Prostitutes have to get murdered before they get treated by the media with any dignity. We need to consider carefully the lessons from the cruel exposure, yet again, of their vulnerability.
Prostitution is massive in the UK. Estimates of the number of prostitutes varies, but the lowest serious estimate I can find is 30,000, while the figure most commonly quoted is 80,000.
What is beyond doubt is that the number of customers for these prostitutes runs into millions – a significant proportion of the adult male population of the UK. Yet this massive industry operates entirely in the shadows. It is not actually illegal, but it is hedged in by legislation that forces it to operate secretly. Means of granting discretion to customers without the need for initially meeting up in dark dangerous abandoned streets, are likely to lead quickly to prosecution.
Our current laws on prostitution are the product of Victorian prudery, and have been reinforced by the still narrower zeal of political feminists who wiish to restrict the uses of female sexuality.
The semi-legal status leaves prostitutes lurking in the dark, and often subject to the attention of pimps, traffickers – and sometimes murderers.
Of course, we need economic policies which provide good opportunities for everyone, so that prostitution is a choice. But for women who wish to be prostitutes, they should be free to work openly, in good conditions, at home or in safe establishments, in security and with access to medical services. Sex workers should be able to pay tax like anybody else.
But the other thing which is plain is that the sex workers of Bradford are often in the industry to fuel their drug habit. Here there are stark parallels in the legal position on drugs and prostitution, born of the inevitable counter-productivity of legislating for personal morality. The legal classification of drugs has very little relationship to the harmfulness of the drugs themselves, but are rather a strange inheritance of historical social factors. The last government was continually in conflict with its own scientific advisers who pointed this out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6474053.stm
It is the blanket and unnecessary illegality of drugs that provides the criminal world with its main source of revenue, destabilises entire producer countries and denies society the benefits of quality control, hygiene and taxation.
It would take a politician of rare courage and vision to take on the tabloid press on these issues. Unfortunately we don’t have any of those.
There’s no more frustrating issue in either the UK or the USA. You may recall the blistering anti-science article the Mail put out in the wake of the David Nutt affair. It crystallised a certain attitude of many towards the efficacy of the drugs wars, that is: we don’t care. We don’t care that the drugs wars are immoral, destructive, wasteful, useless and callous. We don’t care that the evidence that marijuana, meow-meow, E, cocaine etc are uniquely destructive is scant or non-existent. Our personal sense that “something is being done” about “druggy types” is what’s important.
not that it matters much but don’t believe the millions of men, more like thousands of repeat customers. is there anywhere in the world legalisation has been tried? what were the results?
An important starting point is to get rid of the part of the Proceeds of Crime Act which allows police forces to retain 25% of any proceeds of crime which its members recover. This makes prostitutes working in brothels – especially small, informal brothels where women work together for their own protection – particularly vulnerable to police raids. I fear that forthcoming cuts will make this situation worse as police will look for ways of increasing the force’s income. See http://www.womeninlondon.org.uk/2009/05/notice-ecp/ for details.
Brian,
I am afraid you are wrong. There are regular ccustomers, it is true, but if they numbered only thousands they would have to be extremely wealthy to maintain perhaps 80,000 prostitutes. You just do need millions of men to sustain it.
Even if you take the average annual amount paid to prostitutes as just £5,000 each – and many are part time, though many take hugely more than that -that would give £400 million per year turnover for the industry. I that is a very conservative estimate.
I am not saying that the prostitutes get to keep all that income themselves. I am just pointing out that it is a myth there are a small pool of customers.
im sure there was a country that leagalised drugs.
It wasn’t the doom and gloom scenario that everyone was predicting.
Let be honest the illegaility of drugs helps funnel massive amounts of cash through the west, oh so beyond reproach banking system.
I don’t know about the UK but the US can never afford to scale back the war on drugs as it provides the only effective arm of ethnic and social hygiene policy. It is not as efficient as the methods used by Adolph the Aryan against the Jews but over a period of say 200 years of locking black people in prison until they are beyond breeding age the drug laws will solve the problem caused by that most egregious excess of political correctness, the abolition of slavery.
approximately 20million males of the right sort of age in the UK? being short, fat, ugly and bald myself I know how hard it can be to find sexual fulfillment, but 1 in 10 males using prostitutes, maybe more? all I can do is take your word for it and say ‘wow’.
as well as needing politicians with the courage to bring drugs and prostitution within the law, we need good regulatory oversight and a ‘private sector’ which will put the welfare of workers (and customers) before profit.
the beneficiaries of a change would need, predominantly, to be sex workers and drug users themselves, with society reaping some indirect benefits. further political vision and courage are required to ensure that it is not those who currently control these industries, and the government, who gain the most.
it seems an awful lot to hope for, which is such a tragedy as we sit and see so many of our most vulnerable suffer.
brian
Of course all 20 million adult UK males don’t use prostitutes. But to maintain 80,000 prostitutes, i would say 10% of them do sometimes and maybe 3% do so regularly. That is just based on some sensible extrapolations, but I am interested in what others think.
brian
coincidentally i am in amsterdam right now. they estimate that 40% of the vice trade comes from brits, and if you see the way the groups of brits walk and talk you’d conclude that 9 out of 10 will think nothing of using prostitutes.
of course, this is not a typical representation of the british male population.. and the legitimacy of the trade here changes behaviour… but it’s quite clear that morality is not a barrier to using prostitutes.
Craig,
Completely agree with your timely post.
See my hero Thomas Szasz’ views here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mojxtnm3fA4
have been on a stag do to amsterdam, and yes 9 out of 10 enjoyed the view, but as far as I know 0 out of 10 took the plunge, did see a couple of men entering premises looking like they meant business, but they appeared to be completely unfazed by the whole surroundings as if they were there every day. just my perceptions.
Craig,
you are ahead of your time.
Kathz,
I’d never heard of the ‘Proceeds of Crime Act’. I’m shocked to discover that such exploitation of prostitutes (and presumably other lucrative crime)is actually institutionalised. This is utterly shameful.
“” at 10:05,
I’ve noticed for decades much overlap between war zones around the world and the drug producing regions. Paki and Afghani Black, Red Leb etc; you don’t find Durban Poison any more. To fight a war you need a funded enemy. (PS I wish you’d pick a username, it makes replying much easier)
having said that the one person i know who actually told me they’ve been to a prostitute did it on a stag do to amsterdam
Craig is correct, in principle; however, within the framework of the type of society we live in; in practice the legalisation of the drug and sex trades is fraught with problems. Whether these new sets of problems and challenges would lead to a worse situation than the current one is complex and highly debatable.
The problem is that we are, unfortunately, where we are now; and moving away and forward to something else entirely is going to be very difficult indeed.
One needs to appriciate that both ‘crimes’ prostitution and illegal drugs, are seen as ‘wrong’ in a moral sense by powerful vested interests in our society, by people who matter and have power. People like the owners of mass circulation newspapers, who have their own agenda, which is closely linked to their economic interests. It’s truly amazing what these people can justify and defend when it comes to their ability to make vast amounts of money.
If one examines the press one sees that stories about sex and drugs fill page after page. It’s a form of modern morality play where temptation is rife and degredation awaits, yet at the same time there is the possibility of redemption and forgivness. One is dirty but one can be washed clean.
These morality tales sell newspapers and make money for the people who own them, and this is all they are interested in. Money and power.
Challenging the bias of the media towards drugs and prostitution, ‘normalizing’ attitudes, rationalizing attitudes, demystifying them, is an enormous task as too many people see the current system as both usful and profitable.
In this moral cursade against illegal drugs and illegal forms of sexual behaviour, facts don’t matter very much, which is why the rational, scientfic approach is seen as threat by both the political class and the media.
It’s as if we actually need to persecute, imprison, punish and stimatize certain forms of behaviour and individuals/groups in order to maintain our own identity and values. The drugged prostitute both fascinates us and makes us feel revulsion at the same time. A morality play for our own time.
The only way to provide protection to vulnerable people in the sex industry, is to legalize and regulate it. Clearly, 2000 years of illegality has failed.
As for drugs, 40,000 people in the UK die each year from alcohol and tobacco related diseases and crime. Ecstasy has been scientifically shown to be less harmful than riding a horse, and if people smoked cannabis instead of drinking, hospitals and police cells would be nearly empty.
Writerman.
I think you really are on to something with your 11:34 post.
Moral crusades as a distraction from more real problems.
writerman: “It’s as if we actually need to persecute, imprison, punish and stimatize certain forms of behaviour and individuals/groups in order to maintain our own identity and values. The drugged prostitute both fascinates us and makes us feel revulsion at the same time. A morality play for our own time.”
I think it’s called divide and rule.
For what it’s worth, I’d say prostitutes are generally wiser and more honest than our politicians.
Surely the “war on drugs” is hopelessly lost, and always has been, and has had the same effect as prohibition in the US. There, total alcohol consumption went up, not down, there were many deaths through unregulated wood-alcohol sales and so on, many were arrested, it cost the states dearly in revenue.
In the couple of places cannabis has been informally decriminalised here, the unfortunate effect has been for tokers to flock to the area and totally ruin it – ten inch joints, bongs on the table, etc. – just the sort of thing the hate-Mail loves to screech about.
The whole point of decriminalisation is that it has to occur nationwide, or we end up with some ludicrous hot-spots.
*
Holland has become a European hot-spot for drugs for this very reason. But what about the Dutch themselves? The average age of heroin addicts is _increasing_ – meaning younger people are not so interested, and overdoses are not so common. Cannabis use is lower among the Dutch compared with their British counterparts.
Decriminalising takes away the naughtiness factor for kids, lowering the appeal. It’s so passe if everyone including your dad has the occasional toke, and nobody gives a damn.
And all this is only about consumption. What about the state revenue available from activity which most definitely will take place, legally or not? What about quality, and safety of consumers? Why should only criminals profit from this enterprise? Why have a system whereby otherwise law-abiding people regularly have to associate with criminals?
Members of the Cabinet, US presidents etc. have all admitted smoking dope. Why should ordinary people have their lives ruined by criminal records for doing the same? Time to end this cannabis madness – I wonder if our new government will be pragmatic, shrill hysterics from The Mail notwithstanding.
Most women doing this are drug addicts. So lock them up and give them cold turkey till they are free of the habit. As for the punters, draft them into the army and send them to fight the Taliban. Solve two problems at once!
Writerman makes a good point by saying, ‘in practice the legalisation of the drug and sex trades is fraught with problems. Whether these new sets of problems and challenges would lead to a worse situation than the current one is complex and highly debatable.’
I believe prostitution is not all about feeding a drug habit, it is also about trying hard to do the best thing for their children sitting back at home with nanny while mummy ‘works’. I also believe the majority of women selling sex do a brilliant job of steering their children away from crime, sex and drugs.
Some of these women (and children) are controlled by pimps who threaten and physically abuse the forced ‘slaves’ they control.
In Baghdad where families were torn apart and the economy ruined by the illegal invasion, we witness a mass of marginalised street children who have fallen prey to gangs involved in prostition and drugs. These children, many of whom are orphans, are starving despite begging.
A young 12 year old boy, traumatized by the murder of his parents turned to glue sniffing. He joined a gang like so many and now men have sex with him in exchange for money and glue. He said to an NGO worker,
“I cry every time a man has sex with me and they usually hit me because I am crying. After I do it, my boss gives me a good quantity of glue and around US $3 dollars for food. I know what I’m doing is wrong but it’s better than living with daily beatings.”
If we legalise prostitution we rid ourselves of the controlling pimps and gangs something the police and organisations are already trying hard to eliminate. We also negate the present illegality that the sex traders impress on their children.
We cannot encourage any talk in the playground that, “my mum(or dad) works in a new legal sex house on the outskirts of Brighton!”
Psychologically speaking it’s easy for an adult who would like to do so to manipulate and use children. Recent worries of ‘grooming’ and exploitation via the Web have proved the case.
yes to both, long overdue. The exchequers is loosing out on approx. 14 billion/annum in taxes and franchises if drugs would be first decriminalised and then legalised.
This would lead to automatic cuts in public services as every action in the judiciary police or court, not to speak of valuable hospital time, tied up to drugs would disappear.
If prostitution would be fully legalised and made a tarde like every other, it would result in less harm and less sex trafficked woman who are exploited at present by violent and ruthless gangs.
Those that continue with prohibitionary measure, against all factual evidence, should explain why they are harming people and society, costing us hundreds of millions we do not need to spend.
Mark,
I cnnot see any realistic argument that legalising prostitution would increase paedophilia. I can see an obvious reason to hope it would reduce it, though my best guess is that in practice it would have little impact either way.
The entire debate could be narrowed as follows:-
The effects of prohibition versus the benefits of legalisation.
On the drugs aspect, for what it is worth, here is an article I wrote some years ago ?” now published on “Cannabis news” -http://cannabisnews.com/news/14/thread14721.shtml
Dear Craig
I agree with you and blogged on the drugs issue in my post of 30th July 2009.
http://glasgowunihumanrights.blogspot.com/2009/07/time-to-end-victorian-values-and.html
The time to stop funding crime is long overdue.
Elected politicans are scared.
Yes, it does take courage to say something different, you are right.
It is time to fight the fights that need fought.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Why criminalise it in the first place, so i agree. Society stops people expressing a natural human instinct that is wrong. If legal many would still shy away due to not wanting to give their details to an authoritative system. Maybe some would not wish to pay tax on the income. Slackening the rules would stop women getting their head battered in, and that is disgraceful that it still happens. With drugs we have to be careful.
A real debate on this matter is 200 years overdue. Kathz, good point about cops keeping the money. I did not know this until I read your post. An incentive to bust people…who they believe can’t fight back and get away with it. Not in all cases I expect.
No Craig I am not relating paedophilia to prostitution. Certainly legalising prostitution would not reduce it.
You have raised an important question and some analysis is perhaps worthwhile before any talk of legalising ‘sex houses’ and sex services.
Studies have proved paedophiles are not enticed by the children themselves, by their bodies, or by their budding and nubile sexuality. Rather, paedophiles are drawn to what children symbolize, to what pre-adolescents stand for and represent.
In Japan for instance women seem to have a traditional role as socially-acceptable and permissible sexual “child-substitutes”.
Japanese politicians are keen to point out that statistics show a far lower level of reported rape and child sex abuse in Japan than in most western countries.
In Japan, people are generally quite relaxed about nudity and children. Communal bathing is a part of Japanese culture and people are unselfconscious in front of one another (though at a mixed nude bathing spot you’d be unlikely to see many young women.
Western viewers of Hayao Miyazaki’s magical anime My Neighbour Totoro are often surprised and uncomfortable when watching the scene where the father takes a bath with his two daughters, aged 11 and four. We can’t watch such a scene without an awareness of all the connotations of paedophilia. In Japan, sharing a bath with one’s children is natural. (Kelly Osbourne would totally disagree)
So are we ready for legalising sex or more importantly would these brothels attempting to gain more clients than the next, concentrate on the Nabokov’s Lolita – excitement from the sweet and innocent. In our society would we be increasing paedophilia by our own doing?
Do sexuality and legality meet except in marriage? Frustration born from having to put up with crap from society seeks a parallel release in illegality. The illegality is a coping mechanism that props up the illegality of the status quo.
If you lived in a society that gave you respect, you would be content with what is respectable. Western societies completely reject the right of the individual to question the total lack of principles by which we are governed.
You’re not allowed to object to illegal wars on other human beings to pinch their oil. You’re not allowed to object to the system of patronage by which wealth is retained by a small minority of people. You are not allowed to watch your TV or drink a glass of water or buy a CD without being taxed through your nose, to prop up the illegality of the status quo.
As always, Islam has the answers. For those whose natural libido is strong, have more wives. For those who are driven to coping mechanisms by psychological persecution from an unjust society, make life difficult for the unjust oppressors, rather than for the barely coping victims of social oppression.
Until we remove the charging of interest on loans, the drones of society will be in power over the workers. The workers will seek power over the weaker sex and the wishy-washy liberals will do a quick Kenny Everrett cross of the legs saying: ‘ The best of all possible worlds.’
You have to attack injustice at its source, not try and mitigate its symptoms, leaving the cause of injustice stronger. Idealism maybe, but everything else is plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Legislate against the stupidity of oppressing your fellow human beings, and they are less likely to use anti-social coping mechanisms to survive.
Drugs will never be legalised as politicians get their cut, albeit indirectly, from drug trade. The whole system will have to change for something to happen to drug trade.
@The_Simple_Solution_Co – the idea that most/all working girls are drug addicts is a popular one, but it’s not true, I’m afraid. That may be the case on the street – and I would be inclined to get decent statistics before I believed it – but there is a huge, generally safe indoor trade with women who are not dependent on drugs. In most cases they practise significantly safer sex than British people who have many casual-sex partners.
My biggest concern would be regarding women forced into the trade financially (as well as physically, of course, as is sometimes the case with people trafficking). But I think the predominent left/feminist position against all prostitution is actively harmful.
Interestingly, one of the biggest sex industry advertising boards shows that there is an nearly similar number of male prostitutes working in the UK (22,851 vs. 28,274), and that the UK makes up the lion’s share of its worldwide advertisers. I’ve provided a link (note: NSFW).
I agree with the need to have a proper framework around indoor prostitution, but I am not sure it will be a panacea. I am inclined to think the Bradford ladies in question were working the streets out of poverty, and if they were not financially desperate they (a) would not have entered prostitution, or (b) could afford to rent indoor premises for their trade.
I don’t know how it works in other parts of the UK, but here in Birmingham we have a number of ‘massage parlours’ that have become the legally acceptable front for working girls. Some of these have been open for some years, and so do not appear to be a major source of concern for the council or the police. I believe that any non sex-worker that derives an income from such an establishment (such as a madam or receptionist) is technically breaking the law, but in practise I think it is sensibly not enforced.