I want to talk about sex for money.
I'm not like most of the people
you've heard speaking about prostitution before.
I'm not a police officer or a social worker,
I'm not an academic, a journalist or a politician,
and as you've probably picked up from [arian's] blurb,
I'm not a nun, either.
(Laughter)
Most of those people would tell you that selling sex is degrading,
that no one would ever choose to do it,
that it's dangerous:
women get abused and killed.
In fact most of those people would say there should be a law against it.
Maybe that sounds reasonable to you.
It sounded reasonable to me until the closing months of 2009,
when I was working two dead end, minimum wage jobs.
Every month my wages would just replenish my overdraft,
I was exhausted
and my life was going nowhere.
Like many other before me,
I decided sex for money was a better option.
Now don't get me wrong,
I would have loved to have won the lottery instead,
but it wasn't going to happen any time soon,
and my rent needed paying,
so I signed up for my first shift in brothel.
In the years that passed,
I've had a lot of time to think.
I reconsidered the ideas I once had about prostitution.
I've given a lot of thought to consent
and the nature of work under capitalism.
I've thought about gender inequality
and the sexual and reproductive labor of women.
I've experienced exploitation and violence at work.
I've thought about what's needed
to protect other sex workers from these things.
Maybe you've thought about them, too.
In this talk
I'm going to take you through the four main legal approaches
applied to sex work around the world,
and explain why they don't work;
why prohibiting the sex industry
actually exacerbates every harm the sex workers are vulnerable to.
And then I'm going tell you about what we, as sex workers, actually want.
The first approach is full criminalisation.
Half the world,
including Russia, South Africa and most of the US,
regulate sex work by criminalizing everyone involved.
So that's seller, buyer and third parties.
Lawmakers in these countries apparently hope
that the fear of getting arrested will deter people from selling sex.
But if you're forced to choose
between obeying the law and feeding yourself or your family,
you're going to do the work anyway,
and take the risk.
Criminalisation is a trap.
It's hard to get a conventional job when you have a criminal record.
Potential employers won't hire you.
Assuming you still need money,
you'll stay in the more flexible, informal economy.
The law forces you to keep selling sex,
which is the exact opposite of its intended effect.
Being criminalized leaves you exposed to mistreatment by the state itself.
In many places you may be coerced into paying a bribe,
or even into having sex with a police officer to avoid arrest.
Police and prison guards in Camodia, for example,
have been documented subjecting sex workers
to what can only be described as torture.
Threats a gun point,
beatings,
electric shocks,
rape
and denial of food.
Another worrying thing:
if you're selling sex in places like Kenya, South Africa or New York,
a police officer can arrest you if you're caught carrying condoms.
Because condoms can be legally used as evidence that you're selling sex.
Obviously this increases HIV risk.
Imagine knowing that if you're busted carrying condoms,
it'll be used against you.
It's a pretty strong incentive to leave them at home, right?
Sex workers working in these places are forced to make a touch choice
between risking arrest or having risky sex.
What would you choose?
Would you pack condoms to go to work?
How about if you're worried
the police officer would rape you if he got you in the van?
The second approach to regulating sex work,
seen in these countries,
is partial criminalisation;
where the buying and selling of sex are legal,
but the surrounding activities,
like brothel-keeping or soliciting on the street are banned.
Laws like these,
we have them in the UK and in France,
essentially say to our sex workers,
"Hey, we don't mind you selling sex,
just make sure it's done behind closed doors
and all alone."
And brother-keeping by the way,
is defined as just two or more sex workers working together.
Making that illegal means that many of us work alone,
which obviously makes us vulnerable to violent offenders.
But we're also vulnerable
if we choose to break the law by working together.
A couple of years ago,
a friend of mine was nervous after she was attacked at work,
so I said that she could see her clients from my place for awhile.
During that time,
we had another guy turn nasty.
I told the guy to leave or I'd call the police,
and he looked at the two of us and he said,
"You girls can't call the cops,
you're working together,
this place is illegal."
He was right.
He eventually left without getting physically violent,
but the knowledge that we were breaking the law empowered that man to threaten us.
He felt confident he'd get away with it.
The prohibition of street prostitution also causes more harm than it prevents.
Firstly, to avoid getting arrested,
street workers take risks to avoid detection,
and that means working alone
or in isolated locations like dark forests where they're vulnerable to attack.
If you're caught selling sex outdoors,
you pay a fine.
How do you pay that fine without going back to the streets?
It was the need for money that saw you in the streets in the first place.
And so the fines stack up,
and you're caught in a vicious cycle
of selling sex to pay the fines you got for selling sex.
Let me tell you about Mariana Popa who worked in Redbridge, East London.
The street workers on her patch would normally wait for clients in groups,
for safety in numbers,
and to warn each other about how to avoid dangerous guys.
But during a police crackdown on sex workers and their clients,
she was forced to work alone to avoid being arrested.
She was stabbed to death
and the early hours of October 29th, 2013.
And she had been working later than usual
to try to pay off a fine she had received for soliciting.
So if criminalizing sex workers hurts them,
why not just criminalize the people who buy sex?
This is the aim of the third approach I want to talk about,
the Swedish, or Nordic model of sex-work law.
The idea behind this law
is that selling sex is intrinsically harmful
and so you're in fact helping sex workers by removing the option.
Despite growing support
for what's often describe as the "End Demand" approach,
there's no evidence that it works.
There's just as much prostitution in Sweden as there was before.
Why might that be?
It's because the people selling sex often don't have other options for income.
If you need that money,
the only effect that a drop in business is going have
is to force you to lower your prices,
or offer more risky sexual services.
If you need to find more clients,
you might seek the help of a manager,
and so you see,
rather than putting a stop to what's often descried as pimping,
a law like this actually gives oxygen to potentially abusive third parties.
To keep safe in my work,
I try not to take bookings from someone who calls me from a withheld number.
If it's a home or a hotel visit, I try to get a full name and details.
If I worked under the Swedish model,
a client would be too scared to give me that information.
I might have no other choice
but to accept a booking from a man who is untraceable
if he later turns out to be violent.
If you need their money,
you need to protect your clients from the police.
If you work outdoors,
that means working alone or in isolated locations,
just as if you were criminalized yourself.
It might mean getting into cars quicker,
less negotiating time means snap decisions.
Is this guy dangerous or just nervous?
Can you afford to take the risk?
Can you afford not to?
Something I'm often hearing is,
"Prostitution would be fine if we made it legal and regulated it."
We call that approach Legalisation,
and it's used by countries like the Netherlands,
Germany
and Nevada in the US.
But it's not a great model for human rights.
And in state-controlled prostitution,
commercial sex can only happen in certain legally-designated areas or venues,
and sex workers are made to comply with special restrictions,
like registration and forced health checks.
Regulation sounds great on paper,
but politicians deliberately make
regulation around the sex industry expensive and difficult to comply with.
It creates a two-tiered system: legal and illegal work.
We sometimes call it backdoor criminalisation.
Rich, well-connected brothel owners can comply with the regulations,
but more marginalized people find those hoops impossible to jump through.
And even if it's possible in principle,
getting a license or proper venue takes time and costs money.
It's not going to be an option
for someone who's desperate or needs money tonight.
They might be a refugee or fleeing domestic abuse.
In this two-tiered system,
the most vulnerable people are forced to work illegally,
so they're still exposed to all the dangers or criminalistion
I mentioned earlier.
So ...
it's looking like all attempts to control or prevent sex work from happening
makes things more dangerous for people selling sex.
Fear of law enforcement makes them work alone in isolated locations,
and allows clients,
and even cops,
to get abusive with the knowledge they'll get away with it.
Fines and criminal records force people to keep selling sex,
rather than enabling them to stop.
Crackdowns on buyers drive sellers to take dangerous risks,
and into the arms of potentially abusive managers.
These laws also reinforce stigma and hatred against sex workers.
When France temporarily brought in the Swedish model two years ago,
ordinary citizens took it as a cue
to start carrying out vigilante attacks against people working on the street.
In Sweden,
opinion surveys show
that significantly more people want sex workers to be arrested now
than before the law was brought in.
If prohibition is this harmful,
you might ask,
why it so popular?