Daily Times

In comparing prostitution laws in the west, the model that has garnered the most favour by women’s rights activists, at least relatively, is what has come to be known as the Swedish or Nordic model. Sweden, Norway, Iceland, France and other countries have adopted an approach whereby the selling of sex is not illegal but the buying of it is, essentially in order to target pimps, brothel owners and the ‘johns’, basically the men who control the women and the flow of the money.
Amnesty chose to reject this model for another liberal agenda that they decided is in dire need of defence by them: the right for consenting adults to have sex. That as it turns out is the basic human right they prefer to stick their necks out for. Not the right of a prostitute to escape poverty, or receive safe shelter or conserve her health but the ability for adults (who are we kidding, men) to have sex at will by paying for it. The fact that they chose to present the right to sell sex as empowering for women leaves me and many others in shock and disgust.
One of the key critics of Amnesty who has written a series of articles on the holes in the policy of decriminalising prostitution is Julie Bindel, an English writer and feminist. In one of her interviews, she frames what in my opinion forms the crux of the issue. First, how legalising prostitution would influence any society in its treatment of women over time and, second, how each society measures the worth of a human being, how it protects them, respects them. Bindel moderately favours the Nordic model as a start sharply denouncing Amnesty’s proposal but, overall, she does not believe that prostitution can ever be a ‘job’ like any other because of its inherently exploitative nature and its extremely damaging effects: psychological, physical (heavy drug and alcohol addiction), inherent high risk of violence etc.
Rather than focusing on statistics of how many pimps were jailed and how many women were arrested, she speaks to the larger issue that determines the future of countries that wish to be considered as civilised as they seem to want to crave freedom of choice. Some 80 percent of Swedes supported their form of the legislation to criminalise buyers and middlemen. As a result of that cohesive position, she explained, “It has meant a total change in attitude from a human rights perspective of young people that are growing up thinking about sexual exploitation and violence against women in Sweden. In contrast, the last poll across countries that shared the Netherlands’ attitude to sex showed that prostitution was seen as a job much like any other and totally harmless for the women.” And that shift of an erasure of human compassion for someone in dire need of it is what everyone should be extremely worried about.
Peddling prostitution as a choice of livelihood and its legalisation to lend ‘dignity’ to prostitutes is a monumental failure on the part of Amnesty, one that should have consequences for them in terms of exposing their lack of integrity in defending the rights of half the populace of the world: women. But, as it turns out, Amnesty was never front and centre when it came to women’s rights anyway: “the group failed even to recognise sex trafficking as a human rights violation until the late 1990s.” No wonder they seem to be having a difficult time connecting the dots between the two issues even though a largely cited academic study “looking at 150 countries argued there was a link between relaxed prostitution laws and increased trafficking rates”.
Like most things in a capitalist world, the sex industry is driven by one main number: the dollar value of its size and the power lying in the hands of men who run it, control it. Estimates for the US alone, where the industry is predominantly illegal, exceeds $ 14 billion annually. Human trafficking is billions more and sexual exploitation makes up a large, if not the largest, component of reasons behind it. Governments can gain financial benefit from legalising prostitution but only at the expense of the women involved in it.
In the west, when something starts trending, many come on board. The Economist went from acknowledging that “many women become sex workers involuntarily” in 2013 to lending support to Amnesty this August by arguing that no data thus far was conclusive, and paramount was the fact that “making the purchase of sex between two consenting adults illegal is also deeply illiberal”. At the end of the day, I return to Bindel’s point about defining society and its standards of equality, respect and dignity for women. Decriminalising prostitution would enhance the perception of generations to come to see women as objects of trade and their bodies available for cash at will.
The following quote from a piece in The Times by a woman who was forced to sell her body at age 14 when she lost her parents and had no other means to support herself, addresses Amnesty’s concern for lack of freedom of choice for prostitutes. “I know there are some advocates who argue that women in prostitution sell sex as consenting adults. But those who do are a relatively privileged minority — primarily white, middle-class, western women in escort agencies — not remotely representative of the global majority. Their right to sell does not trump my right and others’ not to be sold in a trade that preys on women already marginalised by class and race.”
These days people seem to be caught up in an absurd frame of mind where defending ‘the other’s’ right to anything overrides all other considerations. Granted, this is the modus operandi mostly in the west where no other systems of belief matter except one’s own but it increasingly exists in other countries as well where new generations feel a disconnect with their faith. There is no God to please, no prophets to follow, just each other in a maze of darkness. Today it is prostitution, next it will be incest. Even that will be acceptable as the function of a person’s ‘choice’ as fathers will marry daughters and sons mothers. From New Jersey to Zimbabwe, it has already begun. And again, keeping rules set by faith out altogether since they are increasingly considered entirely bogus, there will be no emotional dysfunction to consider, no abuse of power, no psychological repercussions, no connection to substance abuse in that disturbing scenario either. All hail freedom of choice!
Decriminalising prostitution is the opposite of anything progressive or liberal, it perpetuates misogyny. God knows enough rap songs have been written by ex-pimps who acknowledge that fact more honestly than Amnesty has, and their plan will institutionalise that misogyny. The women who are the sex trade should be provided an exit strategy. But no, that thought would be too patriarchal. Still, it must be said out loud: Amnesty would do better to dedicate their vast network of resources to working with governments to assist millions of women trapped in a state of physical and mental despair, rather than paving the way for boys and men to exploit them in different roles, which will ultimately dehumanise them as well. For the majority of the world, endorsing prostitution is unequivocally endorsing the exploitation of someone in poverty, which is prostitution’s birthplace. And, as for uncles who are on point decades in advance, time to grab a pencil every time they speak!

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The writer is a freelance columnist