I have just submitted my evidence. In accordance with the guidelines for submissions, I added a bullet-point summary of my main views, said why I was submitting evidence, and made suggestions for follow-up government actions.
FYI: the name that I use is fake.
Ladies, gents, and everyone in-between, please stand up for freedom and get your evidence in by 20-9-19!
***
Written evidence from me, Naomi Dixon, in representation of myself, a 43-year-old autonomously-engaged prostitute of 4 years.
My main views:
*Prostitution, the practice in which adults voluntarily have sex for money, has no intrinsic harms.
*Adults deserve sexual freedom.
*The Nordic Model criminalises people who mainly do no harm.
*Sexual exploitation is already addressed through a range of laws.
*The Nordic Model has, I believe, been proven to increase the rate of violence against women.
*Prostitution is a completely separate phenomenon to sexual exploitation and should not be subject to the laws relating to sexual exploitation.
*Exploitation takes place in many industries but there are no proposals, I believe, to criminalise the buying of the goods and services springing from any industry other than prostitution.
*Policing sexual activities between consenting adults would be a gross misuse of police time and resources as well as of taxpayers’ money.
*Most prostitution is “unpoliceable” anyway.
*The Nordic Model is potentially a gateway step to criminalising the selling of sex.
*The Nordic Model is a disgrace to the whole world.
*Instead of conducting a prostitution inquiry every year, please let the relevant authorities enact the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Select Committee in their 2016 inquiry as well as those made by myself in this submission.
*All parties who deny the fact of the autonomous and voluntary selling of sex should be excluded from the the process of law- and policy-making relating to prostitution (if we have to have any such laws and policies in the first place, that is).
By having sex with strangers for money from day-to-day, as I have been doing for the last 4 years, I have been able to tap into significantly above average earnings and, accordingly, to offer myself a life of freedom and choice. With this submission, I am standing up for sexual freedom for adults (without the which my lifestyle would suffer significant harm, in my view).
What, harms, if any are associated with buying and selling sex? Who is affected? How?
For me "prostitution" means having sex for money (or for some other material reward) in the context where all transacting parties are consenting adults. This excludes all other practices where sex may be performed for money, as far as I am concerned. Given this, there are no intrinsic harms of any kind, in my view, considering, in particular, that nature intended sexual intercourse as a pleasurable activity.
How does buying and selling sex affect attitudes towards women more widely?
It doesn't, in my opinion. Furthermore, the vast majority of the men who pay me for sex treat me with respect and warmth. Moreover, the implicit idea that without prostitution, all (sexual) violence against women, along with all other forms of misogynism, would end is, to me, ignorant, offensive and overwhelmingly crass; women around the world are not suddenly going to be free of sexual harassment and violence if paying for sex becomes a criminal offence.
What local initiatives are you aware of that address these harms? Are they effective? Why?
Pass
What, if any, are the challenges for those facing harm in accessing services (for example, healthcare; support services; advice; exit services)? What needs to change?
Pass
What relevance does the Public Sector Equality Duty have for the way that public authorities address prostitution in their area?
Pass.
How does the law currently treat paying for sex? How could law and policy be improved to address harm?
How does the law currently treat paying for sex?
In an archaic, vindictive, and senseless way, I believe. It is anti-freedom, anti-logic, and anti-common sense. It treats adults like children, intruding on their private lives as if we were in some sort of "nanny state".
How could law and policy be improved to address harm?
To me there is no intrinsic harm in prostitution (such as I have defined it). The law could - and SHOULD - be improved, even so, to improve
a) the safety of prostitutes (the matter of vulnerability to acts of violence and other criminal offences being applicable to every single individual in the world, prostitute or not)
b) (what I believe should be) the right and freedom of all adults to have sex with other consenting adults.
For specific changes to law required for a) and b), I refer you to the 2016 inquiry into prostitution of the Home Affairs Select Committee (link provided at the end). To their recommendations, I add the following:
There should be a definitive dismissal of the proposal to make the buying of sex a criminal offence (aka the Nordic Model or the Sex-Buyer Law) in England, Scotland and Wales. Likewise, in Northern Ireland, where the Sex-Buyer Law is in place, this law should be overturned immediately (and anyone with a conviction for breaking this law should have their name cleared, as I say). I say more on this below.
There should be a definitive dismissal of the proposal to ban online sex work advertising platforms.
There should be a definitive dismissal of the proposal to introduce age-verification for porn websites. The "dark web", to which the young - and others - may turn for their online pornography contains sites with far more disturbing content than non-clandestine sites. Besides this, with a VPN or a Cloudflare web browser, for instance, age-blocks will be very easily bypassed. Responsible and authoritative parenting along with recourse, on the part of parents, to software offering parental internet controls are the answer to under-age viewing of online porn, in my opinion.
I also wish to stress the HASC's recommendations that prostitutes should be allowed to share premises for their work and that consensual procuring should be decriminalised.
As for policies relating to prostitution, in keeping with my clearly pro-freedom stance, I feel that this should actually be a non-starter; in my view, consensual sexual intercourse between adults, whether paid-for or not, is the business of the participating parties only and should accordingly not be subject to any form of intrusion from the law.
How effective are different international approaches at addressing any harms associated with buying and selling sex?
With the Nordic Model, a government creates a class of criminals who are, in principle, easy to catch but who, in reality, for the most part, do no harm whatsoever, as far as I am aware. In fact, by enabling prostitutes to support both themselves and their families, our customers do the exact opposite of harming us. Making the buying of sex a criminal offence is, in my opinion, an insult both to freedom and to common sense. In the UK at least, the matter of sexual exploitation (including sex trafficking), which the Sex-Buyer Law is meant to reduce, is already addressed by laws relating to slavery, false imprisonment, rape, and physical assault (amongst others). It is already a crime to buy sex, whether wittingly or unwittingly, from someone who has been coerced or exploited, for instance. The goal of tackling sexual exploitation is no justification for the Sex-Buyer Law at all, then. Additionally, as far as I am aware, the Sex-Buyer Law has been proven to actually increase the incidence of violence against prostitutes. Moreover sexual exploitation is a completely separate and distinct phenomenon to prostitution, such as I have defined it, so the laws against it should likewise be kept separate and distinct to the laws relating to prostitution. Furthermore, there do not seem to be any proposals to make the buying of a manicure, a car wash, or a Chinese takeaway a criminal offence despite the well-documented exploitation of many people who facilitate those services.
Buyers of the services of street-prostitutes are the ones who I believe will be easy for police to catch. Personally, however, I believe most citizens would prefer the tax that they pay into policing to go on anti-terrorism initiatives, the catching of murderers, and the tracing of burglars and robbers, for instance, if for no other reason than the fact (as I understand it) that most people who buy sex do no harm whatsoever to the people from whom they buy, as I have said. Moreover, according to the prostitute-supporting charity National Ugly Mugs, most prostitution is indoors-based. Personally, I cannot see how this form of prostitution can possibly be policed. More importantly, I do not believe that it should be a police matter in the first place, police time and resources being far better spent, in my view, on stopping true sexual exploitation (and other crimes) whose victims will duly appreciate police intervention, I believe.
Picking up on what I see as the inevitable failure of the Sex-Buyer Law (if ever it should be passed in Britain), I feel that the true intention of this proposed law is to make the selling of sex into a criminal offence; once it is clear that the Nordic Model has failed to significantly reduce prostitution (the which being its true aim, in my opinion) - owing to the impossibility of actually enforcing the law (a fact of which supporters of the Nordic Model are fully aware, I believe) - anti-prostitution groups will, I believe, feel justified in arguing for the criminalising of the selling of sex (which would entail closing down sex work advertising platforms, amongst other measures, for example). In my view, far from deserving to be criminalised, consensual sexual intercourse between adults should, as I have already said, be free from all interference from the law.
To me, then, the Nordic Model is a disgrace not only to the countries where it is in force but to the rest of the world as a whole. Adults do not deserve to be treated like children, as I have already implied. Accordingly, as far as I am concerned, my choice to suck cocks for a living is no business whatsoever of any politicians, of anti-prostitution pressure groups, of the police, or of anyone's but mine and my punters. Moreover, having worked, in the course of my 43 years of life to date, as a fast-food restaurant employee, a home-help, an au pair, a bouncer, a media sales executive, and a teacher, I can report that being an au pair was the most exploitative role of them all while teaching, which I did for 13 years, was the single most oppressive and de-humanising work-role that I have ever held, extreme and unrelenting bullying having been at its core and having been visited on me every single day of the job. Having sex with several random men for money from day to day, on the other hand, as I have been doing since July 2015, is by far the most enjoyable, dignified and financially rewarding job that I have ever had, not to mention the total freedom that it affords me.
Even without any examples of decriminalisation in other countries, it only requires common sense to recognise that sex between consenting adults is no-one's business but their own, whether money changes hands or not. On this basis, I make the recommendations presented in my answer to "How could law and policy be improved to address harm?"
Further points.
Since there have already been at least 4 inquiries into prostitution in the last 4 years asking virtually the same questions as those in this new inquiry, what is the point of this new inquiry? To me, what is required at this point, rather, is not any further inquiries but the enacting of the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Select Committee in their 2016 inquiry along with the recommendations made by myself in this submission.
For your information, the inquiries to which I am referring are:
The international symposium on the decriminalisation of prostitution held at Parliament in November 2015. Written report: (link given)
The Home Affairs Select Committee's Inquiry into Prostitution 2016: (link given)
Conservative Party Human Rights Commission Inquiry into Prostitution 2018-2019: (link given)
University of Bristol Prostitution and Sex Work Survey 2018-2019. Report due to be published this September.
I request the views of those who deny the fact of the consensual selling of sex, which I am aware may include the commissioners / conductors of this inquiry (who may read this written evidence of mine) to be excluded from all law- and policy-making processes relating to prostitution (assuming that, against my views, we actually have to have laws and policies controlling sexual interactions between consenting adults in the first place). To argue that paid-for consent is no consent at all, as the authors of the prostitution report entitled “The Limits of Consent” published in July this year do, is effectively to argue against the practice of all forms of employment except voluntary work. In my opinion, parties with such ludicrously irrational thinking should, as I say, play no part whatsoever in the making and / or changing of laws and policies relating at least to prostitution.
Naomi Dixon
August 2019
Topic: Women and Equalities Committee Enquiry into sex work (Read 5622 times)