Benefits of making it legal

“It is fine and dandy to go pay for sex,” says Christina Parreira.

“And I think it’s so silly that feminists want to take away one of the few industries where women make more than men.”

Parreira is an occasional sex worker from the US state of Nevada who also holds a PhD, and she researches the sex industry. She’s an opponent of making prostitution illegal, and says she’s made a good living from sex work.

“I have made enough where now, I can finish my PhD, and barely have to work,” she says. “I mean, what a luxury. Abolition would put hundreds of thousands out of work.”

“What’s great about the brothel is that, since it’s legal, you’re there and you’re protected,” says Parreira. She’s talking about brothels in Nevada, where prostitution is legal in some places.

“If a client were to get out of hand, there’s panic buttons.”

But Julie Bindel, a journalist and campaigner against prostitution, argues more prostitutes are killed by pimps or johns in countries where it’s legal. She says she’s never needed a “panic button” working in journalism.

Bindel favours the “Nordic model” talked about in the Dutch debates – a model that’s spread outside the Nordic region, and aims to decriminalise sex work itself, but can criminalise the johns. Bindel thinks that sex work still isn’t safe enough for women, and therefore can’t be grouped together with any other government regulated career path and spoken about in the same way. She says that problem will exist as long as sex workers are looked at as consumables, and points to “mega brothels” in Germany as an example.

“There are advertisements for men during their lunchtime to have as many women as they can and have a burger and a beer with it,” she says. “It’s become part of consumer culture. They’re like the meat in the burger.”

Bindel believes prostitution is rooted in gender inequality. That’s why she favours a model in which a sex worker could pick up a phone and call the police, even if the man hasn’t done anything wrong or violent – but because he could be planning to do so, she argues.

But Parreira says she’s never experienced anything like that, or any man breaking the rules in a brothel, like refusing to wear a condom. She also points to data from Amnesty International and the medical journal The Lancet, which both support full decriminalisation. Between 2003 and 2008, there was a 30% decline in the US state of Rhode Island in violent assault against female sex workers after sex work was made legal, for example.

“There was no increase in the number of sex workers. This myth that more women will enter the trade – as if that’s necessarily a bad thing – was not true,” Parreira says. They could also negotiate safer sex practices and improved brothel conditions, she argues. They were empowered; even able to sue for rights violations.

As for the Nordic model? “It operates on the false premise that women cannot consent to commercial sex – that they never enjoy it. That fundamentally, the men are predators – but that is not the reality among most sex workers.”

She says the Nordic model is “based on this false radical feminist narrative that we are ‘renting the inside of our bodies’ – the way abolitionists talk is so much more degrading and sexually fetishising than any client I’ve encountered.” Abolitionists, meanwhile, argue that criminalising aspects of sex work – putting the onus on the client – keeps women safer and empowers them more in this particular workplace.

It’s a debate that only seems to be ramping up, as Dutch parliament prepares to deliberate. Parreira says abolitionists need to actually talk to more sex workers themselves, but Bindel says Parreira’s experience isn’t everyone’s.

But the discussion prompts needed scrutiny on the topic, and it also prompts reflection on why we call prostitution the world’s oldest profession.

“As long as there are men, there will be demand for sex,” Parriera says. “And that’s OK for the consenting adult women that choose to do this."

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