BELINDA Pereira, RIP. What was she? A whore, a trollop, a strumpet, a tart? Prostitutes are as universal as they are universally reviled, and they are the easiest and least regarded victims of any serial killer. The first non prostitute victim of the Yorkshire Ripper was also the first to be declared "innocent" by the police, the innocence of the others being apparently vitiated if not removed entirely by their profession, thereby speaking volumes for the culture which could even categorise women in such terms.
Yorkshire why do we need to go to Yorkshire to find evidence of this phenomenon? We have it here at home, in Maire Geoghegan Quinn's infamous and disgraceful Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act of 1993, which re emphasised the criminality of what a prostitute does for a living. At the time, the bill was dressed up for what it was not, as a liberalising measure, because it decriminalised an activity which was illegal only on the foot of an unenforced Victorian law - male homosexual acts.
No Defenders
But some bright spark in the Department of Justice thought it was high time to reinforce the vicious Victorian anti prostitution laws, and so at the very time that a supposedly liberal (and in reality, irrelevant) pro homosexual law was being introduced, to much applause, a new and draconian anti female law made its appearance, in silence, with not a word of an outcry.
For prostitutes have no friends, even - or perhaps, especially - among feminists, for they are outside every pale of decency. They insist on performing acts with men which feminists find degrading - which actually says more about the sanctimonious prudishness of so much of the feminist canon than about the prostitutes themselves. For why is sex for money more degrading than journalism for money or coalmining for money or barristering for money? Sex for money is not in itself degrading, but we make it so with a priggish preciousness which we enshrine in law.
No Protection
The criminalised world which prostitutes are forced to inhabit by the laws and the agents of the State is one in which the working girl has no protection. Their male pimps are normally scum, and many of their clients are sexually dysfunctional and pathetic men, who hate themselves and the prostitutes they employ, for their weaknesses. Nobody speaks out for these girls; nobody - as nobody spoke out when Maire Geoghegan Quinn introduced her vicious anti prostitute laws of four years ago. Male homosexuals were cool, right on, hip and politically well organised hookers were not.
And fresh laws came into existence which made the life of the prostitute even more difficult. They are worthless laws, and in that sense are perfectly consistent with virtually everything else emanating from the Department of Justice; but they are not without effect. Prostitutes live in fear of them - for if they were to be enforced, they are very wicked laws indeed. First offence, £250; second offence, £500; £500 and a month in jail for a third offence.
For what? For soliciting for sex. Why? What other private activity attracts such vengeful attentions of the State? None. These women - under educated for the most part, usually poor, often mentally unbalanced - scare us in some way. We cannot trust ourselves to admit them openly to society, and certainly cannot leave them alone. Even with laws which seem intended to intimidate more than be applied, we make legal and moral lepers of them.
And not just them; we do the same to those who organise them too, so that the world of the entrepreneur is also criminalised.
Brothel Conviction
Or should I say, entrepreneuse? My Irishwoman of the decade remains Marion Murphy, the woman found guilty of running a brothel in, Mountjoy Square a couple old years ago. The house was organised, the girls worked to a strictly adhered to tariff, and the neighbours and the clientele had no complaints - but she was prosecuted, brought to the courts and fined, and had to pay huge legal costs. This was a truly contemptible prosecution, initiated not by the unfortunate gardai responsible for policing that part of Dublin.
Need to Organise
When I last spoke to Marion Murphy - alas, only by phone" - she was still in the same line of work; I have not had the pleasure of meeting her or any of her girls, but I greatly look forward to doing so. It would be an honour to be in the company of such an honest woman, who manages to run a thriving business in such difficult circumstances. If Veuve Clicquot had any sense, they would make her their Businesswoman of the Year.
The truth is that prostitution, like any business, needs to be organised; to criminalise that organisation does not eliminate it but passes it into the hands of violent and exploitative men who are quite unlike my chum Marion. More than that. It causes the entire trade of commercial sex to operate within an underworld.
Do not rail against prostitution. You might not like it, as I do not - nor indeed am I all that fond of financial trading, coalmining or deep sea welding - but our opinions are irrelevant.
Prostitution is a form of commercial activity found in all societies everywhere. It is intellectually and morally primitive to turn its practitioners into criminals or "vice girls" who are residents of a lesser moral world. Belinda Pereira was not some resident of a lesser moral world. She inhabited my world and yours; in life, in death, she deserved as much respect as the rest of us, and she did not get it.
Certain response
We can expect one certain response to her wicked murder; it will not be to undo the contemptible aspects of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, one of the most heinous laws any European democracy has passed in living memory. What we will get, for sure, for certain and odiously hypocritical sure, is a crackdown on brothel keeping and on prostitutes, and on magazines like In Dublin which carry their advertisements. It will make the lives of prostitutes harder; and make the rest of us feel that much more saintly.
Bah.