Sir, – I was highly surprised to find an article in your paper suggesting that I do not support a campaign to change the lives of abused women (“Former prostitutes ‘offended’ by Clare Daly stance on sex industry”, Home News, July 16th). I have to take issue with the comments made. In my contribution to the debate on the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2013, a Bill that dealt with the criminalisation of the purchase of sex, I expressed concerns regarding this course of action. This Bill did not tackle the wider issue of violence against women or human trafficking; my decision not to support the Bill does not mean that I am unsupportive of any campaign to improve the lives of women.
The issue of prostitution/sex work is a very complex one and an open and honest discussion should be welcomed. The Swedish model of criminalising the buyer advocated by Turn Off the Red Light is highly problematic. The data has significant gaps and the collection of information is complicated by the nature of prostitution and the stigma associated. The Skarhed report, carried out to investigate the impact of criminalisation in Sweden, has been criticised (by the Swedish Equality Ombudsman, among others) for being biased and riddled with bad research and speculative conclusions. And this should give pause for thought to anyone considering basing Irish law on the Swedish model.
We need to accept that there is no quick-fix solution. The act of purchasing sex has been outlawed in the United States for over 100 years and it has not stopped either violence against women or human trafficking, or prostitution for that matter.
Because I do not believe that the Swedish model is the correct course of action for Ireland, it does not follow that I endorse or wish to see a continuation of abuse against women in society. And to suggest such is simplistic and wholly inaccurate.
The defensive language often used by members of the Turn Off the Red Light campaign serves only to stifle open discussion on this issue and has put many people off joining the debate. The “if you’re not with us you must be against us” attitude is self-defeating and serves only to trivialise the issue. It would better serve Turn Off the Red Light campaign to explore some of the issues I have raised in relation to the Bill instead of resorting to distorted accusations. – Yours, etc,
CLARE DALY, TD
Leinster House,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Eilis Ward makes a good case in her article “Call for ‘Swedish model’ to curb Irish prostitution lacks evidence” (Opinion & Analysis, July 12th). However, there is a more fundamental issue involved. The proposal to criminalise the clients of prostitutes goes against a basic liberal principle: that it is not the legitimate function of the state to police the private behaviour of consenting adults. This principle was key to removing the laws against gay sex; and, had it been followed, would have prevented the current dangerous nonsense of the “war on drugs.”
Insofar as the proposed law is supposed to put down a marker regarding male behaviour (as appears to be the rationale in Sweden), it is basically misconceived. There is, for example, no warrant for laws against idolatry, missing church on Sunday or telling social lies. If these are wrong, they are sins, not crimes (in biblical parlance, they belong to the jurisdiction of God, not Caesar). Sins against religion (or against whatever sexual-political mores are current) are to be countered by argument and persuasion, not force of law.
The other main objection to prostitution seems to be the commercial aspect (since coercion for purposes of prostitution is already prohibited by law). There are many objections to commercial transactions, including the fact that people have to work in the first place in order to get a living. In an ideal post-capitalist world there might be no commercial transactions at all. But we are very far from such a world, and it’s not clear why sexual transactions are singled out to be banned and not others, unless there is some implicit moral rationale and a related wish to enforce a particular worldview through law. Nor is it clear how removing their client-base (if indeed that could be done) is going to help people who rely on prostitution to make a living.
Whether a relationship involves romance, lust, affection, or the desire for material gain (or some combination of these) is – and should be – entirely a matter for the individuals involved. It is ironic that, just as the “war on drugs” is being widely seen as a failure, the “war on prostitution” is being ramped up. The “law of unintended consequences” can be expected as surely from the one campaign as from the other.
One does not have to be in favour of either drugs or prostitution (and I’m not in favour of either) to point out the folly involved in both cases. – Yours, etc,
PAUL O’BRIEN,
Lamb Alley,
Dublin 8.
Sir, – Dr Eilis Ward criticises the lack of evidence for the proposal – based on the campaign by Turn Off the Red Light – that the Oireachtas adopts the “Swedish model” in seeking to abolish prostitution by criminalising the buyers rather than the sellers of sex. Behind her argument is the liberal feminist stance that women should be free to be sex workers, a stance that ignores the violence and coercion that dominate the sex trade, in Ireland and throughout the world. Prostitution, she argues, without a shred of evidence or research, cannot be abolished.
In April 1981 Geraldine Niland and I published a two-part series in this newspaper on the lives of real prostitutes in Dublin. We spent several weeks “on the beat” with the women, interviewing many prostitutes and male clients. One thing the women kept reiterating was that without clients, prostitution would not exist. Clients, they told us, came from all walks of life. From the married man who sought casual sex on Percy Place on the way home from the pub, to the priest whose dog collar on the back seat gave him away, and who the women described as “taking from the poor to give to the poor”. Most of the women we spoke to had been abused as children, most had a drug habit and all spoke of their wish to leave prostitution if and when they could, or if and when their pimps allowed them to. For most Dublin prostitutes, we wrote, the decision to enter “the life” was a lack of real choice. The women spoke of the split between their daytime and night lives when they assumed “the slang, the vulgarity, the behaviour, the violence”, and between their adored children and their sex work. While for some women prostitution may have seemed a choice, most of the women we interviewed would agree with how one of them described herself: “you’re dirt, and no good to anyone”.
Since then prostitution in Ireland has moved indoors from the streets to private flats, “escort agencies” and brothels, often kept by traffickers, where women are often coerced to have sex with many men through violence and threats of violence. Many are not Irish, many very young. But what has not changed, I believe, is the client profile – men from all walks of life, married, single, old, young, Irish, non-Irish, all regarding these women as mere bodies to be used and abused.
It may indeed be hard to abolish prostitution, but criminalising the men who trade in women’s bodies, be it pimps, traffickers or clients, and assisting women who wish to do so to work out of free, informed choice in dignified and safe conditions, can go a long way towards reducing it. – Yours, etc,
Prof RONIT LENTIN,
Department of Sociology,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Regarding the article by the Rev Dr Donal Dorr (“New reality of prostitution has to be addressed by a change in the law”, Rite & Reason, July 16th), I do not disbelieve the reverend gentleman when he says that nowadays many of the women (he says nothing of men and boys) involved in prostitution in Ireland are victims of trafficking from eastern Europe, Africa or Asia. However he offers no evidence for this alleged “fact” and I suggest he may well be merely repeating an assertion that is popular with those campaigners who are framing the debate rather than those who are genuinely interested in what the real facts are and what precisely is the problem.
Unless you understand this there seems little point in changing the law and every danger of dire unintended consequences when prostitution is driven further underground. So let us start with the evidence and then look at solutions, be they legal or otherwise. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL ANDERSON,
Moyclare Close,
Baldoyle,
Dublin 13.