Commercial Sexual Exploitation

There is a group of people who are working to change the law in Britain so that men who pay for sex are criminalized. Their views can be clearly seen from the transcript of the recent Parliamentary 'debate' on 04/07/18. It wasn't much of a debate because although 15 different MPs spoke there wasn't one person to put the opposite point of view. That's what I have to do on this page.

Many of the points made were the same as found in the report 'Behind Closed Doors' and many of the speakers at the debate were the same people as the authors of the report. These are the members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade.

There are six members of the group; Gavin Shuker, Jess Phillips, Fiona Bruce, Thangam Debbonaire , Sarah Champion, and Lord McColl. Gavin Shuker, Jess Phillips, Fiona Bruce and Sarah Champion spoke in the debate. Gavin Shuker and Fiona Bruce are committed Christians. Ian Paisley and Jim Shannon from the DUP also spoke.

In Northern Ireland they already have the law criminalizing men who pay for sex. Protestants in the DUP worked together with Catholics. Jim Wells of the DUP was influential in getting the law passed with his false statistic. He said in the Northern Ireland Assembly that 127 Dutch sex workers were murdered after legalization. He is better known for his reactionary views on abortion and homosexuality. He is also a Creationist.

In Scotland there is a Scottish parliamentary group (Commercial Sexual Exploitation) which wants to put a stop to 'prostitution, pornography, trafficking, lap-dancing, stripping, pole-dancing and table-dancing'. So it's quite clear what their agenda is. You might think they don't have much chance of success, but all these things are banned in Iceland, not so far away from here.

Ian Paisley, the son of the Reverend Ian Paisley, was the chair of the debate. Fellow Christian and former preacher Gavin Shuker was the first to speak. He is the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade. He said "... men who create the demand in the first place walk away without being held legally accountable for the immense damage they do to individuals and communities".

We know that modern slavery does occur in Britain. It occurs in some brothels, but also in domestic servitude and in factories and on farms. We are asked to take care when we get our cars hand-washed or our nails polished because some workers might be exploited. We don't say though that a woman who pays another woman to do her ironing is creating the demand for domestic servitude. We say that she should take care to notice any signs of exploitation and report the problem to the police or help in some other way.

So why is sex treated differently? It's because of Christianity with it's fear and hatred of sex. It continues to influence even secular people.

Gavin Shuker, speaking for the fifth time in the debate, said that it is "a logical fallacy" that prostitution could be driven underground. "In other words, if I can leave this room today and purchase sex by finding someone’s details online, so can the police. If sex buyers can locate women in prostitution, so can the police and support services."

So, if we follow Gavin's 'logic', if someone can locate a drug dealer then so can the police. If a pregnant woman could locate an illegal abortionist then so could the police. If a drinker could locate someone selling alcohol in prohibition America then so could the police. You would think the police could locate suppliers, but we know the fact is that they cannot. There has only been one conviction under the new law in Northern Ireland even though it has been in place for years (since 2015). The man convicted didn't pay for sex, he attempted to pay for it.

Gavin also said that few sex workers make any money from prostitution, "that money is not finding its way into the pockets of women who are exploited through this trade; it ends up in the pockets of pimps, exploiters and those who benefit from trafficking". Research by academics shows this is not true.

MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion had a lot of false statistics. 50% of women became involved in prostitution before the age of 18, three out of four women involved are aged under 21, 70% of the women had spent time in care, and 45% had previously experienced sexual abuse. This is false, it might apply to a particular group of women such as women who work on the street, drug addicts who have always been a tiny minority of sex workers.

Toby Perkins had also said that 50% had become prostitutes before 18. If you look at House of Commons Home Affairs Committee: Prostitution (page 10) it says National Ugly Mugs disputed the validity of this evidence, saying that: "If this statistic is analysed for representativeness, it can be found that the original sources cited by the Home Office used to make this point relates only to female street based sex workers — excluding workers in varied off street spaces, as well as male and transgender workers; much of the research is old (6 of the 9 sources are pre 1999, and the report itself is 12 years old) the sample sizes of the sources vary and at least one source only had participants under the age of 18, offering a foregone conclusion. Therefore it cannot possibly be the case that 50% of women in prostitution became involved when they were children."

The same document (also page 10) says: In a recent survey of sex workers conducted by Dr Mary Laing, 87% of the 218 respondents worked independently, 4% in a brothel, sauna or parlour, 4% escorted through an agency, 3% were street based and the remainder worked in another part of the sex industry. You would think that Sarah Champion and Toby Perkins would have read the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee document on prostitution.

We have done more in Britain to decrease the amount of street prostitution through the use of ASBOs. There are no Red Light Districts in London as there used to be. You won't see street girls in Argyle Square or Tooting Bec Common. It is said that the 1999 law in Sweden reduced street prostitution by half, but the numbers have crept up again.

Where Sarah Champion got it wrong most of all is when she said "There is extensive evidence of the effectiveness of the sex buyer law in reducing demand". There isn't. She mentions the surveys in Sweden in 1996 and 2008. Men and women were asked questions, one question asked if they had paid for sex within the previous 12 months, another asked if they had ever paid for sex at any time in their lives.

The first question is the important one, and the number of men who said they had recently paid increased from 1.3% to 1.8%. It was only after the 2008 financial crisis when people had less money that it decreased (to 0.8%). Nothing to do with the 1999 law criminalizing men.

Yet she wants to make out that demand decreased after 1999. She stated "the proportion of men in Sweden who reported paying for sex dropped from 13% to 8% in that period". This figure though is not 'the proportion of men in Sweden who reported paying for sex'. This is the proportion of men who reported having paid for sex at some time in their lives.

This figure changes as older generations of men who lived in a different sexual culture either die or become too old to participate in surveys. A man who was a young man during the time of the Second World War would have been young enough to participate in the 1996 survey but too old to participate in the 2008 survey (cut off age in both 74). If he'd paid for sex during the war (Sweden was a non-combatant but there was large-scale conscription) that would show up in the earlier survey but not the later one. Again, the change has nothing to do with the 1999 law.

Sarah said about the 0.8% figure that it is "the smallest proportion recorded in two decades and the lowest in Europe". It's the smallest now after a rise that she doesn't want to tell us about. It could have gone up again: figures can rise as well as fall. It's not the lowest in Europe.

I admire the work that Sarah Champion has done in countering the rape of teenage and pre-teenage white girls by men from a particular ethnic minority in cities like Rotherham. For her to link this with the typical sort of sex work we see in Britain though is wrong. There is no connection between the two. Also, no advertizing was involved in the abuse of these girls, so how is a ban on advertizing sexual services going to help them? Abuse is underground and spread by word of mouth, that can happen with prostitution too: it is said that in the West African community that is already the case.

Fiona Bruce stated "The argument that women ... who are engaged in prostitution and being paid for sex are consenting is a fallacy. They are never consenting; they are coerced". She tells of one 'young girl' who had been rescued. "One day she had decided she would count how many men had abused her that day. After 100 she stopped counting." This is just complete nonsense. Where do all these men come from?

She also said "They say that that would stray into regulating the behaviour of consenting adults, but, as we have heard, one of those people, often not an adult, is not consenting." That is ridiculous. To say that sex workers are never consenting is a statement of faith and not reality. It's also an exercise of faith to believe in everything that 'survivors' Rachel Moran and Mia de Faoite have written; both were mentioned in the debate.

I'm not saying that there aren't women who have suffered a lot and for whom prostitution was part of their problem along with drugs and homelessness, Carolyn Harris gave one example and Victoria Atkins gave another, but cases like this are rare. Carolyn Harris said that "every woman I met who had been involved in prostitution was there because she repeatedly went back into the same abusive relationship". I suggest she meets a more representative sample of sex workers.

Jess Phillips seems to have trawled through all the negative reviews of sex workers on PunterNet and presented the three worst ones that she could find. All three reviewers were saying that some sex workers are unenthusiastic and some can't speak good English and it's best to avoid them. Which would seem to suggest that some people are going to find it difficult to make money while there are many enthusiastic and educated sex workers out there.

There was an interesting exchange where Victoria Atkins, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, was trying to make a point about the money the government has given to help women on Merseyside. When she used the term 'sex workers' Jess Phillips interrupted her mid-sentence with the word 'prostitutes', wanting her to use that term instead. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department finished her sentence (it was a rather long sentence) and then said 'I have used both words deliberately through my speech'.

Sarah Champion replied 'Only one is correct'. Which term is correct is a matter of opinion, but what is not a matter of opinion is whether the Swedish law, the one that Shuker, Champion, Bruce and Phillips are so keen to see come here, has reduced demand. It is not correct to say that it has. Demand increased. Only one is correct.

Is it possible that none of the MPs who advocate decriminalization were invited to the debate? Why wasn't John McDonnell there? The Shadow Chancellor hosted a symposium on this issue.

Victoria Atkins also used the word 'prohibition' twice to describe the Nordic model. They don't like that, it sounds too much like the failed prohibition of alcohol in America. They prefer the word 'abolition'.

Jess Phillips mentioned Amnesty International, and I couldn't really understand the point she was trying to make, but nobody in this very one-sided debate gave the very important information that Amnesty International has criticized the Norwegian government for their policy towards sex workers. Norway has the same policy as Sweden, and what Amnesty found was that the state has found other ways to punish sex workers. Women are evicted from their homes or deported. They face other problems from the authorities. It is a myth that sex workers are helped by the state in Sweden and Norway.

Women who choose to work together for safety are arrested using anti-pimping laws. In Sweden and Norway it is sex workers and their landlords (if they don't co-operate with the authorities) who are treated like pimps.

Neither did anyone mention that all of the academics in Britain disagree with the views expressed in the debate. If you look at the work of Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Dr Nick Mai, Dr Jay Levy
Professor Philip Hubbard and Dr Brooke Magnanti, they all say that in Britain the vast majority of sex workers are not addicted or coerced and earn more money than they would do in other areas of work. They should listen to the academics and not the Home Office or the police who are biased. Dr Maddy Coy, mentioned in the debate, and Melissa Farley are Americans, don't know about conditions in Britain and are also biased.

Neither did anyone mention the investigative journalists who have looked into the issue. Read Prostitution and trafficking – the anatomy of a moral panic and Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution by Nick Davies. The brothel worker: 'I regret not working in the sex trade as soon as I got here'. Posing as a maid, Hsiao-Hung Pai infiltrated the murky world of the UK sex trade and spoke to some of the migrant mothers desperately working to send money home to their families. They told her they came to Britain to work in the catering industry, found out about sex work often years after they arrived, tried it and wished that they had known about it sooner.

Neither did anyone mention that about half of feminist authors don't believe in the Nordic model. Caitlin Moran and Laurie Penny for example. Martha Nussbaum, who more than anyone has developed the theory of objectification, has written that a prostitute’s autonomy is indeed limited by poor economic options but that this is common with many workers, criminalization does not improve a sex worker's circumstances it simply limits his or her options even more, and a woman will not achieve more control by becoming unemployed.

So nobody should use the concept of objectification to try to ban prostitution. People often use the term without understanding what it means, as did Sarah Champion and Fiona Bruce in the debate. It's not men like me who are a problem to women or communities. It's the illogical Christians, Radical Feminists and others who don't want to see the facts who can only harm large numbers of women.

The reason why Evangelical Christians like Gavin Shuker and Jim Wells and Radical Feminists like Jess Phillips and Julie Bindel can justify hating men like me is because of their false statistics. They can say that people like me do 'immense damage' to 'individuals and communities' because they think that sex workers don't have consent. How could they have consent when 50% of them become involved before 18?

That's false though. You would think that they would have read the House of Commons
Home Affairs Committee document on Prostitution. As a prelude to debunking this false statistic it says 'A fundamental difference in view between supporters of the sex buyer law and those of decriminalisation is whether sex workers have the capacity to exercise real choice about the work they are doing. Advocates of the sex buyer law believe that many sex workers are women who have been coerced into prostitution as children and so are victims of exploitation'.

If you persist in giving people a false statistic, people will think one of three things about you. Either you don't care about the women you claim to want to help. Or you're just not very bright. Or you are dishonest. You either know it is wrong or you don't. If you know it is wrong you are dishonest, you're not really trying to help women but are motivated by prudishness. If you don't know it is wrong it can either be because you can't be bothered to research it properly or you're just a bit stupid.