The Sex Industry: A Survey of Sex Workers in Queensland, Australia

Frances Boyle, Shirley Glennon, Jake M. Najman, Gavin Turrell, John S. Western, Carole Wood

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138360068
• eBook ISBN: 9780429781674
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

First published in 1997, this study reports on a study of 221 sex workers in Queensland, Australia. The workers were interviewed by an interviewer with experience in the industry. They were asked a variety of questions relating to how they came to enter the industry, their knowledge of and attitudes towards safe sex, and a variety of other questions to do with lifestyle, service use and sexual health, and contact with the police and legal system. Sex work emerges as an activity which has a number of advantages. The pay is good, the hours are short and the work enables the worker to meet some interesting people and engage in social activities. Unlike other occupations, entry into sex work is somewhat haphazard (few appearing to plan entry to this industry as a career path) but, once in the industry many find it has benefits as well as disadvantages. Primary amongst these latter are the risks of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease (AIDS being uppermost in their minds) or the fear of violence which is associated with the context in which services are provided. In addition, sex workers often manifest a lifestyle which includes substance use and abuse. Relationships with police are often problematic and many workers report experiences which are critical of the legal system. This book provides a broad insight into the industry which, for parts of Australia, is subjected to substantial change. Such insights contribute not only to our understanding of the industry itself but also to the kind of health promoting activities which need to be initiated.

1 Social and legal perspectives

Any study of prostitution needs to be placed in its cultural and historical context. The aim of this chapter is to attempt to do so by reviewing overall approaches to prostitution, how it has been conceptualised and how it has been managed. In particular the legal and health responses to prostitution are examined. The focus is largely recent and on cultures similar to Australia’s. Allen (1984) points out that only in recent times has prostitution been seen as an appropriate study for historians. The emphasis on local prostitution is taken largely because of the difficulties of cross-cultural comparisons where different cultures have significantly different meanings and understandings of prostitution. These issues are highlighted by Day (1988) in her anthropological analysis of prostitution and HIV in the west, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

What is prostitution?

While mainstream, commercial prostitution seems, at first glance to be relatively easy to define, it becomes problematic when attempting to identify the limits or the full range of what should be considered as prostitution. Legally, courts have always taken prostitution as the exchange of sexual services for monetary gain. Other forms of gain, such as temporary accommodation or food, while suggested in law, are not, in practice, equated with gain by the courts (CJC, 1991).

Survival sex, as practised by ‘street kids’ for example, is technically defined as prostitution. Interestingly, however, despite some effort to attract street kids to our study, none self-identified as having engaged in prostitution. This is consistent with Wilson and Arnold’s (1986) study of street kids who often engage in soliciting or prostitution-like activities on an ad hoc basis for some time. Only some of these youth will go on to work in the formal sex industry, and only tend to identify as sex workers if this occurs. The CJC (1991) Report also points to other grey areas such as householders who may enter into an arrangement with tradespeople to exchange sexual services for goods and other services.

The suggestion then is that there may be degrees of prostitution and this argument, taken to its extreme, has seen prostitution likened to marriage:

Marriage … often turns into the crassest prostitution … the wife … differs from the ordinary courtesan only in that she does not hire out her body, like a wage earner on piece-work, but sells it into slavery once and for all. (Engels, 1973 quoted in Smart 1976:88)

Smart extended the analogy suggesting that marriage was a long term contract while the prostitute took out a series of short-lived contracts with several men. She further suggested that the significant difference between these two was not ‘the number of men involved but… sexual relations outside of marriage’ (Smart, 1976:88–89).

The sale of sexual services has also been likened to other industries such as sport where players are ‘bought’ and ‘sold’ to various clubs or to situations where a person’s skills are paid for:

A woman has the right to sell sexual services just as much as she has the right to sell her brains to a law firm … or to sell her creative work to a museum … or to sell her image to a photographer … or to sell her body when she works as a ballerina. Since most people can have sex without going to jail, there is no reason except old fashioned prudery to make sex for money illegal. (French, quoted in Hatty, 1991:4–5)

Consistent with this view the United States Prostitutes’ Collective joined forces with the Wages for Housework movement in the early 1970s and presented prostitution as a legitimate work choice for women in a capitalist economy (Hobson, 1987). Yet, as Allen (1984) notes, many feminists would reject this comparison on the grounds that the sale of women’s bodies as a sexual service to men is inherently different from the sale of other skills. It inevitably degrades the prostitute and, by her availability, women generally.

To some extent this struggle to clarify the legal definition of prostitution is the logical conclusion to a century of controversy and change around the issue of the control of women’s sexuality. As noted by Hobson (1987) prostitution laws in the early 1800s in the United States were largely based on English law (as was the case in Australia). These laws were embedded in a movement around the control of the ‘vicious poor’ and, in particular poor women. Prostitutes were not singled out as a distinct class of deviants at this time and in linking non-marital sex with prostitution it was hoped to give all illicit sex a criminal aspect. Many other laws which sought to control women have been broken down, yet prostitution-vagrancy laws largely remain.

Part of the problem with definitions is that most work from the position that commercial prostitution is a uniform phenomenon and assume that there is a shared understanding of this phenomenon. But, prostitution for a street worker, for example, is very different from prostitution for a highly paid escort worker. Many systems which have evolved to control or regulate prostitution ignore this diversity.

The form which prostitution takes is, of course, shaped and reshaped by legal, social and criminal systems which are built around it and there continues to be a wide range of types of prostitution. Where there have been attempts to legislate for a uniform industry (e.g. Victoria with its large brothels, and Queensland with ‘at home’ single worker prostitution) other forms have simply continued in the illegal sphere. The legal options available must be realistic, palatable and varied enough for workers or they will be ignored by many.

Differing conceptualisations

Zajdow (1991) states that moral judgements are implicit in all discussions of prostitution but not for other forms of work (even other forms of deviant work). The construction of prostitution as problematic, and its complex relationships to morality, gender, commercial, crime and class issues, may prevent workable systems being developed around it. Questions such as those raised by Hobson (1987) as to the nature of prostitution have not been resolved. She asks if prostitution is a sexual relationship, a work contract, a private act or public commerce. How a particular society answers these questions influences the way prostitution is managed and controlled.

Solutions to ‘the problem’ are necessarily widely divergent. At least five major interpretations or conceptualisations of prostitution can be identified. These include prostitution as: moral decay; criminal behaviour; gender victimisation; deviance; and work. While these conceptualisations represent, to some extent, an historical progression, all continue to be presented as current and valid by various interest groups. In Queensland, this was well illustrated in public submissions to the CJC (1991), which contained elements of most of these approaches.

Prostitution as moral decay

This interpretation was most influential during the last century and was associated with growth in industrialisation and the rise of larger cities and towns of a concentrated class of poor. Most of our current laws around prostitution arise from this period, and in particular from British systems.

Prostitution was associated with poverty and vagrancy, and hence, laws around it became embedded in vagrancy laws. It was not really separated as a criminal activity at this time. There was also a lack of differentiation between poor women, ‘fallen women’, women in de facto relationships, mistresses and prostitutes (Hobson, 1987).

Many writers have stressed the inherent double standard in this treatment of women. The ‘Madonna/Whore’ dichotomy divides women into two types: those ‘good’ women who many or remain celibate and who are generally seen as asexual and ‘bad’, sexually active women who are generally represented as prostitutes. This class of ‘bad’ women was necessary to ensure males had access to sexual gratification while at the same time maintaining the facade of morality. Smart (1976:84) notes that this implies that ‘promiscuous females are unnatural and problematic while males cannot be promiscuous because their sexual drive is “naturally” irrepressible and fairly indiscriminate.’ Hobson (1987) also points out that, even during the most repressive anti-vice campaigns, prostitution areas continued to flourish, always within easy reach of business and city districts.

Prostitution as criminal behaviour

As described by a number of authors the categorisation of prostitution as criminal is closely related to the complexity and ‘respectability’ of a particular society. Hobson traces this in San Francisco:

San Francisco prostitutes in the frontier years … were respected and admired, politely mentioned in the press, and welcomed to meetings at the schoolhouse. But in the next decade, as more families moved to San Francisco, law enforcers designated a zone for prostitutes, the Barbary Coast. Respectable folk would not have to be offended by a prostitute’s soliciting or by the presence of brothels near their homes. Police ignored discreet high class brothels in residential neighbourhoods; but contacts with prostitutes had to be made on the sly because the prostitute, even the elegant courtesan or madam, was beyond the social pale. (Hobson, 1987:25–6)

In Australia, historical analyses of New South Wales by Anne Summers (1975) and Judith Allen (1984) suggest that most women in the early days of Australian settlement were subject to an ‘enforced whoredom’ because of lack of employment and a shortage of women. As Sydney became the focus of free settlement, however, women increasingly became divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It was at this time that criminalisation of prostitution began to be enforced. As Allen (1984) points out, this forced women to seek invisibility and protection from criminal organisations, leading them to lose any power they had as independent sex workers.

A similar pragmatism in the face of a shortage of women comes from this century. In Brisbane during World War II, Moore (CJC, 1991) reports that the then Prime Minister, John Curtin became concerned at the ability to keep the peace in Brisbane with quarter of a million American servicemen stationed there. According to Moore, a Sydney underworld figure was approached by federal authorities and duly arranged for a train load of prostitutes to be sent from Sydney to Brisbane. Post-war, however, this had no long term effect or improvement on the position of prostitutes.

The criminalisation of prostitution then, has its roots partly in moral arguments and partly in class and commercial interest which come to predominate at certain periods of a society’s development. Criminalisation, however, brings with it a range of dilemmas and paradoxes. Hobson traces the rise of small business reformers in a number of American cities in the 1830s-1850s who were elected on an anti-prostitution platform. They were unable to achieve their election promises, however, due to powerful vested interests and the loss of faith of the working classes. These groups did not want prostitution in their neighbourhoods but were unwilling to bear the tax burden of heavy enforcement of anti-prostitution laws (Hobson, 1987). As many sources have identified, police and courts do not tend to actively devote resources to enforcing prostitution laws unless there is pressure for them to do so. They tend to ‘contain’ or move prostitution activity to areas or types of activity which will gain little attention (Hobson, 1987; CJC, 1991; Victorian Inquiry into Prostitution, 1985). Hobson summarises the effects of the laws as follows:

A policeman on his rounds, when he plucked the flower on the streets, rarely took the stem or branches, and the system never touched the roots. Law enforcers went after the easiest and most visible target, the public prostitute, they often ignored the keeper, almost always passed over the clients, and never adopted measures that touched the social and economic causes of prostitution. (Hobson, 1987:48)

The regulatory body, rather than the law, in effect becomes the arbiter of what is and what is not acceptable in terms of prostitution. A logical consequence of this pragmatic policing approach is the potential for corruption. An historical analysis of prostitution in Queensland by the CJC (1991) points out that, for much of this century, Queensland was significantly different from New South Wales in this respect. There was no organised crime syndicate in the 1920s in Queensland in relation to prostitution. Also, until 1959 two authorities (health and police) through the Contagious Diseases Act 1886, had joint responsibility for the regulation of prostitution. This seems to have contributed to limiting the possibilities for systematic corruption.

Prior to 1980 the CJC report suggests that, while corruption in relation to prostitution existed in Queensland it was ‘opportunistic corruption’ and it was not until the early 1980s that systematic corruption emerged. It was at this time that a number of factors, which were prerequisites for organised criminals to flourish, were in evidence. These included a consolidation of control of illegal activities, the integration of prostitution with other criminal activities and substantial modification of the regulatory environment (CJC, 1991).

Current arguments for not decriminalising prostitution in Queensland include the nexus with organised crime and the impossibility of breaking this nexus. The CJC reports that this nexus is now largely broken. Given that this is an acknowledged problem common to other areas (racing and gambling for example) it seems that the reluctance to deal with prostitution stems from other concerns.

The existence of prostitution does not automatically imply the existence of corruption, although where considerable consolidation has occurred in an illegal industry it is more likely and unless the internal culture of the law enforcement body is strongly resistant, it may be successful (CJC, 1991). The issue of whether the criminal system should be used to enforce public morality (in particular, to reflect Christian morality) is important in this context. While many support this role for the law, public attitude surveys conducted under the auspices of the CJC did not suggest that the public in general view prostitution as immoral.

Gender victimisation

Gender victimisation provides the basis for feminist analyses of prostitution. Prostitution has been widely recognised as one of the clearest examples of women’s structural inequality and lack of access to economic and political power. However, while most feminist analyses begin here, there are a number of points at which they diverge. This reflects the range of perspectives on prostitution within the feminist movement itself.

Historically, gender victimisation has its roots in the moral reform movements of last century. These movements were largely made up of women and they espoused the prostitute’s cause on the basis of gender consciousness. One of the most significant concepts to emerge from this movement was the notion of ‘forced choice’. Hobson (1987:5) suggests that ‘middle class reformers could not grasp the motivations, moral codes, and survival strategies of poor women … that prostitution could appear as a viable alternative to low wages and lack of employment options’. Protection, rather than punishment, was the goal of these groups and according to Hobson this translated into the imposition of strong controls on most aspects of young women’s lives and not the punishment of exploitative males.

Most prostitute and feminist groups today reject the notion of absolute coercion evident in this approach. However, some groups such as WHISPER (Women Hurt In Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt) in the United Sates continue to present a perspective which seems to support this. Similarly, one women’s electoral lobby group, in its submission to the CJC, consistently portrayed workers principally as victims (CJC, 1991). Hobson (1987) sees prostitutes neither as passive victims nor as heroic rebels rejecting social conventions. Structural inequalities, however continue to create social conditions whereby the choice to engage in sex work will be an issue for some groups of women and not others.

Hatty (1991) suggests that being a member of a marginalised group, as in the case of poor, immigrant, and rural women, increases vulnerability to recruitment into prostitution. In Australia, while most mainstream workers would consider their choice to be voluntary (CJC, 1991; Victorian Inquiry, 1985; the present study), the issue of Asian workers needs to be considered. Here the issue of forced choice is more pressing and powerful than for many Australian workers. The CJC report notes that in southern states of Australia it is common for Asian women to be imported for periods of time to work in the sex industry. They have little independence, few choices in their work settings and little protection in terms of violence or health. The CJC notes its concern about this and suggests that, while it does not occur on a large scale currently in Queensland, the potential is there (CJC, 1991). It is a repetition at an international level of the exploitation possible in prostitution at an individual level.

Prostitutes themselves had no voice in these debates until the 1970s. Where women’s reformist groups were supportive of chan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Social and legal perspectives
• 2 Study methods and participants
• 3 The experience of sex work
• 4 Knowledge and attitudes about safe sex practices
• 5 Sexual practices and prevention at work
• 6 Non-work risk practices
• 7 Sexual and reproductive health
• 8 Training and support needs
• 9 Contact with the police and legal system
• 10 Male sex workers
• 11 Conclusions
• References