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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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Contributors and Sources
- Michael DE Goodyear, Linda Cusick (12 January 2007)
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Sex workers make a valuable contribution to society
- Tuppy Owens (13 January 2007)
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Correction
- Michael DE Goodyear (13 January 2007)
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Remembering Gemma and other Ipswich Victims
- Petra Boynton (14 January 2007)
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Liberal sexual 'realities' can also be social constructions
- Trevor Stammers (14 January 2007)
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Advocacy for health in sex workers
- Sophie E Day, Helen Ward (15 January 2007)
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Sex work and social benefit
- Michael DE Goodyear (15 January 2007)
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Professional ethic of care
- Michael DE Goodyear (16 January 2007)
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Identifying the real moral issues
- Michael Goodyear (16 January 2007)
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Sex Health in Australia
- Bianca Felix (16 January 2007)
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Victoria's experience of prostitution as work
- Mary L Sullivan (29 January 2007)
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Decriminalisation May Also Help in Cases of Fabricated Illness
- J E M SCANLON (7 February 2007)
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Reply to Dr Mary Lucille Sullivan's promotion of the Swedish Model
- Tuppy Owens (25 February 2007)
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Sex work in Australia: a plea for the truth
- Basil Donovan, Christine Harcourt, Sandra Egger, Kate Demaere, Jody O'Connor, Lewis Marshall, John M Kaldor, Marcus Y Chen, Christopher K Fairley (27 March 2007)
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Michael DE Goodyear, Assistant Professor Department of Medicine, Linda Cusick
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We would like to thank the many people who contributed to this editorial, in particular members of the folowing; UK Network of Sex Work Projects English Collective of Prostitutes Individual contributors are named in a background working paper, including all the sources used, available at: Remembering Ipswich This is a living document, so suggestions are welcome and will be acknowledged. Competing interests: None declared |
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Tuppy Owens, Charity worker Sexual Freedom Coalition, London N1 3QP
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Thank you for your excellent article. The SFC sent an 86 page response to the Home Office Paying the Price team and didn't even get an acknowledgement. We argued the case for decriminalisation, promoting the New Zealand model. We pointed out that if this were any other business, the client's health and safety would be a priority, unlike the 11 lines the HO devoted to "users". What I want to add is that sex workers can and do provide invaluable services to clients: obese, disabled and widowed and people rejected for not being in jobs, good looking and fit. I recently brought Pru, Sex Worker of the Year in the Erotic Awards along to speak at the Different Strokes conference, making the point that no stroke survivor should be left to sit without speech or friends during years of recovery. A sex worker, master or mistress of non-verbal communication, should be part of the rehabilitation team. Pru spoke eloquently, and in the audience, Leonard Levy, responsible for NHS Stroke provision, smiled. We're a long way off combating the stigma, but between us, a little toe is in the door. Dr Tuppy Owens Sexual Freedom Coalition Competing interests: None declared |
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Michael DE Goodyear, Assistant Professor Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 2Y9
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The link to the Working Paper above does not seem to be working.
Please use; Remembering Ipswich or, alternatively, locate Remembering Ipswich: The Case for Decriminalisation of Prostitution. January 2007, under Papers on the Women's Health page of my website, which includes many of the resources used. email{at}address.com Competing interests: None declared |
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Petra Boynton, Lecturer in international health research University College London
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The parents of Gemma Adams (one of the Ipswich victims) have set up 'Gemmas Gift'in memory of Gemma to raise funds for a local children's hospice. You can find out more and donate here: http://www.justgiving.com/gemmasgift Competing interests: I provided feedback on previous drafts of the 'Protection of sex workers' editorial. |
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Trevor Stammers, Lecturer in Healthcare Ethics, St Mary's University College, Twickenham TW1 4SX
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It is disappointing that Goodyear and Cusick are so confusing in their attitude to what they term 'the moral debate on sex work'. They claim it to be divisive and yet in the next paragraph, focus on what they select as the 'real moral issues'. A major issue, moral or otherwise, which they do not tackle is why there is such a demand for commercial sex in the UK. Indeed they merely (and mistakenly) assume the 'inevitablity ..of sex work'. However feminist writer, Laurie Shrage, points to evidence that 'our high level of sexuality is a purely cultural phenomenon and not the inevitable result of human biology.' (1) If the social rationalization for the supposed 'inevitability' of prostitution is seen for what it is, perhaps this would help us to find more effective ways to help those involved in it, whether it is decriminalised ot not? 1. Shrage L Should feminists oppose prostitution? Ethics 1989 99 347- 61 Competing interests: None declared |
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Sophie E Day, Professor Anthropology Goldsmiths College, SE14 6NW, Helen Ward
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We welcome the timely call for decriminalisation of sex work in the editorial by Goodyear and Cusick. The murders of sex workers in Ipswich have led to the repetition of stereotypes which only serve to dehumanise women in the industry and make them more vulnerable. We wish to highlight some further flaws in the evidence used by government and others in justification of their demonising of sex workers. There is no evidence that 90% of UK sex workers are addicted to heroin and/or crack, or that 45% were abused as children. These data, along with numerous alternative versions in the media, are attributed to the Home Office consultation exercise, Paying the Price (2004), but we have heard nothing about the many responses that refuted these stereotypes in detail. Our research in London has followed sex workers from the mid- 1980s to 2000 and, to our knowledge, is the only study to provide evidence of the impact of prostitution on women's lives over time. We have shown that: Drug use is widespread and problem drug use is associated with multiply disadvantaged women. Injecting drug use was uncommon in our studies (for example, 7% of women attending our project from 1998-2002 reported ever injecting drugs) and crack use declined towards the end of the 1990s. Alcohol use, however, is a condition of work in some sectors such as clubs and 'addiction' has become more common, as indeed among the rest of the UK population. Violence is found throughout the industry. In our study, two women were murdered and both worked indoors. One murder was never resolved; the other woman was murdered by her boyfriend who then killed himself. (Ward et al. 1999) Research participants described assaults across all sectors of the industry but experiences of violence outside work, when their children were taken into care or when they suffered domestic violence, were the most harrowing. (Day and Ward 2001) Street workers do not form a discrete workforce: they also work indoors and in jobs outside the industry. In our follow-up of sex workers to 2000, street workers had greater occupational mobility than women working in other sectors of the industry (Ward and Day 2006). Among the women we followed to the year 2000, 37% (31/84) undertook further, higher, or vocational education which they funded through their own earnings. However, only half of these women then left the sex industry, despite the occupational choices this training had presented - and, of course, it is always assumed that sex workers would never continue their work if they had any other options.(Ward and Day 2006) The most significant health problems reported in our studies related to stigma and criminalisation. Reports in the press and other media this week about drug-abused victims from broken families forced to expose themselves to madmen on the streets, without any reference to the laws, policies or damaging stereotypes about 'bad women' that put sex workers at risk simply exacerbate their problems. Reports about regulation elsewhere have been misleading about the possible solutions. Thus, the so-called failure of street toleration zones in The Netherlands has nothing to do with 'drug abuse': it is impossible for the great majority to work legally as they are undocumented migrants. (Day and Ward 2004) Similarly, the recent reforms in New Zealand have provided an important model since they were the first to allow women to work together indoors freelance without requiring them to raise substantial capital, acquire a license and manage the business (through which employees are commonly exploited heavily in 'legal' businesses elsewhere). Similar changes have been recommended, but not acted upon, in the UK. It is British policy that makes sex workers vulnerable, whether outdoors or indoors. In the last ten years, these policies have become more punitive through the arbitrary use of ASBOs, street 'cleaning' purges, fines, imprisonment and deportation. We endorse calls for decriminalisation and amnesty from those who organise and work closely with prostitutes, including the International Union of Sex Workers and the English Collective of Prostitutes. These will be key measures towards stopping the violence. They will also be central to wider advocacy for health and health care. Criminalisation and stigma are associated with significant mental health problems; they make workers vulnerable to violence; they foster misinformation about the industry and workers' health needs and they also make contact with health professionals difficult. Without decriminalisation and amnesty, how are we to provide substantial sectors of the UK workforce with basic services including health promotion, screening and treatment? References Day S, Ward H Violence in sex work (corr.) British Medical Journal 2001; 323:230 Day S, Ward H (eds) Sex work, mobility and health in Europe. London: Kegan Paul, 2004 Home Office. Paying the Price: A consultation paper on prostitution. London: Home Office, 2004 Ward H, Day S, Weber J. Risky business: health and safety in the sex industry over a 9 year period. Sex. Transm. Inf. 1999; 75:340-343 Ward H, Day S What happens to women who sell sex? Report of a unique occupational cohort. Sex. Transm. Inf. 2006; 82: 413-417 Competing interests: HW is co-editor of the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, BMJ Publishing. |
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Michael DE Goodyear, Assistant Professor Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 2Y9
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Dr Owens’ letter “Sex workers make a valuable contribution to society” raises a number of important issues. As she points out, the Home Office ignored the advice of many experts and of those who work in this area of health, which reinforces the point that this is not an appropriate policy area for that ministry. Hopefully the Liberal Democrats, who have endorsed our position, will make this point more forcefully. (1) Furthermore the Home Office concluded that sex work has no value, which largely informed many of its recommendations. (2) Dr Teela Sanders, amongst others, has examined the role that sex workers play as therapists and educators (3). She has also demonstrated their role in the care of the disabled, as Dr Owens suggests. These skills have been recognized in other countries, leading to sex workers being hired as care workers in Germany (4), and by physicians in the UK. (5) References 1. Clegg N. Liberal Democrats: Government must have courage to act on prostitution. 12 January 2007 http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/government-must-have-courage-to-act-on- prostitution-clegg.11685.html 2. Home Office. Regulatory Impact Assessment: A coordinated strategy for prostitution 2006. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-paying-the-price/ 3. Sanders T. Female sex workers as health educators with men who buy sex: utilising narratives of rationalisations. Soc Sci Med. 2006 May;62(10): 2434-44. 4. Duke K. Project retrains prostitutes as care workers for elderly people. BMJ 2006 332: 685 5. Barrett J. Personal services or dangerous liaisons: should we help patients hire prostitutes? BMJ 2004 329: 985. Competing interests: None declared |
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Michael DE Goodyear, Assistant Professor Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 2Y9
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We were contacted by a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, asking why the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has remained silent on this issue. One of us (MG) had recently written a letter of support for the position of The Lancet and the Royal College of Nursing, (1) apart from this, the Colleges, Associations and other professional societies have been largely silent. We note that The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ banner reads “Setting Standards to Improve Women’s Health”. (2) Our editorial addresses the professional ethic of care and the responsibility of the health professions to advocate for those in their care. As with other public health issues we believe that the health professions should speak with a united voice on this, and follow the lead of the nurses. References 1. Goodyear M, Lowman J, Fischer B, Green M. Prostitutes are people too. Lancet. 2005 Oct 8;366(9493):1264-5. 2. Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. http://www.rcog.org.uk/ Competing interests: None declared |
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Michael Goodyear, Assistant Professor Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 2Y9
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We welcome the opportunity to reply to Dr Stammers’ letter on the moral issues raised. We fear he has misunderstood the point of our editorial. The issues he raises are also discussed further in the working paper. (1) Partly in the interests of space, but also as we stated, because we believed it to be the ‘wrong debate’ (2) we did not address the traditional moral debate, but merely outlined the respective positions. We do not claim the moral debate to be divisive, it is divisive, there is no debate over that, (2-6) Julia O’Connell Davidson calls it ‘both heated and bitter’. While informative, and while both arguments in the debate have some legitimacy, it is a debate that obscures the issues eloquently described by Sophie Day and Helen Ward. (7) Ethics deals with competing values, and we believe that it is crucial to understand that addressing what are essentially social issues with criminal legislation creates a much more compelling moral problem, the dehumanising of women. The transactions of commercial sex involve both supply and demand, which cannot be treated separately. Stammers claims we did not tackle the issue of demand. In fact we did stress the need to understand the social determinants in any analysis of sex work, in particular emphasizing inequalities, which we believe to be the thrust of his argument. We are surprised that Stammers did not think we had considered Laurie Shrage’s work (which should also include her later book – Moral Dilemmas of Feminism, 1994). We actually cite her directly, stating that prostitution requires no unique legal remedy (p. 360). We not only considered Shrage and the sources she used such as Pateman (8) and Ericsson (9), but the article Stammers refers to is used in teaching at this university (MG). We did not assume the inevitably of sex work, we stated that that was one of the positions in the debate. Citing one work from an extensive feminist and philosophical canon does not inform the discussion much. While Shrage’s assumptions and reasoning can be debated, her central argument is that the analysis of the morality of an act cannot be made considering that act in isolation, but only after considering the cultural context and political and social meaning, specifically how others perceive the act, whether rational or not (p. 351). In this context it underpins Public Order law, with an important exception. Both in the UK and Canada (10), a moral act can be considered indecent and hence criminal if it causes offence, but only if the intent to offend is demonstrable. In that regard, sex work fails the test. Shrage uses familiar arguments that sex work fails to subvert patriarchy and sustains inequality (p. 359), but admits that her reasoning leads to supporting decriminalisation (p. 361). Where we differ fundamentally from her is that while we accept that women are degraded and oppressed in sex work (p. 349), it is because of the alienation imposed by the state, not merely the existence of patriarchy (p. 352), and what she refers to as our tolerance of it (p. 356). We do not tolerate it, any more than the oppressive cultural attitudes she describes, and whose inevitability, unlike her, we reject. We stressed that decriminalisation was a necessary but not sufficient condition for fulfilling our ethical obligation to support these women. Shrage herself implies a meeting place for the proponents in the debate. Real life rarely fits neatly into simple binaries. Decriminalisation to restore human rights does not exclude the equally necessary need to address inequality and other social determinants. Hilary Kinnell (11) makes the most compelling argument of all for the immorality of our treatment of sex workers. Throughout history we have rationalised our prejudices by alienating groups, be they defined by religious, racial, disability, occupational or caste criteria, in order to dehumanise them and reconcile actions that would otherwise be abhorrent. Thus it becomes a relatively simple step to move from what we do not like, or believe to be wrong, to believing that those involved are not truly human, and can therefore be disposed of as commodities. Such social cleansing becomes intensified if we believe that we are actually threatened, such as Home Office mythology about sex workers as reservoirs of disease (social pollution). She demonstrates that both acts and attitudes by authorities, media and the police inflame hatred against sex workers leading to increased crime against women, that is rationalised, less likely to be reported and less likely to be acted on. We called for decriminalisation, based on the lived realities of women, because criminalisation dehumanises all of us, is ineffective and harms women, not because we support sustaining patriarchy. Criminal law is never a substitute for failure to address social ills. References 1. Remembering Ipswich: a plea for human rights. http://myweb.dal.ca/mgoodyea/files/rememberingipswich.doc 2. Davidson JO. The rights and wrongs of prostitution. Hypatia 2002 Spring 17(2): 84-98 3. Miriam K. Stopping the traffic in women: power, agency and abolition in feminist debates over sex-trafficking. Journal of Social Philosophy 2005 Spring 36(1): 1-17 4. Sullivan B. Rethinking prostitution, in Caine B, Pringle R (eds.) Transitions: New Australian Feminisms Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1995 184- 197 http://www.atc.org.yu/data/File/Prostitucija/feminism%20and%20prostitution.pdf 5. Weitzer R. New directions in research on prostitution. Crime, Law & Social Change 2005 43: 211-235 6. O’Neill M. Prostitution and feminism: Towards a politics of feeling Polity Press, Cambridge 2001 ISBN-10: 0745612040 7. Day SE, Ward H. Advocacy for health in sex workers. Rapid Response January 15 8. Pateman C. Defending prostitution: charges against Ericsson. Ethics 1983 93: 561-65 9. Ericsson L. Charges against prostitution: an attempt at a philosophical assessment. Ethics 1980 90: 335-66 10. R v. Labaye, [2005] 3 S.C.R. 728, 2005 SCC 80 11. Kinnell H. Murder made easy: the final solution to prostitution?, in Campbell R, O’Neill M (eds.) 2006 Sex work now. Willan, Cullompton, Devon 2006 ISBN 1-84392-096-4, pp. 141-168 Competing interests: None declared |
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Bianca Felix, Medical Officer Melbourne, Australia
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Just a brief word about sex work and sexual health in Australia: Each state has its own laws governing what is, and is not, legally permissible. (Generally outdoor v. indoor work) There are OH & S standards that apply to what is legally permissible. I worked as a medical practitioner for some time at a free, walk-in sexual health clinic that was run as part of the public health system. Many of the clientele were sex workers. (Other client groups included university students... gay men... cheating husbands... international travellers... etc.) All pts received the same - high - standard of clinical care. I believe such a service is essential in all communities, and reflects the fact that sexual health is an important part of life. Competing interests: None declared |
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Mary L Sullivan, Author and Member of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (Australia) Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia 3122
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Dr Mary Lucille Sullivan Goodyear and Cusick’s article ‘Protection of sex workers’ propose decriminalisation of prostitution as the most effective means for governments and health and social services to meet their duty of care to people in prostitution–to end the cycle of violence that those in the sex industry experience. They base their position on the belief that ‘state oppression’ in the guise of restrictive and punitive laws ‘invites victimisation and creates barriers to accessing health and social care’. They call for comparisons with more liberalised countries which have moved towards decriminalisation. The State of Victoria has now experienced over two decades of regarding prostitution as work, the first of four Australian states to treat the trade as a legitimate industry. The government regards brothel and escort workers as ‘sexual services’ which are licensed similar to real estate agents, for example, and occupational health and safety (OHS) standards apply. In addition small owner-operated brothels can operate without a licence. The few restrictions the government places on the industry relate to local planning and health regulations. The annual staging of Sexpo, a trade show for prostitution that draws crowds of 70,000 over four days, suggests that within Australia the stigma associated with prostitution is quickly disappearing. However the Victorian (and Australian) experience demonstrates that treating prostitution as work not only does not control prostitution’s harms, it produces many of its own making. The purported benefits of decriminalisation for women in prostitution are a myth(1). State endorsement of prostitution greatly expands the legal, as well as illegal, sectors of the industry. While industry revenue Australia wide has grown significantly, 11.1 per cent in 2005-2006, and employment increases annually by around 5 per cent (10 per cent are students), in real terms the money women take home has declined significantly(2). Sex entrepreneurs, mainstream financial institutions and the Government have been the main beneficiaries of legitimising prostitution as work. Most women continue to enter and be entrapped in prostitution through economic necessity, histories of abuse and lack of family support. In these circumstances women continue to be coerced either overtly (rape and assault), or through economic necessity to meet the demands of both brothel owners and clients to provide whatever services are demanded. Studies have shown that male buyers in Victoria will not use condoms, with one in five men having admitted to unsafe sex. Men have also become more demanding of the type of service they want. The demand for oral sex, for instance, has been replaced by the demand for anal sex and the market for sado-masochistic practices as well is expanding. Women have reported that despite claims that brothels provided safer working environment, many prefer to work alone and risk violence at the hands of buyers than be subjected to violence by both buyers and brothel staff and security. The Government’s has not met its legislative promise to use its licensing fees to fund exit program even the Victorian sex industry itself reports up to 70 per cent of women want to leave. I also challenge the fiction that the prostitution industry can be neatly categorised into a well–regulated business where occupational health and safety can be applied, and where law enforcers can effectively deal with any clandestine operations. Illegal brothel prostitution under Victoria’s model system is 4 to 5 times that of the regulated sector. However criminal behaviour and involvement is a feature of both sectors. Sex exploiters indiscriminately traffic women for commercial sexual exploitation, into both legal and illegal brothels, the former often a safe entrepot for the illicit trade. Victoria also has the highest child prostitution in the country. The authors suggest that prostitution and trafficking, underage sexuality and organised crime must be uncoupled. I argue that legitimising prostitution as work in Victoria, in effect, mandates a steady flow of women and girls to meet the demands of the vastly expanded and lucrative market. The authors do recognise that decriminalised models will not completely eliminate street prostitution, but they suggest it will enhance women’s choices and make the streets safer. On the contrary, Victoria’s tolerance of prostitution has been accompanied by significant increases in the street trade as well as escalating violence against those women on the streets as well as women and girls who live in the vicinity. Victoria’s legal prostitution businesses notionally provide the most optimal conditions for creating a safe place and system of work. However both Government and sex worker organisations’ OHS literature recognises that prostitution is a high-risk occupation in terms of violence and coercion, irrespective of whether it is legal or not. Sexually transmitted infections, sexual harassment, physical and mental abuse, unwanted pregnancies and rape remain among the workplace hazards listed in OHS guidelines. Solutions to try and deal with the consequences of these dangers are ludicrous and tragic. The use of prophylactics as protection against STIs is prioritised. Yet the OHS literature makes clear that condom breakage and slippage are inevitable, highly dangerous and the consequences are immediate. That is assuming that a woman can negotiate safe sex, which, as suggested above, is questionable. Risk prevention strategies to guard against violence include panic buttons in rooms, video surveillance to screen clients and ultimately when these fail, self- defence courses. Surely the hazards of prostitution meet John Stuart Mills definition of ‘measurable harm’ which the authors argue must be the basis of defining a crime. The real problem is that legitimising prostitution as work has allowed violence that is unacceptable in any other workplace to become normalised for women in prostitution as just sex and just part of the job. No occupational health and safety strategy can deal with this reality. Criminalisation does indeed harm women in prostitution. But legitimising prostitution as work has simply worked to normalise the violence and sexual abuse that they experience on a daily basis. The authors refer to the Swedish model as ‘moralistic’. I suggest that to effectively address the rights of women in prostitution to equality and safety we must seriously consider this option. Sweden tackles both side of the prostitution equation: the demand for prostitution as well introducing workable strategies to change the economic and social disparities that make women and girls vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Of course to do this governments and health carers must be prepared to challenge the presumption that men have a right to purchase and use women sexually for their own needs–the male sex right. Footnotes 1. The discussion below draws on research findings published in my book Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution. Melbourne, Spinifex Press. 2007. 2. IbisWorld Industry Report. (2006). Sexual Services in Australia (23 May). IbisWorld Pty. Ltd. Competing interests: None declared |
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J E M SCANLON, CONSULTANT PAEDIATRICIAN WORCESTERSHIRE ROYAL HOSPITAL, WR5 1DD
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Dear Sir In their excellent article in the BMJ of the 13.1.07, Michael Goodyear and Linda Cusick comment on the need for the protection of sex workers. They suggest that decriminalisation could restore public health priorities and human rights. I think that there is a parallel with the problems that have been encountered by paediatricians recently in dealing with fabricated illness. Some of the difficulties encountered by paediatricians in recent times in relation to fabricated illness (including the high profile cases involving Meadows and Southall) have at least in part arisen because of the criminalisation of the issues involved. Some of the adults involved with fabricated illness in children have psychiatric problems and psychiatric needs. Dealing with those as a criminal proceding does not seem to be the ideal way of sorting out the issues involved. The family courts are due to be reformed in a variety of ways. However, the principle of the child's needs coming first will always remain one of the highest priorities. This does not always remain a priority when a case moves on to criminal procedings. We like to think that our society had developed more liberal attitudes over the last thousand years. However, led by the media, today's society finds it difficult to accept that anyone - especially mothers - might harm children; but when there is a suggestion that they have harmed a child the media frenzy is the modern equivalent of burning witches at the stake. I believe that if all these cases were dealt with by the legal profession considering the child's needs as the highest priority, some of the criminal procedings would not be necessary. Yours faithfully J Scanlon Consultant Paediatrician Competing interests: None declared |
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Tuppy Owens, Charity Coordinator TLC, 4S Leroy House, 436 Essex Road, London N1 3QP
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I read Dr Sullivan's letter with enthusiasm as I am extremely interested in the success of decriminalising sex work. Sadly, her letter is not based on fact. It is rather a classic Stalinist/feminist argument putting over authoritarian anti-sex and anti-male feminist politics, using unknown sources of information. I immediately recognised the stream of misinformation when Dr Sullivan described Australia's Sexpo as a “trade show for prostitution”. It is in fact just a commercial trade show, like Britain's Erotica, promoting pornography, sex toys and fetish wear. Dr Sullivan, like most feminist campaigners, speaks of prostitution as if it is only done by women, whereas we all know that both men and women work as sex workers. She ignores the actual democratic rights of sex workers and their clients to engage in consensual adult behaviour. She is condescending to sex workers rather than respectful. She singles out sex workers as having to work out of economic necessity for their bosses and clients, but we all know that is the same for most employees and freelancers. Sullivan's claim that legitimising sex work leads to more criminality and violence is also false. For one thing, the criminality and violence would not have been reported before the decriminalisation took place. If sex work business has expanded, so will all aspects of it. Many other businesses attract gangsters, such as night clubs, gambling casinos and the construction industry, and nobody suggests that this should lead to these industries being closed down. Criminality is always with us in all walks of life, despite feminists and religious fundamentalists selling us their utopian dreams, it always will be. What is needed to minimalise criminality is improved policing of the criminals who work within the industry. It is also necessary to raise the status of sex workers by transforming sex work into a specialist social service. The latter was proposed in the Sexual Freedom Coalition Response to the Home Office Consultation Paper Paying the Price, with sex centres being attached to health centres around the country (so far ignored by the Home Office). The Swedish Model which criminalises clients is inhumane, and is now thankfully being challenged in Sweden. Pru, one of the TLC sex workers has been invited to take part in a Swedish television documentary made by Titan Television, Stockholm to be transmitted on their Channel 5. Pru will be featured talking about disabled people using sex workers. The producers tell us that in Sweden this is a big issue because Swedish people feel that disabled people should have the right to buy sex from sex workers. Hopefully, Pru will have the opportunity to prove that the right to buy sex from sex workers is beneficial to many people's mental health, however socially, physically or emotionally impaired they might be. And, who is to be the judge of that? Dr Tuppy Owens www.tlc-trust.org.uk www.sfc.org.uk Competing interests: None declared |
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Basil Donovan, Professor of Sexual Health National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, 376 Victoria Street, Sydney NSW 2010, Aus, Christine Harcourt, Sandra Egger, Kate Demaere, Jody O'Connor, Lewis Marshall, John M Kaldor, Marcus Y Chen, Christopher K Fairley
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Dr Sullivan’s assertions about the sex industry in Victoria, and Australia more generally, appear to be derived from an ideological perspective rather than having an empirical basis. We do not wish to debate her ideology, but are concerned about a number of assertions that she makes, and the potential for them to cause harm to women who are currently engaged in sex work. As there are too many errors and apocryphal claims in her report to deal with in total, we have chosen to deal with just two key issues: Without disclosing any sources, Dr Sullivan claims that most women engaged in sex work in Victoria are coerced into sex work and that the ‘male buyers… will not use condoms.’ She provides no evidence or even a definition for ‘coercion.’ This claim is inconsistent with our research experience with sex workers over several decades, as well as the direct clinical experience of several of us. The second assertion is countered by published research: sex workers attending the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre reported 100% condom use during commercial sex resulting in extraordinarily low incidences of sexually transmissible infections.[1] Again without any evidence, Dr Sullivan claims that decriminalisation of sex work has created a ‘vastly expanded and lucrative market.’ Indeed, under its federal structure Australia is an excellent environment to investigate that possibility because its various jurisdictions have highly variable legal responses to sex work: ranging from decriminalisation without regulation, through decriminalisation with regulation, to ongoing criminalisation.[2] In a national population-based study, when Australian men were asked about their use of commercial sexual services, those men living in the decriminalised states and territories did not report an increased use of such services. In fact, the highest consumers of sexual services were men living in Western Australia and the Northern Territory where sex work remains criminalised.[3] We are currently funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (grant number 352437) and the Victorian Department of Human Services to investigate the impact of the law on the health and welfare of sex workers across a range of Australian jurisdictions including Victoria. Data collection is underway, and we are looking forward to being able to provide more authoritative information for those with an objective interest in sex work and its ramifications. References: 1. Lee DM, Binger A, Hocking, Fairley CK. The incidence of sexually transmitted infections among frequently screened sex workers in a decriminalised and regulated system in Melbourne. Sex Transm Infect 2005; 81: 434-6. 2. Harcourt C, Egger S, Donovan B. Sex work and the law. Sexual Health 2005; 2: 121-8. 3. Rissel CE, Richters J, Grulich AE, de Visser RO, Smith AMA. Aust NZ J Public Health 2003; 27: 191-7. Competing interests: None declared |
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