On the one hand, Canada bans Dire Straits. On the other, it fills the streets with posters aimed at extricating sex workers from social non-existence. Halifax group Stepping Stones is running an ad campaign reminding people that hookers are mothers, daughters, brothers, friends. They are also PhD students, civil servants, dental hygienists, actors and many other things when they’re not with a client, and shiatsu therapists, shrinks, grief counselors, actors and many other things when they are. Oh, and criminals (though it is my burning hope that this won’t be true in Canada by the end of the year).

It’s that criminalisation which creates stigma and the need for campaigns like this; the stigma in turn makes it hard to run these campaigns. The Chronicle Herald reports that ad agency Extreme Group‘s staff used their own grandmothers and Sepping Stones employees for the campaign because “regular” models didn’t want the job.

Also fighting invisibility are sex workers in Ottawa. There, Chris Bruckert and Frederique Chabot worked with members of prostitute group POWER to publish a synthesis of what sex professionals said about their work, and (perhaps more importantly) their work-life balance. Many of the comments reminded me just how hard it is to maintain that balance in any profession which society deems an identity rather than an occupation (film star, Royal, hooker). Here’s Janette, talking about how the police treat her when she’s not working:

“I was showing my new neighbour around, walking him up to the food bank. And as we were walking, one cop turned around and told the young man I was with ‘Do you know you are with a prostitute? You could get in trouble for that’. He yelled at the cop ‘She is my neighbour and I don’t care what she does for a living, she is helping me out. She is still a person’. I was so embarrassed. That did bring tears.”

You can read the whole (.pdf) report here. Stepping Stones have published a similar volume, which I haven’t yet read, called Sex Workers Talk Back.

The East London Borough of Hackney is trying to wipe lap dancing clubs and sex shops out of my back yard. I’m pleased to see men of the cloth joining me in pointing out that since the businesses are perfectly legal, it is not the goody-two-shoes local councilors’ job to abolish them.

The Vicar of St Leonards Shoreditch, says it is not for the local government to impose a moral code on its citizens. I agree with Paul Turp that it’s inappropriate for the council to decide which (absolutely legal) businesses may and may not operate in an area already desperately short of jobs. But I myself am especially infuriated at the way they are trying to do it.

I stumbled on the council’s clumsiness a couple of months ago, when I was responding to a call for opinions about a new one way system. There on the website was a “Consultation” asking for our opinions about a new sex shop licensing regime. Along with a paper telling us why they’ve already decided what they are going to do, there’s a draft of what they are planning to do, and a questionnaire.

Here’s the key paragraph from the planned policy:

1.5 The Council has considered the character of its wards and determined that the appropriate number of sex establishments for each ward is nil. It will not allow further licences to be granted where the appropriate number is exceeded. Please refer to paragraph 5 for more details.

There follows another nine pages of gumph before one gets to the critical paragraph 5. What that does is list the total number of lap dancing clubs, sex shops and erotic cinemas the council has deemed appropriate per ward:

…and so on, for all 19 wards. And then the coup de grace:
“5.1.4 There is no right of appeal against a decision based on this element of the Policy.”

So all that precedes and follows it, including the detailed description of the appeals process should your application get turned down, is null and void. It appears that the “consultation” itself may be null and void. Despite putting forms on its web site, the Good Governors of Hackney have decided that “Any unsolicited comments will not be taken into consideration”. And just to hedge their bets even more fully against undesirable opinions such as those of the highly respected vicar of one of the most socially engaged parishes in east London, we have this:

“2.4 The Licensing Authority will give due weight to the views of those consulted and amend the Policy where appropriate following responses received. In determining what weight to give particular representations, the factors to be taken into account will include:
• who is making the representation (what is their expertise or interest)
• what their motivation may be for their views
• how many other people have expressed the same or similar views
• how far representations relate to matters the Council should include in its Policy.”

Having spent many a long year living in countries where I am allowed to pay taxes but not allowed to vote, this is my first real experience of grass roots democracy at work. I’m looking forward to seeing whether our concern that men and women in Hackney ought to be allowed to do whatever work they please within the limits of the law is upheld in this process. Any readers who live in Hackney, or know anyone who does, are urged to respond to the consultation before December 13th.

The kerfuffle surrounding the Pope´s comments on condoms continues. As the gender of hookers allowed to use condoms switched in translation, the Pope´s spokesman was asked to clarify. Apparently, HIV-infected people can use condoms to protect their partners:

“Whether it’s a man or woman or a transsexual.”

Of all the men I know who regularly wear dresses, Benedict was the last I expected to be embracing the rights of transgenders to protect themselves and their partners from HIV infection.

Many people have commented that as long as reproduction´s not in the picture, he can say whatever he likes about condom use. I´ve yet to hear of a transgendered woman giving birth, so that might be part of the equation here (though note that women who sell sex to men are also encouraged to “take responsibility”). But I’m in an optimistic mood today, and I think the Vatican could be trying to ease open the door to a more rational existence. Miracles just might happen.

These groups look to Sweden as their model, or at least half of it. Arguing that all prostitution is violence of men against women, the Swedes in 1989 made it illegal to buy sex (even from men and transgenders, go figure). Arresting and fining punters was supposed to strike a blow against partriarchy, advance the feminist cause, and, of course, reduce violence against women. Here’s what has happened since the law was passed:

At a cost to the Swedish tax payer of over US$ 7 million a year, Sweden has, over the last four years, convicted an annual average of three people for trafficking and 18 for pimping, and has fined an average of 75 men a year for buying sex. Street-based sex work did nose-dive soon after the law was passed, then stabilised and remains constant. There’s no information about what’s happened to women selling sex in other venues, including apartments, clients’ homes, neighbouring Denmark… What we do know is that convictions for rape have increased by 28% since it became illegal to buy sex, and convictions for sexual crimes overall have increased by 68%. Some of this may be because the hoopla surrounding the law did effectively advance the Ice Queen agenda, and more women are successfully prosecuting men under the country’s incredibly vague “rape” laws. But it hardly fills one with confidence that “end demand” campaigns will reduce violence against women overall.

Chicago’s abolitionists are a strange miscegenation of paternalistic feminists (I’ll tell you when you can and can’t consent to sex, dear) and tub-thumping moralisers (extra-marital sex is bad, and convenient, no-strings, paid extramarital sex is much, much worse). They have both failed to grasp the logic that underlies the Swedish approach. If all sex workers are victims by definition, then it is hardly fair to bang them up in jail for the violence that is done to them. And indeed, in Sweden, people who sell sex can’t be prosecuted. In Chicago, on the other hand, we’re busy increasing the penalties for both the buyers and the sellers of sex. So we are:

1) depriving women (and men, and transgenders) of their right to consent to sex, if payment is involved

AND
2) depriving women (and ditto) of a living

AND
3) depriving women (and other prostitutes) of their liberty, if they get caught.

You’d think from the Chicago police department’s Rogues’ Gallery that the only people who get arrested for soliciting and prostitution are blokes and the odd trans. But that just reflects a policy decision only to put up photographs of people with Y chromosomes. If you delve into the stats a bit, you’ll find that women bear the brunt of prostitution-related arrests right now. Look at this:

It’s already illegal both to sell sex and to buy it in Chicago, and indeed all of Illinois. Making it MORE illegal on both sides, which is what HR6195 is proposing to do, is not going to change that. What it may change is the overall volume of arrests, since a felony is more likely to lead to a court case than a misdemeanour, which is what most prostitution charges currently qualify as. More court cases mean more police time in court. And since Illinois cops are paid time-and-a-half with a three hour minimum for showing their face in court, that rather increases the incentive to arrest. And as you can see from the graph above, it’s easier to arrest women than men. So my question to the good feminists of End Demand is this: How, exactly, do they think HR6195 helps women who choose to sell sex for a living?

Unsustainable? Well, there’s latex to dispose of, or worse still, population growth. But on the upside sex warms you up without needing to burn fossil fuels. It’s a renewable resource. And if it’s on offer for free this week in Copenhagen, it might just provide the positive energy to break some of the log-jams in the negotiations.

I’ve followed the build-up to the conference (beautifully dissected by Sam Kinght, writing in Prospect), with some amusement. Way back when I was writing The Wisdom of Whores, a friend from the World Bank was rolling his eyes at every UN agency’s willingness to hook itself to the HIV wagon. I quoted him thus:

““The UN institutions are professional beggars, and beggars go where the money is,” he said. “So you get “culture and AIDS”, “kids and AIDS”, “fish and AIDS”. I’m just waiting for “climate change and AIDS”.”

It wasn’t until months later that I saw the first headlines linking HIV to climate change. Just recently, there’s been a UNFPA report about it, which means it’s now official. As Rasna Warahp pointed out in Kenya’s The Nation, the real link between HIV and global warming will probably be that as more funding goes to the latter less will go to the former.

An aside, since I’m mentioning both development fashion and the World Bank: I am reliably informed that that venerable institution last week headed off a bid to have every loan reviewed for the effect that it has on trafficking of persons (which in the current climate is more or less equated with trafficking of women into the sex indutry). Just sometimes, common sense does prevail.

Thanks to Ron of greencollar for sharing the determination of the Danish with me.

It’s like this. Ms Harman, who is Deputy Leader of the UK’s ruling Labour Party, wants whats best for working girls. Punternet does too. (For those who use the term “john”, a punter is a man who buys sex). Ms. Harman wants to reduce trafiicking of women into sex work. Punternet does too — that’s why it provides links to allow men using the site to report women that they suspect might be under age or working against their will. Is that why Ms Harman decided to give the site such good publicity, more than doubling its hits to an eye-watering 2.7 million a day according to the Financial Times? From the vote of thanks she’s had from sex workers working on both sides of the Atlantic. you might think so. But no, the good democrat was actually appealing to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to shut the site down (the server is, apparently situated in the land of free speech).

No surprise to regular readers of this site; it is all part of Nanny Labour’s ongoing campaign to wipe out consensual trade in sex which, the views of sex workers themselves notwithstanding (see comments), always amounts to exploitation. But it did bring the idiocy of this policy to the notice of mainstream commentators such as the FT’s Matthwe Engel, which can only be a good thing.

Other issues of cultural politics I had to try and explain: why I am addicted to a radio soap opera that has been running for nearly 60 years. That’s right, The Archers, originally billed as “the everyday story of country folk”, now rebranded appallingly as “contermporary drama in a rural setting”. I tried to explain that bracketed between the unchanging theme tune “Tum ti tum ti tum ti tum…” came all the burning issues of the day. My mate rolled his eyes and went back to blogging about really burning issues, like rectal gonnorhea. Then, on Friday, he apologised. He “just happened” to turn on the radio when The Archers was on (that’s how I started too — a slippery slope to a lifelong struggle with Archers addiciton). And bingo: Ian gets beaten up because he’s gay. You could argue that Ian gets beaten up because he tries politely to get a bunch of drunken football louts to shut up. But they called him a “bender”, which is surely enough to blow the homophobia flag up the pole. (You can listen to the episode until 16/10/09.) The question that is not exactly burning up the message boards is: why did Ian not want to report the assault to the police? Might he suspect that the cops in a rural setting might have rather uncontemporary views about anal sex between men? You’ll just have to tune in to find out…

Pic by Jason Cragg via DCist

Many people are thrilled that the Bush Years are almost over. Few more so than sex workers, who have essentially been declared not to exist under the administration’s HIV funding rules. Though many are disappointed that Mark Dybul will stay at the helm of PEPFAR for a while, some of us hope that he’ll do away with the most egregious of his old boss’s idiocies, starting with the “anti-prostitution oath”. So yes, we should be thrilled that Bush is out and Obama in. But I’m not sure how thrilled sex workers in DC will be at the vaccation being forced on them in honour of Obama’s inauguration.

DC has declared downtown a hooker free zone until January 25th. No work during the party or the hangover, then. Seems like a shame; in these difficult times it would have been nice to take advantage of the boost in business that will almost inevitably come with tens of thousands of out-of-towners all intent on having a good time.

Thanks to Lisa M.

Today’s post is copied wholesale from Laura Agustin. In the poster, the product of a workshop by the Thai sex workers rights organisation EMPOWER, sex workers relate what being “rescued” in brothel raids means to them.

• We lose our savings and our belongings.
• We are locked up.
• We are interrogated by many people.
• They force us to be witnesses.
• We are held until the court case.
• We are held till deportation.
• We are forced re-training.
• We are not given compensation by anybody.
• Our family must borrow money to survive while we wait.
• Our family is in a panic.
• We are anxious for our family.
• Strangers visit our village telling people about us.
• The village and the soldiers cause our family problems.
• Our family has to pay ‘fines’ or bribes to the soldiers.
• We are sent home.
• Military abuses and no work continues at home.
• My family has a debt.
• We must find a way back to Thailand to start again.

Many of these women are Burmese. They’ve worked hard to get to Northern Thailand, and their hard work while they are there is often a mainstay for their families. For me, the most telling of their comments is the last: after going through all of the nightmares associated with being “rescued” from a life selling sex, they have to start again from scratch. That means paying more bribes to get across the border, more jostling to get back into pole position at the brothel. It must be a consolation to the anti sex-work organisations that for the time between their rescue and getting back to work, at least, the souls of these women are safe.

Among anti sex-work organisations, some would include the Poppy Project, the originators of a somewhat lurid it’s-all-about-trafficking view of the London sex scene was featured on IRMA recently. I’ll let friends and colleagues who are closer to the London trade than I am respond to that more fully.

So a Russian girl is worth twice as much as a girl from north China, huh? And Malaysian girls are discounted fairly heavily. There are 460 million young adult women in China. That’s 60 times more “girls” that you’ll find in Malaysia (even if you count the Chinese Malaysians). My rudimentary understanding of economics suggests the scarcer commodity should sell for more. Perhaps some of our economist friends over at Marginal Revolution could explain what’s going on before we become Unspun or propmt Ranting from those who know the true value of cewek Melayu…

If nothing else, I’m happy to note from the poster that all nationalities are working in air-conditioned rooms. In these days of rising temperatures and oil prices, that’s a blessing whatever your price.

Hat tip: Unknown source via Digg and Mark Zip.

Four in ten sex workers in Cambodia were infected with HIV when the government started its admirable programme to promote condoms in brothels, karaoke bars and on the streets. Sex worker groups also organised to demand health services, and for the most part, they got them. HIV infection rates came crashing down, halving in just 5 years. It is estimated that condom promotion had saved 970,000 Cambodians from HIV infection by 2007.

The programme worked because brothel owners and sex workers were organised, easy to reach and involved. Now, under pressure from the White House, Cambodia has launched a massive crackdown on the sex trade. The result, according to the Phnom Penh Post, is that sex workers are losing their livelihoods, their jewelry, their cash, and getting beaten up in the process.

Cambodian authourities have been persuaded by rescue missionaries such as the International Justice Mission (aka Cops for Christ) that women who sell sex for 5 dollars a day would rather sew T-shirts for three cents a piece. “It is no problem for [prostitutes] when brothels are closed. They can learn different professions from the ministry and local NGOs,” a policeman was quoted as saying.

Sex workers beg to differ.

Chanting “save us from saviors” and waving placards saying “condoms protect, police threaten,” hundreds of red-shirted sex workers demanded their human rights be respected and asserted they did not need to be “saved” from their jobs in brothels, least of all by lecherous, avaricious police officers.

The crackdown is the result of a new “Law on the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation”, which is based on US-style model anti-trafficking legislation. It assumes that the best way to get rid of the very nasty crimes of trafficking and sex slavery is to criminalise the sex industry as a whole. Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence to support this view, and a fair bit of evidence that the reverse might be the case. (A new study from New Zealand, for example, shows that decriminalisation of sex work has led to less exploitation with no increase in prostitution.) What the US Administration demands, Cambodia seeks to deliver. Even the US Ambassador to Cambodia, Joseph Mussomeli, has said he thinks it is likely that Phnom Penh has initiated the crackdown “just to keep the Americans off their back”.

To that extent, it has worked. The latest State Department report on trafficking, published a few days after the crackdown began, has upgraded Cambodia from the wicked to the less wicked category on its trafficking watchlist.

Does the crackdown mean men will stop buying sex? Unlikely. Does it mean that it will be harder to deliver the sorts of HIV prevention and health services that have won Cambodia accolades as an example of “international Best Practice”? Almost certainly, as sex worker activists, reproductive health specialists and even United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have pointed out. (Disclosure statement: I drafted the introduction and epidemiology chapters of the Asia Commission report at the launch of which Ban argued against the criminalisation of prostitution.)

I’ve commented on what’s happening in Uganda before. But readers may be interested in this comment from Sam Ruteikara in the Washington Post. I provide the link not because I agree with his comment, or even particularly because I disagree, but because it is a phenomenal example of spinning the facts by accusing others of spin. Spin doesn’t save lives. Honesty might.