Of prostitutes, puritans and prohibitionism

January 11, 2009 at 6:59 pm (Feminism, sex workers, unions, voltairespriest)

I felt prompted to write this by Cath Elliott’s latest piece at Liberal Conspiracy, “Betraying Sex Workers”. In it she raises questions about the International Union of Sex Workers, suggesting that there are other interest groups behind the IUSW’s libertarian stance on legalisation and unionisation of prostitution, namely pimps and punters. Further, she says:

Whenever those of us who are opposed to legalisation or across the board decriminalisation air our views, we’re invariably shouted down and accused of not listening to what prostitutes themselves want: “Go and talk to the IUSW” we’re told: “they represent prostitutes: they know what they’re talking about.”

Now, maybe Cath and I read different newspapers but I certainly haven’t noticed supporters of Jacqui Smith’s recent proposals, or conservative feminists in general (by which I mean moralists who see puritan legislation as the solution to this issue) being howled down by IUSW or ECP supporters. It just is not true. In fact the vast majority of coverage of Smith’s proposals which I have seen, has reported them as though they were the only reasonable way forward with the issue.

As I mentioned above, she intimates that the IUSW could have members who are pimps and punters, and cites as an example one Douglas Fox. He himself replies on the same thread, and I have no idea who is right and who is wrong. In a way however that isn’t really the point. The real question is not whether the IUSW is at this stage a representative body for sex workers, but actually what it is that gives the right to speak on behalf of sex workers to middle-class Labour politicians and liberal-feminist journos who in most cases will never have had so much as a lengthy conversation with a sex worker, let alone actual experience of the way that sex work manifests and affects people’s lives.

I also find it credulous in the extreme of Cath and other writers to put so much apparent trust in a government whose record in terms of protecting vulnerable women is at best gun-shy (when it wilted over abortion rights in Northern Ireland), and at worst downright disgusting (attacks on lone parent benefits spring to mind). I simply don’t believe these people when they suddenly strike “feminist” poses, conveniently on issues with cross-party appeal to Daily Mail readers and nimbies who most certainly do not have the best interests of sex workers at heart.

Fellow Liberal Conspirator Kate Belgrave has written a reply to Cath which I entirely agree with. She says:

It does not follow that feminists who support the notion of a legal sex trade are indifferent to the crimes that can take place around it – or think, somehow, that protection for victims of those crimes runs second to the rights of sex workers who choose their trade. It is simply that feminists who support a legal sex trade believe that there is nothing to be gained from pushing the trade underground, and know that sex workers say the same thing.

The bottom line is that it’s all very well for writers favouring prohibition to cry “feminism” in defence of what in the analysis are very socially conservative politics, but it still will not alter the fact that the real crisis of representation does not lie with sex workers themselves so much as with those who claim to be representing their interests by defending proposals which stink to me of political expediency throwing sops to middle-England conservatism.

Our Caroline has written extensively both here and at her own blog giving the case against legislative prohibitionism for sex workers. I have little to add to her writings, but to say that I think the case against prohibitionism is overwhelming and further that I believe most of those who understand the difficulties faced in trying to help street sex workers would agree with me.

As Kate says, “Labour isn’t for girls”.