Tasmanian Labor’s agenda for its conference in Queenstown this weekend has promised an opportunity for ‘robust and spirited debate’.
While the decriminalisation of brothels and the legalisation of some illicit drugs are being proposed by two separate branches of the party, the coupling of both proposals is difficult to avoid.
A more cynical person would thank members of the Labor party for at least acknowledging that ‘working’ in brothels requires chemical support in order to dissociate to survive the reality of the sex-trade.
I challenge Young Labor to cite research behind their claim that decriminalising brothels results in further autonomy and protections for ‘sex workers’, and could give them the power to ‘unionise’ and ‘collectively organise’.
If Young Labor had done their homework, they would know that brothels are the means of keeping violence against ‘sex workers’ behind closed doors. Those selling sex in brothels have less negotiating power, are forced to adhere to conditions imposed by the brothel-keeper and any bargaining power becomes increasingly hypothetical, with the sex-buyer dictating with his wallet, which sex acts a woman must perform.
Young Labor’s naive assumption that ‘sex workers’ will unionise independently of third party profiteers, male and female pimps now ‘managers’, drivers and landlords, under the obfuscating title of the ‘operational aspects of sex work’ is staggering.
While it is already legal to buy and sell sex under Tasmanian law, extending this decriminalisation to pimping and other forms of third party profiteering leave those selling sex at high risk of imposed control, including fines for lack of adherence to clothing policy, fines for tardiness, and, most obviously, having a large percentage of their income taken from them. As for other ‘protections’, in a decriminalised brothel in NZ recently, a woman who over-dosed on ‘illicit drugs’ was removed unconscious from the premises in order for the brothel not to come under scrutiny. In fact, in-house knowledge of violent assaults, theft of personal items and money from ‘sex workers’ in decriminalised brothels are rife, but hidden, both by the prostituted who fear losing their livelihoods and scoring a black mark against their name, and the brothel owners themselves.
States with decriminalised legislature are target destinations for sex-traffickers, whereas countries in which buying, pimping and procuring sex is illegal, and those selling sex are completely decriminalised themselves, such as in Sweden, are a turn-off for these same traffickers (*intercepted call via Swedish police). Increased sex-trafficking is evidenced with the international and domestic trafficking of women and girls in both decriminalised New Zealand and NSW.
Putting aside the innate horror of sex-trafficking, an influx of brothel ‘workers’ increases survival competition and women’s livelihoods are substantially reduced. Women are more vulnerable, not less, to endure added sexual violations they otherwise would not.
While it is appreciated that this proposal comes from the ‘rank and file’ of party members, is it also understood that any advice from so called ‘sex worker organisations’ such as Scarlet Alliance, comes not from the ‘rank and file’ of the majority in the sex-trade? These are a minority of those in the sex-trade, often in positions of ‘management’ and/or wholly independent of brothel ‘work’ themselves!
Why take advice from government funded groups in these positions who also minimise the need for exiting strategies for those who want to leave prostitution?
And what ‘union’ worth it’s salt argues for a model of legislation which empowers pimps over ‘workers’?
Perhaps it is understandable that Young Labor has produced an ill conceived policy based on old notions about the politics of prohibition. After all, if high profile human rights organisations such as Amnesty International can be infiltrated by pimps, drafting it’s policy on ‘sex work’ on the basis of brothel-owner Douglas Fox in the UK, brothel owners Escort Ireland, and convicted sex-traffickers such as Alejandra Gil, Mexico, why wouldn’t others?
I encourage a dialogue with Young Labor as it is likely their motivation comes from an ethos of ‘worker’s rights’, but it has been misled by those with a vested interest in opening up opportunities for profiteering from brothel owners and keeping the status quo of pimps over the prostituted. As we know decriminalisation leads to an expansion of the sex-trade from which the majority simply want to get out.
One hopes in the predicted ‘spirited debate’ fiction does not obscure fact, although it seems unlikely. Meanwhile, hundreds of women are trafficked into decriminalised NSW, and a ‘sex worker’ bound and raped in legalised Victoria is remunerated with a phone and money that was stolen from her wallet (rape as theft?)- cases which the Scarlet Alliance vehemently ignore . One wonders which ‘sex workers’ are considered, by them, to be worth fighting for.
Young Labor’s challenge should be to fight the global humanitarian crisis of the 21st century, not cater to the mutli-billion dollar sex-trade and further cement in to the GDP money taxed off the sexually exploited.
Links …
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/trafficking-women-lured-with-student-visas-forced-into-sex-slavery-20140329-35q88.html
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/acquitted-of-rape-real-estate-agent-henry-jiang-must-pay-for-sex-workers-broken-phone-20160426-gof3gv.html
http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/courts-law/melbourne-sex-worker-allegedly-raped-by-client/news-story/8d060cd87fc1f453e2863492ab4f0947
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/vic/VCC/2016/494.html
http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/images/uploads/The_Red_Light_Report_-_NORMAC.pdf
http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:31592
*Simone Watson is an Indigenous woman living in Western Australia, and the Director of NorMAC (Nordic Model in Australia Coalition). She is a prostitution survivor and a contributor to the book Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade edited by Caroline Norma and Melinda Tankard Reist
• Andrew Minney in Comments HERE: … The correct approach to male violence is obvious. To identify it and to repudiate it. The commercialization of exploitation is absolutely the antithesis of Labor principles. Please lead the way forward for a better, safer, respectful future for women and girls by condemning the men who harm them.
• NorMAC: Labor to open the door for violence to women by johns, pimps and traffickers
Simone
November 13, 2016 at 11:24 am
In the last 35 days in Germany, four prostituted women have been murdered by johns. In the case of this fourth victim, the brothel knew he was violent but didn’t inform the police. As neighbours said , they heard screaming but were used to hearing that, and all the drunken men arriving by taxis making a lot of noise. The brothel said they were “Sad because she was a nice woman.”
And before anyone chimes in and says “Oh but that’s not the same as decriminalisation! That’s legalisation!” – Decriminalisation is just legalisation with even less regulation. Think about it.
Source : Sex Industry Kills.
Isla MacGregor
November 13, 2016 at 11:11 am
#4 And Brian Green wants ALP members to put their hands up to stand at the next election:
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/politics/bryan-green-issues-call-for-wouldbe-labor-candidates-ready-to-take-reins-from-oneterm-liberals/news-story/3e654ac8229f3124fbc2b0fe52d89ad0
Many ALP members are outraged by the vote at the ALP state conference to open up Tasmania for open slather brothel businesses trading in women’s bodies and it’s the wrong message for the ALP to be sending to our your girls and women that it is. It is the wrong message for the ALP to be sending to men that it is OK to prostitute and sexually exploit women. [b]Labor’s policy is no solution to addressing inequality for women – it is nothing less than capitulation to male demand and privilege.[/b]
No one in their right mind would want to stand for Labor going to an election with this policy.
Andrea
November 13, 2016 at 10:41 am
Still astonished that Labor’s lack of consultation with sex-trade survivors and peer-reviewed researchers. I thought Labor was against exploitation? So many Labor Party supporters are stunned by this, including me. I won’t be voting for them again if they let this pass.
Isla MacGregor
November 12, 2016 at 6:08 pm
Many Labor Party members are outraged over the fast tracking of a decriminalisation policy on the sex trade at the state ALP conference.
The party has refused to ensure democratic consultation with Survivors who, unlike [i]’sex worker’ front groups[/i] such as the Scarlet Alliance, have no vested interest in profiting from an expansion of both the illegal and legal sectors of the sex trade that has ensued in all other jurisdictions.
The method used to ram this policy through the ALP has been no different to that used by Amnesty International during its so called consultation:
* Restrict access to information and right to know by members of alternative human rights based approaches to prostitution law.
* Refuse to meet with NGO’s with different views
* Reject submissions from other stakeholders
* Restrict time for debate
* Reject Survivor voices being heard during the debate
* Keep the focus off the johns, pimps and traffickers and what they do and why
* Claim to protect the rights of ‘sex workers’ but not don’t mention the over 90% of women who want to Exit the trade as a result of being harmed
* Circulate a biased position prior to any vote on policy
* Stack meetings
The Tasmanian ALP has now entered dangerous ideological territory in backing the opening up of Tasmania to be come part of a global unregulatable multi billion dollar trade that involves organised crime and trafficking in defense of male rights to sexually access women.
The Tasmanian ALP vote on this has rendered the party ideologically bankrupt. Any position they previously had on being part of the global campaign to stop male violence against women has been made a mockery of.
Simone
November 11, 2016 at 3:26 pm
I was interviewed on the phone by a journalist yesterday and discussed the Australian Labor Conference happening this weekend , their proposal to decriminalise pimping and profiteering, how awful that would be, and that nearly 70% of the prostituted develop PTSD.
Today I see that the journalist did indeed write about the Labor Conference, and indeed about PTSD…. But it was about support for paramedics and people witnessing the fall-out of trauma in general. Not a word about PTSD in the sex-trade.
Not one word.
The journalist may have had no control over what she was allowed to write about, but still the irony is sickening.
The paramedics and front line support workers often develop PTSD from witnessing the murder, rape, and bashing of the prostituted; the suicides and accidental overdoses of the prostituted; the heart attacks, and other emergency physical and mental health crises experienced even after/if we’ve manged to leave the sex-trade, all due to our PTSD.
So, yeah, the irony runs deep and runs bitter. In the meantime, people listen to the ‘sex worker rights are human rights’ chants from the front lobby for pimps- the Scarlet Alliance and Vixen Collective, the ones who are advising the Labor Party to decriminalise buying and pimping women.
They don’t care about the prostituted, and it is obvious they don’t care about paramedics or front-line support service providers who witness our brutalisation and dehumanisation either.
Isla MacGregor
November 11, 2016 at 2:29 pm
Thank you Andrew for your important contribution to this urgent crisis of men’s violence to women in the global sex trade.
It is vital for men to take responsibility and voice publicly their opposition to the broader issues concerning men’s violence to women especially so in the global sex trade. Until now this has been a bridge many men have dared not cross – but it is time.
[i]In Tasmania in 2009/2010 100’s of men raped a 12-year old girl sold to them by her mother and step-father in Tasmania’s one “adult, uncoerced†sex trade as 18-year old Angela “new in townâ€. The men who raped her were not paedophiles or criminals. They are ordinary everyday sex buyers. The legal sex trade was both their enabler and legal defence to child rape.
Informed consent (from the perspective of the sex buyer) in a trade built on exploitation of vulnerable women and children is pragmatically impossible. It is a form of rape. The exchange of money suggests this: not detracts. Sex buyers know full well that he and his sexuality of violence is repugnant to women and girls. He expresses this rage and resentments on sex buyer blogs and forums. She – the survivor – expresses her misery in her testimony. The best argument against the sex trade is the sex trade.
Prostitution harms all women and girls well beyond prostitution because it serves as a reminder to them that their sexuality and sex belongs to men and the industry that serves them: whether by force or payment. Given society is the interconnectedness of indivuals: prostitution has wider social consequences. It is politically motivated violence and a harmful cultural practice. Not a private exhange “between two consenting adultsâ€. There are no brothels where women buy sex from vulnerable men and boys. It is a sexed (“genderedâ€) pratice.
Prostitution is male violence against all women and girls. And the point of all this is a man’s orgasm obtained with brutal indifference. Is this truly a social good worthy of trumping all? No. It’s an extraordinarily cruel cultural practice made all the more cruel by blessing it as a “choice†and a “job†and a “sexualityâ€.
The correct approach to male violence is obvious. To identify it and to repudiate it. The commercialization of exploitation is absolutely the antithesis of Labor principles. Please lead the way forward for a better, safer, respectful future for women and girls by condemning the men who harm them.[/i]
Andrew Minney
BSocSc MEthics&LegSt; MA
Posted by Andrew Minney