Today is the international day to end violence against sex workers. In recognition of the violence done trough ignorance and fear, we are republishing this article that addresses many of the facts and myths about sex workers.
The stereotype of sex workers, that they are all drug addicted, abused, powerless women, pimped out by dangerous men to clients (probably married men) who want weird and kinky sex, is, as most stereotypes are, based on ignorance and fear.
Facts and Myth
Most sex workers are working on the street
It’s all but impossible to get reliable data on the number of sex workers working outside the registered industry. However, the 2003 Australian Study of Health and Relationships found that, of men who visited sex workers the settings included brothels (64.6%), escort services (32.6%), massage parlours (26.8%), private premises with a single sex worker (25.5%), private houses where more than one sex worker worked (11.5%), and street sex work (5.9%).
The Working in Brothels report commissioned by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) in 2009 states that there were approximately 95 licensed brothels and approximately 1,700 exempt sex workers registered in Victoria, so a rough guess would be that around 2,500 people work in the decriminalised framework
As far as I have been able to determine, there is no market for street sex workers for women. Every study I could find that studied male street sex workers found that their only clients were men.
Sex work spreads Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)
Sex workers have lower rates of Sexually Transmitted Infections than the general community
Where STIs among sex workers do occur, they are more likely to be related to their sexual encounters outside work than their professional activities.
Condom usage in sex workers in Australia exceeds 99%
Sex workers are encouraging happily married men to cheat
The Australian Study of Health and Relationships found that men with no regular partner were significantly more likely to have ever paid for sex and significantly more likely to have paid for sex in the past year.
From the study:
Men aged over 30 years were significantly more likely than younger men to have ever paid for sex. The likelihood of having ever paid for sex was significantly greater among men who identified as bisexual. There was no significant association between having paid for sex and non-English-speaking background, education level, region of residence, income or occupational classification.
Men who had paid for sex were significantly more likely than other men to report levels of alcohol consumption in excess of NHMRC guidelines, significantly more likely to have injected illicit drugs, significantly more likely to have elevated psychosocial distress, significantly more likely to have ever been diagnosed with a STD and significantly more likely to have taken an HIV/AIDS antibody test. There was a significant association between having paid for sex and the total number of sexual partners respondents reported. Men who had paid for sex reported significantly more partners over their lifetimes and in the past year. Men who had paid for sex were significantly more likely than other men to have had vaginal intercourse before the age of 16 years and were significantly more likely to have had heterosexual anal intercourse.
Most men have visited a sex worker at some point
The Australian Study of Health and Relationships found that men were significantly more likely than women to have ever paid for sex (15.6% vs. 0.1%). Of the men who had paid for sex, 97% had paid for sex with a woman and 3% had paid for sex with a man. All of the women who had paid for sex had paid men
Sex workers only cater to men who have weird fetishes
The Australian Study of Health and Relationships found that services requested of sex workers by men were: vaginal intercourse (94.5%), masturbation of the man by the worker (89.7%), manual stimulation of the worker by the man (62.5%), fellatio (66.1%), cunnilingus (26.6%), anal sex (2.3%) and BDSM/DS (0.8%).
The sample size of women who had paid sex workers was too small to obtain reliable data on the services women pay for. Aphrodisiac Male Escorts, however, were able to provide the following data on their clients:
30-40% of our clients are between 25 to 35 years of age. 30% of our booking are couples where often times the man organises the encounter for his partner (service is only provided to the lady).
Women only do sex work because they are abused and damaged
Dr Antonia Quadara in her report 2008 report Sex workers and sexual assault in Australia found that getting reliable data on sexual assault among sex workers is just as difficult as it is in the rest of the population – sexual assault is always under-reported. However, of the studies she looked at that contained credible data, she found that sex workers comprise only a very small proportion of sexual abuse survivors. “it could not be established that child sexual assault “contributes uniquely to the onset of prostitution””. There was a connection between a childhood history of abuse, state care and street prostitution but this was not repeated in other sectors of the industry.
Although there may be a connection between child sexual assault, leaving or being removed from home and engaging in prostitution (or survival sex) in order to support oneself, this does not reveal a relationship between child sexual abuse and prostitution per se. It cannot explain why most victim/survivors of child sexual assault do not enter sex work; and this focused sampling cannot account for all women’s entry into prostitution, which is made up of many sectors.
The same report found that sexual assault in the workplace varies significantly across the industry. Street sex-workers experience high levels of assault (46%-78%) workers in brothels and other contexts experienced far lower rates (3%-38%).
Sex workers are all doing it to support a drug addiction
The Working girls : prostitutes, their life and social control study on the Australian Institute of Criminology found that the most common reason given by sex workers for starting in the industry was to earn more money (44.5%). Other reasons (respondents gave multiple reasons) were unemployed at the time (36.7%), curiosity about self or prostitution (25.8%), to support a family (16.7%), to support a man (5.5%), for sexual enjoyment (3.1%) and to support a drug habit (9.45%). The study compared the answers given by sex workers with the expected reasons for entering sex work as given by health workers and students and found that “prostitutes see and treat prostitution as a job option, unlike most non-prostitutes, who see it as an expression of a psycho-social deficiency.”
Sex workers are being trafficked by “pimps”.
This can only apply to street sex workers, where their activities are criminalised, so again, it’s very difficult to obtain robust data on this myth. It would be naïve to deny that it ever happens, but in a decriminalised, safe industry there is no need for “pimps”. Dr Brooke Magnanti wrote a convincing piece dispelling the “pimp”myth and pointing out the underlying racism in the stereotype.
While the “pimp” stereo type may be rubbish, trafficking certainly exists. Again, by its very nature it’s impossible to tell how often it happens in Australia, but it absolutely does occur, it is horrific and utterly evil. It is not, however, what is happening to the thousands of people who chose to work as sex workers in Australia. Trafficking is slavery and rape. Making a choice to be a sex worker is not.
Criminalising sex work will protect women
Elena Jeffries had this to say:
Sex workers have consistently proven that health self-regulation is not only possible but successful; 30 years of research by Basil Donovan, Roberta Perkins, Frances Lovejoy, all Australian Epidemiology Reports and all evaluations of the National HIV and STI strategies show that decriminalisation improves and maintains good sex worker health.
Anyone trying to criminalise sex work is not looking after the best interests of the workers. They have another agenda.
Criminalising the client, not the sex worker, protects women
The Swedish model of criminalising sex work, where only the client, not the worker commits a crime, assumes there is no such thing as consensual sex work. It assumes all sex workers are female, that all of them are victims and all of them are powerless. There is no evidence that it has been any more effective in reducing barriers to exit, harassment of sex workers or any sexual health issues related to sex work.
Sex work is physically dangerous for the worker
Emotional health is more at risk than physical or sexual health and the biggest risk factor for emotional health among sex workers is the social stigma that leads to isolation, shame, fear of rejection and secrecy.
From the CAV report:
The single biggest issue for sex workers is the challenge of stigma. Workers resented perceptions of sex workers as diseased, criminal, victims, drug addicts, promiscuous and without a moral code or values. They felt they are looked down upon by the broader community. Negotiating disclosure to family, friends, colleagues, health professionals and others was cited as a difficult issue for most workers. Strategies to deal with stigma varied among workers. Some workers avoid discussions about work and others actively conceal the nature of their work by substituting another type of work like cleaning, childcare or hospitality. For some workers this impacts upon their ability to socialise with people outside of the industry and to enter relationships; for others, it enhances close bonds in the workplace.
Sex workers only do sex work because they are desperate
Again, from the CAV report:
All workers reported that the most attractive aspect of sex work is the financial reward in combination with the high degree of flexibility. This was particularly attractive to mothers raising children alone, to students and to workers whose opportunities for other work were limited by a lack of skills and training and/or language barriers. Older workers reported facing struggles to maintain earnings.
Social indicator modelling reveals that workers identified ongoing financial security as a key concern; most workers considered their current housing, social support and health to be generally secure and acceptable.
Reported earnings averaged $1000 – $3000 per week for women. Most workers reported working at least three shifts of 8 to 12 hours each. Male sex workers reported less earning capacity than female.
There are barriers to exiting the sex industry. Trying to explain holes in your resume, the registration (in Victoria) that is not expunged after you leave and the inability to find work as lucrative as sex work are all ongoing issues. Many sex workers will transition in and out of the industry with various changes in circumstances.
In their own words:
Finally, it would be incredibly presumptuous of me to speak on behalf of sex workers without allowing them a voice. These are some of the things a few sex workers have said about their work:
Elizabeth, Daily Planet (on being asked what she would want me to tell people on her behalf): “Tell people that we’re not freaks! Tell them we’re not on drugs, we’re not being abused, anyone they know could be doing this job, tell them we’re just people like them.”
Jodi, Daily Planet: “I left school in year 10 and I’ve been doing sex work for 9 years. What am I going to do, go work in Coles for $15 an hour? Or stay here, where I earn hundreds of dollars an hour and have a good time doing it?”
Anthony, Aphrodisiac Male Escorts: “That whole day-spa women-pamper-yourself market is weird. In my experience, women don’t pamper themselves. Some may spend a lot of time and money on their appearance, and that may genuinely make them feel good, but it’s not always in the true sense of self-care. It’s only about how the rest of the world sees them.“
Anthony again: “My job is not about sex, it’s about understanding the client, what they want and how they want me to give them that”
Samantha, Daily Planet: “Nothing happens here unless I want it to; I have far more power in this room than the man does, so how can it be demeaning?”
Samantha again: “There’s such a wide variety of girls here, from every nationality, every age, every background and we all have different reasons for being here, we’re all saving for something, you can’t say we’re all just one single thing.”
Dr Brooke Magnanti: (from her book Intimate Encounters with a London Call Girl) “The men I have encountered in my working life can be characterised by a single feature – timidity…the punters seem uncomfortable with demanding what the, as paying customers are implicitly entitled to. One night men (social interactions, not clients) on the other hand, tend to just take”
Eva Karlsen (her twitter feed @Eva_H_Karlsen) “Every #sexworker has their own truth to share. Just because it doesn’t fit in with your idea of trafficked slaves, doesn’t mean it’s false.”
Tess (CAV report): “There’s so many intelligent women in this industry and you know um and they’re all, they all self support themselves. Own their own homes, cars and you know don’t need a man to do it all for them and it’s such a great feeling being able to financially look after yourself.”
This is an edited version of the article was first published in The King’s Tribune