documentary on BBC Radio Leeds today

I listened to the documentary 'Love for sale' on BBC Radio Leeds today. Two British women (Charlie Daniels and Julie Bindel) went to Nevada to find out about the legalized brothels there. They went to four brothels, The Love Ranch, Moonlite Bunny Ranch, The Mustang Ranch and Wild Horse.

The documentary didn't answer the most important question for me. Julie Bindel on Woman's Hour last week linked Nevada brothels to slavery and incarceration. She said that the women working there are institutionalized. Nobody said on Woman's Hour, in Bindel's Times article, or in this documentary, that the women only spend part of their time at these places. They will spend a number of days there per month, and a number of days elsewhere.

I've looked at different places on the internet to find out about this. One site says they spend a week to 10 days working each month, and they don't work every month. Another says it is two weeks per month. These brothels are way out in the desert, often hours drive from cities, so the women stay there while they are working. When they're not working they are far away.

I would like to know what they do while not working. Do they enjoy leisure at their homes? Do they holiday? Do they have their own businesses? Perhaps some of them work as prostitutes elsewhere. I would like to know how much money they have in the bank, what investments they have, and if they own their own homes. Whatever the answer, they're far from institutionalized.

At the end of the documentary, the two women were asked for their impressions of what they had seen. Bindel used the phrases "state sanctioned rape", "cess pits" and "hell holes". She also described the Nevada brothels as a "failed social experiment". You wonder where all that came from, because the documentary itself didn't give that impression at all. In fact, they seem to be living in luxury.

When asked if legalized brothels are acceptable because they keep women safe, she said they are not safe because anything can happen behind closed doors. There was a discussion of the issue on Radio Leeds after the documentary, and Bindel gave her little theory that the presence of prostitution in society increases the objectification of women and will result in increased violence against women. There is no evidence for this and it doesn't make any sense.

At the end of the discussion Bindel said that the women she met were the most emotionally damaged women she had ever seen. Again, you wonder where that comes from. The documentary didn't give that impression. The women who were interviewed seemed well balanced, although it could be that some of the women could have been damaged previously by working in parts of the illegal sector.

During the discussion, Bindel said this:-

"You cannot make a law for the minority, you have to make law and policy for the majority. If you have a group of privileged women who are lucky enough to have a home in the Cotswolds, putting her children through private school; she's never been raped, she's never been pimped, she's never contracted HIV. Good luck to her, we'll never meet her."

And later she repeated herself "we cannot make laws to suit the privileged minority, we just can't." I could agree with her on that, because I know that all the evidence shows that the vast majority of women involved in prostitution are not coerced. Most women involved in prostitution are not drug addicts or pimped or trafficked. However, I think we can create laws that benefit all women involved in prostitution. We should not have to force women to choose between working alone in a flat legally but not safely, or working with other women in a flat safely but not legally.

Obviously the majority of sex workers do not have a home in the Cotswolds or send their children to private schools; Bindel is just being patronising about sex workers in saying that. The majority of sex workers however are not coerced and do it because of the considerable monetary rewards. She says 'we'll never meet her'. I've met lots of affluent sex workers. Unfortunately, even the affluent sex workers run the risk of rape and contracting HIV because Bindel is standing in the way of a change in the law that could allow women to work together legally and safely.

What's more, she knows damn well that all the evidence shows that the majority of sex workers are not exploited. She knows that women are safer working indoors with other women than on the street or in a solitary flat. She's not stupid, she's looked at the research. I think she is being dishonest. She treats people with contempt and misinforms them.

I think Bindel doesn't want legalization of prostitution for the same reason that lots of people don't want legalization of drugs. The fact is that if we allowed heroin addicts to have access to pharmacologically pure heroin then there would be few deaths from accidental heroin overdose. Street heroin varies greatly in strength. Some would say that heroin is such a terrible thing that you just can't legalize it, and they'll tell you all the horror stories, but the point is it doesn't have to be that way.

If you got rid of all the drug dealers you could end the twin problems of drug addiction and street prostitution in one go. But they've tried zero tolerance, and it doesn't work. You just force things further underground where they can't be regulated.

Big brothels out in the desert of Nevada have nothing to do with anything happening in this country. The legalization of brothels in the UK would mean that 2 or 3 women could work safely and legally from a flat. The women of Ipswich can't do that yet. Bindel in the discussion said that what has happened in Ipswich is the way to go. Women have been forced off the street and into flats. However, women working alone from flats are not safe, as the examples of Sheila Farmer and Hanna Morris show. All it would take is another serial murderer to come on the scene and it will start all over again.