This week, E.U. lawmakers will
consider following the lead of some European nations and criminalizing the
purchase of sex across the continent. But critics of the proposals, including
many sex workers, are legion
 |
Christian Hartmann / Reuters
A prostitute waits for customers along a
road of the
August 28, 2013 |
The Belgian police appear equally indifferent to the women
sitting in the dim red glow of neon tubes, even if they are occasionally
flouting a city rule specifying exactly how much skin can be on display from
neck to navel. Of far more interest to the 40 officers fanning out across the
area one windy Friday night are the license plates of cars crawling past the
windows in the three streets that form the heart of Ghent’s regulated sex
industry.
Nearby in France,
buying sex usually means a hasty transaction on the street and the risk of a
fine or public identification. So young men pack in their cars and drive 50 km
east for nights out that can turn rowdy. “There were complaints about
criminality and disturbances in the neighborhood,” says police superintendent
Johan Blom.
Ghent police now hold monthly operations to stop and search
French cars. If they find drugs or weapons, the men pay a fine and police
motorcycles escort them to the highway and point them toward the border. It’s a
nuisance for the police, but for campaigners pushing for a more unified
approach to prostitution across Europe,
that border is nothing short of a battle line in the fight for a woman’s rights
over her own body.
The
politicians and feminists who consider prostitution a crime against women are
hoping the European Union’s
28 member states will follow the lead of France, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and
criminalize the purchase of sex. A report recommending this approach is due
before the European Parliament in the coming days.
On the
other side of the debate are many social workers dealing directly with
prostitutes, sex workers’ unions and at least seven European governments. They
say any criminalization forces the trade underground, puts sex workers at
greater risk and removes a woman’s right to choose a profession that some see
as their route out of poverty. “It will exist somewhere in the dark, and then
nobody is safe: not the client, and not the girl,” says Isabelle De Meyer, a
social worker in Ghent.
In Belgium, the purchase and sale of sex is legal, but making a
profit from prostitution is forbidden. Cities interpret the laws differently,
and prostitutes in Ghent are officially hired as “servers” in “bars” — in
reality a dimly lit room with a bed behind the glass display window. The
prostitutes must have a contract and social-security number, meaning the city
has a record of every woman working in the sex industry, and social workers can
make regular visits to check for abusive relationships or victims of human
trafficking.
No one claims the system is perfect: police can only act if the
women speak out about abuse or illegal pimps. But all the sex workers who
agreed to speak to TIME said they felt safe in Ghent and opposed
criminalization. “Once these kind of places exist, then everybody can relax and
there is less violence than in the street,” says Gaby, a 25-year-old from
Romania, who like other working women in Ghent’s red-light district asked that
TIME only use her first name to protect her identity.
For every woman like Gaby, however, there is the scared young
East European girl repeating “everything is fine, everything is fine”
while keeping a wary eye out the window. It is the women who may have been
coerced or trafficked into the sex industry who worry Mary Honeyball, a Member
of the European Parliament representing Britain’s Labour Party.
Honeyball has drafted a report recommending E.U. member
states adopt a system known as the Nordic Model, which is currently in place in
Sweden, Norway and Iceland. The model criminalizes buying sex, but legalizes
selling sex, in theory treating prostitutes as victims of a crime rather than
perpetrators. “According to the information we have from Sweden it actually
reduces demand for prostitution, and if you reduce demand, the consequence is
that you reduce human trafficking,” she says.
If the report passes, it would not be legally binding, but
Honeyball hopes it would help steer the debate in member states. France’s lower
house adopted such laws in December, and politicians in Ireland and the U.K.
have also raised it as a possible way forward.
To countries with more repressive laws on prostitution and large
religious or socially conservative communities, it may be a politically
palatable first step. But no European country that has introduced a regulated
sex industry — including Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and
Switzerland — is seriously considering rolling back to the criminalization
of the client, although they are looking at ways to improve the laws.
One country that may amend legislation is Norway, held up as an
exemplar of the Nordic Model. The new Conservative-led government is waiting
for the results of an independent review in June before deciding whether to
repeal the 2009 law banning the purchase of sex.
While the number of women selling sex on the streets initially
decreased, social workers say they did not simply disappear. Some traveled
abroad, while others started selling their services over the Internet. Bjorg
Norli, director of Pro Sentret, which works with prostitutes in Oslo, says
street prostitution is re-emerging, and under the current laws women feel more
vulnerable than ever. Clients rush transactions to avoid detection, meaning
women have little time to assess whether the client poses a danger. If they do
have problems, they are unlikely to go to police out of fear they will then be
monitored by law enforcement looking to catch buyers.
Behind Ghent’s windows, the heaters are on full blast as the
women in their skimpy outfits negotiate via hand gestures with men bundled up
against the cold outside. The going rate is €50 (about $70) for 15 minutes, but
a client may want more time, a lower price or a special service. If a woman has
misgivings, she just leaves the door locked and turns away. Zorha, a former
civil servant from the Netherlands, says on a good night she will have sex with
25 men. It is not a life she particularly enjoys — she wants to open a
restaurant — but when she found herself in debt a few years ago she
decided it was her best option. She and other established Ghent sex workers
worry about the new influx of younger women from Eastern Europe, who they say
work long hours for cut-down rates.
The link between a regulated sex industry and human trafficking
is unclear. While the first E.U. report on human trafficking released last year
shows a high number of victims detected in the Netherlands, countries like
Italy and Romania, where prostitution is illegal, also fared badly. Belgium,
meanwhile, reported relatively low levels. Norway — not in the E.U. but
included in the study — shows barely any change in the year before and
after the law banning the purchase of sex. Similarly conflicting statistics
exist in Sweden.
With a lack of reliable data, the debate often focuses on the
moral rights and wrongs of sex as a commodity, with Honeyball’s report equating
prostitution with “sexual slavery.” For many women working in the industry,
being labeled mute victims of male aggression simply means their voices are
excluded.
“[Politicians] don’t inform us when they are seeking to make our
lives more difficult and dangerous,” says Catherine Stephens, a British
activist with the International Union of Sex Workers. “There is nothing
feminist about the criminalization of our clients and disregarding our
consent.”
@ Time
