Safer sex work?

Over at Nashville is Talking, the question has been posed: Why isn't prostitution legal? prompted by this post which speculates that sex workers might be safer if it was. Would that solve all kinds of problems? e.g. lower levels of disease and crimes against the women who engage in prostitution?

Despite the fact that I'm generally in favor of the free market - including the selling of personal services, I'm very dubious indeed about the legalisation of prostitution. Is it for moral reasons? Yes, it is. But it's not about sex. It's about the way that we treat workers on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

Those who favor the legalistation of prostitution and the heavy regulation of the sex workers and their places of work probably have the right idea in principle, but not in practice. Prostitutes are the lowest of the low - they always have been. Legalising the trade has never made that different. I mean how many women who've managed to get out of the sex biz now have their time as prostitutes proudly displayed on their resume*? Even in countries where prostitution is legal. (Despite the fact that engaging in this kind of work successfully demands a whole array of marketable skills - flexibility, customer service and a sharp judge of human nature). Sure, a few whores manage to attain some sort of social standing and they're called courtesans or heterae or geisha and offer companionship as well as sexual services. But these are a rare breed indeed - how many of us could charge just for the pleasure of our company and maybe a little singing or tea pouring?

In countries where prostitution is legal and regulated (e.g. the Netherlands) the sex work force isn't overwhelmingly happy hookers. No, it's the foreign sex workers who may or may not be there willingly, the drug addicted and the grossly misfortunate. Regular blood tests don't change this and the people who manage these workers (pimps, if you will) don't care about the personal development of their employees. This is a dead end job which usually results in that dead end quite early. And these are workers in a highly regulated, partly socialised economy where there are well-established mechanisms for investigating work place safety. The sex trades in London and Amsterdam and other big cities in Europe are well stocked with sex slaves from Eastern Europe and South East Asia and Africa. Do you really think that people who would enslave young women and boys are into complying with red tape and regulation? These folks are criminal scum and they'll find ways to get around regulation just as they find ways to get around the existing legislation against prostitution, pimping and slavery.

What about the US? Do you think America is geared up to regulate the sex trade? Under the Bush administration work place safety and regulation has been gutted. And that's for respectable trades like mining or utility ditch digging or meat packing - not for the morally dubious business of sex for sale. Can you really see the religious right prioritising the physical and mental welfare of prostitutes when the Republican party has resisted supporting workers and maintaining an objective, adult attitude to sex?

No. My reasons for objecting to legalisation of prositution is that I don't think it will make much, if any, difference to the safety of sex workers and may make it more difficult to pursue the criminals behind the worst practices in the trade.

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*update: - well, here's one example - but I reckon that's pretty unusual.

like watching a trainwreck

A former colleague of mine had a moonlighting job acting as guide-cum-chaperone-cum-cultural interpreter to American high school bands and majorette corps who march in London's New Year's Day parade. I'm not sure who goes to see that parade and if it's shown on tv it's up in the nosebleed channels on some open access programming. But American high school students pay to march in London - so there's a parade.

This colleague often had to deal with American parents and chaperones who were a bit shocked by the more open, permissive culture of Britain. For example, one came to her complaining of the unrelenting pornography on the hotel tv and could they please have the channel blocked?

Upon investigation it was discovered it was one of the regular old, free-to-air network channels - good old Channel 4 with a little late night, educational, culturally enlightening documentary. And no - since it was a "terrestrial" channel - it could not be blocked. This stuff was being broadcast into every home in the land.

I had to admit I had some sympathy with the American parent. After all, on what other channel can you find a man talking openly about his love for his pony (as I have watched - rapt)? And I don't mean like a little girl's love for her pony. Not at all.

Of course Channel 4 doesn't always have stuff like that on, but sometimes it does and tonight it did. It was all about the Virgin School - where a group of middle aged women (often twice the age of their clientele) help men become - well, not virgins. They've all got certificates in something called "sexual grounding", so I'm sure it's all totally legit. Did I mention that this school was located, rather conveniently, in Amsterdam?

This particular programme was focusing on James, 26, from Kent who was their first English client and who had gone over to Holland to learn how not to be a virgin. It was cringe, after cringe after cringe as young James shopped with his grandmother for new underwear for his course (he told her it was a confidence building course). The Vol-in-Law was working on the laptop and said "I'm averting my eyes."

I did not turn away when a woman over twice his age ( and certified in sexual grounding) was encouraging him to touch her wherever he might. I said "I can't, it's like a watching a trainwreck." But indeed even I had to turn away when the role play turned to a school reunion and James was confessing his undying love to the intimacy therapist (playing some old crush of his) within moments of asking her onto the dance floor.

Channel changed. Even the hardiest of us have to turn away when the carnage gets too bloody.