When we find work, many of us find the work not empowering. Most people would not say cleaning toilets, cleaning offices is empowering. Working in a call centre in the main is not empowering. Working in Amazon packing parcels is not empowering. So why does working as a sex worker have to be empowering? For many escorts working as a sex worker is not empowering, but a way to earn good money at the most flexible and fastest way to allow other activities. Some sex workers do find the work empowering. Research in California found call girls in the main found selling sex empowering. But the main complaint about Julies article is, why does sex work have to be empowering for people to work as escorts, when so many other menial poorly paid jobs are not empowering. What is so special about sex work that it must be empowering for people to partcipate in the work?
She of course then comes out with other old disproven tropes that the entry into sex worker is under the age of 18 and from people who were abused or had mental health issues. This has been time and time proven not to be the case. She fails to differentiate between the licensed German system, and the decriminalised system in new Zealand and Western Australia. In Germany, the licensing encourages large brothels, while in New Zealand the decriminalised approach along with the planning laws encourages small discrete workplaces operated by friends for companionship and safety. Many escorts with mental health issues find that selling sex is the most convenient way of earning money. Their mental health issues don’t allow them to get a ‘normal job’.
She wants to get rid of pimps, but we all know that working together always results in at least one of the sex workers to be accused of pimping, normally the owner of the lease. Often though, as in the Republic of Ireland, all the Irish Escorts working together in the flat will be charged and convicted of pimping each other. This is also a way thet ‘bad’ clients who are criminalised can have a hold over these prostitutes.
Bindel refuses to acknowledge that criminalising the client fails and causes more harm to the escort. Research from Cambridge University into the implementation of the Nordic Model in Sweden shows how this has so harmed sex workers. More so than the few clients caught.