JAC Online

‘Sex Work’ or ‘Violence Against Women’?
by Nikki Capp

Open Letter to On Fire

Articles such as the recent “Work or Exploitation“ tragically serve to perpetuate what has become a ‘normalised’ view within Australian culture. Our working assumptions about the legitimacy of the business of those who make money from selling women’s bodies as commodities for sex, and the naive assertion of women’s supposed ‘right’ to do so and to ‘choose’ to have sexual abuse inflicted upon them, reflects just how desensitised we have become to what is a grave global issue of injustice.

The prostitution of people in Australia, and in Victoria in particular has grown rapidly since brothels were legalised in 1984. Our move to sanction and commoditise the sale of women as objects for sexual use has added legal backing to the existing social and moral permission given to men, to buy women and girls to act out a sexuality based on violence and inequality.

Legitimising prostitution as ‘work’ simply sanctions the oppression and inequality of women and girls, and is not only incompatible with human rights protocols, but contrary to the biblical value and dignity ascribed to every human being, created in the image of God

How can we as Salvos even use the term ‘sex work’, seemingly accepting and legitimising what our society has institutionalised as male violence against women? Yes we can argue that prostitution in Victoria is legal, but does that make it right? Is a framework of law, which enshrines and supports the powerful and continues to oppress the vulnerable and weak, one to which we should have agreed, and is it one we should continue to unquestioningly support?

What ‘worker’ should be required by law to operate in an environment where panic buttons, regular screening for disease contracted through the work place and routine physical, psychological and sexual abuse is not only accepted but legislated as part of Occupational Health and Safety regulation? Why does the system which we seem to so readily accept as a legitimate ‘work' situation, screen the customers, those with money in their pockets, those who hold the power to buy the product, those who demand the service those who believe that the exchange of money or drugs or some false sense of protection, somehow gives them immunity from the abuse they inflict on another through purchasing of sex acts from prostituted women? Why do men who buy sex acts from prostituted women have the right to pass on any disease they may have? We protect the men, and the other sexual partners of the men who buy sex from the supposed diseases they might catch from prostituted women, but we don’t protect the women by screening the men?

There is no debate that The Salvation Army is for prostituted women, however it is a warped sense of endorsement of what has become normalised in Australian society, to propose that us speaking up against the industry which commoditises and institutionalises violence against women, somehow disenfranchises the women. Yes there are prostituted women, groomed and backed by those who prosper from prostitution who claim that women choose to offer themselves to multiple unknown men to perform sex acts, and that the regulation supporting this as legitimate work and an acceptable business is to protect women. Who is really behind those put forward as spokespeople for this supposedly legitimate industry? Surely we should be asking ourselves who actually gains from the supply of women’s bodies as commodities to meet the demand of men for anonymous sex acts, generally separated and hidden from the rest of their life and those with whom they are in relationship. Who makes the most out of the whole trafficking and prostitution trade? it’s certainly not the women servicing the demand of the men who supply the funds. It is the pimps, brothel owners and traffickers who gain the most from the women and children who are used to meet the supply for the demand for sex.

Surely as Salvos, we are called to recognise the intrinsic value and the image of God in every human being. This includes prostituted women, women and children trafficked into prostitution, the ‘Johns’ or ‘punters’ who purchase sex acts from prostituted persons, the pimps and dealers in the human commodity of women’s bodies. Each of these deserve our prayer, and our intentional engagement and presence with the intent for the transformation of lives through the power if Jesus Christ, shown in and shared through us?

Surely recognising the intrinsic evil of a system where the law of the land legitimises and institutionalises the systematic abuse and violence against women which prostitution represents, we are called to act for social reform. If we exist in a system that perpetrates abuse and violence against a particular group, are we not called to work to right injustice? And yet, we have sadly been part of supporting and legitimising a legal framework that ensures the perpetuation of this injustice. The harm minimisation posture of those who supported the legalisation of prostitution, sadly, including The Salvation Army in the Australia Southern Territory within the last two decades, has conscripted us into the majority voice in Australia. Tragically we have stood with those who have said, and through articles such as that in On Fire, continue to reinforce the assumption that it is the right of men to purchase sex. We have aligned ourselves with those who believe that the need for persons to be prostituted is inevitable. We have fallen for the line that as long as we protect those with power, those with the money to purchase sex acts, those who demand to have their sexual desires met, not through relationship but through their capacity to purchase a commodity in a market which society has created and condoned, then we maintain a ‘safe’ workplace and a ‘needed’ industry. WE WERE WRONG! It is time for us to acknowledge that if we truly exist to build the Kingdom of God, then we cannot take any position other than that of abolition of prostitution.

We need to position ourselves to be engaged with women who are prostituted. We need to be able to offer them ways out, by empowering them and supporting them to develop skills that give them other choices and alternative ways of generating income to live. We need to shake the comfortable insensitivity to this issue pervasive in Australian society. How easy it is to accept the proliferation of pornography, strip clubs, topless bars and lap dancing clubs, all of which feed this notion that women’s bodies are commodities which can be purchased for the pleasure of men. We need to educate men and boys to see through the subtle socialisation into a commoditised view of women and sex. How many fathers would be genuinely happy for their wife or daughter to be prostituted to satisfy the sexual appetites of multiple unknown men? And yet, we socialise our boys into ways of viewing women as products for their pleasure, available according to their purchasing or ‘persuasive’ power.

I, for one am not willing to buy into the myth that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and will always exist. I believe that God has a bigger vision for Salvos of the Australia Southern Territory than simply accepting the oldest oppression in the world as legitimate ‘work’. I’m believing that God will use us to truly impact and reform our society by opening our eyes and transforming our minds, so that for Salvos the question ‘Work’ or Exploitation is a no-brainer.