Making paying for sex illegal won't end the abuse of women

Rhoda Grant MSP today gives evidence to Holyrood's Justice Committee regarding her Private Members' Bill which aims to make paying for sex illegal. I'll look at the issue in more depth when I don't feel completely floored by a nasty bug but some brief thoughts to be going on with.

I am not convinced that criminalising the process will actually help those men and women who are exploited by others and forced into prostitution with no control over what they do or how they do it. The people who do that trafficking, exploiting and abuse are the people who need to be locked up. Given that they are not usually keeping to the letter of the law in other areas of their lives, a ban on paying for sex is hardly likely to put them off.

If you are a young woman (or man)  who's been trafficked by one of these nasty pieces of work, you are unlikely to speak a huge amount of English. I wonder if Rhoda Grant's law would have the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for you to seek help once you are trapped within that world. After all, if they were told it was illegal and they'd go to jail, even if that were not the case, if they complained...

Sweden took this step in 1999 and there are mixed reports of its success. I'm not sure how much we can compare the situations in both countries, though. What struck me was one study where they said that the number of men paying for sex had dropped from 13.6% to 8%. I wonder how accurate that was given that the first time they were confessing to a legal act, and the second time to an illegal one. That surely has to distort the figures.

I have to confess that I am pretty conflicted - in most cases, prostitution as it is currently practised is an act of violence against women (and also men) so it's difficult not to have sympathy with what Rhoda Grant is saying. It's an occupation you rarely participate in if you have the economic choice and those who do often have drug and mental health issues as well. Equally, in most cases, drug dealing is an exploitative act aimed at keeping customers in dependence and subjugation. Prohibition hasn't worked in the latter area, so why would it work in the sex industry? The people who need locking up are the men (and, let's face it, they almost always are men) who abuse and exploit the vulnerable by forcing them into prostitution.

I think we need to look at ways of getting ourselves a much healthier attitude to sex in this country. The easy availability of internet porn in which women are portrayed as mere receptacles will only make the idea that women who provide sexual services are not human even more commonly held- a view which was prevalent amongst punters even before.  I think we actually do need to educate and discuss rather than ban  - which is why I've always been against this talk of automatically barring certain websites and people having to opt in to access them. It might protect your child in your home, but not when they're round at their mates. The best form of protection from damage is education and information, frankly.

Prostitution is far from being the only way in which bad men exploit and abuse vulnerable women. I'm not sure that the model of the sex industry here necessarily fits in with Sweden's where they've had a history of being more open about sex. While I get what Rhoda Grant is trying to do, I'm far from convinced its implementation would actually help those trapped in a horrible, degrading humiliating, abusive, violent world.

Britain's Got Talent Shame - When did stripping become mainstream family entertainment?

I know that I can usually be trusted to watch every reality show known to man, but I've never quite got Britain's Got Talent. My daughter loves it, though, especially the acts that, predictably, involve cute animals.

What I wasn't prepared for in last night's opening show of the new series was the final act they showed. Effectively, the woman gyrating on the stage in red stockings, suspenders and basque with strategically placed Union Jacks round her bum and bosom was a stripper. For all that people use the term "burlesque" to make this sort of activity sound exotic, in the end of the say, it still represents a massive disrespect to women.

I want my daughter to grow up with an idea that there are no barriers to what she can achieve based on her gender. It makes it all the more difficult if her future male partners or employers are being raised on the idea that women are merely there to be men's sexual playthings.

I am halfway through watching a series channel 4 did last week on the effects of pornography on secondary school students' perception of sex. It's very, very scary stuff although it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to work out the effects of the almost universal access to porn on the internet.

Predictably, girls felt pressure to have come up to the image and behaviour of female porn stars. Given that the entire porn industry pretty much is targetted at straight men, then a whole generation of boys is being taught that women are there to perform a subjugated rather than an equal role in a sexual relationship.

Not only that, but the boys who are watching porn will presumably go to work one day. How are they going to respect their female colleagues as equals if they have been brought up to see them as subservient architects of their sexual gratification?

When I was a student, and first got interested in these issues, porn was limited to some dodgy under the counter videos and top shelf magazines and to get anything really explicit you had to go to a sex shop. Now, for most of our kids, it's a few clicks away.

The inclusion of these acts in a family entertainment show brings the seedy world of the lapdancing club into our living rooms. I leave you with some thoughts on why that is not a good idea. If you haven't got time to look at those links, then the edited version is that reports of rape in the vicinity of lapdancing clubs are up by a third and of indecent assault are up by over 50%.

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