“I want to relax, that’s why I go to prostitutes. There’s a great little place near my house, where I can pay a flat fee and get all I want to drink, maybe even a burger, and as many women to fuck that I can manage. They have oriental girls, and they are happy to do it without a condom.”
I met this punter while investigating the sex trade in Auckland, New Zealand. It was said to be the gold-plated model for decriminalisation. While the men might have liked it, the women didn’t. “I have been raped more times and I can remember,” Lindsey told me. “Some of the bastards enjoy hurting us, the last one the punched me in the face after he’d finished and ran away laughing.”
Carly who worked in a large, busy brothel told me that even though there were house rules, all the punters ignored them: “What’s the pimp going to do? He just charges the men more for unprotected sex, because what they want, they get. Why anyone thinks that when you turn a pimp into a legitimate businessman that they will treat the girls better, I will never know. It’s made it much worse.”
Most people assume that “decriminalisation” of the sex trade would make lives better for women in prostitution. It won’t. Along with its close relative “legalisation” it has made them worse. Which is why I am astonished that public money is going towards Decriminalised Futures, a highly politicised exhibition opening later this month at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).
“Full decriminalisation of sex work is the rallying cry that unites the sex worker rights movement across the world,” reads the blurb on the ICA website. “Under this banner, sex workers and their allies have fought tirelessly for strong workers’ rights, an end to exploitation, an end to criminalisation, and real measures to address poverty.”
This “celebration of the ‘sex workers’ rights’ movement” features 13 artists from countries including the UK, France, Germany and the US, and highlights the history of the campaign to decriminalise the sex trade.
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