Prostitution: the oldest oppression

It’s known as the oldest profession, yet ask any woman who has managed to escape prostitution to tell you if it’s a job like any other, and she will tell you something rather different

During the past 25 years, since I began to prioritise campaigning against the sex trade, I’ve heard heartbreaking stories from the hundreds of women I’ve interviewed. These women, often abused in childhood, many targeted by pimps whilst still in the care system, tell me it is a life of hell, and not remotely ‘work’. As one woman said, “It is the oldest oppression”. In the UK, feminists have been calling for the police to stop arresting the women and start arresting the punters, and for the government to introduce a law that helps women get out of the sex trade, whilst clamping down on the men that create the demand.

When it comes to the Left, and I say this as a life-long Labour voter, women have been completely betrayed. The Labour Party is full of parliamentarians and activist members calling for full decriminalisation of all aspects of the sex trade, some of whom have formed the group Labour4Decrim. The party’s left-wing faction Momentum is totally pro-prostitution, as is Novara media, another hard-left platform.

Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and poster boy of the Left, was seen in photographs smiling and pointing at the “Will suck dick for socialism” slogan on a woman’s T-shirt. Billy Bragg, another hero of the Left, proudly posted a photograph of himself on X – his arm around a woman calling for strippers’ rights. This is classic “feminism for men” – they support prostitution because it hands them even more rights. Never mind the women involved in the sex trade in the UK, half of whom were prostituted as children. Almost all women on-street have serious drug addiction problems.

Talcum X (aka Owen Jones)

The latest UK figures show that at least 58,000 women are in prostitution, and that one in ten British men admit to having paid for sex at least once.

The trade in human beings is worth billions worldwide, and the UK is host to thousands of victims. The latest study discovered around 2,000 brothels in London alone, though this will be a serious underestimation: many women are now bought and sold from private flats and houses across the city. Pimps and traffickers are rarely arrested, let alone convicted – only 50 to 100 charges are brought forward annually.

Many studies have found that women involved in the sex trade have experienced serious active sexual or physical violence at the hands of a pimp or punter at least once, and that the vast majority wish to exit – but feel unable to do so.

In June I attended a conference in Montréal, along with 400 other people from around the world who seek to eradicate prostitution. The event was protested by leftists  wrapped in Palestinian flags, and men shouting, “Sex work is work! Blow jobs are real jobs”, and, “Get your laws off our bodies” – as though feminists fighting for laws that would target pimps and punters are somehow taking away women’s freedom to ‘choose’ this way of life.

The English Collective of Prostitutes is a Trotskyist organisation that has long demanded full decriminalisation of all aspects of the sex trade. It claims that any laws targeting punters or pimps endanger the women, though there is no evidence of this.

On the contrary, in countries that have legalised or decriminalised their sex trade, the incidence of murders of women, trafficking, and illegal brothels is far higher than under other regimes. In the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain – all of which have done so – there have been dozens of recorded murders of women in prostitution as a result of their involvement in the sex trade.

The UK government has long been reluctant to take this course of action, although the Tory party is certainly more in favour of this approach than Labour ever has been. Both the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are totally opposed to any sanctions on the men, and wish to see a Wild West approach to the sex trade, where selling and buying women's bodies is no different from popping out for a burger and a beer.

Paradise, a “mega-brothel” in Stuttgart

I am one of the many women that, from the early 1990s, campaigned to criminalise the men that pay for sex, and to end to the criminalisation of the women. It makes sense: men create the demand, and the women are the victim of sexual exploitation.

In 1999, Sweden adopted this very law, and since then prostitution in there has been drastically reduced, with many women being supported out of the sex trade, and a whole generation of boys and young men being raised to see prostitution as the abuse of women and girls. This approach, known as the Abolitionist Model now been adopted by several countries around the world, including Northern Ireland and France.

In Ipswich, after five women in street prostitution were murdered by regular punter Steve Wright, Suffolk police clamped down on kerb crawlers. At the same time, they switched their tactics from arresting the women to supporting them into drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes, referring them to agencies that could help them. Because of the many associated crimes, plus public nuisance, and children being taken into care, every £1 spent on this strategy saved £2 of public money.

Fiona Broadfoot was pimped into prostitution at 15, and spent 11 years working the streets. After her cousin, also prostituted, was murdered by a punter in 1995, she managed to escape her pimp, and never looked back.

Fiona Broadfoot

It is difficult for women to exit prostitution, partly because it is almost inevitable that they will have a criminal record from being arrested for soliciting on street.

Fiona is part of a team of claimants, all of whom were prostituted as children, challenging the government’s Disclosure and Barring scheme, under which they must disclose criminal records for soliciting for the rest of their lives. This means they are unlikely to be allowed to volunteer in any position involving children or vulnerable adults – including at the school their own children attend. These women are seen as akin to sex offenders, facing terrible  stigma and shame, when in fact they are victims of child sexual abuse by predatory men. They won their case against the Home Office in 2021.

When brothels are legalised, there is more abuse of women, and more children are pimped into prostitution. “As soon as police are told it is no longer a crime, they care even less about what the pimps and punters are doing to the women,” Fiona tells me. “This means that loads more women are encouraged to start selling sex, and men are more likely to think there’s nothing wrong with it.”

I have interviewed a number of men who paid for sex, both in the UK and in other countries, and been horrified at their attitudes towards women. One US study found that sex buyers were nearly eight times more likely to rape than other men.

A Danish sex tourist in Pattaya

I have visited legal brothels in Germany, Holland, and Nevada, US, and what I found was even worse abuse of the women than in illegal regimes.

Nevada is the only state in the US where prostitution is legal, and some legal brothel owners are worse than any pimp, because they are fully protected by the state.

The women are expected to live in the brothels and work 12 to 14-hour shifts. They are not allowed to have their own cars. When a customer arrives, a bell rings, and the women have to instantly present themselves in a line-up, so he can take his pick.

Jenny, who escaped prostitution after a decade of working both on-street and in brothels across the UK, told me many of her punters were serving police officers who would drop in to the brothel (licensed, like most, as a sauna) and threaten to arrest her on a trumped up charge unless she gave them a freebie. “I knew it was pointless complaining,” she told me, “and so did they, so I just had to put up with it. Most of the girls I worked with had similar experiences."

Why do so many on the Left support an industry run by dangerous criminals and gangsters, and built on oppression and exploitation of some of the most vulnerable in society?

Billy “Double Denim” Bragg

“These prostitution apologists see the issue of “sex work” as a matter of workers’ rights. They speak of women being “empowered” and exercising “free choice”,” says Sandi, a former prostitute from Glasgow who escaped her pimp after he took her to a hotel room for a ‘job’ and she discovered six men waiting for her, expecting a ‘gang bang’.

It is high time that those on the Left who support this vile trade in human flesh are named as the hypocrites they clearly are. These people claim to be concerned about oppressed and marginalised people, but this doesn't extend to the women caught up in prostitution.

Fiona’s story, told in her own words

During the 15 years I was in prostitution, I experienced horrific violence, abuse and humiliation at the hands of pimps and punters. I was once driven 70 miles out of London by a punter who held me in a semi-derelict house and raped, beat and tortured me for an hour. I got away from him by spraying perfume in his face and running naked into the street.

My pimp told me to wash the blood away, stop crying and get back to work. He said getting back on the streets was like riding a horse after a fall, and that unless I get back up there I would never ride again.

There is no such thing as a “right” to sex. When men claim that prostitution reduces rape. What they really mean is that it is OK to rape prostituted women, which is how we experience sex with punters. Prostitution is rape.

The next UK government needs to take a long, hard look at the laws on prostitution. The women should never be criminalised for selling sex. Why should women be arrested for being abused? The women in prostitution have no choice, but the punters that buy us have all the choice. Instead, they need to be given every bit of help available to exit the sex trade, and treated as victims and not criminals. The shame and stigma should be put on the men that buy and sell us. We need to tackle the demand, and arrest men who are caught in brothels or kerb crawling. Boys need to be raised with an understanding that prostitution harms the women involved, and that they will be committing a crime if they pay for sex.

Prostitution is not a victimless crime, or harmless fun. It is abuse, and it costs the lives of countless women and girls. We need to work towards a society where prostitution is totally unacceptable.