The Ugly Face of Sex Work Ideology
Of course pro-prostitution advocates collude with pimps and other profiteers. They are cut from similar cloth
The revelation (see Telegraph news clipping below) that a pro ‘sex work’ charity in Scotland has taken the money of an online pimping site does not surprise me in the slightest.
Based in Glasgow, National Ugly Mugs campaigns for the normalisation and decriminalisation of pimping, brothel owning and sex buying. It transpires that National Ugly Mugs was given £100,000 during the Covid pandemic by the dating website Vivastreet, which advertises ‘escorts’.
However, the only grants suitable for organisations supporting women caught up in the sex trade would be those to assist them to leave. As my decades of extensive research have shown, the vast majority of women wish to leave prostitution provided they are given the right help and support to do so.
It is totally immoral for any organisation that claims to have the best interests of prostituted woman at heart to support men in paying for sex. Of course, National Ugly Mugs argues against Ash Regan MSP’s Bill and claims that criminalising the punters puts the women in danger, but this is not the case. Under the Nordic Model, prostituted people are decriminalised and exiting services made available by the state.
The sex trade runs on profit, it cares about nothing else. So anything that threatens the business model of the sex trade, such as this Bill to tackle demand, will be challenged by pimps.
Since I first encountered them in the 1990s, National Ugly Mugs has been normalising prostitution as a job like any other. National Ugly Mugs’ message is that the majority of punters are decent men and there is only a tiny minority who wish to hurt the women they buy.
Following the murder of 21-year-old Daria Pionko in 2015 on the ‘managed zone’ in Leeds, which National Ugly Mugs had argued provided safety for ‘sex workers’, a spokesperson for National Ugly Mugs said: “The rise in the murders of migrant sex workers has been very dramatic but unsurprising … Migrant sex workers are very fearful of authorities. Very often they have come from countries where police are overtly abusive to them and they expect the same treatment here.”
It is unclear why the treatment of migrant women involved in prostitution is relevant to how safe or unsafe a managed zone is. Pionko had attempted to call the police during the attack but was unable to reach them.
A street on the Leeds ‘tolerance’ zone
The global ‘sex workers’ rights’ lobbyists have one goal: to frame prostitution as a job like any other, and to remove all legal impediments from profiteers.
Just look at Turn off the Red Light (TORL): an umbrella movement uniting a diverse range of more than 70 organisations with an aim to abolish prostitution/sex trafficking in Ireland by criminalising the sex buyers, just as Ash Regan is attempting to do. Immediately after its launch in February 2011, a counter campaign, Turn off the Blue Light (TOBL), to denote a flashing police car light, arguing against the Nordic model emerged in an attempt to conjure an image of “prudish moralists sticking their sex obsessed noses into the bedrooms of sexually liberated and empowered women”.
TOBL’s marketing strategy used stock photographs of models of a range of ethnicities posing as ‘sex workers’, boldly pronouncing: “I chose the job that suits my needs.” Their website and advertising material appeared to have better financial backing compared to the grassroots activism of TORL. That’s because Britain’s infamous pimp Peter McCormick was bankrolling it.
McCormick
McCormick, a former Royal Ulster Constabulary reserve police officer, was a notorious brothel owner in Ireland. In 1990, along with other members of his 12-man gang, he was arrested and charged with brothel keeping: a crime for which he was convicted and sentenced.
Pimps and pro-prostitution ideologues help each other out. Both camps promote the idea that prostitution is harmless, inevitable and even necessary to the wellbeing of both the buyers and the women they exploit.
But something ugly is happening if an organisation like National Ugly Mugs that claims to care for these desperate women is in collusion with those who profit from abused women’s misery.
Hi Julie, I wonder if there couldn't be a resolution of the House of Commons to require that all parties which put up candidates for election to the HOC be asked about his or her support for money to help sex workers escape their situation? As things stand, I doubt if this extraordinary imprisonment it is even mentioned 99percent of the time. Ian
Julie, Right on the money, as usual. The career opportunities served up by my 1960's careers teachers and advisors were pretty thin gruel, but, thank the lord, they did not include the proffer of any category of "sex worker".
Luckily, I sidestepped the suggestion of soldier, policeman and fireman and, ultimately, retired from a career in education as a workplace representative of a trade union. Never once did I ever hear a trade union colleague refer to or attempt to dignify the phrase "sex work" as work or employment: it is neither; it is a mechanistic, inhuman, undignified activity embedded in multiple layers of abuse and exploitation.
The only humane, remedial conjunction of the word "sex" with the word "work" will be, for example, in healthcare, professional counselling services or agencies for legal redress of the exploited.
PS: If ever within sight or sound of the promotional phrase "sex trade", activate your personal alarm. This pernicious phrase encodes no equity of power, no contractual liability, no welfare, no protections, no enhancements, no education and no future.