Canberra needs to follow the Swedish model and provide exit programs for prostituted women.
Caroline Norma, a valued contributor to the MTR blog, wrote this piece in response to an article in The Canberra Times March 6 (‘Sex trade eyes the suburbs’) about sex industry pressure for less regulation and more brothels to expand Canberra’s sex trade. The Canberra Times didn’t seem to think it worth publishing. Fortunately ABC Drum Unleashed did – I reprint here with permission. Caroline is a lecturer in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University in Melbourne and a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia. She will also have a chapter in the forthcoming Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Porn Industry (Spinifex Press), which I’m co-editing with Dr Abigail Bray.
Review into prostitution must benefit women not business
The ACT government is currently reviewing its 1992 Prostitution Act, and has called for public submissions. Not surprisingly, the sex industry has been quick to submit its wishlist on prostitution, and Phillip Thomson’s article in The Canberra Times nicely summarises the demands the industry is currently making of the ACT government. These include:
- Normalise prostitution as a legitimate business activity by removing zoning restrictions on brothels that are currently relegated to industrialised areas
- Open up more opportunities for organised escort prostitution networks by lifting the one-person ‘sole-operator’ restriction for prostitution businesses operating outside of industrial areas
- Remove official registration requirements for one-person ‘sole-operator’ prostitution businesses
Through lobby organisations like the EROS Foundation and ACT SWOP in Canberra, the sex industry pursues its demands under the rhetoric of ‘safety for sex workers’. This rhetoric runs along the following lines:
- Women risk danger if they must commute to brothels in industrial areas, because these areas are ‘dark’ and unpopulated at night
- Women risk danger if they must operate prostitution businesses as one-person ‘sole-operators’ from home, because they can’t employ drivers to act as security guards
- Women risk exposure and social discrimination if they must register with government as ‘sex workers’
While the sex industry pursues its business aims under the rhetorical guise of ‘safety for sex workers’, its profits are derived from the sexual degradation and exploitation of society’s most vulnerable people. Research shows overwhelmingly that people in prostitution suffer rates of post-traumatic stress disorder equal to that of war veterans. So, it’s unlikely the industry gives a damn about the personal security, integrity and individual growth of the women it sells as live sex dolls. Notably, the industry is not lobbying the ACT government to set up ‘exit’ programs to assist women to leave prostitution if they wish. The industry’s real agenda is obscured by its ‘safety for sex workers’ rhetoric, but understanding this agenda is important if any changes are going to be considered for the ACT’s Prostitution Act.
The business logic behind the sex industry’s first aim—to remove planning restrictions on brothels—is fairly obvious; the more prostitution is integrated into mainstream Australian society, the greater profits the industry will earn through customers who are no longer inhibited by the social condemnation of their peers. But the reasoning behind aims 2 and 3 might be less clear to the general observer.
To understand these two aims, one has to be aware that a big growth market for the Australian sex industry is escort prostitution. Escort or ‘outcall’ prostitution currently contributes over half of the industry’s earnings. This model of prostitution is profitable because it runs with few overheads, falls under the radar of most government regulation, and operates flexibly over large geographical areas and in response to movements in male populations (e.g., toward mining areas).
If the ban on one-person ‘sole-operators’ operating in conjunction with another party is lifted, Canberra’s sex industry will be able to tap into a large population of poor and vulnerable women (often living with small children) who are currently bought for prostitution through rented suburban flats. The head of the Adult Entertainment Industry in Victoria was quoted recently as saying that as many as 7000 ‘sole operators’ in that state are currently being organised into networks by criminal groups who, he speculates, might be drug dealers. They could be involved in abuse of the migration program, including the trafficking of women. They might be engaging in inducing under-age persons into the sex industry.
Canberra’s sex industry is lobbying to have restrictions on sole-operators lifted so that ‘legal’ prostitution businessmen, too, can start to profit from these women. Large-scale escort prostitution businesses aim to recruit these women into their networks by offering them ‘drivers’ (for the sake of their safety!) and free mobile phones. This will allow escort business operators to expand the number of women they have on their books, cater to a geographically expanded male population, and recoup overheads and licensing costs incurred in running legal and ‘legitimate’ brothel businesses. Lobbying for the lifting of restrictions on ‘sole operators’ is therefore an important task of the industry, and one tied to its future profitability.
The industry that seeks to profit from prostitution is a business that has devastating consequences for women used within it, as well as Australian society at large. It is an industry that preys on young women who have been made socially vulnerable through childhood sexual abuse, poverty, mental illness, drugs, and homelessness. It is an industry also renowned for prostituting underage girls. Janine Cameron was found dead in a Canberra brothel (‘Death of innocence’, 1 November 2008). She was 17. Women are trafficked from overseas to meet the demands of the domestic sex industry. The lives of so many women and girls are destroyed by this industry. Violence and abuse is just part of the job. And Fiona Patten, representing a voracious industry, only wants to expand it into Canberra’s suburban backyards.
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australian (CATWA) argues the sex industry needs to be properly understood as imposing on Australian society an unacceptably high level of harm. Like the approach taken toward the tobacco industry, we believe state and territory governments should begin to introduce legislative measures that have as their ultimate goal the industry’s demise. CATWA supports the “Swedish Model” of sex industry legislation which sees all forms of prostitution as violence against women. The purchaser of sex is penalised, and women are offered éxit’ programs to help get them out of the industry and find non-harmful ways of supporting themselves and their children.
We find it disturbing that the ACT’s sex industry is using the current Prostitution Act review to call for more brothels in the territory when there is not one exit program in place for prostituted women in Canberra. As the ACT government accepts submissions on its Prostitution Act, it should be aware that a profitable and highly sophisticated sex industry with its own lobby organisations is making demands that are wholly aimed at expanding the industry’s profits. If the government listens to these demands it abrogates its responsibility to its most vulnerable female constituents, and permits the sex industry even greater reign to damage the wellbeing and social status of women in Australia’s capital.
Published today on ABC’s The Drum Unleashed.
See also 
March 21st, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you Caroline, for speaking the truth in the face of the twisted rhetoric spewed out by the sex industry and their lobbyists.
Profiting from the sale of someone else’s body for sex is exploitation of the most degraded kind. I can only hope the ACT government will listen to common sense over the lies of an industry made wealthy by a trade in human misery.
March 21st, 2011 at 9:14 pm
Thank you for this voice of common sense and truth. This makes me so mad. What about acknowledging the basic fact that women risk danger simply from working as prostitutes? Continuing to exploit vulnerable women whilst pretending to care about their welfare is simply unconscionable. It is beyond understanding that this type of exploitation and violence against women can continue unchecked, whilst the ‘industry’ just gets richer.
It’s against the law to sell your body parts (let alone anyone else’s). But selling someone’s dignity and safety… that’s okay, apparently, so long as you make it look like you’re actually helping them.
March 22nd, 2011 at 5:57 am
The only ones who will be benefit and profit will be the Johns who believe it is their innate right to purchase women and girls in order to use them as disposable sexual service stations.
But of course the male-dominated, overwhelmingly male controlled and male operated sex industry (aka the prostitutors) will earn huge profits and the ones will continue to suffer extreme physical, sexual and psychological suffering will be the women and girls coerced/sold/tricked into entering prostitution.
Canberra must follow Sweden’s lead and criminalise the Johns, prostitutors and pimps because unless male demand is criminalised, we are in effect sending a message to all women and girls that females are for sale to male buyers and this is not a gross violation of all women’s and girls’ human rights.
Attempting to hide the issue of endemic male sexual violence which is being routinely committed against the women and girls involved in prostitution is a common ploy by the Sex Industry/Prostitutors.
There are laws against any human and this includes men by the way, prohibiting them from selling their organs to buyers because rightly such transactions are seen as a violation of all human rights – meaning of course men’s human right not to be reduced to disposable body parts.
But men purchasing/selling women and girls to other males is not commonly viewed as male violence against women or even perceived as enforcing and maintaining the lie that women unlike men are not human but just disposable sexual service stations. No instead we are expected to accept the lie that ‘prostituted women supposedly enact a commercial transaction with the John/Johns’ and this transaction entitles him/them to commit whatever sexual degradation they wish upon the prostituted woman/girl.
Then there is the fact that if prostitution is just ‘sex work’ this in itself means all women and girls are for sale to men and have no human rights.
I’m still waiting to hear/read that a male/males has/have died from lack of sexual access to a female body. But the prostitution industry commonly claims that men need regular sexual access to women’s bodies because otherwise they will implode.
News flash no human and this means no male has died from lack of sexual access to another human body. Sexual gratification is not a necessity – water, food and shelter are human necessities.
There are laws in place making it illegal for male employees to sexually harass female employees but whilst these laws exist the male harasser(s) can easily purchase a prostituted woman/girl which makes a nonsense of legislation making it a criminal offence for males to sexually harass/sexually assault/rape women and girls which male supremacy deems to be ‘not prostituted women.’
Prostitution was created by men for men’s benefit and to maintain male domination and male control over women. That is why prostitution must be eliminated – because no woman or girl was placed on this earth to be a male’s disposable masturbatory aid. Sex is not being sold to the Johns, rather what is being sold is men’s pseudo right to enforce and maintain their sexual domination and control over women and girls. All women and girls must be accorded the right of ownership of their bodies and sexuality, but prostitution is enactment of the opposite.
Johns and pimps must be criminalised whilst prostituted women and girls be decriminalised. The Swedish model provides expert support and assistance to the many prostituted women and girls and this support enables innumerable women and girls to access medical care and begin the very, very long process of rebuilding their lives after having suffered years and years of systemic male sexual violence and sexual torture.
Women and girls are not dehumanised sexual service stations.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Reading this blog made me question if any of the people commenting on this article or the author herself has ever talked to a sex worker? If yes have they ever talked to a sex worker that likes their job and is proud of what they do?
As a feminist I believe that the voices of womyn need to be heard, the voices of womyn that see themselves as victims of sex work as well as the voices of womyn that do not.
Sex workers all over Australia identify as feminists and believe that their work is valid and does not oppress them.
Many radical feminists believe that when engaging in sex work the sex worker sells their body, however as a sex worker I know that I’m in charge during a booking and I set my own boundaries.
Although I do not doubt that there are sex workers that feel oppressed by their work, the sex workers I have talked to felt empowered by by what they do and felt that their work gave them room to set boundaries where many other work places did not. Sex work provides many womyn the chance to work flexible hours and make more money than in other jobs. This in turn for example makes it possible for single mothers to support their children whilst still having time to be there for them.
It is also ironic that so many womyn and feminists want to abolish the only industry where womyn can make more money than men, unlike most jobs.
I believe that the decriminalization and legalization of sex work helps this industry to become safer for womyn. NSW is a good example of this.
The sex work industry will keep existing even if the Swedish model is applied, but it will become less safe as sex workers will have to work in more dangerous places and be constantly aware of the illegality of their work and the consequences that derive from that.
I also want everyone to have a think about why people that are against sex work avoid talking about Dominatrixes and male sex workers. Is it because it is hard to argue that Dominatrixes and men are oppressed by what they do?
And why do so many people not take serious the voices of empowered sex workers? Is it because they again and again challenge the idea that sex workers are oppressed and lack agency?
I also want to emphasize that the problem of trafficking and children being forced is real and needs to be taken seriously. However, these issues need to be separated from sex work and need to be dealt with seperatly.
May 20th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
It’s great to see someone comment on these forums that has the same opinions as I do. we really need to challenge peoples whorephobia and let them know that we sex workers don’t wanna be rescued.
I stopped identifying as a feminist years ago, because people kept telling me that i can’t work in such an exploitative industry, like it and be a feminist at the same time. Also when I hear about feminist conferences such as the one that’s being held here in Melbourne inviting people like Sheila Jeffreys, who has hurt so many people she is trying to save by opening her mouth, I see that nothing has changed, and that although many of my believes align with feminists they still don’t respect who I am, so I’d rather stay away to protect myself.
May 23rd, 2011 at 4:44 pm
While I agree that there does need to be exit programs for those in the sex industry who want to leave and need support to do so, to assume that ‘all sex workers, all the time’ are silenced and need you to speak over them is just plain insulting (or so it would appear to me).
Even if I accepted the articles view that ‘all sex workers, all the time’ are trapped or just plain tragic, to think that forcing people into less legal, less accountable situations is counter intuitive.
I think it’s a little ironic that the article takes the time to quote organisations like SWOP, which are run by workers, for workers and then to dismiss that knowledge and authority as incorrect, and I would be curious to see all the sources the author has used, and how many would come under the ‘moral panic’ information umbrella.
I support tikka’s call to actually listen to those who are working in the industry. After all, isn’t feminism about empowering women’s voices?
May 25th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
I agree with Ellen on the irony of quoting an organisation run by peers, which in social work would be seen as a best practice approach as it is much more effective to have people with experience in the area working with sex workers.
I also wonder why sex workers would set up an organisation to call for justice (such as Scarlet Alliance) if that same work was making them feel like a ‘dehumanised sexual service station’ as Jeniffer said.