Amanda Sebestyen
This article appeared in the May 1979 issue o/^Spare Rib, available from 27 Clerkenwell Close, London ECl, UK.
During the Middle Ages, the prostitute like the Jew, was confined to a few streets of the city, she too was forced to wear clothing that identified her from others at a glance, and enabled her movements to be policed efficiently. She had no civil rights. English law continues these traditions. Three cautions are enough to brand a woman a "common prostitute ". No witnesses are called for, unconfirmed police evidence is sufficient (remind you of anything? the notorious 'Sus' law which has been used to harass so many black teenagers "suspected of loitering with intent to commit an arrestable offense "operates on the same lines). She is the only " offender " whose record can be read out in court before she's even charged — and yet prostitution itself is not a crime in this country. Once known as a prostitute, a woman finds herself barred from other work, her lovers liable to charges of living on immoral earnings, her friends and flatmates to charges of running a brothel. Rape and child custody cases go against her almost as a routine . Even murder is taken less seriously if the victim is said to have been a pro.
As for her social mobility, well — we don't have a walled brothel quarter any longer, do we? No, but the laws against soliciting and loitering do a grand job. A " common prostitute ', you see, may be loitering whenever she leaves her own house. Many women have been sent to Holloway carrying their weekend shopping. And then soliciting: we all know that while the streets are safe for any male " loiterer ", kerb crawler or religious maniac to make our lives a misery, a woman making sexual approaches to a man is endangering the peace of our cities and liable to immediate arrest. If convicted, she will be heavily fined and may have no way to raise the money but to go on the game.
Two million women in this country are involved in some form of recognized prostitution, from the full time street-walker or call girl to the waitress expected to go home with clients to the woman who needs money occasionally for Christmas presents or to pay the rent.
Recent history
The Street Offenses Act of 1959 allowed prostitution itself but "cleared it off the streets" by for bidding street-walking, advertising or any other methods of contact
Joan Vickers, a Conservative MP, was the only person in her party to oppose the Act's passing. She and the Labour members opposed to the Act were supported outside Parliament by the Josephine Butler Society, founded in 1870 to oppose a brothel system and defend the civil rights of prostitutes; and by feminist organizations founded in the suffrage era like the Six Point Group and the Women's Freedom League. They pointed out that the act discriminated profoundly against women where soliciting on the street is said to be a crime, kerb crawling is no such thing . They also pointed out that by driving prostitutes underground the law was forcing them to rely increasingly on pimps and madams to provide a front , and that a woman going on the game temporarily would be forced to seek protection from organized crime. The proliferation of massage parlours, nightclubs and other organized prostitution rackets show that these feminist were right.
In the 70s came a new wave of campaigners, including pros themselves. In 1973 a prostitutes' union COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), was founded in San Francisco by Margo St James, a woman who'd "never turned a trick in her life" when she found herself hauled upon a soliciting charge in the 60s. Finding herself a " common prostitute " she decided t o make the best of it. Other prostitutes' unions have followed, from Washington to Honolulu. In England a call-girl named Helen Buckingham set up her pressure movement PUSS! (Prostitutes United for Social and Sexual Integration), calling for an end to the ban on advertising and the stigma on prostitution, but also calling for a "clean up of the profession".
In 1975 the massive French prostitutes' strike inspired many feminists with its militancy , the Wages for Housework group in Britain began to organize around the issue, for mingan English Collective of Prostitutes and working alongside Helen Buckingham, whose pressure group now changed its name to PLAN (Prostitution Laws Are Nonsense). The ECP say that women's poverty ensures that we are all prostitutes: ' There is only one reason why it's men who buy and women who sell. Because it's men who have money and women who don't ". This statement at a campaign meeting provoked a well-known and outraged radical sociologist to bellow from behind my left ear, "What about rich women, then ? " Yes, what about them? Haven't we all seen the Queen and Mrs Thatcher roll up to open a bazaar with some beautiful rent-boy in attendance? hmm ?
Meanwhile in Birmingham a group of streetwalkers were getting together with lawyers and community workers to fight the unbearable police harassment they were subject to. They called their group PROS (Program for Reform of Soliciting laws), and it's now the largest organization with branches of support in Sheffield, Coventry, Liverpool and Bristol (articles about PROS in SR 56 and 69).
Branches of support in Sheffield, Coventry, Liverpool and Bristol
(articles about PROS in SR 56 and 69)
These newer groups are campaigning for decriminalization — an end to the term " common prostitute " , to the offenses of soliciting and loitering, and to imprisonment for streetwalking. All are against "legalization" — a system of clean, efficient , profitable brothels (government-run or private enterprise) where the women are kept working 14 hours at a shift and given no choice of clients. This sort of "conveyor belt of sex", in the words of a French prostitutes' organizer, is constantly held up by liberals as t he "reasonable alternative" to our present system of repression and harassment. It's a real danger, as it would fit in so perfectly with our burgeoning sex and tourism industry, and the campaign groups are clear that it would lead to prostitutes being more exploited than ever.
Breakthrough
At a meeting held by Baroness Vickers, PLAN and the ECP last winter , at Westminster Central Hall across the road from Parliament, Maureen Colquhoun (the MP who risked her seat by coming out as a lesbian) laid herself on the line again. In the 20 years since the Street Offenses Act , two alternative bills had been introduced in the House of Lords, but no politician had been prepared to risk a Commons career by taking up such a controversial issue. Now Maureen Colquhoun volunteered to put the case against the Act as soon as possible. The publicity would be enormously valuable for the campaign, even if she lost her seat at the election or some other obstacle arose before the tortuous process of redrafting legislation was complete.
The late news on March 6 flashed this great little item; "Maureen Colquhoun MP won the right to draft her bill for the Protection of Prostitutes under the Ten-Minute Rule by a surprisingly large majority. Prostitutes have withdrawn their threat to make public the names of their clients inside the Houses of Parliament". So to massive abstentions from Conservative MPs (interesting!) and a long overdue display of female solidarity from women members, Colquhoun put her case for abolishing the laws which are used to harass and victimize the "common prostitute", and for a new law on street nuisances, where proper witnesses would have to be called and kerb crawlers, drunks, pushy salesmen or Hare Krishnas would be equally liable. She pointed out that the present laws are an offense against women's human rights and force prostitution into the area of organized crime. Unfortunately she then went on: "Eminent psychiatrists the ones who make sure two thirds of our mental hospital inmates are women?] have assured me that it is accepted in their profession that prostitutes have great therapeutic value in society and are practitioners of professional therapy. Many psychiatrists accept that prostitutes are the oldest sex therapists in the world".
What about women with sex problems, then? Are they supposed to be able to pay for "sex therapy" too? This is a polite rephrasing of the idea that men just Have to Have it or else they'll go out and rape old ladies. Feminists have been pointing out for years that rape has very little to do with sex and everything to do with power. When do we hear of a woman rubbing against men in tube trains, molesting children, undressing a man at gunpoint? But no, say the "sex therapy" supporters, men still (mysteriously) need it more, they have to have a Recognized Outlet (is that why they call a fallen woman a Sink of Iniquity?). Men are the Demand, you see, and women are the Supply, so fair exchange is no robbery...
The "sex therapist" line was taken by Helen Buckingham at a meeting I attended to launch the new initiative. As a working prostitute who has been brave enough to come forward, perhaps her ideas seem more credible to Maureen Colquhoun than the militant speeches of the ECP and their supporters. But if you listen to Helen Buckingham carefully her speeches really sound like a plea for the professionalization of the upmarket call-girl: not only are prostitutes therapists, according to her, but the dear old madame's were "peaceful", orderly and civilized" (I'd like to hear from one of the "girls" about that). In another part of her many splendorous speech she claimed prostitutes were fighting just like Florence Nightingale 100 years ago — to be free to serve men! 'There are many ways of loving men, and ours is one of them". Yuk.
Prostitution's-just-a-social-service-for-disturbed individuals: this load of hooey comes up every time prostitutes' rights are mentioned and has I believe done a lot to discourage the women's liberation movement from seeing how closely the victimization of prostitutes affects us all. It's painful to admit how closely we are governed by the rules of the game. The rules of marriage (a contract which 90'/o of us enter at some time or other) are almost identical — the man has free access to a woman's body in exchange for money, in this case not a fee but a house and upkeep. The law that passes over rape within marriage, or refuses Social Security payment to a woman who is cohabiting, is only the visible confirmation of what everyone tells us is "common sense": if a man gives you anything, he's got to have sex — and if he's getting sex, he has to be paying. This is prostitution, and as feminists we're out to stop it in all its forms.
But then, some women ask, how can we oppose prostitution but support the women who engage in it? Mary Stott in the Guardian saw this as a big contradiction: a feminist must be fighting to stop being a sex object, whereas a prostitute was saying she didn't mind being a sex object as long as the price was right. And from a different angle, a letter to Women's Voice asked: "How are we to better our prospects for equal pay, opportunity, labour rights etc, if we all retreat, from the field of struggle [into prostitution]? ... a job in which any man can spit over your body for the price of your sustenance and shelter is sometimes, quite literally, the shiftiest job of all " . The picture conjured up by both writers is almost of prostitutes crossing a women's picket line, breaking our ranks by "selling themselves". The reality of our lives seems to me to be extraordinarily different: all kinds of women in all kinds of "shitty jobs" struggling to survive and forced into all kinds of compromises along the way, but slowly building up solidarity to make the changes that we need. The message of consciousness-raising is that each personal experience is Interconnected — the "spinster", the "housewife", the "prostitute" all pay the price of our subordination to men. And far from being rewarded for selling out, the "common prostitute" is one of the most heavily victimized women in our society.
Prostitution is important for the women's movement. The prostitute's situation is so very clear — commerce and the state make a naked intervention in areas we usually think of as personal and private. Many of us in the movement have things slightly easier — interesting jobs, "understanding" men, alternative support networks. These gains should not blind us to the fact that women share the same fight.
Three women from PROS make the point better than I can. They took the platform together at a recent campaign meeting, and said: "Some of us are prostitutes and some are social workers. We're not going to tell you which".
PROS: c/o Birmingham Peace Center, 18 Moor St. Birmingham 4, UK.
ECP: 38 Mount Pleasant, London EC1, UK. 01-837 7509. PLAN: 794 9187.
Josephine Butler Society/Six Point Group: 49 Hawkshead Lane, North Mimms, Hatfield, UK.