Sex Workers and Violence Against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle
of the Sexes?
Laura Ma Agustín
Development, Society for International Development
Vol. 44, No. 3, September 2001.
Laura Ma Agustín uncovers some of the myths
around sex workers and the men engaging their services within
the context of building a movement to end 'violence against
women'. She argues that totalizing all experiences of
prostitution with a view to punishment and criminalization does
not work and advocates a much more visionary and pluralistic
approach.
Key words: exploitation, migration, prostitution, sex
workers, trafficking
Sexual exploitation and prostitution
In the movement to construct a discourse of 'violence against
women', and thus to raise consciousness about kinds of
mistreatment which before were invisible, the stage has been
reached where defining crime and achieving punishment appears to
be the goal. While it is progressive to raise consciousness
about violence and exploitation in an attempt to deter the
commitment of crimes, I hope to show that the present emphasis
on discipline is very far from a utopic vision and that we
should now begin to move toward other suggestions for solutions.
The following argument uses the example of prostitution or
'sexual exploitation' as an instance of 'violence against
women', but the approach can apply to any attempt to deal with
not only definitions of gender and sexual violence but with
proposals to deal with them. When applied to adult prostitution,
the term 'sexual exploitation' attempts to change language to
make 'voluntary' prostitution impossible. For those who wish to
'abolish' prostitution, therefore, this change in terms
represents progress, for now language itself will not be
complicit with the violence involved. For those who may or may
not want to 'abolish' prostitution but who in the present put
the priority on improving the everyday lot of prostitutes, this
language change totalizes a variety of situations involving
different levels of personal will and makes it more difficult to
propose practical solutions. When applied to the prostitution of
children, the term 'sexual exploitation' represents a project to
change perceptions about childhood. For those who believe that
the current western model of childhood as a time of innocence
should become the 'right' of all children in the world, this
term is very important.
Criminalization of clients
Efforts to change sexist, racist and other discriminatory
forms of language have long been a focus of projects of social
justice in western societies, and the push to define 'violence
against women' clearly forms part of this movement. Along with
this, we see a strong move to have actions that fall within
these new definitions proclaimed as crimes and their
perpetrators punished. If prostitution is globally redefined as
sexual exploitation (by 'globally' I mean that no distinctions
are made according to whether prostitutes say they 'chose' sex
work to any extent), therefore, all those who purchase sexual
services, called usually 'clients', become 'exploiters'.
Obviously, different terms function better or coincide more
with different situations, but when social movements consciously
work to change language they almost inevitably eliminate these
differences. Since there are still plenty of places in the world
where prostitutes are simplistically viewed as evil,
contaminated, immoral and diseased, campaigns to change language
so as to see the lack of choice and elements of exploitation in
prostitutes' situations are positive efforts to help them. Why,
then, do these positive efforts have to be based on finding a
different villain, to replace the old one?
I am referring to the discipline-and-punishment model that
these efforts to change language and change perception
inevitably use: in constructing a victim they also construct a
victimizer — the 'exploiter', the bad person. After that, it is
inevitable that punishment becomes the focus of efforts: passing
laws against the offense and deciding what price the offender
should pay. This model of 'law and order' is familiar to most of
us as an oppressive, dysfunctional criminal justice system. We
know that prisons rarely rehabilitate offenders against the law;
we know that in some countries prison conditions are so bad that
riots occur frequently, and if they don't, perhaps they should.
We also know that it is usually extremely difficult to prove
sexual offenses (because of how the law is constructed, because
of the difficulty of all these definitions of victimization,
because legal advice can find ways out, etc.). Yet we continue
to insist on better policing and more effective punishment, as
though we didn't know all of this.
International regulations on trafficking and sexual
exploitment
My own work examines both the discourses and the practical
programming surrounding the European phenomenon of migrant
prostitution, the term used to describe non-Europeans working in
the European sex industry (and, indeed, everyone who travels
from one place to another in that vast network of diverse
businesses). In most countries of the European Union, migrants
appear now to constitute more than half of working prostitutes,
and in some countries possibly up to 90 percent (Tampep, 1999).
This situation has caused a change in the thinking on violence:
now 'traffickers' of sex workers are discussed more than their
clients. Because so many of the migrants come from 'third world'
countries, 'trafficking' discourses have become a forum for
addressing 'development' projects such as structural adjustment
policies of the International Monetary Fund. But the more active
debates have concerned violence, in a way that constructs them
as organized crime.
One of the fora of this highly conflictive discussion was the
United Nations Commission for the Prevention of Crime and Penal
Justice, which met various times in Vienna to elaborate
protocols on the trafficking of migrant workers. Two distinct
lobbying groups argued over definitions of words such as
consent, obligation, force, coercion, deceit, abuse of power and
exploitation. Two distinct protocols were produced, one which
applies to the 'trafficking of women and children' while the
other to 'smuggling of migrants'. The gender distinction is
clear, expressing a greater disposition of women — along with
children — to be deceived (above all about sex work), and also
expressing an apparently lesser disposition to migrate. Men, on
the other hand, are seen as capable of migrating but of
sometimes being handled like contraband, thus the word agreed on
is not trafficking but smuggling. The resulting protocols now
form part of the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized
Crime (UN, 2000), which member countries will debate
individually and decide to sign or not.
What is the problem? In an effort to save as many victims as
possible, the protocols totalize the experience of all women
migrants working in the sex industry, and all those who help
them migrate — a wide array of family, friends, lovers, agents
and entrepreneurs, as well as small-time delinquents and
(probably, but this is not proved) big-time criminal networks —
are defined as traffickers. Every kind of help, from preparing
false working papers, visas or passports to meeting migrants at
the airport and finding them a place to stay, is defined as the
crime of trafficking.
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
specifically tries, both at the Vienna meetings and
internationally, to fuse the two concepts of 'trafficking' and
'prostitution' and to define them both as crimes of violence
against women. Not only everyone who helps people migrate and
work in the sex industry but everyone who buys sexual services
ends up defined as an exploiter, a rapist and a criminal. CATW
favours legislation to penalize clients of prostitutes (CATW,
2000).
The booming sex market
The problem with proposing the penalization of sexual
'exploiters', or clients of prostitutes, comes from the
magnitude of the phenomenon, which is almost never confronted.
Statistics are unreliable for all sectors of an industry
overwhelmingly unrecognized legally or in government accounting,
and which operates informally and relies on bribes, legal
loopholes and facades. However, we can understand from the many
studies of different aspects of the sex industry that it is
booming. Prostitution and exploitation sites are so numerous
everywhere that customers cannot be exceptional cases (yet they
are often spoken of as if they were 'perverts' or 'deviants').
Rather it is clear that adult and adolescent men everywhere
consider it permissible to buy sexual services, and some
estimates calculate that most men do it at some time in their
lives.
More than 20 years ago, one Roman prostitute calculated this
way:
Rome was known to have 5,000 prostitutes. Let's say
that each one took home at least 50,000 liras a day. Men
don't go more than once a day. That means that for someone
who asked 3,000 liras in a car, to arrive at 50,000 she had
to do a lot, maybe twenty or so. Figure it out, 20 times
5,000 comes to 100,000 clients. Since it's rare for them to
go every day, maybe they go once or twice a week, the total
comes to between 400,000 and 600,000 men going to whores
every week. How many men live in Rome? A million and a half.
Take away the old men, the children, the homosexuals and the
impotent. I mean, definitely, more or less all men go.
(Cutrefelli, 1988: 26, author's translation).
A French report calculated in 1977 that an average of 40,000
men a day have sexual relations with prostitutes (Crimi, 1979).
In 1996, a Spanish NGO estimated that 300,000 prostitutes might
have three clients a day, making a million buying sexual
services every day in Spain (Hernández Velasco, 1996). Other
measures may demonstrate the size of the clientele: counts of
the number of overt sex businesses, figures on users registered
at Internet commercial sex sites, condom sales in sex
establishments, turnover of vehicles at a given business site,
etc.
The fact that practically none of these consumers acknowledge
what they are buying should not distract us. Millions of men lie
every day about this aspect of their lives, to someone: wives,
friends, girlfriends, children, and themselves. This is a
powerful amount of bad faith or bad karma, but do we want to put
all these people in jail?
Changing attitudes to sex and power
Far from a utopic vision of freedom and equality for all
people, what is being constructed here would have vast numbers
of otherwise conventional people locked up or otherwise
punished. Perhaps if the history of the penal justice system
were more positive, we could say it would be worth it to get the
cleaner, better society awaiting us afterward. But there is no
such history in general; societies seem to be resigned to
recidivist crime and unrehabilitated criminals. So why do we go
on pretending prison works?
A focus on defining crimes and letting people know they are
at risk of arrest for committing them furthermore relies on a
theory of 'deterrence'; that is, that potential criminals will
not commit crimes if they know they may be punished for them.
Conclusive evidence does not exist to show that this theory
works, however, and perhaps least of all with sexual crimes.
Many sexual activities are technically against the law, in both
third and first world countries, but continue to be widely
practiced, tolerated and accepted socially. There are States
that forbid oral or anal sex or sadomasochism or homosexuality,
but motivated people continue to engage in these practices. This
is not to say that sexual exploitation or violence are the same
as such practices but to demonstrate that penalizing sexual
activities has a long history of failure. Above all, social
efforts to abolish prostitution and penalize clients (in Europe
and North America, where it might be thought possible) have
failed for 200 years. Those involved simply move to less visible
locations.
So where are the proposals that show a real utopian vision,
of societies and cultures where exploitation is not routine?
There do not seem to be many, as most projects make no attempt
to work with victimizers/clients themselves as subjects. The
proponents of this particular social change are largely women,
and on this subject they distance themselves from men, making
them potential criminals impossible to study, reason with or
include in building a better world. This simplification also
obscures the role of the many women who participate in
exploitation/prostitution as procurers, business owners,
managers and clients, as well as disappearing the fate of many
male victims who deserve to be seen as needing support or help.
My suggestion is that we begin to move on to proposals that
would work directly with people at all levels to change
attitudes to sex and power. The changes would involve how we
conceive of our personal desires and our potential power over
others — absolutely fundamental changes. Thinking this way moves
us away from classic prostitution debates and battles (a welcome
relief) but also proposes to include 'the other half' of the
problem in projects for change. Many of those working on the
ground with victims of sexual exploitation cannot conceive of
working with victimizers, whether they are sex business owners,
taxi drivers or clients. But it should be remembered that not so
long ago prostitutes were thought to be morally lax and
contaminated, recalcitrant and generally unredeemable. That
attitude has been changing, so we might contemplate possible
change with those who exploit and commit violent acts, too.
If language is important to social movements, then the
language being heard widely on the subject of sexual
exploitation and prostitution needs reshaping. At the moment
what is heard is disciplinary, which may make sense in the short
run, but what we need are long-run, hopeful visions that do not
continue to divide the world into two gendered camps in the
traditional battle of the sexes.
References
- CATW (2000) Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/catw
- Crimi, B. (1979) 'La prostituzione in Francia'. Paper
presented at a Conference on Biological, Social and Legal
Aspects of Prostitution, Rome, November.
- Cutrufelli, M.R (1988) 'La demanda de prostitución',
Debats, no. 24, June.
- Hernández Velasco, I. (1996) 'Un millón de hombres al
día va de prostitutas', El Mundo [Sociedad 26], 27th
December.
- Tampep (1999) Health, Migration and Sex Work: The
Experience of Tampep. Amsterdam: Mr. A. de Graaf
Stichting.
- UN (2000) Convenci&ocute;n de las Naciones
Unidas contra la Delincuencia Organizada Transnacional.
Anexo II: Protocolo para prevenir, reprimir y sancionar la
trata de personas, especialmente mujeres y niños. Anexo III:
Protocolo contra el tráfico ilícito de migrantes por tierra,
mar y aire. Vienna: UN Commission for Prevention of
Crime and Penal Justice.
Original link:
http://www.walnet.org/csis/papers/dsid-0109.html
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