My main interest in bringing up New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act is to point out its anti-migration side, disguised as anti-trafficking. I will come back to that, but, since most responses to the post revolve around the question of whether street sex workers are protected by and benefit from the Act, I am following up on the street question today. Please read the interesting comments on the previous post if you haven’t already.
Street prostitution gets most of the attention worldwide: from the media, from lawmakers, from moral entrepreneurs, from street gangs, from sociologists and from all manner of other people. Street sex workers in New Zealand are unquestionably covered by the legislation and that is an improvement over the situation in most places. But just the same as in other places, and despite the law, some communities are highly offended and annoyed by street prostitution in their neighbourhoods. In NZ, both the street sex workers and their clients are permitted to exchange money for sex.
The greenish picture above shows a scene from a link sent to me by Jo Richdale to a video made by annoyed citizens in one community. The sex workers in the video object to vigilante actions intended to discourage clients. The vigilantes command clients to leave and threaten to tell their families if they come back (a classic anti-demand tactic). The video was edited and shown on television. A second video depicts the discussion a presenter then held with one sex worker, one policeman and two vigilantes.
Laws can only achieve so much, and negative incidents don’t prove that laws are bad. In this case, the law has not changed some people’s minds about street hooking and kerb crawling. But, as the sex worker in the discussion points out, much more could be done to reduce the problems communities perceive. So people interested in how to draft prostitution law should be interested in New Zealand’s experiences and what else might be done. The fact that a legislative model is better than others doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed or that we should be afraid to find any weaknesses in it.
A weird argument i have heard in Taiwan is that,
(context: in taiwan legislation, there are laws regulating trafficking and child prostitution, also a law that punish sex workers and the third parties and the clients are not under any regulation. Now sex worker rights NGO wants to abolish the law that punish sex workers while the anti-prostitution campaign wants to revise the law into the one that decriminalizes prostitutes and criminalizes clients, because the anti prostitution campaign considered that the decriminalization of sex worker without punish “patriarchy”(client) at the same time equals to the recognition of patriarchy, then we cannot allowed the decriminalization of sex workers in such a way)
some anti-prostitution NGOs (they agree with the decriminalization of sex workers but not of clients) said, “because once the decriminalization of both sex workers and clients the sex workers without any proper accompanying policy sex worker would face such an aggressive insult and became more marginalized, so we need a comprehensive policy to avoid the situation, that is, severe punishment of clients and the third parties to reduce prostitution at the same time while the passage of decriminalization of sex workers. Otherwise, we should just asked them to transfer their work and reduce the prostitution.” So, why not decriminalize sex worker first and later design a policy to solve the problem which might happen? they said, “because prostitution (the institution) is the embodiment of patriarchy (men “play” women). if we cannot change patriarchy, why agreed with these women to do sex work to obey the patriarchy. Besides, most of them are in suffer as the statistic shows, but we cannot see what would be better for them after the legalization because there is no positive evidence, any more comprehensive research to prove their life would be better after the legalization.”–>i do not understanding the logic.
What i want to say, the thorough policy is important, but in such a case, the thorough policy became an excuse to delay the decriminalization of sex workers (but some of the fault resulted from government’s fault, the government think since without a public consent of the legalization, so the decriminalization of sex workers should be postponed). Should a thorough policy postpone the decriminalization of sex worker? Why not decriminalize it and solve other problems too, why the problems then became the stone curbing the importance of decriminalization, since they also agree to the importance of decriminalization? Maybe the key problem is how we think sex work as well as the thorough sex work policy are different, and there is no good conversation, but it became an intriguing lock of the political debate, especially when pro- and anti-NGOs respectively represent different stance–street sex worker versus victim. Also the legislation could only have one model, but two different stances must reach a difficult consent (i think it is possible, but somehow it is still in the deadlock except only the decriminalization of sex workers(consent is about should but not how))
NZ legislation and the later discussion of its problems is a good model for others’ discussion, but sometimes it is frustrating that the discussion still stay in a dead lock like TW. You have mentioned the cultural studies of sex work, it is important base for legislative discussion, but the dead lock of the debate also restrict the broadness of the studies too.
Thanks, Laura, the discussion of NZ PRA is very inspiring.
Best,
Ted
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“Scarlet Alliance urges all members of hte New Zealand Parliament to maintain a focus on street based sex worker safety while solving current issues raised by non-sex working residents in relation to amenity impact.
Scarlet Alliance recommends safe houses for street based sex workers as a win-win solution for sex workers and non-sex working residents in street sex work areas. Safe houses provide safety for sex workers, and also lower amenity impact in sex working areas by giving sex workers and clients a private and discreet location in which to meet and provide services.”
from Scarlet Alliance Submission in opposition to The Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill & in support of the Rights of Street Based Sex Workers 2006 (link below)
Link: http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/library/sub-nz06