In another part of the forest...

[rozk]

I am very worried about the possible unforeseen consequences of the Home Office proposals for criminalizing punters, not because I have any especial sympathy for men who buy sex, but because I think the proposals are relying far too heavily on the principal of deterrence and not nearly enough on thinking about what such a law is trying to achieve.

The clear and present social evil which the Home Office is trying to address is the growing amount of slavery, including but not limited to, sexual slavery, made possible by looser borders generally, under-enforcement of existing laws, and the existence of large rich criminal organizations. What is going on with sexual slavery is not the continued existence of a sex industry that was always evil from top to bottom as the replacement of one sort of sex industry by another - one of the problems with the radfem analysis in which the whole thing was always wholly and soley about the industrialization of sexuality is that it put ideas into people's heads. (Making up stories about snuff films that did not exist was a good way to put the idea into people's minds - they did not exist, but they almost certainly do now.)

We are entitled to disapprove of sex work and a sex industry, or not to disapprove of it. The issue of slavery, enforced by rape and murder, is another matter on which, in theory, we can all agree. And an urgent one.

But not, perhaps, if we turn it into a pretext for dealing with the unfinished business of the sex industry generally, or take the slavery issue as an argument for total prohibition, the way Fiona McTaggart, say, is doing.

It is worth commenting, BTW, that Fiona was at the Home Office during the extended period during which the British Government refused to ratify the European Convention that gave asylum to trafficked women - a practical measure against enslavement which fell foul of the government's desire to placate the anti-asylum sections of the Tory press. They brought it in eventually, but reluctantly.

The trouble with the current proposals is, as I say, that they rely on the deterrent effect of criminalizing punters. What the new law would do, I fear, is offer the gangsters responsible for trafficking a wonderful opportunity to blackmail punters not only into giving them lots of money but also operating as their minions. If you were running a sex slavery operation, how useful would you find it periodically to recruit as your catspaw businessmen, policemen, government ministers? Moreover, once you have recruited them, you want the carrot as well as the stick - so you offer them sexual services that are their darkest fantasies, involve them in an escalation of criminal acts, and make a creep into a monster.

I have no answer to the problem except strict enforcement on criminal conspiracy. What do you think?

Comments

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Would having legalised brothels, as the dear old Mother's Union suggests, make a difference? I'd much rather see the law positively protect sex workers.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Ah, you should chat to jinxremoving about this - she works for a sex workers support project, here in Scotland where we have semi-tolerated brothels, and she says it is not at all a total answer, as street-based sex workers are not the same (group of) people as premises-based ones, so they need solutions for them as street-based workers. And that being in a legal or tolerated premises isn't necessarily rosy anyway.

(If you're reading this, jinxremoving, is that right?

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yeah. The sex workers' rights movement generally takes the line that decriminalisation is better than legalisation. In places where the sex industry is legalised, a certain kind of regulation comes with it such as registration (undesirable for many sex workers since sex work continues to be stigmatised; since they may plan to only work in the sex industry for a short time; and since their registration could later be used against them, an example being child custody cases) and mandatory health checks (considered intrusive, and also diverting all responsibility from the clients). I mean, if I had to choose between legalisation or the current situation, okay, I'd pick legalisation, but it's still not ideal.

But yeah, nowadays (at least in Edinburgh, and I'd suspect similar in the rest of the UK) street-based sex workers are largely drug-dependent, and a brothel is unlikely to take on someone who's too chaotic to keep to their shifts, or who's injecting on the premises, etc. So the street scene is going to continue because there is nowhere else for them to go (and also, because all the money they make there is their own - there's no manager or receptionist to get a cut). However, the Scottish Parliament had the opportunity to make the street scene safer, and rejected this in favour of the apparently more pressing need to send a message to clients.

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

However, the Scottish Parliament had the opportunity to make the street scene safer, and rejected this in favour of the apparently more pressing need to send a message to clients.

That is just wrong. The law needs to protect the workers first. Thank you for the info, too.

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

I imagine this is yet another example of NuLab (unattainable) perfect chasing out the good. From Smith's interview with the Bindel (isn't the legislation in part based on her "research"?) in today's Guardian she openly admits that her ambition is to stop men paying for sex. Well, I wish her luck, but several thousand years of trying, some of it by people a lot wiser than smith, suggests there's a bit of wishful thinking going on there.

It would be nice to hope that some useful research had been done on how prostitution is dealt with around the world, determining what is possible and what isn't and then determining a pragmatic set of policies centered around the greater public good. Unfortunately, this is the UK, so we get a load of puritanical authoritarianism which will achieve little but the further immiseration of those in the trade. This time, apparently, in the name of feminism. Trebles all round and a Stonewall nomination I imagine.

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

There is plenty of useful research around. Unfortunately, the likes of Julie Bindel and Melissa Farley are popular with both the media and the government - real experts who report back that "it's complicated" aren't going to grab headlines so much or back up the government's agenda.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

There's an astonishing answer in Smith's interview with Bindel in The Guardian:

JS: I am willing to accept that there are women out there who say they have chosen to sell sex. But they are in the minority, and laws are there to protect the majority.

I had to read that a couple of times to make sure I didn't dream it, but yes - it seems the Home Secretary really doesn't believe that it's the business of laws to protect minorities. That explains a lot!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

the growing amount of slavery, including but not limited to, sexual slavery, made possible by looser borders generally, under-enforcement of existing laws, and the existence of large rich criminal organizations.

It's not just the looser borders, it's the idea that people without official permission to be in a country have few or no rights. Just about every account I've seen of modern slavery is involves illegal immigrants.

[paulathomas.livejournal.com]

If I could add, from a limited experience of the situation in Australia, the legalised brothels are actually a bit of a problem. But not for the reasons that are usually ascribed.

The problem I see is that the legalised brothel takes on woman at a youngish age. The brothel does health checks regularly but the objective of these checks is to protect the clients from disease and therefore protect the brothel from being sued.

If a woman fails the health checks she is out of the brothel. So what does she do? She goes onto the streets for work as this kind of work is all she knows and she may not be qualified for anything else.

[oatc.livejournal.com]

Which then raises the old approach - training and help with a fresh start. In some ways sex workers (of any sex or gender), apart from the enslaved and those who genuinely choose and prefer it (assuming they do, truthfully exist), are often yet more victims of the class system that, after family, connections, and wealth, uses otherwise often quite meaningless "qualifications" to protect themselves from competition.

Those disadvantaged, bullied or harassed in being processed by the education/training industry or in subsequent employment, and people caught by an earlier pregnancy than society considers normal, are victims of that.

When society uses punitive methods against the victims of the class system it is the opposite of socialism. So much for Julie Bindel's, Jacqui Smith's, and New Labour's radical credentials.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

This is a very insightful analysis of the real problem with criminalising prostitution and patronising prostitutes. You should write to the newspapers with these arguments.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I have dropped a note to two columnists that I know, and to whom I owe a favour.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

What I think is that I'd better get it clear exactly what the term "punters" means. It isn't in any of my books about British language usage, and I never heard it until a few years ago when it suddenly came up from Brits all over. I've seen it used to mean "ordinary folks" (in the same sense in which Dave Langford likes to evoke "The Plain People of Fandom"), or to mean the audience or customers (as of the attendees of a show, or the people who bet on a horse race, or the general readership of a book).

Now you're using it as if it meant specifically, and only, "paying customers of sex workers", a category for which the U.S. slang term (implying males only) is "johns" (a term also meaning "toilets", but context reveals the difference).

And I'm wondering, is the "sex customer" usage implied whenever the word is used, or is that purely dependent on context?

[rozk.livejournal.com]

It means 'customers' with a side order of what I believe carnival folk in the US call 'rubes', but is also what sex workers standardly call what you would call 'johns' in this context.

[paulathomas.livejournal.com]

"punters" is an old piece of British slang from the betting industry. 'Taking a punt' is slang for having a bet or guess. From this 'punters' came to mean people who were having a bet. It has since been extended in two different directions. 1. to people who make guesses. and 2. to customers of what one might term fringe industries such as the sex trade.

Mair

[(Anonymous)]

Here we go again , using this proposal and scare tactics about slavery to push their own feminist agenda .
If there is a problem you can be sure that it wont be fixed unless they can get political mileage out of it And I doubt if it will be fixed then But it will certainly interest the media Good headlines there. I can see Julie Bindel having a field day.

This is mostly not a case where the Law helps

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

Not that a total hand off policy is possible-rape of a prostitute is rape plain and simple and sex workers (if there are to be such ) should have decent working conditions. & certainly slavery is intolerable.
My position is the derided as simplistic position that ther is nothing (in THOERY) wrong with a women selling her body but most all prostitutes are grossly exploited.
Legalised brothels yes but they won't bring in the new utopia. This won't happen until most men reguard treating decently a person who has hauled his ashes if obligate in the same way as treating someone who has put a secutrity lock on his front door is. I'm not holding my breath.

[zoeimogen.livejournal.com]

If I read the news right - and more importantly if it was reported correctly - they'll be treating it as rape.

It occurs to be that this "devalues" rape somewhat as a very serious crime.

[paulathomas.livejournal.com]

According to the BBC report at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7735908.stm says

"Under the plans, people who pay a prostitute for sex knowing they have been trafficked against their will could be charged with rape."

There would be legal difficulties with this proposal. Firstly how do you prove that a man knew that the woman was trafficked? How do you prove that such trafficking was against her will? How do you prove that the man knew that the trafficking was against her will? There will be other difficulties as well.

In addition I see no proposals that actually benefit the women involved. Presumably they would be sent home with their home governments knowing why. Not at all a healthy situation in some cases.

[oatc.livejournal.com]

Bindel et al find low conviction rates for rape prosecutions useful in pressing for the judicial system to be changed. Having the judges or magistrates involved trained by them is a preferred "solution" (as they train border agency staff, police, an violence shelter workers). A nice little earner, apart from other advantages for them. Higher numbers of "rape" cases, and reduced conviction rates (whilst not suggesting that it has not long been a problem in need of solution), also serve to promote the Bindellian agenda in various other ways.

[oatc.livejournal.com]

Many of those who have suffered the crime feel that some of those who latch on to it as a "cause" do so for ulterior motives. Those associated with Bindel have been known to even describe the mere presence around other women of someone "born male" presenting as a woman as rape, saying it is being in women's minds without permission.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I have no answer to the problem except strict enforcement on criminal conspiracy. What do you think?

Have there ever been any attempts to recruit the assistance of the men who actually visit prostitutes? You know, awareness-raising campaigns, an anonymous hotline to ring if they come to suspect the woman they visit has been coerced into the role? I'm sure some of the punters couldn't care less or would even get off on the idea; perhaps the majority would have a troubled conscience but might not want to get involved; but if even 1% of the punters were willing to take action, then a brothel with five trafficked women seeing five customers a day each would be reported to the police within a week.

I don't know, maybe i'm being too idealistic. But the government's current attempt to demonise the customers of prostitutes seems just as short-sighted as earlier attempts to demonise the prostitutes themselves. They're human beings; some are probably scumbags and some are probably decent guys who could be persuaded to help out. But not if they're likely to face criminal charges themselves.

And that's not even getting into the issue of strict liability laws. I wonder how willing a jury would be to convict on that basis? It seems to me crystal clear that the government wanted to outlaw buying sex entirely, realised that British public opinion was against that, and so attempted to do the same thing by stealth.

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

Spot on!

This post by Catherine Stephens discusses the new laws as well as Turkey's successful hotline.

Certainly plenty of clients in the UK are concerned and don't want to visit sex workers who are unwilling. There's at least one prominent punter website that has a big banner for Crimestoppers urging anyone to report concerns about trafficking or underage girls; I expect it's not the only one.

One thing I envision happening is that more clients will avoid seeing migrant sex workers altogether because of trafficking fears. After all, abolitionists like to cite the mere presence of migrants as 'evidence' of trafficking, and lazy journalists like to echo that.