers can speak in the same way that anyone else can.

In the case of a free agent, yes, of course. But can a coerced sex worker (with a pimp to answer to) reasonably be expected to speak freely about their own coercion, in the knowledge that the transaction (and the amount of money they will be able to turn over to said pimp at the end of the night, i.e. their [relative] safety) will depend on how convincingly they deny being coerced?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
20:15 / 20.11.08
Anna - here are two quotes from the Independent:

Chris 32, male sex worker, partner runs a straight escort agency in the North-East

"I have no idea where they get these figures for trafficked workers from. I have been involved in the industry for 10 years either as an independent or working through an agency and I have never met anyone who has been coerced or forced to do the work. A third work full time and about a third part time. This legislation will just drive it further underground. The police don't know how they will enforce it. How will the clients know who has been trafficked and who hasn't? The worst thing about this legislation is that the worst affected will be those who are already suffering most. People are not going to come forward to the authorities if it puts them at risk. How could an agency or a brothel inform the police they think a particular girl has been trafficked? They would be put out of business. The clients are not all dirty old men. I specialise in elderly and disabled clients – will you really want these people in court in their wheelchairs? You don't rush to be a sex worker, you have to make a decision. Some people who pick it, love it, but it is not for everybody, although that is no reason to ban it."

Toni 25, sex worker, South-East

"You are extremely vulnerable. Violent men target prostitutes because they know they won't go to the police. I was raped and tortured for four-and-a-half hours by a client but the police told me, 'You are a prostitute, you cannot be raped.' It was very hard to go back to work after that. I am just trying to keep my head and my children's heads above water – 80 per cent of us are mothers. It is just a job of work between two consenting adults. The only immoral thing is the Government telling us how to use our bodies. It is pure arrogance. The Government is using the trafficking issue to clamp down and criminalise prostitution even further."

From The Independent
 
 
Evil Scientist
20:57 / 20.11.08
%Well that makes it okay then. They either love it or are supporting families and therefore anything done to them cannot be criminal.%
 
 
Closed for Business Time
21:44 / 20.11.08
No it doesn't make anything ok. It just illustrates the fact that sex-workers are as divided as most people on the issue, just along slightly different faultlines. It's also interesting in light of the strand of thought that sees what sex-workers say about their work and themselves as a result of exploitation and false consciousness, hence not to be fully believed by the less naive person, when they say they're doing sex-work voluntarily. Check Julie Bindel on "The Industrial Vagina" for some of that thinking... not that she or that book (which i haven't read btw) is representative of the mainstream i think...

arg. getting late, fuzzy head, more 2mrw.
 
 
Papess
03:07 / 21.11.08
It is so typical for legislators to create impossible laws regarding sex work. It's always damned if you do/damned if you do. There is rarely, if ever, a prostitution law that doesn't have some hidden agenda. The victory of decriminalization gets lost in legislation. This I suspect, is the entire point of creating such an impossible situation for sex workers and their clients. Oh sure it's not illegal, but no one would dare.

Same thing in Canada. Prostitution is not illegal here but all the circumstances that make sex work operable, are.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
05:13 / 21.11.08
I heard a rumour that sex workers can speak in the same way anyone else does

But then why pay in the first place? The sex-workers I routinely, and increasingly, visit just have to sit there and watch my fave shows on television with me, not interrupting. I pay good money for that service, so I don't have to feel so alone.

More seriously, (although sex for the aged is going to become a more serious issue, as time goes by - not just personally) the legislation seems like a typical slice of silly, New Labour cant.

How many fat businessmen from out of town, or lonely guys in stained trenchcoats (poets and such) would honestly want to pay for coercive sex? In any situation, there's always going to be a minority, but generally, I'd have thought the sight of a sex-worker looking weepy, depressed or obviously enslaved would be a turn-off, unless you were paying extra.

I'm not saying it doesn't go on, that sort of thing. Just that, not for the first time, the UK government is choosing to focus on an issue it can be seen to ban (done in a stroke!) rather than issues it would actively have to think constructively about, over a number of years.

See also smoking, fox-hunting, etc, as opposed to teenage gun crime, antics in the financial markets, etc. Etc.
 
 
Evil Scientist
09:28 / 21.11.08
This I suspect, is the entire point of creating such an impossible situation for sex workers and their clients. Oh sure it's not illegal, but no one would dare.

Perhaps I'm being cynical but I suspect the change in the law is not going to stop people from using prostitutes. If a person has been happy to use them up to this point without being concerned that the sex-worker might be an unwilling participant then how likely are they to be bothered from that point on? Unless there is an upswing in the amount of police dealing with the traffiking issue I guess.

Some of the commentators on this subject make it sound like every person who uses a sex-worker is going to be arrested. Not so. Okay, it's bloody difficult for clients to confirm the person they're using for sex isn't being beaten and drugged into compliance but I find myself massively unsympathetic to the clients who, after all, are in a better position to walk away.

The clients are not all dirty old men. I specialise in elderly and disabled clients – will you really want these people in court in their wheelchairs?

It doesn't matter why they feel the need to visit sex-workers, it matters that they are not taking an active role in the abuse and degradation of someone who has no choice.

Nolte, sorry about the sarcasm upthread, beer and Barbelith never mix well.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:37 / 21.11.08
You know I heard a rumour that sex workers can speak in the same way that anyone else can.

You know I heard a rumour that people trafficking sex slaves from other countries don't usually provide them with free English lessons.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
10:20 / 21.11.08
Yes exactly and men are going to be charged with rape for sleeping with trafficked women so a general rule for people who buy sex is quite easy- if you can't ask someone about their circumstance don't buy sex from them.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
10:23 / 21.11.08
... and no a sex worker may not tell the truth but when the barristers ask her if the client asked her and she says yes that could create a legal defence.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:51 / 21.11.08
This whole legislation is garbage from soup to nuts.

On the street, the people (overwhelmingly women and vulnerable minority groups) who are selling sex will go on selling sex, but now the clients will be more skittish. So they won't want to hang around while the sex worker eg. checks the back of the car to make sure no-one's hiding in the back seat, checks for weapons, and generally assesses the punter as a possible threat. This means that more sex workers are going to end up getting into cars with people who intend to harm and kill them. Sex workers who have marginally more security and are not working from the street will also be put at greater risk as more workers are going to be chasing fewer clients. We can't secure convictions for the violent rape of non-sex workers now, so even if having sex with a trafficked person becomes rape legally I doubt very much that any cases will ever go to court let alone be successfully prosecuted.

This legislation will do FUCK ALL to protect anyone from exploitation, all it will do is create misery.

Also: I for one am sick to fucking death with reading commentary in the papers from able-bodied conventionally attractive under-50 neurotypical hacks who think that nobody should have sex unless they can attract a partner in the "normal" way. Not everyone is ab. Not everyone is conventionally attractive. Some people have low social skills. Some people are elderly. These don't have to be barriers to establishing a sexual relationship, but they can be. When they are, I don't see why a paid companion isn't a legitimate way for people to gain the intimacy they need.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
12:10 / 21.11.08
What would you do about people who buy slaves in this context? "Oh it's okay, you didn't know that this person you just had sex with didn't want to do it and that she/he couldn't talk to you". Is it the case that clients are that incapable? I know it's not this simple but are we saying that trafficked people shouldn't have the right to charge for rape? In the long term (rather than in the next few years) would this be a thoroughly negative thing?

If you can't criminalise the process right the way through (without getting at the sex workers which would be the other option) than how do you ultimately get the traffickers? Is it possible to even start to identify them?

I'm not trying to use aggressive questions to ask points here (reading it back it does come across a bit like that), I really am interested in the answers because I think this issue is about as complicated as legislation gets.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:35 / 21.11.08
Yeah, they should have the right to charge for a variety of offences up to and including rape. I'm all for greater sanctions against all the people who would exploit someone that way, from the traffickers to the ppl who buy the sex at the other end.

But they're going to accomplish none of those things with this package of legislation. Throwing the criminalisation of clients of consenting sex workers into the mix will make it MORE likely that paid sex is coercive, abusive, dangerous sex. What would help to prevent sex trafficking would be a healthy well-regulated unionised sex industry where the workers enjoyed the protection of the law.

What we have now is a situation where people--some of them children, mark you--are going to the police having been raped and tortured and being told "no we're not going to investigate because you're a prostitute, fuck off." In the face of this, how is extra legislation going to change anything? The legislation we already have isn't being enforced. The new sentence of rape for using a trafficked preson for sex is therefore useless. The criminlaisation of willing sex workers' clients is worse than useless.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
14:05 / 21.11.08
What would help to prevent sex trafficking would be a healthy well-regulated unionised sex industry where the workers enjoyed the protection of the law

Darn tootin'. I understand that the government don't want to create red light districts in our cities but it's pretty obvious that a unionised sex industry would help to address a huge number of problems in a way that this legislation can't. Governments should be practical rather than moral and this is an issue that they have consistently failed to sort out because it's politically hazardous.

I wonder if sex workers are being turned away by the police because current law doesn't adequately cover them- evidence difficulties, if a financial transaction is included- rather than simply because the police are idiots (which I have no doubt about)? I don't know how the law is framed in that area.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:19 / 21.11.08
I wonder if sex workers are being turned away by the police because current law doesn't adequately cover them- evidence difficulties, if a financial transaction is included- rather than simply because the police are idiots

The irrationality is everywhere, not just in the police service (although in their case it is focused through the double lens of effective power and contact with the public to create a beam of pure GAAAHHHHH).

Society as a whole has bloody irrational ideas about sex, sex work, consent, and rape, which means that the police have bloody irrational ideas about sex, sex work, consent, and rape, the CPS who decide whether to bring a case or not have bloody irrational ideas about sex, sex work, consent, and rape; so do the judges who try the cases and the people making up juries; so do the politicians who try to court votes by bringing in worse-than-useless legislation like this, and the media who back them up.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
19:41 / 21.11.08
Is this were I need to bring up the vexed issue of "false consciousness" again? Not that you're flat out wrong MC, not at all. I too am of the firm belief that the system as it stands is totally fucked. Your point about able-bodied stereotypes about attractiveness and pull is something I really didn't consider at all.

But back to the question from Anna: AFAIK having sex with coerced sex workers already constitutes rape, and the change in law is mostly to do with adding additional consent/knowledge requirements to the variables that a client has to think through before buying sex. The problem seems to be that prosecution and conviction rates for both rape of sex workers and the more basic charge of trafficking are abysmally low. Thus the change in focus, no? Demand has been identified as the proximate cause/problem by these legislators, and that means it's time to target the johns. If someone innocent (for a given value of innocence) gets sucked into the penal vortex - TOO BAD, IT'S WORTH IT.
 
 
Papess
02:52 / 22.11.08
I always find it rude when people with no claim to sex work in their personal history, talk around those who actually are or have been sex workers as if those people don't even exist or have a valid opinion.

One of the problems with this legislation is that "living off the avails" can mean anyone whom a sex worker supports. That includes: common-law partners, children (especially those of the age of majority), elderly dependents...you name it.

Another problem is even though it won't stop prostitution, it was never meant to! It is meant to allow for discriminatory persecution. Whenever authorities feel like enforcing these laws, they can and will. But even though it doesn't bring the industry to a grinding halt, you had better believe it most certainly will effect the business of individual sex workers.

Having any form of obvious protection, organization or incorporation will be seen as a threat to punters. But, discouraging sex workers to organize or incorporate is the real point of a law such as this. I base that on the fact that if this legislators actually listened to sex workers, and involve us in their rulings, they would know already how to protect those that they claim they want to protect. They are not any better than those they are trying to protect sex workers from.
 
 
Papess
02:57 / 22.11.08
I base that on the fact that if this legislators actually listened to sex workers, and involve us in their rulings, they would know already how to protect those that they claim they want to protect.

You know, like the workers of other industries are considered before policy is made.
 
 
Char Aina
03:10 / 22.11.08
Are there any practical reasons to criminalise the sex industry? I may be ignorant, but it seems like most of the illegalisation of the industry is moral.

Does that seem a fair assessment? Are there any glaring exceptions?
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
09:57 / 22.11.08
We live in a world with contraception and means to avoid STDs and that wasn't exactly the case 100 years ago so I can understand why it would have been criminalised. Governments are meant to protect people and outlawing prostitution was the best way to do that because it wasn't safe for anyone at all. Now we have a completely different medical state and the protection of everyone has to start with the people in the sex industry in a different way but I think society is still in the throes of sex as unsafe.
 
 
Papess
13:01 / 22.11.08
Are there any practical reasons to criminalise the sex industry?
Did you mean decriminalize, Life Critic.

I may be ignorant, but it seems like most of the illegalisation of the industry is moral.

How so?

We live in a world with contraception and means to avoid STDs and that wasn't exactly the case 100 years ago so I can understand why it would have been criminalised.
Governments are meant to protect people and outlawing prostitution was the best way to do that because it wasn't safe for anyone at all.

If that was the actual reason for ciminalizing it in the first place, then they would have criminalized promiscuity. Which, would mean that men who had relations with several women and possibly men also, would be targeted as criminals who were a threat to public safety. I assure you though, this is not about public safety, it is a religious-political measure.

Now we have a completely different medical state and the protection of everyone has to start with the people in the sex industry in a different way but I think society is still in the throes of sex as unsafe.

While I agree with that last statement, I don't think the stigma here is on sex so much as it is on the sex worker.

Sex workers need to be consulted about their needs if there is any intention to protect them. Allowing women to make a living using their bodies and creating legislation where they are in control of the industry and it's destiny and where public advocates, in tandem with advocates for sex workers, are consulted to make policy, is what would be ideal. Thus, the real concerns of everyone will be addressed.

Instead the UK government has just decided for us. As if all situations where sex workers were working with someone there is coercion. Do they have a method to decipher whether this is the case or not? Will they take the woman's word for it? Will they be able to tell if there is a situation where she is too afraid to talk, or can't? Will there just be an across the board assumption that if a sex worker is in business with someone or employed by an agency that they are coerced?

For those situations where that is actually happening, why punish the punter? That law is strictly to frighten off potential clients. Preventing a woman who is actually coerced from making money is only going to make her situation even more intolerable as it could lead to beatings and possible death for her. But they don't think about this when making these decisions. They base legislation on assumptions rather than actualities.
 
 
Char Aina
13:30 / 22.11.08
Did you mean decriminalize, Life Critic.

No.

I may be ignorant, but it seems like most of the illegalisation of the industry is moral.

How so?
...
I assure you though, this is not about public safety, it is a religious-political measure.

I think we're saying the same thing from slightly different angles. I think religious morality was at the root of it, and attitudes inspired by such morality are still behind it. There is a tendency to talk about worst case scenarios as though they are the norm in abolitionist literature I've read and read about, and that reminds me of other moral crusades, such as the war on drugs.


To quote a piece I was reading the other day,

"When you hear about the worst incidences of abuse and exploitation, it’s easy to decide the entire sex industry should be eradicated. Unfortunately, such a lofty approach eclipses any potential for tackling the actual abuse and exploitation, and instead conflates rapists and victims with consenting adults."



As I say, maybe ignorant, but I'm yet to hear a convincing practical basis for making the sex industry as a whole illegal in my society. Controlling it, definitely. Criminalising it, less so.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
13:52 / 22.11.08
If that was the actual reason for ciminalizing it in the first place, then they would have criminalized promiscuity

Where's your context? How do you outline promiscuity in law? How do you outline promiscuity 100 years ago- sex when not attempting to conceive a child? When someone is paid to have sex every single day with strangers they're more likely to pick up sexually transmitted infections and transmit them to other people. That's still the case now but it's less liable to happen and certainly less likely to kill. People who work in porn are required to have regular tests for a reason in 2008, to lower the risk of infection among actors. So I think you're wrong, it wasn't just about morality and if you think it was you need to sit down and think about what is possible now that wasn't in 1908 and how you would reduce the number of people picking up incurable, fatal illnesses like syphilis at that time. Every event in history doesn't link to the way we're able to perceive things now.

I'm yet to hear a convincing practical basis for making the sex industry as a whole illegal in our society.

I've never heard anyone try to make one for the whole of the sex industry... that covers a lot of ground.
 
  

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