Scottish Sex Work: Concluding Thoughts

Over the past few months I’ve spoken to a number of different people involved in the sex-working business. It’s difficult to get them to open up. Most people have a preconceived opinion about the sex trade, usually along the lines of a woman crying into some fat guy’s pubic hair as her pimp/abusive boyfriend screams in her face. No-one I’ve met or talked to over the last few months denied that people are exploited in the industry, but most of them were keen to stress that many choose to have sex for money of their own accord.

The problem seems to be ideology. Middle-class women sitting in universities try to picture themselves in such a line of work and imagine it to be distasteful and demeaning. Many of the charities who work with sex workers in Scotland have the foundational belief that all prostitution is exploitation. For instance, the Scottish Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation believe that, 'Sexual exploitation eroticises women’s inequality.' They scoffed at the idea that anyone could choose the enter into the profession. Jenny Kemp, responding to my query on the SCASE Facebook page, said:

“People have to say to themselves and to others they're okay, happy even, when they're involved in prostitution as a survival mechanism – it's only after exiting that they can acknowledge they were not happy. But even if there were a few individuals who were happy to be involved, it doesn't make it alright. We don't tell women who are in abusive relationships who accept it as part of the relationship, ‘Well, that's fine, that's your choice.’ We see domestic abuse as a societal and public health issue. Prostitution is the same.”

Here we get into the issue of consent. Can adults be trusted to enter into sexual contracts of their own free will? Or would those who are exclusively anti-prostitution, in all its forms, say that no women (or indeed person) can ever be trusted to make such a commercial sexual contract?

I spoke to an Inverness based escort named Amanda Redfern who questioned whether it was truly feminist to deny her to make her own decisions regarding her body and her livelihood. While she felt that any work done to prevent trafficking was a good thing she offered up the same analogy as Jenny Kemp, but in the reverse direction;

“Trying to ban all prostitution because of the dark side of the industry is like trying to ban marriage because some people are victims of domestic violence. It's using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

No-one is denying that being a sex-worker is an unsafe occupation. That even one experience of commercial sex gives you a lifetime ban on giving blood via the NHS shows that something is going wrong, but could the problem not be the underground, semi-legal nature of the profession?

If two or more sex workers operate from the same premises they can be accused of brothel keeping and taken to court, like Sheila Farmer (a London based sex-worker) was in January. Yet using legislative restrictions to force people to work alone puts them in a much more dangerous situation. A number of the sex workers I spoke to said that they were the only person working in the industry that they knew. They were afraid to talk about their experiences for fear that their friends and relatives would find out and react badly. Some were worried their kids would be bullied at school if they were outed. This all suggests that the stigma, and the resulting isolation, could be causing much of the harm.

There are small ways that escorts (the main group of sex workers I talked to) are getting around the issue. Support and Advice for Escorts (SAAFE) have a ‘Warnings & Wasters’ room on their forums, something that is found on many of the escorting sites. This is just a modern incarnation of the ‘ugly mugs’ idea and gives the escorts an opportunity to identify potentially dangerous ‘punters’ (customers/clients) and hopefully prevent other women from having similar trouble. Of course all sexual violence should be reported to the police too.

The problem with SAAFE and many of the other online resources for escorts is that streetwalkers and those who work from saunas, or more isolated brothels and shared houses, may not have as easy or private access to the internet. My research into the issue has been mostly internet based (conversations over e-mail, private messaging, text messages from phone numbers found online, ‘real world’ interviews arranged with people ‘met’ online). It’s easy to forget that private internet access is a privilege and that I may be communicating only with the top tier of those in the industry.

Rebecca, an Edinburgh based worker, spoke candidly about the contact she has with more disadvantaged women. She says, “Of course I do see women that are not as blessed as me, uneducated, foreign and young who have no respect for themselves and are often, to be honest, quite ill. Some Polish women have told me how they have had passports stolen, been beaten and made to sell themselves for a pittance etc. I know that I am very lucky, if I wanted to stop tomorrow I could. I am in control and that is the main thing.”

Here at the end of my small investigation I am as conflicted about the issue of prostitution as I was when I started, although I hope I am much better informed. One worry I have is that the sex industry is still very much directed at heterosexual men, as if their sexualities are the only ones that matter. I spoke to a man who claimed to be an escort offering services for women, but he turned out to have never had a client (despite advertising for the last two years). The male for male escorts didn't seem to have much contact with the female escorts, at least at the independent escort level. I didn't come across a transsexual worker.

It may be that those at the higher levels would indeed benefit from more legal rights and the removal of social stigma. I believe that talking about our sex lives openly and honestly will improve our society, somehow. Shame and secrecy can't be the way to having healthy and happy sex lives. However, I would warn anyone who reads this and sees an invitation to become a sex worker (or those who, over the course of this project, have accused me of encouraging prostitution) to bear in mind Amanda Redfern’s parting advice;

“Know what you are getting into. When you have done that, go to the main street of your town and count the passing men. Could you have sex with every tenth man you see? If you think ‘Ugh! He has a beard/is fat/has bad teeth’ or whatever, then think again. Part of this job is being able to look past all that and find something attractive in every man who walks through your door as long as he is clean, polite and respectful.”