It’s time to take down Scotland’s ‘Women for Sale’ sign

Prostitution is not ‘empowering’ for women, it’s a miserable life of exploitation and violence, writes Dr Jacci Stoyle

When I was young life seemed so simple; sex was something that you chose to do for love or lust or even comfort, or something you were forced to do (called rape), but what it definitely wasn’t, was a job.

Of course, one knew that women had sex with men for money, but the suggestion that this was a job like any other would have been considered preposterous.

Fast forward to 2019 where the discourse has changed: sex is now being referred to as ‘work’. Pimps, who sell women to buyers to use as they wish, are called ‘business managers’. Johns are ‘clients’, prostituted women are ‘sex-workers’, foreign women trafficked into the sex trade are ‘migrant workers’ and UK women and girls who are groomed are ‘making a lifestyle choice’.

This new, ubiquitous discourse tells us that ‘sex work’ is ‘empowering’ for women and that ‘sex workers’ are ‘happy’ in their work.

When a society changes the language it uses to describe things, it changes the way those things are perceived. So, by reframing abuse and exploitation of vulnerable young women into something perfectly normal and innocuous, prostitution has been reconstituted into simply another option in the labour market.

The public are still appalled by the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young women, as was shown by the Oxfam scandal following the Haiti earthquake when high-ranking employees of the charity traded Aid for sexual services.

When this first came to light, and still to this day, there was (quite rightly) a public outcry. The organisations who lobby for full decriminalisation of the sex trade didn’t mention how ‘empowering’ this must have been for the Haiti women.

They were strangely silent.

However, very few people made the connection that a vulnerable young woman is vulnerable whatever the circumstances, so if it is exploitation in Haiti, then why is it not so in Scotland?

If prostitution is now work, it follows that there will be sex-worker unions. Indeed, they exist, although practically none of the women and girls in the sex trade belong to one, but they are open to all sex workers including ‘business managers’ and brothel owners.

Now, that would be odd if the CBI could join the TUC and set the agenda, wouldn’t it? When these unions claim that sex workers say they want full decriminalisation of the sex trade, is it not strange how that is exactly what pimps, brothel owners, traffickers and buyers want?

Survivors of prostitution who have healed and recovered sufficiently to speak out about this ‘cosy, happy’ world of prostitution will tell you a very different story. It is an inherently violent existence – rape and beatings are occupational hazards and they will tell you that behind the rhetoric they have never met a woman who has chosen to be there. Research has demonstrated that 70 per cent of prostituted women and girls suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as depression, anxiety and mental dissociation.

For the 90 per cent of women involved in prostitution who have a ‘business manager’, he will take a large proportion of their money, which doesn’t sit well with this brave new world of female empowerment.

There is a sense of inevitability about prostitution; the ‘oldest profession’ is universally quoted, inferring that having always been with us, it will always remain so. But it is