Crazy hours. Chasing dollar. Constantly laying yourself open for strangers. Freelance journalism is pretty similar to prostitution, and I should know – I've had better careers than you in both. I start every article I write about sex work by outing myself as a former pro because there are so few people in the media with firsthand job experience of the issue. See what I did there? It was a joke about handjobs. Because I used to do them. For money. When I was a prostitute. Anyway, I've asked some current sex workers how the game could be improved. Apart from, you know, clients washing their fucking dicks before appointments. Obviously, I was hoping to interview a real expert on the matter – someone like Lena Dunham, or Emma Thompson, perhaps, but they were busy.
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LISTEN TO SEX WORKERS
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"There's a certain type of feminist," says Smith, "who has a 1970s-ish understanding of what womanhood is, that seems to have this profound and irrational hatred of sex workers and trans women." I suspect they see both matters as things that people 'do' – and if only they could only campaign hard enough, people would stop having sex for money or sex changes and all the other naughty things that upset the fancy ladies of White Feminism. They are modern day missionaries, white-gloved and disapproving, here to save everyone by, erm, trying to stop us doing things with our own bodies.Lee is more diplomatic. "I have no doubt that some of them have good intentions at heart, but at best they are very ill-informed." Do they really believe they can end the oldest profession going? "There's never been a society without prostitution," says Lee, "and there never will be either. For me it's about how we manage the most vulnerable people." Of course there are vulnerable people working in the sex industry. Just as there vulnerable people in showbiz. And banking. And politics. "You're not protecting them by taking away their income," Lee adds. "What you need to do is give them safety in the workplace."Lee is challenging Northern Ireland's sex work laws through the courts next month. It's the only occupation in which UK law compels people to work on their own and she says it sends a message to would-be attackers that "we're vulnerable, we're alone, we probably carry cash and we're highly unlikely to report it to the police," though she insists the industry isn't inherently dangerous. "It's the conditions in which we're forced to work that are dangerous." Every sex worker-led organisation that I speak to agrees.Soliciting laws criminalise people who work on the streets, but rather than end streetwalking, Lee says they just make the job more dangerous. "When the tolerance zone was removed in Edinburgh, the number of assaults against sex workers shot up by 95%. The police pulled back from patrolling the area whereas before they were there to protect the girls. Now they were there mainly to nab clients, if they were there at all. It happened in Dublin in 1993 as well. Violence against sex workers sky rocketed because clients knew they could get away with it."
LEGALISE SEX WORK
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Smith adds: "When you criminalise kerb-crawling, the client is jumpy and saying 'Get into my car quickly. We'll have a conversation about services and prices and condom when we drive off, because I don't want the police seeing you leaning in.' So sex workers, who've got to pay their rent like everyone else, have to acquiesce." She also points out that, conversely, soliciting laws actually prevent people from leaving sex work. "If you have a criminal record for soliciting, that makes getting another job much harder." Hard as a fucking dick, I'm guessing.Many anti-sex work feminists say they merely wish to target clients and end demand – as though this would happen in a vacuum. In reality, it just makes sex workers desperate. As Smith says, it's all very well being told "Amazing, no more clients! Patriarchy's over!" but what about when your rent is due and you haven't seen a John all week? "If someone calls you up and says 'Hi luv, I see you're advertising sex for £100 [€134]. I have £60 [€80] and was wondering if I could get oral without [a condom]?' you have less power to say, 'Fuck off. I don't want to negotiate my prices or condom use.'" And you should always have power to tell someone to fuck off. It's a basic human right as far as I'm concerned.Then there are the brothel laws, which criminalise two or more people working together. "You're always in danger of having the police turning up to raid the flat and arrest you," says Smith, "and you will each be prosecuted for brothel keeping the other." Um. OK. What's the most legal way to do it? "Work alone and advertise online." I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty risky to me. "Even then you're subject to stuff like anti-pimping laws," says Smith. "So if your landlord knows you're a sex worker, he can be done for pimping. That puts people like me in the vulnerable position of possibly being evicted at very short notice."
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STOP CONFUSING SEX WORK WITH TRAFFICKING
FINISHING OFF
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