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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - May 2003
Bill sanitises reality of prostitution
and its effects
Could there be a more politically correct subject than the Prostitution
Reform Bill? Steadily making its way through Parliament, the bill
is designed to ensure an environment of occupational health and
safety for prostitutes and their clients.
It is intended to protect prostitutes from exploitation and correct
the glaring double standard of an activity that is illegal for prostitutes
but not for their clients.
The bill, promoted by Christchurch Central MP Tim Barnett, endorses
the giving and receiving of money for sex as a private act between
consenting adults and stresses that prostitution is a service industry.
In the process of legitimising this, the bill is guilty of sanitising
the reality of the work a prostitute does and its wider effects. Anyone
who has encountered the activity of a prostitute knows it is anything
but an emotionally or physically clean profession.
A 1992 publication, Backstreets: Prostitution, Money, and Love, described
it best: "The everyday life of prostitution is distant from most of
us. And here, our imagination is a poor assistant. Negotiate a price
with a stranger. Agree. Pull down one pant leg. Come and take me.
Finished. Next, please. It becomes too ugly to really take it in.
The imagination screeches to a halt."
Suddenly it doesn't seem quite the same as other service industries,
does it? Not in the same league as making coffee at Starbucks, or
pumping gas, or clipping movie tickets at the Rialto.
In Sweden, that most liberal of societies, they faced the same issue,
beginning at the same point: how to protect the well-being of those
working in the sex industry.
But rather than adhering to a narrow model of occupational health
and safety, the Swedish Government decided to look at the industry
as a whole. They commissioned studies on the effects of prostitution,
not just on the women themselves but also on their clients and society
in general. And study after study, from personal stories to longitudinal
research by criminologists, found that all prostitutes suffer deep
psychological damage as a result of their occupation.
New Zealand psychologist Miriam Saphira knows about this. She reports
that after researching prostitution for more than two decades, she
has not yet met one happy, robust prostitute. All have been damaged.
She says there is no other job outside of front-line police, ambulance
work, or war where one has to completely dissociate from oneself to
do the task. Most prostitutes suffer post-traumatic stress disorder
as a result. Perhaps this is the reason 85 per cent of prostitutes
use hard drugs as the most efficient way to deaden their feelings.
Then, of course, there is the fact that about 80 per cent of women
in prostitution have been the victims of rape. American researcher
Dr Melissa Farley found in her study of 854 prostitutes in nine countries
that 89 per cent of them wanted to leave prostitution, but did not
have any other options. Other researchers estimate that 65 to 95 per
cent of prostitutes have been victims of incest. And three international
surveys indicate that between 60 and 90 per cent of prostitutes have
suffered prior sexual abuse.
And so it goes on. Study after study revealing that no matter how
you slice it, prostitution is not an act between equally free individuals.
But our reform bill, with its lofty intention of safeguarding the
human rights of sex workers, seems to have missed all this. Nowhere
in the world have the aims of Mr Barnett's bill been achieved through
decriminalisation. In fact, the form of decriminalisation this bill
outlines empowers pimps, cements and institutionalises emotional and
physical abuse, and expands the market.
In Victoria, it is estimated that decriminalisation has tripled the
industry and increased, rather than decreased, criminal control of
parlours and women. Auckland massage-parlour operators said in their
submission that they expected trafficking in women to increase significantly
under decriminalisation. It has even been predicted that decriminalisation
will at least double or treble the industry.
Which begs the question: how will New Zealand pimps and massage-parlour
owners (perhaps they will be redefined as sex entrepreneurs) meet
that demand? Will it be your daughter who, in the morally neutral
vacuum of this legislation, makes a toss-up between serving in a cafe
or serving in a massage parlour?
But there is an alternative. Rather than bleaching the reality out
of the sex industry and casting it as just another OSH issue, we should
emulate Sweden. In 1999 it also decriminalised prostitution but with
a twist. Any woman can offer herself for sale but if you are a pimp,
a massage-parlour owner, or a client, you are a criminal.
Sweden's unique approach, underlining that in an equal society the
buying of sexual services is not acceptable, has led to prostitution
declining by up to 50 per cent, with no indication that the sex industry
has gone underground. Other countries with legislation resembling
our proposals, such as Finland, France and Norway, are now looking
to enact legislation similar to that of Sweden, because, rather than
safer environments, they are finding they are overrun with the illegal
trafficking of women and children, and an explosion of social problems
associated with prostitution.
If New Zealand passes this bill, we will, as a society, be taking
a morally neutral position on an activity that is never neutral. And,
ironically, we will be asking our MPs to cast a conscience vote in
a moral vacuum.
So what are we going to do - decriminalise something that on the surface
seems like a victimless activity but isn't? Or are we going to act
like a mature country?
Why not follow Sweden and acknowledge that prostitution is not just
a simple service exchange between consenting adults.
It is a complex, injurious, debilitating, and marginalising activity
that damages not only the participants but our country as a whole.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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