Analysis of the Commercial Sex Industry - Research Paper Example

The Commercial Sex Industry The commercial sex industry includes street prostitution, massage brothels, escort services, outcall services, strip clubs, lap dancing, phone sex, adult and child pornography, video and internet pornography, and prostitution tourism. Most women who are in prostitution for longer than a few months drift among these various permutations of the commercial sex industry. With the invention of males and females came the constant need for negotiation, as history indicates. Some civilizations were based on male dominance and rewarded those who possessed strength, innate tactical intelligence and traits generally present in males. This explains why many civilizations have not been kind to women. A small number of civilizations did honor women, but women have never been able to achieve equal status with men. Women have not always been able to escape the role of housewife or gain a political voice. Only in recent human history have women been able to obtain relative equality. They have been able to make great gains through a considerable amount of achievements, no need to list here. Yet to this day, men and women have specialized roles within societies, differing only slightly in some countries and greatly in other countries. Each culture deals differently with heterosexuality. Most cultures encourage monogamy, while countries like Saudi Arabia have adopted polygyny. Even within societies that safeguard or promote monogamous relations, there are allowances for citizens to have many types of sexual relations. People can remain monogamous to one person at time or date multiple partners simultaneously. People can have open marriages (a.k.a. swinging) or exist within monogamous relationships and be covertly promiscuous.1 There are also people who frequent prostitutes regardless of the law.2 It is thus important that when we examine sex as a trade, the combination of philosophy, cultural precedence, religious influence and politics be looked at as these influencing factors made each country select how to handle it in its own way. For example in Singapore, sex for money is open and commonplace. Denmark women can be legal prostitutes so long as it is not their sole means of income. Canada, France and Mexico allow it. Prostitutes must be contained within brothels in the Netherlands, unlike within England and Wales where prostitution is limited to individual providers. Israel, the historical stage for the Bible, allows it, too. Meanwhile, the United States has made prostitution illegal (misdemeanour) in all states, except certain counties of Nevada. In street prostitution, the prostitute solicits customers while waiting at street corners or walking alongside a street, usually dressed in skimpy, suggestive clothing. Often the prostitute (commonly called a "hooker" or "street hooker" to distinguish them from other sex workers) appears to mind his or her own business and waits for the customer to initiate contact. The act is performed in the customer's car or in a nearby alley or rented room (motels that service prostitutes commonly rent rooms by the half or full hour). This type of sex work offers the most freedom while it can sometimes be the least respected and most dangerous form of prostitution. It has been observed that all prostitution causes harm to women. Whether it is being sold by one’s family to a brothel or whether it is being sexually abused in one’s family, running away from home and then being pimped by one’s boyfriend, or whether one is in college and needs to pay for next semester’s tuition fees and one works at a strip club behind glass where men actually never actually touch you – all these forms of prostitution hurt the women in it. Official figures underestimate the level of prostitution. A Home Office consultation paper on prostitution in 2004 suggested that police figures showed that 115 women were estimated to be on the streets of London in any one night. Other figures suggest that there are around 80,000 people involved in prostitution in the UK. An article in the Lancet in November 2001 estimated that in London, one in eleven men pay for sex, and a report in the Sunday Observer in February 2002 estimated that more than 80,000 men pay for sex in London every week. 3 London Metropolitan Police report that the trafficking of women and young girls into the UK for sexual exploitation is aggravating the level of this problem. About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. It's hard to talk about this because the experience of prostitution is just like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet. The 'precursors' which can contribute to a woman becoming involved in street prostitution - such as drug use, mental ill health, family breakdown and homelessness - are factors which tend to concentrate in urban areas. The factors which lead women towards street prostitution and the behaviours such as drug misuse which underlie it are themselves complex and often relate to deep and intractable consequences of experiences such as abuse or family breakdown, the strategic response requires to be sufficient to cope with this complexity and intensity of personal need. The task of influencing deep rooted social attitudes, such as an assumption of the legitimacy of sexual relationships based on power and abuse - while by no means impossible - demands careful thought, planning and sufficient intensity of implementation. For these reasons, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that single or quick solutions are not available - although there are measures which of themselves will contribute significantly to the objectives. It is self evident that, if an effective, lasting impact is to be made on reducing the numbers of women involved in street prostitution, not only must those currently involved be successfully helped to move away from prostitution - and stay away - but ways must also be found to stop progress of that nature being undermined by more women becoming involved. The preventive activity necessary to disrupt recruitment into street prostitution should be informed by what is known about the factors which influence the likelihood of a woman turning to prostitution. Overwhelmingly, this is dominated by drug misuse, but a combination of that and some or all of the following frequently influence women's entry into street prostitution: untreated mental illness, family breakdown and experience of being looked after out with the family; experience of sexual and physical abuse; under-achievement at school and lack of employment skills; exposure to unemployment; criminality as a cultural norm, insecure housing and low income. The characteristics which define the concepts of 'social exclusion' are very evident as associated with why women take this step. Preventive work needs to operate both at a general level and a specific individual level if these routes into prostitution are to be disrupted. For many prostitutes, the factors that drew them into prostitution are the same reasons that stop them from leaving, for example: money to support them and any children and pay bills, as well as funding their own, and sometimes their partner’s drug habits unemployment and poor work opportunities fear of violence from partners and pimps poor self image and lack of a social network outside the world of prostitution the legal status of those prostitutes who are also illegal immigrants. The harmful consequences which often escalate as regular involvement in street prostitution develops have been alluded: an increasingly chaotic lifestyle, intensification of drug misuse and its associated problems and increased reliance on a criminal culture to finance and obtain supplies, increased criminal justice involvement, including imprisonment, with consequential stigmatisation and adverse effects (e.g. a criminal record) on potential for rehabilitation, loss of child and family contacts and responsibilities, loss of secure accommodation, alienation from family and community support, physical health impairment, mental health problems, exposure to abuse and violence. Historically, the UK has not made prostitution itself an offence. The approach has been a pragmatic one, and is one of partial criminalisation, which penalises soliciting and living off the earnings of prostitution. It also penalises involving children in prostitution, and trafficking in human beings for the purposes of prostitution. Prostitution is not a recognised form of work and there are no regulatory mechanisms applying to the sale of sex. The UK approach is restrictive by comparison with other jurisdictions, without penalising the buying and selling of sex as such (except for the buying of sex from a 16 or 17 year old in England and Wales). There is stronger statutory regulation in England and Wales than in Scotland. For example the law in England & Wales, as well as prohibiting purchasing sex from a young person under 18, expressly prohibits 'carding' (advertising prostitutes through cards left in public places) and kerb crawling. Considering the existing range of offences under Scottish law, one specific offence mainly applies to street prostitution. (Other offences affect procuring and brothel keeping and the Group has elected not to examine these offences in detail at the present time but to reserve this for a later stage of the work.) “I was a London City call girl with my own book. My johns had careers in the fashion industry, finance, law and the media. I visited them in their homes, offices, and at well-known hotels like the Plaza. I also worked for madams in well-established brothels around the city. However, this is where any resemblance between my experience and the mythical call girl ends. I was a young teenage girl, not a sophisticated woman. I wasn’t an independent agent, but controlled by a brutal pimp who had a stable of women. People believe only streetwalkers are drug addicts, but I abused drugs until well into my twenties. It was the only way I could cope with the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that defined my job. As for my well-heeled clientele and their fancy suites, all I can say is, whether you turn tricks in a car by the Holland Tunnel or in the Plaza Hotel, you still have to take your clothes off, get on your knees or lie on your back, and let this stranger use you in any way he pleases. Then you have to get up, get dressed, and do it again with the next trick, and the next. In the movies, call girls make lots of money which they invest in legitimate businesses when they retire from the life. It’s taken me close to twenty years to undo the damage that was done to me in prostitution. Not only did I leave prostitution impoverished, I was totally isolated from mainstream society. The only people I’d had contact with for almost a decade were pimps, tricks, and other prostitutes. I was deprived of a basic education. I had no job skills. My health was severely compromised. I required surgery and repeated medical treatment for reproductive damage and remain infertile. In addition to these tangible issues, I’ve coped with the trauma resulting from years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that is common in the lives of prostitutes. Like battered women who escape abusive partners, women escaping prostitution must totally rebuild their lives.” Human trade, slave markets, the buying and selling of people – these are words and phrases that to many people echo a brutal and distant time in our past. But to the countless women, men, and children trafficked every year, these words coldly define the horror of their lives. Trafficking is a worldwide phenomenon. Victims are trafficked into a range of hazardous labour including forced prostitution and forced or bonded labour and servitude and subjected to sexual abuse and other forms of violence.4 Two sisters who ran Britain's biggest Thai prostitution racket, thought to be worth millions of pounds, have been jailed. Bupha Savada, 45, of East Ham, east London and Monporn Hughes 40, of Borough Green, Kent, were described as the "controlling minds" behind the racket which brought hundreds of young girls to the UK to work in the vice industry. Sri Lanka-born supermarket supervisor Pathinage Ranasinghe, Savada's husband, was also jailed for two years for living off immoral earnings.5 In a capitalist market in which bodies, particularly female bodies, are commodified in every way, prostitution will continue to exist as a crude result of demand and of the unequal social conditions of women. Non-legal remedies, such as advocating for the increased professionalisation of prostitution, that do not appear to be within the scope of possible future changes. The prognosis for a realistic compromise that effectively manages the presence of prostitution, the needs of communities, and the desire to frame sex work as employment, may well be left to the criminal justice system. Impacting on drug misuse would therefore be an essential part of reducing the likelihood of becoming involved in prostitution, reducing the risk of harm once involved and facilitating an exit route away from prostitution. Street-based sex workers currently form one of the most excluded and marginalised groups of homeless people. There is little specialist accommodation available to meet their needs, and service providers and funding bodies often fail to recognise the nature and scale of the problem in their area. While society may view prostitution as the biggest problem for these women, the women themselves relate it to their homelessness, drug use, and lifestyles characterised by poverty, chaos, and desperate choices. Accommodating the homeless women who work on the streets as prostitutes is an essential first step to addressing their social problems. Conclusion “Like other forms of violence committed by men against women, prostitution is a gender specific phenomenon; the overwhelming majority of victims are women and girls, while the perpetrators are invariably men.”6 Negotiations on the European Convention on Trafficking have reached a crucial stage in Strasbourg. The Convention provides an opportunity to establish binding minimum standards for the protection and support of trafficked people, who are currently vulnerable to prosecution and deportation from the UK. Government ministers fear that measures to protect victims would be exploited by people falsely claiming to have been used as slave labour, but the NGOs believe this is unlikely. They are calling for: Medical, educational and vocational assistance for all victims of trafficking, without requiring victims to testify in court against their will. A reflection and recovery period of at least three months, in which victims can receive medical care and counselling, and decide whether to give evidence against their traffickers. This already happens in some European countries, including the Netherlands, and the NGOs argue that victims are more likely to co-operate when they have had time to recover. Residence permits for victims who may be in danger of reprisals or being trafficked again if they return to their own countries. The Poppy Project says it knows of victims who have been returned and trafficked two or three times. Excluding Westminster, London boroughs are averaging 19 sites to buy sex, with between four and eight women on average per site. Only 19 per cent of these women are British. The remaining women are from Eastern Europe (25 per cent), 13 per cent from South East Asia, 12 per cent from Western Europe and 2 per cent from Africa. Fifteen London boroughs have no sexual health outreach provision for women in the sex industry.7 Prostitution is not illegal. However, activities associated with it, including soliciting, kerb crawling and running a brothel are criminal offences. Anti-social behaviour linked with prostitution can include fights; noise; harassment; sexual activity taking place in public places, and related littering (including used condoms, dirty needles and other drug paraphernalia). A Council of Europe Convention was drawn up a couple of month ago, and an EU action Plan outlining the steps that must be taken by EU Member States in order to prevent the trafficking of humans has followed. Of the 46 Member States of the Council of Europe, there are still 23 left to sign the Convention, (including the UK and France) and all, including those already signed up, are yet to be ratified.8 The question of whether the trade in sex on Britain’s streets should be legalised is to be addressed by an international conference at the University of Liverpool. Paying for sex is allowed, but it is illegal to run a brothel or to seek or advertise sexual services. The conference on street prostitution will also examine the dangers faced by those in the trade such as drug addiction, sexual and physical abuse and poverty. Although the conference will focus on the issues faced by female sex workers, the health and safety of male prostitutes will also be addressed. In a civilised society we need to find a way of helping women out of this dangerous and degrading trade or of managing their activities so that violence is minimised. This conference addresses the challenges of street prostitution directly. It explores the consequences for street workers including their personal health and safety.9 If you have to visit a sex worker then at least have the common decency to treat her like a human being. Go to one of the many massage parlours where you will be less likely to get arrested for kerb crawling. Sure it may cost you more but the chances are the girl will be cleaner and you less likely to catch something undesirable. Finally, spare a thought for the girls predicament. What would you do in her shoes if you had no choice in life? What trauma of her past made her resort to prostitution for a living? I hope you care. You should care. We should care. But, does the law care? The answer is no, it does not. Bibliography: Bindel, J and Kelly, L. A Critical Examination of Responses to Prostitution in Four Countries: Victoria, Australia; Ireland; the Netherlands and Sweden, Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University, 2003. Brooks-Gordon, B. M. and Gelsthorpe, L. R. 'The Hiring and Selling of Bodies'. In A. Bainham, S. Day Sclater, and M. P. M. Richards, Body Lore and Laws, pp 193- 210. Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2002. Hester, M. and Westmarland, N. Tackling Street Prostitution: Towards a Holistic Approach, Home Office, London, 2004. Legalized Prostitution Regulating the Oldest Profession by Mark Liberator, December 8th, 2005. Phoenix, J. Making Sense of Prostitution. London: Macmillan, 2001. Haste, C. Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain, World War I to the Present (Chatto StWindus) London, 1992. Adkins, L. Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market (Open University) Buckingham, 1995. NAWO: Response to 2004 ‘Paying the Price’ UK Govt. Consultation on Prostitution, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Report of International Prostitutes Collective conference:  No Bad Women, No Bad Children, Just Bad Laws, 4 December 2004, Camden, London. UK presidency must sign up to Convention on Human Trafficking - Liz Lynne, 2nd Dec 2005, http://www.lizlynne.org.uk/news/500.html http://znet.ukwatch.net/article/70 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetwalker http://www.thaivisa.com/index.php?514&backPID=10&tt_news=362 http://www.amnesty.org.uk/sextraffic www.timesonline.co.uk Read More