Sarah Harte: It’s ludicrous to suggest that sex work is just another form of work
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Does any little girl say that when she grows up she would like to be a sex worker?
I think we can agree that a job with a risk of unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, rape, violence, and stigma is not a dream job and many of those who advocate being sex-positive and supporting sex work would not like to do it themselves or would not like their daughters, sisters, and mother to do it.
However, up and down this country in cities and country towns women sell sex and service the needs of a largely male clientele who have no problem with exploiting their bodies whatever the circumstances.
At the weekend, it was reported in this newspaper that sex for rent offences will be dealt with through human trafficking legislation.
The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2023 wending its way through the Dáil will be amended to prohibit the advertising of accommodation for sex instead of rent making it a criminal offence.
One ad is currently offering FWB (friends with benefits) arrangements for a property near Mullingar, for females only.
This is not the first attempt to legislate for this complex issue which must avoid unintentionally criminalising consensual relationships.
Homelessness charity Depaul has just published a report in collaboration with a UK-based charity The Passage, ‘An Overview of Homelessness and Human Trafficking in Dublin’, with homelessness organisations reporting that human trafficking is becoming more prevalent here and that they are coming into contact with victims of trafficking.
Kate McGrew, a former director of the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, sex worker, and artist, recently argued on Newstalk Breakfast that only about 6% of sex workers are trafficked.
She is an articulate, intelligent woman who argues for the legalisation of sex work and the inclusion of sex workers.
This statistic seems low but in the absence of accurate data, it’s hard to prove either way.
A concern of those who are opposed to the legalisation of prostitution is that legalisation leads to increased demand.
In a country like Ireland where women have access to education and jobs you won’t have a rush of Irish women into the market, therefore you will have traffickers bringing women in from poorer countries to service those demands.
But what is the legal position on prostitution here? Since 2017 we criminalise the buyers of sex and third parties like brothel owners but don’t criminalise sex workers which is an attempt to kill demand.
The logic here is to support sex workers but not the industry.
Some countries legalise sex work and regulate it like Germany and New South Wales in Australia. Statistics and studies vary wildly on what has happened in other countries post-legalisation.
So what about arguments for legalisation? For obvious reasons, reliable data in relation to sex work is relatively hard to come by, but a 2022 review by the European Sex Workers Rights Alliance evaluated the health and wellbeing of sex workers in New South Wales, Australia, and New Zealand discussing the findings of 52 research papers, interviewing thousands of sex workers, concluding that decriminalisation led to improvements in sexual health, access to health services, and less exploitation.
The SWAI supports legalisation. Both Amnesty International and the World Health Organization argue that our laws put sex workers at higher risk of abuse and violence forcing them to take more risks as they avoid the police and authorities and that the black market is the ideal setting for abuse and exploitation.
Attitudes to sex work vary greatly and are key. A motley crew of activists, academics, and thinkers — left and right — support the legalisation of prostitution arguing many things including that finger-wagging prudes should not claim to know better than sex workers themselves whom they are effectively gaslighting, that we should collaborate with sex workers to formulate policy rather than focus on rescuing them as such thinking is rooted in an outdated morality.
A sort of ‘their bodies their rules’ approach.
Some people like West Cork TD and leader of the Independent Ireland party Micheal Collins in favour of the legalisation of prostitution argue that it’s the oldest profession in the world.
The term sex work first became politicised in the 1970s. Since then many feminist academics have supported sex workers and sex work, but we can safely assume that Collins is coming from a different place.
One argument is sex work is work, that women choose to do this, that it shouldn’t be degraded by being called prostitution, and in a capitalist system, women who can’t earn money in other ways in the labour market, sell their bodies.
If you boil this down it would appear to be the epitome of neoliberalism that serves the needs of male consumers and male supremacy because it’s mostly men who buy sex.
It’s difficult to believe that the bulk of sex workers enter the industry voluntarily or that so-called choice is not vitiated by a lack of money and opportunities which is the coercive force.
Attitudes to buying sex and women are at the heart of this.
In 2017 I supported the Turn off the Red Light campaign which led to the criminalisation of buying sex.
At the time, I gave a brief talk about how in a patriarchy, teenage boys’ attitudes were being culturally formed to be misogynistic in a way that would affect patterns of male demand for paid sex.
The kind of attitudes that emerged during the Belfast rape trial in WhatsApp messages including ‘any sluts get f*cked?’ or ‘Boys, did you pass spit roast brassers’, then ‘Why are we all such legends?’.
I know from experience that those attitudes can be tacitly justified by parents and a certain type of culture.
At one social occasion I attended, parents related how a significant proportion of that year’s Leaving Certificate class from a well-known boys’ school had come back from Magaluf with STDs having bought sex and had quietly been treated by a GP mother in the class.
It was the subject of much ribald amusement.
Then, sometime later, I was in a conversation with a group of parents from another similar school who, to my utter amazement, told me that ‘no it wasn’t a problem’ if boys on the Leaving Cert holiday were experimenting with prostitutes because ‘sure wasn’t that what boys had always done’, and once it wasn’t on our doorstep, ‘sure what was the harm?’.
This naked imperialism involves the othering of foreign women, the legacy of a pernicious whore/Madonna dichotomy that previously divided Irish women and girls up into ‘nice girls’ and ‘sluts’.
What we do know is when the war broke out in Ukraine, there was a huge spike in internet searches in Ireland relating to buying sex from Ukrainian women which proves if we don’t address the attitudes that underpin demand through education within schools, then women will continue to be exploited because one woman’s humanitarian crisis is another man’s opportunity to act out his fantasies.
What stands out in the 2022 Amnesty International report where the overwhelming majority of sex workers interviewed reported experiencing violence while engaging in sex work was the quote from one sex worker who said:
“One-to-one, a woman with a man, we don’t stand a chance. We need another girl. She can hear what’s happening. But to be alone is very dangerous.”
Denying sex workers their agency and rights and promoting shame about sex is wrong, but messaging that sex work is just another form of work, is ludicrous because it’s anything but.