I was listening to a story on the Bradford murders on the BBC the other morning. One of the interviewees in the story stated that crimes like this happen disproportionately frequently to commercial sex workers because of the criminalisation of commercial sex work. Women in this profession are far more likely to be on the fringes of society, less protected by the communities around them, and less able to go to authorities for help when they need it. Because of this marginalisation, potential attackers are also more likely to think they can get away with it – that no one will follow up on these cases.

This resonated with an article a friend recently pointed me towards, on the Accelerating Prevention news service. The article pushes for the decriminalisation of sex work for these reasons:

• Sex work will not go away;
• There are many harms associated with sex work, but these can best be dealt with by other areas of criminal law or by non-legal interventions;
• Anything short of decriminalisation makes those harms worse, particularly to sex workers themselves; and
• Enforcing a sense of morality through the law is likely to generate other harmful immoralities.

The article goes on to argue for the legalisation of commercial sex work by advocating that “consensual sexual contact between two adults in private is legal.” As my friend rightly pointed out, one could use the same approach to decriminalise homosexuality.

The argument is essentially that people’s sex lives – so long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process – are their own business, and the rest of us have no place trying to control them.

People will live lives differently from how other people might – or how other people might want them to. I might be compelled by choice, curiosity, DNA, personality, biology, nature, nurture or any other number of reasons to take actions you might not take. But, as long as I’m not hurting anybody in the process, is it your right to judge, condemn, or legislate my behaviour?

Ignoring the things that make us uncomfortable doesn’t make them go away. Secrets thrive in the dark, like mushrooms. If I’m shamed, or stigmatised, or legislated into keeping my behaviour hidden, it is far more likely that problems will fester. Let things into the light, where we can talk about them, disagree about them, share ideas and concerns and advice. And accept that if I’m not hurting anyone else, I have the right to be who I am, just as you do.

This entry was posted on June 1st, 2010 at 1:30 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Activism, Women's issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.