The horrifying murders of five young women in Ipswich have thrown the nation into one of its periodic fits of hypocrisy about prostitution. Somehow we seem to be in permanent confusion about the oldest profession, torn between contempt, ignorance and political correctness.
The unfortunate women in Ipswich were all prostitutes and all the early news reports described them that way. Rightly so. If they had not been street walkers, they would still be alive. Their unpleasant occupation was relevant to their deaths and it was in the public interest to know that.
Yet immediately from all sides came the usual cry that they should not have been described as prostitutes; that was demeaning; they were women, people and daughters first of all; they should not be stigmatised; they should have been called sex workers, like any other kind of worker.
This is all nonsense. Prostitution is not like any other kind of work. It has to do with powerful feelings and with the suppression of powerful feelings — with lust, disgust, shame, greed and desperate need.
It is true that at the more genteel end of the spectrum prostitution can be satisfactory to all concerned. The good-time girls in clubs, the poules de luxe, the cosy madams like Cynthia Payne who offered tea, eggs and Luncheon Vouchers to her suburban clients, and the sole traders who have satisfactory regulars have all found a way of making money that suits them well enough.
It’s also true, I imagine, that some prostitutes enjoy their work, particularly at the expensive end of the business. I remember once in an expensive louche dive almost being picked up by a handsome and rich Swede in London on business (until my husband reappeared from the bar) and thinking how attractive he was and how beautiful his manners. But it seems self-evident that most women do not enjoy commercial sex.
The prostitutes I’ve spoken to, mainly girls in clubs, do not pretend to think it’s much fun, although they have to pretend to their clients that they do; they just like the easy money and are not too squeamish to earn it on their backs. The same, more than one has told me, could be said of quite a few married women, too.
It always amuses me that people who stand up so stoutly for the right of sex workers to professional respect are shocked by the idea that respectable men, so to speak, might choose to go to whores, and that respectable girls become whores. It is the priggery of the bien-pensant.
It is all right, it seems, if girls are driven to prostitution by poverty or addiction, and if men become clients because they’ve got problems. But the idea that many nice enough men like casual sex, that prostitutes might be fun and sexually skilful, and that many women sell themselves out of choice is profoundly shocking to some people. My view is the opposite. One need not be shocked or censorious, but one should not accord respect either. The point, surely, is that some kinds of prostitution rightly carry much more stigma than others.
How can one describe as “sex work” — with attendant rights and trade unions — what the Ipswich girls were doing to feed their drug habits. How can one do anything but stigmatise it — the trade, if not the girls, and the clients perhaps most of all. It is demeaning, disease ridden and dangerous. It is a public nuisance, a public health hazard and threatening to residents.
Some of the girls who were killed, and their friends who were interviewed, described a miserable existence, driven to risking death for their next fix, as well as the horror of sex with some dirty, furtive stranger in a back alley or back seat. To avoid stigmatising this is to give tacit permission to something unacceptable. A stigma is a clear and harsh warning to others.
The question is what, if anything, should be done. It seems to me there are two sorts of acts of prostitution; those that concern the rest of us and those that do not. Those that don’t affect the rest of us should not be illegal — what business of ours are such transactions, distasteful as they might be, if they don’t cause any trouble to anyone? The laws against prostitution should be revised, in the name of humanity, and also in the name of more freedom and less government. Currently prostitution is not illegal but soliciting, procuring and brothel keeping are. This is absurd and a perfect illustration of our hypocritical national confusion. How can one work as a prostitute without soliciting, procuring and keeping bawdy houses? It’s all part of the business.
The business of prostitution (including all brothels) ought not to be illegal, if and when it presents no problems. But neither should it be legalised, in the sense of having legal recognition; prostitution, like poverty, may be always with us but that does not mean we need to approve of it officially. All that actively concerns the public and the criminal justice system is sexual slavery, sexual violence and kerb crawling — most of which can be dealt with under existing laws. Kerb crawling has been a criminal offence since 2001, although this has apparently had little effect on the number of clients. And if brothels were permitted, desperate women would not have to work the mean streets, though doubtless many still would.
One of the many depressing things about the Ipswich murders is that the Home Office issued a prostitution strategy — rather a strange title — in January. Called Paying the Price, it was an attempt to deal with some of these problems, not least the small minority (about 10%) of prostitutes who are street walkers. Supposedly the most thorough overhaul of prostitution law for more than 50 years, it made a few modest suggestions.
Almost nothing has happened since; the Home Office admitted as much last week, although it claims that the strategy’s idea of legalising “mini-brothels” — with no more than two sex workers and a helper — is under “active consideration” with “stakeholders”; they agree that the law now encourages prostitutes to risk working alone.
Presumably the Home Office has given way to tabloid pressure, or the inability of “stakeholders” to agree on anything. Perhaps, though, the wasted lives of the young women in Ipswich will remind us all that it is high time the government thought again, and much more radically, about prostitution. Meanwhile, the police could start enforcing the laws we have.
