Dancing About Architecture
Dancing about architecture, on a beach too... I love this peaceful place. Hard to fathom that not far from here - only round the corner, in fact - is where young girls removed from all they know are believed to have been trafficked into Europe for use in the sex trade...two totally different concepts coinciding in a way that most right-thinking people would never even consider putting together...
Why would they? Why should they?
M. Scott Peck contends that a positive force can exist independently, but anything rooted in negativity is parasitical - in need of goodness to feed off - and no better place for it to go to cause havoc than where good people are gathered... This theory is often borne out, with church and institutional abuse immediately springing to mind. We've all heard accounts from the world over of powerfully positioned predators preying on innocence, and all bearing nauseatingly familiar patterns. Even to those who lived through those times, it can still be bewildering to understand how such evil sway remained uncontested for quite so long, right in front of our eyes. Admirable-seeming individuals operating smoothly on the surface, while peddling their slyly insidious rot right through the lives of good people, mass hypnosis ensuring that all challenge to their supremacy was off limits. And if anyone tried to challenge, they'd find themselves crushed socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, economically... How did they - priests, politicians, police and mothers superior - achieve all that? There must have been a first lie somewhere which vested interest made sure to kick the dirt well over.
First lies...
Uncanny, isn't it, how similar that scenario is with the perennial efforts of the prostitution industry to appear "normal". It even made top story and became quite an ongoing preoccupation in The Economist this time last year. Yet there's something so familiar about its constant shrouding in denial the abuses and litany of savageries perpetrated on vulnerable people which define what prostitution actually entails. A minority definition of one true god - in this case, high finance - that's pretty familiar too. Equally, its shouting down as illiberal and unenlightened anyone calling out those fundamental lies all conforms to a well rehearsed pattern... certain types of ugliness never leave: they just shift shape.
How truly awful then, to learn that, of all organisations, Amnesty International is imminently considering the advocation of decriminalising prostitution as policy... all with the best of good intentions...
How depressing is that?
A conversation I had with someone very pure indeed in relation to fundraising for another social cause keeps coming to my mind.
“You only deal with X”, I was saying. “People are going to ask why not Y too: you'd be a much easier sell with Y...”.
“And indeed they’re right”, he agreed. “There’s a huge need for Y”.
A pause.
Then I said, “But couldn’t you even SAY you’re ABOUT to try to sort out Y…?”
“X is all we can do. To attempt Y would dilute our effectiveness”.
“Well then, tell me what your success rates are – there’s a tack I could use”, I said.
“Oh.. very low – at best 20%”, he said smiling. “In this area, you never really anticipate high success rates”.
“Em… but.. what..I mean, how could we possibly…?”
“Karen, there'll never be a day when we don't have X: that's the truth. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying to level the pitch and offer hope and a helping hand to anyone who wants to take it. If you're thinking 'business' with impressive balance sheets, you're probably in the wrong place. "
Girls and women in prostitution are not regular workers - they're being exploited. Ask any district judge how often victims of domestic violence go back for more, wholly convinced it's what they want... It's not condescension to point this out: it's just stating facts. When you're inhabiting adversity of a kind that most of us couldn't dream up in our worst nightmares, it's easy to see how you could drift into an outlook of better the devil you know than the devil you don't; and it becomes almost comprehensible how the "work" mightn't seem so bad, nor the danger so constant nor beatings quite so keen when you're doped up to the eyeballs most of the time...
Then, think about this: who exactly would be anything other than appalled to encounter their mother, sister or daughter in a brothel? Is anyone - least of all Amnesty International - seriously suggesting we legislate to accommodate that mentality? And can anyone seriously believe that men who pay for sex intend to show respect and abide by laws? They're buying a so-called right that they couldn't ask of a peer.... they buy sex to take advantage of the power they see money as bestowing on them, and that's the start point, only the beginning of what the prostitute has to contend with. If ever there were a parasitical manifestation of pure misogyny, this is.
On an average day, in an average world, decent people have trouble envisaging what the truly devious are capable of, and in my opinion that innocence or ignorance (depending on your viewpoint) is where evil prospers. Abuse of vulnerable women should never be allowed to be just a regular fact of life we need to legislate into something unremarkable. Speeding glibly by the existence of prostitution as though a given - and an acceptable one if only a few legislative tweaks were made - only adds to its offense. There are choices:
- We can call out the fundamental first lie and refuse to tacitly agree to cast entire sections of humanity on the scrap heap filed under the nice, clinical banner of "sex work".
- We can offer every assistance possible to those trying to escape.
- And we can shame and prosecute the pimps and punters for their ignorance, presumption, selfishness and lack of humanity, rather than make their lives even easier and more rewarding.