Handbook on Sexual Violence (54 page)

framework is the recognition of the specific conditions of existence for women in prostitution, and the articulation between these and formal, political responses, i.e. the regulation and policing of prostitution. Using Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence results in an inability to recognise, analyse and explain how formal regulatory systems do, or do not, leave women vulnerable to the types of economic and physical victimisation described above. Important dimensions of the lived experiences of many women in prostitution get lost – such as, in the UK, the way that community safety policies pitch the safety of one group of women against the safety of another (cf. Melrose 2009), or how policies which seek to criminalise punters (especially now with strict liability) undermine women’s attempts to protect themselves, or policies which criminalise indoor working (bawdy houses, brothels) undermine women’s attempts to organise themselves and work in ways that generate safety (Phoenix 2009; Scoular and O’Neill 2007; Sanders 2009). Applying the concept of a continuum of sexual violence to prostitution means that there is no space left to recognise and understand what makes women in prostitution vulnerable to the various forms of victimisation described in the literature. It also obscures the differences between the experiences, impact and meaning of a prostitute woman being battered or raped at home or being robbed or raped by a client.

The dangers of a teleological explanation

It is perhaps unsurprising that important distinctions between economic and social conditions of existence, between economic and sexual victimisation and between governmental responses to the victimisation of women and the victimisation of sex workers are obscured by Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence. Kelly analytically privileged gender over all other forms of social differentiation and inequality (that is, economic, ethnic, age, sexuality, disability and so on) by using a functionalist logic in which the disparate forms of harms, abuse, intrusion, coercion, threat and violence in the realm of the sexual are understood
in relation to the function
they serve in maintaining relationships of gendered inequality. The continuum ‘functions’ as a mechanism of social control. Kelly was not describing
sexual
violence or describing sexual
violence
but rather a means to a specific social end – the control of women by men. At the risk of repetition, sexual violence exists
because
it functions to control women. This form of teleological and essentialist feminist theorising was thoroughly critiqued over two decades ago and for that reason I will refer readers to that literature (Nicholson 1989; Jaggar and Bordo 1989; Harding 1986, 1987; Butler 1993, 2004, 2006). Suffice to say, however, teleological argument and analysis of this type jar with contemporary sociological and criminological audiences, particularly because of the manner in which they tend to conceal the historical, ideological, political, economic specificity of any social phenomena.

My call to maintain analytical specificity is not ‘just’ about producing good knowledge. It is also about the politics of prostitution and policy reformation. In the UK, the past decade has borne witness to the gradual acceptance, at

governmental level, of what is at heart an ideological position in regards to prostitution. This position has been developed as a logical extension of the lack of specificity in characterising, describing and analysing ‘the problem’ of prostitution. Instead, the vulnerability of women in prostitution to victimisation has been conflated with their status as victims and the drive of policy has been to abolish prostitution on the grounds that it is sexual violence against women. This is an historical departure from the ‘traditional’ negative regulationism marking British policies on prostitution. Prior to the massive reforms in the past decade, prostitution was seen as a matter of private morality except in as much as it offends or is ‘injurious’ to ‘decent citizens’. Constituting prostitution as a matter of private morality has meant that women have not been criminalised or regulated for being involved in the commercial exchange of sex for money, per se, but rather for the manner in which they do it. The policy landscape now is very different. In May 2000, the Department of Health and Home Office jointly issued guidance (
Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution
) that recommended dealing with those under the age of 18 years old and involved in the commercial exchange of sex for money as victims of child abuse, in the first instance. By 2002, this guidance was formalised in the Department of Health’s published
National Plan for Safeguarding Children from Commercial Sexual Exploitation
. By the end of 2004, the organisation of local services had shifted. In most large cities, new services were developed for young people and worked to a different agenda, with different sources of funding and in different ways than services working with adults. Barnardo’s took a pioneering role in developing services for children with their flagship project, Sexual Exploitation of Children of the Streets (SECOS) in Middlesbrough. The impact was that sexual health and drugs outreach services became cautious of working with young people if only because they could no longer guarantee anonymity and confidentiality, or indeed a non-judgemental approach. By redefining young people’s involvement in prostitution as child sexual abuse, harm minimisation outreach services became subject to the statutory powers (and responsibilities) of child protection legislation and the statutory agencies tasked with protecting children. The ultimate effect was that these services withdrew provision for anyone under the age of 18. This was made possible by the simple discursive shift that constituted young people as
victims
of child abuse, exploitation and coercion. The guidance on young people inaugurated a process that has continued since – the ever more finely tuned demarcation of types of victims (and not-victims) involved in prostitution for whom fundamentally different interventions are seen as appropriate, justified and, indeed, necessary (see also Phoenix 2002a, 2002b, 2006).

So, in December 2001, the Home Office, through the Crime Reduction Partnerships, spent £850,000 funding 11 pilot projects ‘to reduce the number of young people and women involved in prostitution, reduce crime and disorder associated with street-based prostitution and find out which interventions helped women to exit prostitution’ (Home Office 2004: v). The results of that research were published in a document entitled
Tackling Street Prostitution: towards a holistic approach
. In the same year, the Home Office also published its first consultation about prostitution in the form of
Paying the Price
(HO 2004b)

and subsequently published its recommendations in a document entitled
A Coordinated Strategy on Prostitution
(HO 2006). The approach adopted was called ‘enforcement plus support’ in which welfare support is offered
alongside
criminal justice interventions. In this way, so the logic goes, women are given all the help they need to exit from prostitution – but they also become legitimate and appropriate subjects of (increasingly) punitive criminal justice responses should they ‘choose’ to return to prostitution (Phoenix 2006, 2008a and 2008b; Scoular and O’Neill 2007). In this ‘coordinated’, ‘strategic’ approach, a more central role is played by criminal justice agencies in relation to policing (especially street-based) prostitution. Police and court disposals become the major point of referral to welfare agencies to help women with debt counselling, drug and alcohol problems, housing and so on. Put simply, welfare is being delivered to this population of women through criminal justice – the point being that should such welfare be refused, or should women not comply with the programmes, traditional criminal justice punishments are seen as warranted and justified.

Arguably the guidance on young people and the adoption of a new strategy on prostitution form only part of the ‘quiet revolution’ in prostitution policy. The concern about sexual exploitation of children ushered in a raft of new legislation. The Sexual Offences Act (2003) and the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005 criminalised
any
adult involvement in the commercial sexual exploitation of children and young people by inter alia making it illegal to purchase sex from a young person (i.e. anyone under the age of 18) or to facilitate or encourage the sexual exploitation of a young person. In a related move, the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 and the Scottish Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2004 brought in a further set of measures that have criminalised the trafficking of women and children for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. In 2006 the Home Office published its consultation on human trafficking: the result of which established the UK Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield. By March 2007, the Home Office published the
UK National Action Plan on Tackling Human Trafficking
. Taken together, these form a comprehensive set of measures which operate to criminalise the movement of women and children for the purposes of prostitution. The final set of Acts has moved the ‘agenda’ for regulating prostitution
in the name of protecting women against victimisation
even further. In Scotland the Prostitution (Public Places) Act 2007 criminalises soliciting for prostitution in a public place (known as ‘kerb-crawling’). Since then, in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill (2008) Labour sought to criminalise the purchase of sex altogether and to create a new court disposal (a ‘prostitution rehabilitation order’) that would compel women to leave prostitution. Although the prostitution-related provisions were ultimately defeated, similar measures were re-introduced with the Policing and Crime Act 2010 in which Engagement and Support Orders (which compel women in prostitution to seek help), Closure Orders and a strict liability offence of purchasing sex from an individual who is exploited have been introduced. During the same time period there have been other policy changes worthy of note. The Criminal Justice and Policing Act (2001) extended police powers of arrest in kerb-

crawling. The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) introduced antisocial behaviour orders which some local authorities and police constabularies have taken up to use against prostitute women.

The words of Harriet Harman, then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, in

her Labour Party conference speech in 2009 neatly summarise the discursive shift that made possible this raft of new policy measures. Ms Harman was unequivocal: ‘Prostitution is not work – it’s exploitation of women by men’
(http://www.labour.org.uk/harriet-harman-speech-conference). The irony to note here is this: in the name of protection against exploitation and violence a series of measures have been introduced whose effect is an intensification of regulation not of women in prostitution, per se, but of those women with few, if any, social resources to make different sorts of choice (Phoenix 2008a, 2008b).

The point of this
section has been to highlight one of the consequences on the lives of actual women of not maintaining analytical specificity in relation to women’s involvement in prostitution. The ‘war over meanings’ that often accompanies feminist interventions regarding prostitution is not a dry academic debate. It feeds into and out of policy debates and shifts. My final criticism, therefore, of Kelly’s concept of a continuum of sexual violence is that it is a concept founded upon the discursive conflation of
victimisation
and
victimhood
, that is to say, Kelly’s concept fails to draw a line of demarcation between the incidents occurring in individuals’ lives (i.e. their experiences of victimisation) and the social contexts and identities of those individuals who are victimised (i.e. their status as ‘victims’ and the objective effects such status incurs). It may be the case that one enduring impact of feminist scholarship about sexual violence, of which Kelly’s text was only one part, was that it generated the political drive for government to address gendered sexual victimisation. But without analytical specificity, or an understanding of the wider economic, political and ideological conditions shaping women’s choices, political interventions are based on overly simplistic binary distinctions between ‘victims’ of prostitution and ‘voluntary sex workers’. The final sting in the tail then is that this form of teleological, essentialising analysis may well have provided the discursive (and ideological) conditions that ushered in policy reforms which, paradoxically, make women in prostitution more (not less) vulnerable to victimisation.

Conclusion

What conclusions can be drawn from this discussion? The concept of a continuum of sexual violence is highly problematic. In the context of prostitution, it conflates the economic, the sexual and the violent in such a way as to obscure any depth of understanding of the
specific
experiences of women
in prostitution
. The second and broader conclusion is that when examining sex and sexual violence (or victimisation) in an economic context (i.e. prostitution) there is an absolute need to maintain analytical specificity if a fully social understanding is to be achieved. There can be little doubt that gendered social control and gendered violence are experienced by women in prostitution in profoundly different ways than other women – the point of

analysis is not to flatten those differences in the service of a political campaign. Instead, it is to understand gendered violence and the social, economic, political and ideological conditions that make them possible in order to identify possible points of meaningful (and not punitive) intervention. Therefore a final conclusion that can be drawn is that in theorising sexual violence there is a paramount need to contextualise and build theories which are capable of both recognising and denying the lived realities. To put it another way and in the context of prostitution: the violence is real. The harm is real. None of what has been said negates the fact that violence in prostitution is a problem. The known scale of it is disturbing and
should
be shocking. The human cost to its victims is probably unquantifiable. The gendered nature of it is unquestionable. But to categorise it as something else (i.e. ‘just’ another manifestation of male violence against women) is an indication of our lack of sociological and criminological imagination. Instead, we need an analysis that both recognises and denies these facts. We need to recognise the historical, social, economic, ideological and political conditions that give rise to the vulnerabilities experienced by women in prostitution and shape the official responses to it while simultaneously denying the inevitability of it in contemporary societies.