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Memorandum submitted by Thierry Schaffauser (PC 23)
I
am Thierry Schaffauser and I am a migrant sex worker living in the
I have been working in the sex industry for the last 6 years on the streets and advertising on line.
I write to you today because I am very worried about the Policing and Crime Bill that will endanger my life and my colleagues ones.
Some people make a business with "rescuing" sex workers. They pretend to help us but their only will is ideologic. They decided that sex work is the evil and always a violence against women. Male and transgenders sex workers are erased in their discourse because we don't match with their "poor women" propaganda.
In order to obtain more subventions for their business or because they hate men and they can't accept the idea that women and minorities are able to make their own choice, they try to eradicate prostitution.
For more than one century, the abolitionist movement has tried to do so.
These people, from the Victorian period until nowadays, often upper and middle class, are scandalised by what the working class do in bed. Not only we have sex, but we get paid for that. They can't think women as sexual as men. They think that women can only be respected by men if they are in a couple or in a love relationship. Otherwise, they think men are taking advantage of women by pressure and violence. They think men consume sex while women
They know that with this money we are able to migrate and live in any country we want because we'll find punters everywhere. They know that with this money we will be independent from our family and we will be able to refuse to do a "proper job" as they say.
They want us to be in their system, to wake up every morning and accept 40 hours a week for minimum wage.
They can't think women as sexual as men. They think that women can only be respected by men if they are in a couple or in a love relationship. Otherwise, they think men are taking advantage of women by pressure and violence. They think men consume sex while women are deceipted and abused. They think prostitution equates rape because they can't make a difference between rape and consenting sex. But we do. We know perfectly the difference when we are forced or not. They can't decide that for us.
They pretend to act for our good but they never listen to us. They choose the sex workers voices they want to listen to. They behave like the 20th century doctors who cured homosexuals with electrochocs for their good. They use the same techniques. The homophobic movement use "ex -gays" to promote the idea we can change our lives and go back on the straight way. The abolitionist movement uses some "survivors" to promote the idea they went back on the straight way too.
Their ideology doesn't rely on facts. There is no evidence of everything they say. They lie all the time.
They lie on the age of sex workers. They invent we start working in average age of 13. So where are all these children ? Why the police never finds them or so rarely?
They lie on trafficking. In 1885 William Stead invented the white slavery. Nowadays they continue with trafficking since they obtained by the UN that the consent of victims was irrelevant. In their views, all migrant sex workers are trafficked. Of course, if prostitution can't be a choice, migration can't be one either...
They
lied when they said 40 000 women were trafficked in
They lie when they say 80 % of sex workers are trafficked. Do they know only how many sex workers are foreign?
They lie when they say we have been raped in our childhood or are traumatised.
They lie when they say we have to drink or take drugs to work and that we are drug addicted.
They lie when they say we are forced by pimps.
They lie because no one dares opposing them. Because no one wants to be seen as a complice of rape and trafficking. Because emotion is more efficient than truth.
They lie because sex workers voices are silenced by the stigma and the laws you vote to criminalise further our lives.
This Bill is not about fighting against trafficking and protecting us.
They wanted to criminalise all of our clients and we have been successful in preventing them. That's the reason why they attack now in misusing the issue of trafficking.
This Bill is about fighting against prostitution and exclude us further from the society. More we'll be vulnerable, less we will have access to our citizens' rights, more the abolitionists will have power on our lives.
I ask you to drop section 20, which gives the police wide ranging powers to seal premises on suspicion (i.e. with no proof) that a wide of activities related to prostitution have happened or will happen. This will remove the protection of the law from many people in the indoor industry as people will not call the police if they know doing so risks closing the premises so we will suffer increased violence, robbery and rape.
I ask you to drop section 13 - criminalisation of clients - which will do nothing to stop violence or trafficking, but will play into the hands of traffickers by decreasing reporting by clients of anxieties about trafficking.
If you want more information, a short briefing from the IUSW can be downloaded at http://iusw.org/TenReasonsWithLogo.doc
also online is an 18 page briefing on the Bill, at http://iusw.org/IUSWPolicingCrimeBillFeb09.doc
February 2009 |