Sex Workers Fear ‘Disastrous’ Labour Government Plan ‘That Would Put Us Much More at Risk of Violence and Arrest’

Under a new law in Belgium – the first of its kind in the world – sex workers have been given employment rights.

They will be entitled to official employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave, and sick days. Brothels will have to meet basic hygiene and safety standards. Sex workers will be able to refuse certain acts or clients without the threat of immediate firing.

Workers get workers’ rights! Radical stuff, eh?

Except it is. Because sex workers have lobbied for these rights around the world for decades and faced pushback at every turn. Systematically ignored by the media and governments, sex worker voices are largely overlooked in favour of ‘moral’ pundits with no lived experience beyond their religious, patriarchal or self-defined feminist opinions.

These speakers’ moralities dictate that the best way to protect sex workers is to eliminate them from existence. How can “victims”, “sex objects”, “pieces of meat” be consenting workers?

The irony of this message is felt by sex workers like Amelie, from Bristol.

The people who call us the worst names are the people who say they want to save us

Amelie, sex worker

None of this is to say that the coverage of Belgium’s new laws hasn’t been helpful – much of it has finally centred sex worker voices in a way that has been so rare in reporting around sex work.

The BBC’s Gender & Identity correspondent, Sofia Bettiza, spoke to multiple Belgian sex workers whose lives will be directly affected by this policy; she prioritises their voices, not just as case studies, but experts-by-experience.

However, a lot of the UK coverage about this new law has failed to extend any introspection regarding laws here in the UK.

Because while sex workers won labour rights in Belgium, sex workers in the UK are currently screaming for them, and they are desperately trying to attract media attention to their cause.

Media Storm has reported from many a protest: on the streets of London in 2022, sex workers and allies marked International Women’s Day at the Sex/Work strike, to demand the decriminalisation of sex work.

“We are sick of police violence”, said one sex worker at the protest, “we are sick of laws that criminalise our bodies and the way that we make money. If they’re not going to offer us any better solution than sex work, why are they punishing us for doing it?”

It is not illegal in the UK for a consenting adult to sell sex in exchange for money, but laws around the sex industry are complicated.

Many associated activities are criminalised, creating a restrictive legal environment. These include “brothel-keeping” (in other words sharing a venue with another sex worker) and publicly offering sexual services (eg street soliciting).

And sex workers are not just concerned about the UK’s existing laws – they are currently trying to draw attention to new risks they fear from the Labour Government.

A statement from the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) warns: “Since Labour came in there is a real threat that some of the Labour women who consider themselves feminist, and who now have ministerial positions, will introduce a clause in the next Criminal Justice Bill to criminalise clients, or to redefine prostitution as ‘sexual exploitation’. Both proposals would be disastrous for sex workers and put us much more at risk of violence and arrest.”

Labour has proposed several amendments to the Bill that replace the term “prostitution” with “sexual exploitation”. In other words, they are seeking to define prostitution as inherently exploitative, and prostitutes, in turn, as inherently exploited.

And it’s no wonder some Labour ministers would associate sex work with exploitation, objectification, and powerlessness – it’s a long-running stereotype in mainstream media narratives.

But, as Niki Adams from the ECP said on Media Storm: “It ignores the way that women have used sex work to get money to get power, [and] the ways in which women have used the money from prostitution to escape violence. Escaping domestic abuse is a massive issue for a lot of women in our network.”

Chloe, a sex worker from Bristol who works in multiple strip clubs across the city, added: “The objectification argument […] doesn’t allow for consent at all. Are you saying that someone can’t willingly want to be looked at a certain way? Are you saying that that’s the same thing as unwanted harassment? There’s just no nuance there at all”.

More widely, Labour’s moves to redefine sex work as inherently exploitative is an idea that underpins the Nordic legal model. The model, developed in Sweden in 1999, is often positioned as a way of protecting sex workers, as it criminalises the purchase of sex while decriminalising the sale of sex. But sex workers widely oppose it, and one of their greatest grievances is that policymakers don’t just ask them what they think. So Media Storm did.

“The Nordic model is a scam”, says Adams, “It has this veneer that it’s going to improve the situation of sex workers… But of course, if you’re involved in an interaction with a client, and one part of that interaction is criminalised, you are forced more underground.”

When sex worker voices are dismissed from legislation conversations, they are stereotyped: either hyper-empowered OnlyFans millionaires, or non-consenting victims — when for most people, the reality is in between.

We absolutely refuse to be categorised as either happy hookers or as poor victims. We’re women doing a job to earn the money to support ourselves, mostly to support our kids.

Niki Adams, ECP

Adams added: “In any case, we don’t have to love our job in order not to be criminalised. Nobody would ask that about a nurse, or somebody working in a supermarket – ‘do you love your job?’… most people would say, ‘no, I don’t love my job’.”

As detailed by sex worker on Media Storm, the chant “sex work is work” does not mean to say that sex work is inherently good or empowering. But, with the acknowledgement that all work is by its nature exploitative, sex workers need the same rights as everyone else.

This is not the place for personal moralising – whatever government ministers, podcast hosts, or the general public think personally about sex work, sex workers deserve to be safe.

And so as sex workers urgently try to put decriminalisation on the agenda in the UK, our coverage of Belgium’s new law resembles a massive missed opportunity.

Listen to Media Storm here.