which way for Britain?

I used to think that the Nordic Model might come to Britain. It already has in Northern Ireland. Recently though it seems that we are moving the other way. Julie Bindel is worried that this might be happening. She wrote an article in December subtitled 'Young Left-wing MPs ignore the exploitative reality'.

In this article she criticises a number of women politicians for speaking in favour of decriminalisation. Nadia Whittome, Dawn Butler, Charlotte Nichols and Zarah Sultana from Labour. Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennett from the Green Party.

About Nadia Whittome: "She was delighted when feminists lost their fight to put a cap on lap dance clubs in Bristol, despite evidence that men outside the clubs sexually harass women on their way home".

Julie Bindel doesn't give a link to this 'evidence' although she gives links to other things. If you follow the links though they never seem to support the points she makes.

Caroline Lucas used to support the Nordic model but changed her mind after talking to Paris Lees. One link given in this paragraph doesn't have anything to do with Caroline's ideas about prostitution though. It is a link to a debate where Caroline was present but didn't speak.

Another link is intended to support her assertion that 'the psychological damage as a result of prostitution is well documented'. The link is to a study titled 'Posttraumatic stress disorder among female street-based sex workers in the greater Sydney area, Australia'. It is not about sex workers in general, it is only to do with women who are drug addicts and street-based sex workers. They are a minority of sex workers and their psychological damage is as much to do with drug addiction and homelessness as it is to do with street prostitution.

Julie Bindel states that in New Zealand HIV and rape are thought of as "industrial injury".She links to a document called 'A Guide to Occupational Health and Safety in the New Zealand Sex Industry'. The version she links to  is not a seachable version but I found one here. The word "industrial" is not found anywhere in the text. The document is meant to help women avoid harm, it doesn't say that sex workers have to accept harm as a necessary part of what they do.

There can be a sex industry where harm is minimised or a sex industry where harm is not minimised. What is not possible is to have a society without a sex industry. You can try to ban it but it will not work. It hasn't worked in any Nordic Model country.

She believes that legalisation increases trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children. She links to a study done by the London School of Economics. The study however has nothing to say about the exploitation of children. The study says that the more prostitution there is in a country the more trafficking there will be. It doesn't seem to distinguish between women who are coerced and women whose motivation is to make more money.

Some countries have more prostitutes and therefore more trafficking. The study establishes that the amount of prostitution and trafficking increased in Germany. It does not establish that the amount of prostitution and trafficking increased in Denmark or decreased in Sweden. Germany, Denmark and Sweden were the three countries studied in some detail. It says nothing about New Zealand, which is the only country to have had decriminalisation in place for a number of years, where we know there has been no increase in the amount of prostitution.

Denmark has more prostitution than Sweden, but there is no evidence that this is because of the difference in the laws. So that cannot be used to say that there is more prostitution and trafficking because of differences in law. It can even less be said that legalisation causes an increase in prostitution and trafficking ('legalisation of the sex trade increases both' in Bindel's words), and the study does not say that. We know that did happen in Germany, but we already know that what is happening in Germany is not the right way to go.

Bindel writes that "The commercial sexual exploitation of children is rife, for example, the buying and selling of Albanian refugee children in Kent". The article she links to does not say that though. It says that Albanian children have gone missing. It doesn't say anything about them being bought and sold, or even sexual exploitation.

"Tina sold sex from high-end London hotels for years and was forced to sleep in handcuffs every night." I don't know where this comes from. The Space International site she links to in this paragraph has nothing about Tina or handcuffs. It has testimony from 'women who have escaped' but I can't find a Tina. Rachel Moran doesn't mention anyone being forced to sleep in handcuffs every night in her book.

There are horror stories and they want us to believe that they are typical of the sex industry.*

Nadia Whittome gets another mention in an article that suggests there has been a big change in the attitudes of the police towards brothel keeping. The police closed many brothels in the 2010s.

"Commenting on the police officer's remarks, Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, told The Independent: Right now, too many sex workers work alone for fear of prosecution, increasing the risks they face.

Changing the law on brothel keeping so that sex workers could work from the same premise would be an important step in the right direction."

Christine Jardine, a Scottish Liberal Democrat, agrees with Nadia Whittome. So it looks as if Julie Bindel will have to add Christine Jardine to her list of female MPs who she despises, along with Nadia Whittome, Dawn Butler, Charlotte Nichols, Zarah Sultana, Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennett. She will have to add the Liberal Democratic party to the Labour and Green Party. That seems to leave just the Conservatives left for her.

It's not that Whittome et al ignore the exploitative reality. Bindel and people like her have failed to convince them. Most prostitutes don't get PTSD. Decriminalisation doesn't increase the amount of prostitution, trafficking or the sexual exploitation of children. It's not surprising that people think that Julie Bindel and her Evangelical allies are pearl-clutchers.

What is Julie Bindel's real motivation? Does she really believe that women need to be freed from handcuffs? Or, as a political lesbian, does she think that women shouldn't be having sex with men anyway? Does she think that she can stop some women having sex with some men, which is some way towards her ideal society?

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* The worst horror story that I know of - and a real one - is that of the the four Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters. It's quite interesting but not relevant - it comes from 1940s Mexico. They were the perpetrators, not the victims.

the victims of the Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters

New Zealand decriminalisation model

I have just been reading a blog written by a sex worker in New Zealand. I think that what she has to say is so important I want to repeat it here. This comes from the post What the NZ model cheer squad get wrong on the Dollar Girl Diaries blog.

If what she is saying is true then it seems that the decriminalisation of sex work has succeeded even better than expected. Sex workers are turning away from pimps because they don't need them. I have always said that sex workers don't need pimps, they can work for themselves.

"So, what happened when we introduced decriminalisation? Something totally unexpected. The paradigm shifted and it shifted radically. The brothels and agencies got wiped out, they were forced out of business. Nobody predicted it. But why did it happen? Despite decriminalisation, the casual independent contractor model for brothel work stayed. The owners had no reason to change it, there was a lot of very good employment case law from around the world saying this was legal and changing would both increase their costs and reduce power over the workers. So they didn’t change it. Decriminalisation however meant you could work outside the brothel system without fear of arrest of police harassment. Suddenly independent work was every bit as safe from arrest as the brothel work. The PRA also includes a provision allowing up to four sex workers to work out of a single location and share the costs equally without a license. Only restriction is all have to control their income independently, you can’t pool the takings and share them out. Gives the safety benefits of a brothel without the exploitation of a manager. Of course this means you’re self employed, with all the issues that brings, but without half your income going into somebody else’s pocket, you can put aside for those things.

Now for the first time, brothel workers had a choice. They no longer needed the brothels and agencies to be safe from arrest. They could stay on in the brothels as self employed independent contractors, with the owners taking around half of what they earned and imposing shift fees, late penalties, controlling their shifts to keep them from complaining, pressuring them to take clients they didn’t want etc. Or they could cut out on their own as an independent worker, maybe get together with a couple of other workers and form one of those new fangled small worker collective brothels. Of course that meant facing the perils of self employment, but they were being treated as self employed in the brothel system anyway. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority elected to cut out on their own. The old brothel system very simply collapsed as the workers found they no longer needed it’s protection. The entire industry paradigm changed. The sex industry in New Zealand is now dominated by independent workers and small worker collectives. Before 2003 there were over 400 hundred brothels and agencies in New Zealand, there are 45 left."

This shows that the proponents of the Nordic model have got it wrong when criticising the New Zealand model. Finn Mackay in her book Radical Feminism on page 211 writing about the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) and the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW). "Both groups commend the approach taken in New Zealand, where brothels of varying sizes from small owner-operated ventures to larger chains are allowed to operate legally, though the ECP favour small owner-operated ventures over larger big business brothel chains. The latter are thriving however under this regime."

Mackay also writes that there had been plans for a 15-storey brothel in Auckland that didn't go ahead. Three brothels in Queensland closed complaining about unfair competition. That doesn't sound as if big business is thriving.

People who believe in decriminalisation are not the pimp lobby. The last thing that pimps want is the decriminalisation of sex work just like the last thing that drug dealers want is the decriminalisation of drugs.

There are some people who will tell you that the amount of prostitution increased in New Zealand after decriminalisation. Mellissa Farley has said this, and so has Samantha Berg. They are both wrong, and I shall show why below. In the case of Samantha Berg, she doesn't seem to understand how statistics work. Just as with her examination of the statistics to do with Norway, she doesn't understand you have to compare like with like. If you have two statistics related to different time periods then they are not comparable. Christchurch had 100 street prostitutes in 2006 and 121 street prostitutes in 2007. However, we're talking about different time periods and different times of year.