Women in prostitution should not be criminalised — this is something that those (like me) who want to see prostitution abolished, and those who want to see prostitution fully decriminalised, agree on. MP Nadia Whittome took it further, saying on Channel Four News that she didn’t “really care about the men who are purchasing sex”. Instead she cares “about keeping women who are involved in sex work safe”. Yet, it is the men who pay for sex who are a direct danger to the women and girls exploited. Ignoring the men who pay for sex will not keep women safe. Like all other forms of men’s violence against women, if we want to reduce men’s violence and abusive behaviour, then we need to change that behaviour, as well as address women’s safety. The way to stop men abusing women in prostitution is to end men’s sense of sexual entitlement through paying for access to women’s bodies — to end demand. Criminalising men who pay for sexual access to women, not ignoring them, is part of the solution to violence against women in prostitution. 

Enablers of the sex industry, like Whittome, argue that we need to focus on poverty, particularly women’s disproportionate poverty in order to address prostitution. Indeed, poor women, including those from marginalised ethnic groups are over-represented in prostitution, and this is also linked to socio-economic inequality. I agree, an end to prostitution will require economic security for all. Supporting prostitution, where men pay for sexual access to the bodies of women who have too few choices, is not the answer to women’s poverty. It is not possible to have sexual equality for all in a society when one sex is for sale as a commodity or service, and the other is the consumer and almost always the purveyor. 

Things got worse, not better after decriminalisation

Prostitution turns women into products. Consumers have rights over and above the goods and services that they buy. Women who have exited prostitution in Germany and New Zealand, where the purchasing of sex was decriminalised and prostitution became regulated by the state, have said that things got worse, not better after decriminalisation. It was not the women inside brothels but rather brothel owners who set prices and offered “bargains” to attract the increased demand of emboldened men who could shop around with impunity. Men demanded increasingly unpleasant and demeaning acts from women who were desperate to be selected. Survivors of prostitution often speak of their repulsion from the men they were coerced into having sex with, and the abuse they suffered as men played out their fantasies on women who were not in a position to say no. As Rachel Moran, prostitution survivor, famously said: “When a woman is poor and hungry, the humane thing to do is put food in her mouth, not your dick.”

Some question the inclusion of prostitution as a form of violence against women, instead claiming that “sex work is work”. Others, like myself, not only argue that prostitution is violence against women in and of itself, but that it also contributes to a society where men’s violence against women flourishes. Women in prostitution, particularly street-based prostitution, can be easy targets for men who plan to use violence to rape or kill. Prostitution requires women to go to isolated places with men whom they do not know. In addition, women in prostitution can become the focus of men who fear or despise women and women’s sexuality, an issue exacerbated by stigmatisation. It’s easy to see how some can be convinced that full decriminalisation, or state sanctioned prostitution, can offer protections for women. 

Many who want to end prostitution are themselves exited women

Researchers looked at killings of women in the German sex trade between 1920 and 2017. They found that since the “liberalisation” of prostitution in Germany in 2002, although the numbers of women killed between 2002 and 2017 appeared to decline, the numbers of women reporting attempted murder increased dramatically. Part of the answer is improved medical practices. The research authors concluded that the liberalisation of prostitution does not eliminate serious violence against women in prostitution — it increases it. In the summer of 2021, more than five years after the murder of Daria Pionko, Leeds City Council announced that they were scrapping the so-called prostitution managed zone in Leeds Holbeck. West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin welcomed the move, pointing out that the failed experiment didn’t “protect women and girls”. Women in prostitution are at an increased risk of murder in the UK. Since 2009, the Femicide Census has found that at least forty-six UK women who were involved in prostitution have been killed by men. This is more than five times greater than the number of killings of people with transgender identities in the UK in the same time period. 

The term SWERF (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist) frequently accompanies TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist). Both terms are ludicrous — refusing to capitulate to transgender identity ideology isn’t exclusionary, and many who want to end prostitution are themselves exited women. It’s interesting that there is a huge overlap between supporters of transgender identity ideology and supporters of the sex trade. Whittome is just one such person and certainly not alone. In both cases, the safety of those affected, whether people with transgender identities or prostituted people, is often evoked as a reason for support. Who would disagree with improving the safety for either of these groups? The answer to violence, abuse and discrimination against people who don’t conform to the gendered stereotypes associated with their sex is not to require people to change their bodies to correspond to those stereotypes or to deny their biological reality.

It is to break down stereotypes, to strive for a society where we are all free to be who we are and not confined by biology. This is how you end biological essentialism, not by denying that women and men are biologically different. Likewise, we need to end poverty, including women’s disproportionate poverty, but the answer cannot be to codify a system of sexual exploitation of women. If we want to end men’s violence against women and girls, we need to dismantle the systems that perpetuate it, not enshrine them in state legislation.