Punish the men who pay for sex, instead of the women who are lured into that life | Sonia Sodha

ILabour’s most ambitious pledge is not to achieve the highest sustained growth in the G7, or to move Britain to zero-carbon electricity by 2030. It is to halve male violence against women and girls over the next decade. At least 100 women were killed by men in 2023. So achieving that would be an extraordinary achievement that would transform the experience of being a woman in the UK. But a real test of Labour’s commitment is whether it is prepared to protect some of society’s most vulnerable women trapped in prostitution.

Prostitution puts women’s lives at risk; it’s difficult to quantify precisely, but women in prostitution are many times more likely to be murdered than other women. Figures from the Femicide Census highlight that 47 women involved in prostitution were murdered by men in the UK between 2009 and 2023.

Too often, these women are effectively written off. One example was last week’s BBC coverage of the trial for the alleged murder of mother Samantha Holden, described by her family as a “kind and beautiful soul who will be loved forever”. She was found strangled and suffocated by her 18-year-old son. This was not how the BBC phrased her death: “Murdered sex worker found dead by son, court hears” ran the headline for hours before being changed in the face of righteous anger. This plays into two damaging social mores. The first is the age-old assumption that women who are paid for sex – who are overwhelmingly forced or trafficked into this vile “industry” – are somehow less deserving than other victims of male violence. The second is the more recent idea that governments should turn a blind eye to this commercial sexual exploitation because “sex work is work” and the state should let it happen rather than cracking down on men who buy sex. Both are harmful because they undermine women’s protection from violent men.

Women being murdered is a feature of prostitution, not a flaw. You only have to read a sample of the horrific online reviews to see how men view these women as objects who exist to satisfy their sexual desires, however violent. In one study, a significant minority of men who openly buy sex said their payment gave them the right to demand any act of their choosing; more will actually think so. The idea of ​​consent collapses in a situation where a man is paying for sex: how can a woman meaningfully consent to someone she knows could kill her within minutes if she says no or makes the wrong facial expression?

Rape becomes an empty concept; sexual assault becomes the right of a paying customer. One survivor, Esther, told me that her decision to tattoo every limb was an insurance policy to deter violent men from going too far, because it made her body so recognizable.

Men who buy sex are more likely to commit violent crimes. For some men, paying for sex is clearly a conveyor belt to violence and sexual abuse. Why would a society that is serious about tackling violence against women allow that conveyor belt to run for young men whose sexual values ​​have already been unhealthyly influenced by violent pornography?

Feminist and advocacy groups such as UK Feminista and Cease are posing this question to the Labour government, with its breathtakingly ambitious target of halving violence against women and girls. Does the government treat the vulnerable women harmed by male sex buyers – a nine-country survey found that almost seven in 10 women prostituted suffered from PTSD – as worthy as other female victims? There are encouraging signs; two Home Secretary, Diana Johnson and Jess Phillips, are former officials of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation (APPG), which recommended that prostitution be recognised as a form of violence against women and that buying sex or profiting from the prostitution of another person be made a criminal offence. Phillips pledged last month that the government would look at all levers to reduce demand for commercial sexual services in order to protect women from exploitation.

But Labour will have to confront the “sex work is work” mantra championed by the pimp lobby (who have rebranded them as “sex workers”), which has a strong hold on sections of the left. It is easily believed by men who pretend that prostitution is a transaction supported by equal power dynamics, and by privileged naives who buy into the “happy hooker” myth that many women are happy to offer sex for money but never ask themselves whether they would accept £20 for a blowjob.

The reality is that prostitution is overwhelmingly reserved for women with no other options: drug and alcohol addiction, or a history of domestic and/or child abuse. The average age of entry into prostitution is 15. And women are trafficked into the UK from countries like Romania and effectively held as sex slaves to be raped by multiple men a day, while they pay for the privilege. One survey found that over half of male sex buyers understand that most women are lured, tricked or trafficked into prostitution, but they exploit them anyway.

Meanwhile, the state looks the other way. Too few police forces are using the fact that it is a crime to solicit sex in public to crack down on men who buy sex, while arranging to buy sex online is perfectly legal. Sexual exploitation websites such as Vivastreet and Adultwork rake in huge profits from pimps advertising women. Their business model fuels demand for sex trafficking by making it exceptionally easy for criminal gangs to make contact with buyers. Sex trafficking is almost 10 times more profitable than other forms of forced labour, but is much harder to prosecute under British law because it involves proving that terrified women were forced into sex work, which is extremely difficult in practice.

International evidence shows that criminalizing the purchase of sex reduces male demand for prostitution; sex trafficking is most prevalent in countries such as Germany, where prostitution has been legalized; in Sweden, where the purchase of sex was criminalized in 1997, male demand for prostitution has fallen significantly, without increasing the risk to prostituted women, as the pimp lobby often claims. Male demand for prostitution is not innate. Governments shape it through legislation.

Back to the big question: will Labour seize the opportunity to reduce this deadly form of violence against women and girls?