Giving a Green Light to the Red Light District
‘Paying for sex is never okay. Never, ever EVER!’ exclaimed my fellow Glass House Girl, The Duchess. She’s absolutely adamant that prostitution is bad and being a punter is worse. And her views are in the majority. Having spoken to men and women of all ages and backgrounds lately, the general consensus is that only desperate, sleazy and dodgy men pay for sex – and only desperate, slutty or oppressed women charge for it. Right?
Wrong. It’s actually a lot more common than you think.
In January 2016 Leeds became the first UK city to be granted a legal Red Light District. This came into effect three weeks after the case of a local sex worker being murdered in the same city, and although Leeds City Council are more than aware that this new and radical approach to soliciting will not wipe out associated crimes such as drugs and child trafficking – they are hoping it’s a small step to protecting sex workers’ safety, looking after their health and giving registered girls on the streets a line of communication should they want to get out.
Let’s hope it is.
Whether we find the concept of exchanging money for sex ethical or moral is a personal one, but the fact remains that prostitution is the oldest known profession… with an estimated 42 million sex workers (mainly women as well as gay, lesbian and heterosexual men) worldwide generating over $100 billion per year.
That’s a lot of people wanting to have sex with a lot of strangers.
Globally, prostitution is approached in three distinct ways – legal and regulated (such as in Mexico, Columbia, Eastern Australia, New Zealand and The Netherlands), legal but unregulated (such as in most of Europe, India and Brazil) and totally illegal (such as in the USA – excluding the state of Nevada – Russia and most of Africa).
It goes without saying that, unfortunately, the majority of women who work in the sex industry around the world don’t do so through choice – but for those that do, providing them with a safe, clean and healthy environment free of judgement and fear is the only positive step towards ensuring that only those who choose to sell their bodies, do so.
In 2003, according to Wikipedia, it was estimated that in Amsterdam (a country where sex workers are given health checks and their work premises are registered) one woman in 35 was working as a prostitute, compared to one in 300 in London. Following this, in 2014 the European Parliament voted in favor of the EU criminalizing the buying of sex, but not the selling – an attempt at eradicating soliciting and keeping the sex trade behind closed doors.
Which means that in most cases it is the one looking for sex who faces jail, not the sex worker.
Every day men are taking the risk of breaking the law to get some no-strings-attached sex. Statistically the percentage of men paying for sex varies from country to country, with approximately 7-8% of men in the United Kingdom having visited a sex worker, to between 59% and 80% of men in Cambodia (one of the most popular Sex Tourism destinations). And it’s not only men in far flung places paying for sex. In Australia, a survey conducted in the early 2000s, showed that 15.6% of men aged 16–59 reported paying for sex at least once in their life, and 1.9% had done so in the past year.
So who are these people paying for sex?
Are they all really ugly perverts who can’t get laid the ‘normal’ way? No.
During my time in Australia, a country where prostitution is not illegal, I met a lot of men who had at one time or another paid for sex. Men who had been in the Northern Territory drilling for oil in 60 degree heat, 15 hours a day every day and hadn’t seen a woman in months. Men who, when given a day off, raced to the only town for miles around and paid for sex. These guys were young, attractive, polite, intelligent, respectful men with no deviant streak who simply wanted to have sex and then get on with the rest of their day. They wore protection, they were courteous and they didn’t give the woman a second thought afterwards. Not because they were monsters, but because they weren’t looking for a girlfriend. They weren’t cheating on anyone, they were just satisfying a need like any other.
And I understand that.
I may be a woman but I can empathise with that hunger of needing sex like you would a glass of water on a hot day or a bed when you’re tired. Most women can make do solo, it’s easier, safer and less complicated that way… but with men it’s different. They are rarely victims and most don’t need to feel validated in the sack, so they are free to go the whole hog and seek out a woman they will never see again. The act itself may seem animalistic, premeditated and ugly, but surely it’s more respectful when both parties understand the transaction taking place?
I spoke to Paul*, a 39 year old married man who has paid for sex in the past. He’s handsome, articulate and has a successful job. So why did he have to pay for it?
“I was young, on holiday and after a few drinks my mates suggested going to a local strip joint,” he says. “One of the dancers was really hot and she offered me sex, so I paid. What young lad doesn’t want to have sex with a stripper?”
So does it make him a bad person? Does it mean his now wife, three kids and employers should no longer trust him?
“It wasn’t that great, to be honest, it’s not the same as having sex with someone you know actually likes you. I wouldn’t do it again, plus I’d never cheat on my wife.”
But many do though, I tell him. More than we realise.
“Oh yeah,” he agrees with me. “I work in the City now and many of my married colleagues go to Lap Dancing clubs when ‘entertaining’ clients. They see it as harmless, but it’s not right when you have a family. That’s just wrong.”
So Paul had lots of sex on his travels, well so did I as a backpacker, but apparently getting it for free from a stranger is morally more acceptable than paying for it. We don’t judge a man as a pervert if he meets a girl in a nightclub then never calls her again, having received FREE sex. A punter, on the other hand though, is being transparently honest in his intentions and, unlike a jilted one night stand, the sex worker can walk away with her emotions still intact.
So why do we treat the purchasing of sex differently to anything else we are able to acquire in life? If you wanted a car and someone wasn’t willing to give it to you, but offered to charge you for it – that’s fine. But someone who charges you for sex is a criminal?
Let’s look at the type of women that get paid to have sex…
Are they all drug-addicted ‘whores’ from broken homes, controlled by a pimp, with no self respect or other job opportunities? No. Not all.
I spoke to Amy*, a 31 year old teacher from Manchester, about her time working as an escort to finance her way through Teacher Training College. She’s tall with olive skin and a huge smile. She’s dressed in simple trousers, vest top and cardigan…like any other respectable teacher. She’s not what I was expecting. Actually, what was I expecting?
“It wasn’t as sleazy as it sounds,” she tells me. “I was pretty promiscuous in my teens and early twenties and my friends would often joke that I was so unfussy that I may as well charge for it. So I did. I figured that women, one way or another are used for sex…even once we are married…so why not be in control of the situation and make some money out of it? It wasn’t always full on sex, and I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. I stopped once I passed my exams and started working.”
She’s worried about me keeping her identity hidden and what her employers might say, now that she is head of the Science department of a prestigious school. I find it sad that she would lose her job if they knew she had charged for sex as a living, whereas sleeping around in her teens and not charging for it wouldn’t be deemed as relevant. I ask her if she ever felt threatened during her time as an escort.
“Not really,” she says, shrugging. “It’s no different to going out on a Saturday night, getting drunk and sleeping with a stranger. There’s no substitute for love, but at least this way I was in control.”
But it’s more than just horny men wanting a quick lay that are willing to pay for sex.
The world is full of men and women that, for whatever reason, can’t find sexual fulfilment. What would you say to Catherine the 43 year old Christian virgin who, in the touching and intimate documentary ‘Desperate Virgins’ (below), pays a male escort to help her finally lose her virginity and free her from her sexual inhibitions? Is she immoral for paying for sex? Or Alan, a 49 year old virgin who, due to an illness suffered in childhood, is partially disabled and enlists the help of an escort who specialises in having sex with nervous middle aged men? Does he not deserve the opportunity to enjoy sex with someone who he has paid to treat him kindly and without judgement?
The subject of prostitution will never be black and white.
You only have to read the Daily Mail’s report on Leeds’ new Red Light District to see that not enough people are prepared to consider all sides of the sex industry. That to them paying for sex is bad, and every single one of the sex workers, whether through their own choice are not, are the lowest of the low. As if the very act of paying for sex sullies and spreads among a community making faithful husbands stray and sensible daughters targets for rampant sex-crazed killers that are lured to the city with the promise of a five pound blow job.
It’s not like that.
Personally, my only concern regarding prostitution is the lack of controls and safety for those partaking. If prostitution were to be legalised and controlled – sex workers registered and monitored for their own and their clients’ safety – then officials would be able to better determine who had entered the industry through their own volition and who was being forced into it.
Those wanting to pay for sex don’t want to finance the life of a pimp and his criminal activity. Nobody wants to justify the subjugation of abused women. No one wants to see young vulnerable girls out at night on their own, fearing their ‘owners’ or their ‘clients’.
As long as the need in this world remains for immediate and uncomplicated sex, then women (and men) will continue to sell their bodies. That won’t change, regardless of your moral compass. The only way to ensure that the sex trade remains just that – one willing person trading sex for money – is to eradicate the crime behind it and bring it out in the open. Drag it out of the underground and into the light.
Call me ignorant, but I’m hoping that Leeds City Council’s new Red Light District is not a clever PR stunt to wash their hands of the complicated matter of a rundown part of town being taken over by crime, but a well-meaning attempt to help women on the streets and get back a level of control over a profession that has been vilified and shunned for thousands of years.
Because some women do choose to do it, and some men who pay for it are not perverts. So I will leave the last word to the anonymous blogger and private escort at Exotic Escort Diary:
“We have sex with clients for money, not out of pleasure (even though some of us enjoy some clients). The other common misconception is that many people assume a whore (a woman who loves sex) is synonymous with a prostitute (a woman who has sex for money). Ahh… it is interesting how we live in a world that’s obsessed with sex, yet is still so confined to norms and social attitudes. Why is it such an issue?”
*Names and identities have been changed to protect our sources.
