Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
YESTERDAY, 27 MARCH, marked the second anniversary of legislation which criminalised the purchase of sex in Ireland.
It is the view of the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland (SWAI) that the new law has failed utterly to support sex workers.
Instead, criminalisation has driven the industry further underground, we believe leading to increased violent incidents against sex workers and increased exploitation.
The number of sex workers in Ireland has not reduced and of course, people are continuing to provide sexual services to earn a living.
One escort site alone listed nearly 800 people on one day last week. If you add in those working in erotic massage, street workers, those advertising through various other escort websites and Grindr, as well as those who work only certain days or at weekends, then the number of sex workers in Ireland could run into several thousand.
Criminalisation
What is different under this new law is that sex workers are now forced to work in an
environment that has become more criminalised. This is not just an academic consideration. Every single client is now considered a criminal.
Sex workers need our clients much more than they need us, as this industry is a means of survival for us. So to us, this law has created a buyers’ market and thus clients have more bargaining power.
This has led to an increase in risk-taking behaviour and workers report dropping their prices or offering unsafe services.
Even in Sweden where this law originated, a review found that sex workers reported increased stigma.
The law encourages greater stigmatisation of all sex workers.
It frames us all as helpless victims and facilitates a mentality that dehumanises us.
It enables assaults and attacks on sex workers as vulnerable people, while at the same time creating more barriers for seeking assistance or reporting a crime.
Coercion
There are a minority of sex workers who are trafficked and need urgent support but this
law totally fails to address their needs.
The law does not respond to the circumstances of deep poverty, domestic violence, homelessness, and drug misuse that leads to coercion.
The majority of sex workers in Ireland comprise single mothers seeking to raise a family, students paying their way through college, and trans or migrant workers eking out a living. Another cohort of people has identified sex work as a means to earn an additional income, with flexible hours, as the cost of living increases.
Interacting with Gardai
Sex workers should be encouraged to liaise with Gardaí about their concerns,
however the historically contentious relationship between sex workers and the Gardaí
has only been made worse by this law.
Sex workers are now fearful if they report a crime, that gardaí will then know where they work and try to surveil their workplace and catch their clients.
There are no new services or funding mechanisms to assist those people who wish
to obtain alternative work.
Instead, what is being reported to us is increased stigmatisation, precarious living and marginalisation.
Since the introduction of the new legislation, Uglymugs.ie – an online safety and
screening service for escorts – is reporting a massive 90% increase in the number of violent attacks on sex workers in Ireland.
Additionally, Uglymugs says there is a decrease in the number of victims who want to have their report communicated to gardaí.
These stats are no coincidence. The law change has forced our work deeper underground
and pressures women, men and trans workers to put themselves in riskier
situations.
Marginalised
We believe that the criminalisation of those who purchase sex, under the Sexual Offenses Act, makes life more dangerous for sex workers because it forces them to work alone.
The law is purported to protect us, but if two people are working together they face harsh penalties for so-called brothel keeping. This puts sex workers in increased danger.
Unscrupulous people can profit from our vulnerability. Workers tell us that they are forced to seek assistance from criminals to find housing or are being exploited by landlords who take advantage of our position, to extract enormous sums of money for accommodation.
We hear of landlords attempting to blackmail workers by soliciting sex from them.
Through my work in the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, I talk almost daily to workers whose safety and income has become increasingly precarious under these new laws.
Ireland is moving away from its dark past, the days of the Magdalene Laundries and the Catholic Church’s obsession with controlling and repressing the female body and sexuality.
Increasing numbers of people and organisations in Ireland and internationally are rejecting an ideology that seeks to marginalise sex work.
Getting organised
Only this month the GMB trade union in the UK established an adult entertainers
section in Scotland. The union is open to anyone in the adult entertainment industry, including sex workers, strippers, burlesque and go-go dancers and video cam workers.
The GMB union says: “Sex work is work and should be safe - if sex workers are treated differently then that is discrimination.”
Many local and international organisations, as diverse as the World Health Organisation, Amnesty International and the Global Alliance Against the Trafficking of Women as well as HIV Ireland, the Union of Students in Ireland and the Migrant Rights Centre, have called for an end to the criminalisation of sex work.
In New Zealand, sex work is decriminalised. Sex workers can take legal action for assault or exploitation, without being ‘shamed’ for their profession, and without repercussions for their livelihood.
How long more can our government, health authorities, and gender equality bodies ignore the growing body of evidence that shows that their policies are damaging and endangering to the physical and mental health of this precarious group of people?
It is time for a serious assessment of the impact of the laws which criminalise sex buyers. We must now wait another year for the legislation to be reviewed – that will take place early in 2020, three years on from their implementation.
We need sex work to be decriminalised in Ireland. People working in the industry should be at the centre of all conversations about the impact of the current legislation.
SWAI assists individuals who are in the sex industry by choice, circumstance, or
coercion. For support, ring 085 824 9305
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Legalise the industry and then the government can rake in the tax, just like any other job.
@Gus Sheridan: yeah that doesn’t happen. What pimp is gonna be cool with handing over half their earnings to the government? Use your noggin.
@Veronica: If sex workers were treated in the same way as any other sole trader there would be no need for pimps. Pimping could be a crime – it would make those who wished to legitimately work in the sex trade truly independent and still remove the opportunity for exploitation, trafficking etc. I know its a complicated area but the country has legislated in more complex areas than this and done so relatively successfully.
@Colin B: Any and ALL forced labour should be a crime with stiff penalites, the abuse is in the coercion not the specifics of the work (which will always affect different people differently).
@Gus Sheridan: it’s already legal.
@Colin B: pimping is already a crime. It would be a crime if everything was decriminalized as well. exploiting & coercing sex workers is a crime, just as it would be for any other type of work.
@Gus Sheridan: What about the married punters… Those happily married ones that visit the gay massage with a happy ending ones. Is it not unfair on the wife, even if she is doing it with the milkman at the same time lol.
@Gus Sheridan: sex workers already pay tax
Lets face it this law is all about the religious nut jobs punishing the dirty man for his sins, whether it makes the job more dangerous for the woman is irrelevant, twisted religious dogma must be blindly followed at all costs the man must pay for his sins!
@Peter Hughes: I think both issues are important but a sex worker’s safety can never be irrelevant.
@Peter Hughes: religious nut jobs and leftists like Ivana Bacik who claim my body my choice on abortion, but not for sex. This law will be overturned.
@Peter Hughes: No. It is po faced feminists in league with religious nutjobs.
@Peter Hughes: yep that’s it,introduced between gay marriage and repeal the eight. If anyone has a religious electorate to compromise with its fine Gael.
@Clanrickard: Neither, it’s people in US with virtually limitless money who want to exchange some of it for power over other people’s lives to avoid feeling bored…and power is the most potently addictive drug of all so they buy lobbies to keep delivering more…the topic, and the consequences to innocent people are absolutely irrelevant…it’s disgusting…
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/what-can-i-tell-you-my-sister-my-killer/
Criminalising purchase of sex drove it even more underground and made it even more dangerous for sex workers.
Organisation behind the campaign to make purchase of sex illegal: Ruhama.
Founders and owners of Ruhama: the religious orders that ran the Magdalene Laundries, profiting from the slave labour of women and girls.
Those who’ve refused to compensate their former slaves: yup, those self-same religious orders.
Plus ca change…
@Valentine Healy-Rae-Nua: I don’t know a great deal about the sex industry, however this article does appear to be at odds with what is claimed by Ruhama, often on The Journal itself. Some of their headlines include, ‘Pick an apartment block in parts of Dublin and you’ll find a brothel’. ‘Most prostitution here is run by crime gangs’, ‘Concern growing about the number of underage boys being abused in Dublin brothels’, no convictions secured against sex buyers since new laws introduced’.
I don’t know what situation would be ideal, and it’s not exactly a career path I’d hope for a family member, having said that Ruhama portray this as industry as being staffed primarily by migrants and run by criminal gangs. This article appears to contradict that image and suggest the sex industry is, if not voluntary, almost a career path. While acknowledging that a small minority are trafficked and forced into it, that criminality exists, it claims the majority is, if not legal, being forced into the darker parts of our society by this law. Maybe our perception was wrong.
@Arch Angel: Let’s sling out the old view of Ruhama and get it updated to the 21st century?
Any form of abolitionism is, in and of itself, an inappropriate conflict of interest with helping and supporting sex workers because the premise of abolitionism that “sex work must be abolished to send a message to men that women are not sexual objects” makes no allowance for the human rights, welfare and needs of sex workers at all, preferring instead to objectify them and reinvent their reality to artificially support and substantiate the abolitionist agenda rather than determine and provide useful and appropriate support and resources.
It is self-evident that Ruhama have a poor to non-existent relationship with their designated user group, and lobby in direct opposition to most of them. They should, or course, be able to promote any coswallop they like as long as the lobby percentage does not exceed the constraints of their charitable status, or as much as they like if they forgo said charitable status. However, under no circumstances should Ruhama be in receipt of state funding (currently about 75% I think) to “help and support” a user group that (with one or two retired and abolitionist employed exceptions) actively oppose them.
It would be more appropriate to retain funding to “help and support” sex workers within the, nominally more neutral, HSE, and that is saying something.
@Arch Angel: At least they haven’t taken any ideas from Henry Ford to modernise it yet lol.
Target the criminal gangs and traffickers who force women to be sex workers.
I never see any reports of gangs/pimps being prosecuted in the news.
Absolutely pointless targeting individuals, you can’t outlaw human urges.
It’s just pandering to the likes of the Iona institute!
@Dotty Dunleary: I would love to see ANYONE who knowingly places a person in a position where they are driven to sell sex criminalised equally…and let’s extend that to ALL forms of economic abuse that place people in impossible financial positions that threaten their survival. I have ALWAYS wanted to see this.
I think it’s important for fellow commenters and readers to note that decriminalisation and legalisation are two different things. Legalisation would mean that the government would regulate the industry, like in the Netherlands. But Kate is talking about decriminalisation, like in New Zealand, where sex workers are not criminalised by any means (which they can be under a legalised system if they can’t work withing the regulated sex industry). Decriminalisation means that sex workers can access justice safely under employment law.
The government boll#$ up legal activities like healthcare so why would you think they’d actually make a go of making prostitution a safe activity.
@Green Lentils: you are so right, we are ruled by a bunch of ill equipped gormless bunch of gobshytes, keep the recovery going lads/lasses…
This article could have been, and was, written years ago with the words sellers subbed in for buyers.
No one wants to see a person sell their body.But its is our instinct to crave sex…So there is a market.It will be exploited.Making it commercial is wrong.But criminalizing it will force it underground putting those who trade it in danger…is there a middle ground?
@Dave Walsh: The middle ground is right where it always was, in giving adults the freedom to make their own decision based on the complexities of their own situation, needs, limits and nature that nobody else could get right for them, and this is what full decriminalisation is.
“This industry is a mean of survival for us”. I don’t get where this come from. A single mum in Ireland gets welfare if their kids are still in college and can’t find work or is unable to work, their kids get grants for low income household, also collage age students can do part time jobs and help with expenses. They must have other reasons I’m sure, but I don’t see survival or getting their kids through collage being one of them.
@Rosa Lopez:
You are right, for MOST people, but there are always people who, usually due to a combination of factors are left with literally no honest way to survive, often through not fault of their own. The state should strive to minimise that, but frankly, couldn’t be bothered, and those people have a right to survival with a tolerable (just as opposed to intolerable, such as having to sleep in shop doorways) quality of life just like anyone else.
I have been caught in that trap before and currently, at age 61 it is looking increasingly unlikely I will have any way to still be alive this time next year without going back to selling sex – despite the fact that it is against my religion and pretty much the last thing on earth I want to do. So please do not bother telling me it cannot happen.
@Gaye D: I’m sorry Gaye, I didn’t mean to judge personal circumstances. Not long ago there was an article in this paper about mothers being forced to pay back their kids drug debts..that could be one scenario and I’m sure there are many more and many factors than together lead a person to have no other choice than going that road.
What I meant is in normal circumstances the life of a single mum in Ireland with the help available is a constant struggle for her and her kid/s, but is enough to survive and taking their kids through collage without having to sell sex.
I’m very sorry you see yourself in that position, I wish you all the best.
@Rosa Lopez: It makes me feel better just to see that you *DO* understand after all. Usually get pretty obvious when you translate sex workers into a percentage. Highest count I have seen is 7000 for Ireland and that is .014% of the population, so whatever their reasons, they aren’t normal…the least dramatic, but in the old days fairly invincible reason I ever saw was a lovely lady with twins to put through Uni and a dead beat ex…there was no other way to make those ends meet up, there just wasn’t (value of her home priced her out of everything available. Special needs single mums, a reasonable childminder can cost *from €15* an hour…and trust me, the state fails to cover costs more often than it succeeds where there are complex needs – and, in the hot seat you have to ask yourself whether it is best for your child if you leave them 20 hours a week when they should be asleep or 60 hours a week when they are awake? Single dual carers are often in the financial rattrap from hell whether or not it is bad enough to drive them to sell sex…adly there are way too many holes in the social safety net.
Legalise already!
@No One Important: In political terms its called lobbying lol.
Decriminalization means that sex workers are able to work without threat of criminal sanctions. Criminal and administrative penalties on prostitution are repealed. Sex workers’ workplaces are regulated through employment law, enabling workers to hold their bosses to account and form trade unions.
Decriminalization is sometimes presented as at odds with anti-trafficking measures – but it should be obvious that giving workers more rights is crucial to tackling exploitation. Research shows that less than 6 percent of migrant sex workers in the UK have been trafficked; many said they prefer working in the sex industry to the “unrewarding and sometimes exploitative conditions they meet in non-sexual jobs”.
Decriminalization increases sex workers’ power in their interactions with clients, managers, police and landlords. It makes people safer. It reduces the transmission of HIV.
It is for these reasons that decriminalization of Adult consensual sex work similar to the New Zealand model is supported by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, Sisters Uncut, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women etc .
@Francis O Toole Art: Darn it, if all else fails, by choosing to sell sex, which is usually the easiest work to get but the hardest to do, when so many of them have been in positions so desperate they would have a 24 carat excuse for lying, cheating, stealing and harming people (which can all, often be legal) instead sex workers DESERVE full human status and exactly the same rights and conditions as any other adult, beginning with out from under the dominion of any abusive org like Ruhama.
Have a look at other vountries where prostitution has been legalised and see if the abuse of sex workers doesnt happen. Wake up
@Ismise Máire: does it happen more or less in those places? Scale matters, just because perfection cannot be achieved does not mean harm reduction/limitation shouldn’t be attempted. Same argument as the one about drugs at the moment – in an ideal world there would be no prostitution and no drug abuse, but we don’t live in an ideal world, so let’s try and do the best that can be done for those affected rather than punish them for daring to illustrate that we don’t live in an ideal world.
@Winston Smith: Winston’s comment- Proactive and sensible.
Máire’s comment- defeatist
@Winston Smith: Well said!
@Ismise Máire:
Abuse happens wherever there are people, but decriminalisation is a way to ensure that, at least, the state and civil society are not active in dishing that abuse out as a present.
You either have a code of ethics to guide society or anything goes. By all means treak or amend the law but I wouldn’t be for letting sex buyers off the hook
@eddie horgan: Laws are meant to protect people, property and organisations. This law harms rather than protects. Therefore the law is not effective and must change. Changing the law has shown that effective regulation, as with the drugs industry, reduces the harm considerably and therefore is worth adopting.
@Ailbhe: Wonderful phrase someone (not me) put on twitter:
“The Nordic Model doesn’t help anyone who isn’t getting a salary out of promoting it” says it all, accurately.
Ridiculous that prostitution is illegal! Legalize it the women pay taxes and are protected! Simple
@Gearoid Mag Lennain: decriminalise. Also workers already pay tax
Oldest profession in the world. Make it safe for the women in the trade & legalise it.
The british police raided nearly 800 brothels and found not one pimp or forced prostitute
So far the only conviction is a 65 year old from a working class area who was caught with independent escorts(no pimp involved). Seriously how about laws to catch some real bloody criminals.
@Dave O’Hanlon:
In the north it was funny, because the first guy they busted really needed busting for anything you could get him on – drunken oaf trying to force money on a petrol station attendant…but down here, after a few days of demonising him by full name and address even Ruhama had to wake up to how cheap and shabby they were making themselves look.
….and not once have they ever shown the slightest interest in how survival sex workers will manage if they achieve the clamp down they are looking for…because sex workers and their lives are as disposablle as used kleenex to them…ok, maybe clients see sex workers that way too, but they have consent and pay sex workers well enough for them to be whoever they want to be in their own lives…Tuhama just impose themselves, destroy and move on to the next game.
How on earth could a resposible mother place her childrens lives at the mercy of an organisation like that even if they had anything relevant to offer? But the truth is, they don’t. Ruhama want to take away the money that gives you a home, a car and some semblence of a life and force you into hostels, on welfare with skewed “personal development” and “women’s studies” course to break the monotony and help you internalise Ruhama’s contempt for everything you are.
Offering something that’s illegal is called conspiracy. Are they not guilty of that because vagina?
have your say