Victorian Values 1

This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 40, Winter 1999/2000.

It is sometimes claimed that many of the problems associated with prostitution would be solved by legalisation. Here Mary Sullivan examines what has happened in the Australian state of Victoria since the law was changed, and concludes that legalising prostitution doesn’t work.

Prostitution was legalised in the state of Victoria in Australia in the 1980s. Proponents of legalisation argued that it would solve the problems associated with prostitution, such as the industry’s unregulated expansion and criminal involvement. In fact, legalisation solved none of the problems and has led to many more. The state’s experience of legalised prostitution demonstrates that government sanctioning of the trade perpetuates the culture of violence and exploitation that is inherent in the trade. The new liberalised climate has facilitated the expansion and diversification of the industry, with increasing numbers of women and children commodified for exceedingly high profits. The sex industrialists — former souteneurs, procurers and pimps now given immunity through the law — control the trade, while the state benefits through increased taxation, licensing fees and the promotion of prostitution tourism.

Any suggestion that a more permissive approach to prostitution may benefit women is discredited by the reality that most prostituted women are economically worse off than before legalisation and they must now accept as part of normal work practices sexual violence and harassment that is unacceptable and unlawful in any other workforce in the state. More disturbingly, alongside the legal industry, a black market in women’s bodies is flourishing. Legislative changes introduced by the Victorian government to counteract these illegal activities are proving ineffective, since once any form of official toleration of prostitution is in operation, police willingness to act against any prostitution-related offences is markedly decreased.

The legal approach

A liberalisation of the Victorian prostitution laws began in the early 1980s when the newly elected state Labor Government initiated its program of prostitution law reform, which was taken up by successive Labor and Liberal governments. Central to this shift in public policy was the conviction that prostitution was principally an economic exchange. New legislation introduced in 1984 legalised prostitution in brothels with a valid planning permit — an approach that recognised brothels as acceptable commercial practices to be dealt with as a legitimate land use for town planning purposes. Labor comfortably distanced itself from taking either a moral or an ethical stance on prostitution by adopting the libertarian position. To Labor, the practice was a matter of private sexual behaviour between consenting adults that should not be criminalised ‘simply because money changed hands’.

Victoria’s legalisation of prostitution, it could be argued, was not intended as a total sanctioning of the sex industry. It was a harms-minimisation approach. Proponents argued that the prohibition was ineffective against a highly visible massage parlour trade (a euphemism for brothels), and increasing street prostitution. The existing proscriptive legislation was also seen as ineffectual in eliminating the traditional criminal involvement and drug use from the sex industry. Nor could it diminish the health risks, particularly sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), either for prostituted women or their johns. New prostitution law therefore was in part intended to minimise the extent of the industry and its impact on the public. The appearance of the AIDS epidemic in the mid 1980s was a further stimulus to reform.

Legalisation, however, brought with it new issues. On-going adjustments to legislation have become necessary as state policy makers attempt to deal with a myriad of unforeseen issues that are not addressed by treating prostitution as commercial sex — child prostitution, trafficking of women, the exploitation and abuse of prostituted women by big business. As the industry expands so does the variety of ways which are offered to men for the expression of their sexual dominance, such as tabletop dancing, and further adjustments are required. The forms of degradation that the industry develops to cater to men’s demands are unimaginably diverse and no legislation is able to foresee these possibilities.

The existing model for the state’s prostitution law is based on the Prostitution Control Act 1994. Under the Act, licensed brothels and escort agencies operate legally, although subject to local planning controls determined under the Planning and Environment Act 1997. These controls ensure that sex establishments are not located close to schools, churches or other areas where children frequent, ensure their exclusion from residential areas, and limit the size of brothels to six rooms. The Act established a Prostitution Control Board composed of lawyers, police and industry figures in order to ensure ‘a rigorous licensing procedure for prostitution services and for the disciplining of licensees’. Other prescriptive measures include the requirement that prostituted women are registered and must undergo regular health checks for STDs and AIDS. Most significantly, street prostitution remains a criminal offence.

By 1997 the Attorney General, Jan Wade, and her supporters were promoting the state’s prostitution industry as ‘a highly regulated profitable, professional and incredibly well-patronised industry …that pays taxes.’ The legislation itself she saw as a model for other states.

When one examines the impact of legalisation in light of its intended aims, it becomes evident that it failed in even its most trivial aim of containing the industry. An investigative report by Victoria’s Age newspaper, found an increase in the number of legal brothels from 40 a decade ago to 94 today, along with 84 escort agencies. Each week 60,000 Victorian men spend $7 million on prostitution, with the legalised industry turning over more than $360 million a year and drawing on some 4,500 workers. When one considers that Victoria’s population is around 3.5 million people, these figures attest to how mainstream buying a woman has become in the state. Ironically, the real growth area is in the illegal sector. With over 100 unlicensed brothels they now outnumber ‘legitimate’ sex businesses.

The legalisation process has brought with an explosion in other forms of sexual exploitation in the industry. Tabletop dancing, bondage and discipline centres, peep shows, phone sex and pornography — all are an increasing part of a multi-million dollar trade in women. Tabletop dancing, where women working as dancers perform nude or semi-nude on tables or podiums surrounded closely by groups of men, has come under close scrutiny because of its phenomenal growth since its inception in 1992. The 1997 Dixon Report, a government advisory committee evaluation of the legalised industry, included tabletop dancing among its main terms of reference. The performances include close contact with or touching of men, double acts with other women or men (showers, oil wrestling) and personal or lap dances where the dancer sits on a man’s lap ‘gyrating, twisting and generally stimulating his groin area, or rubbing her breasts in the patron’s face’. Penetration of women with objects that included mobile telephones being inserted into the dancer’s vagina or anus was common. Our politicians uselessly grapple to create an adequate legal definition of prostitution, ignoring the fact the government’s own committee found that the sex industry is expanding and men are demanding ever more explicit forms of ‘sexual services’.

The increasing magnitude of the sex industry is only matched by its growing acceptability. With legalisation, parliamentary rhetoric began to portray the industry in a new light, casting aside the illicit associations historically associated with prostitution . One apologist for legalised prostitution commented during the passage through parliament of a 1997 amendment bill, that ‘prostitution in the 1990s no longer involves tawdry, unkempt small rooms off laneways frequented by desperates wearing raincoats who seek sexual gratification’. The claim was substantiated by evidence provided by a Melbourne madam. According to the woman, ‘Those men who used the prostitutes were well educated professional men, who visit during the day and then go home to their families. Most of [the] clients’, she concluded, ‘have secure marriages and have no intention of leaving their wives’. It is interesting that no member of parliament considered it important to discuss how this fact might impact on married women.

The degree of normalisation of prostitution that has resulted from legalisation is illustrated by the fact that the Melbourne University Students Union invited the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria to hold a seminar on how students could combine sex work with studies. This fits in well with federal government policy in Australia to cut expenditure on higher education. When economic rationalist policymakers promote ‘work for the dole’ schemes that demand the unemployed work for welfare assistance, as has happened in Victoria, it is feasible that prostitution would be among the jobs women will be expected to perform.

Once the commodification of women’s bodies was legitimised as a commercial practice, few ethical barriers remained to prevent new forms of exploitation. The sex industry was quick to recognise that along with a woman’s vagina and anus, her reproductive capacities were sellable products. The sex-industry’s 1999 Working Girl/Working Boy magazine highlighted in a piece entitled ‘The Working Mother to Be’ the benefits in women marketing their reproductive capacities. As the writer states ‘pregnant women may find themselves with a whole new group of clients who find pregnancy a turn on’. In addition, if one chose to offer the service ‘a surprising number of men find drinking breast milk either arousing or soothing’.

The annual staging of a trade show for the sex industry illustrates just how acceptable prostitution is in Victoria presently. SEXPO markets prostitution both locally and internationally (via the internet) through the promotion of brothels, escort agencies, tabletop dancing, pornography and other forms of sexually explicit ‘entertainment’ and ‘adult products’. Once inside the R–rated exhibition space, crowds attending the 1998 SEXPO could immerse themselves in an array of porn — in the flesh and on video. Corpulent images of oversized vulvas and breasts flashed from screens which were then transmitted via the internet around the world, selling Melbourne internationally as the new sex capital of Australia. On stage, women pretended to orgasm, while in the open stands men sat with their faces between women’s thighs, having paid between $A10 to $A35 for a personal lap dance, the price depending on whether a woman wears a G-string or is nude. The women were sold for little more than the produce advertised at the frozen yogurt stand next door. What is of most concern, though, is that this public event is held at the state-operated Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre (MECC), which gave front page coverage to SEXPO in its business section, alongside a profile of Australia’s sex industry which has an estimated annual turnover of $A1.2 billion. The 1999 SEXPO to be held in December promises some approval of the state for prostitution.

State support has undoubtedly buoyed the sex industry. SEXPO’s rapid transition from a relatively unrespectable sideshow held at Melbourne’s Carlton Crest Hotel, to a mainstream public event is evidence of this. The first SEXPO was staged in Melbourne in 1996. It had 24 exhibits and attracted 10,000 people. The most recent SEXPO, staged in Melbourne in November 1998, had over 220 stands and 70, 000 attended the exhibition over a four-day period. Seemingly sustaining the claim that SEXPO is of increasing economic importance to Victoria, the 1999 SEXPO to be held in December promises some 90,000 visitors.

The government profits from the commodification of Victorian women. Already at the time of the passage of the Prostitution Control Act 1994, there was evidence that prostitution was an accepted sideline of the tourism and casino boom. The Labor Opposition, referring to an Age article entitled ‘Brothels cash in on casino trade’ brought to the parliament’s attention the fact that the Government-sponsored casino, seen as the financial basis of Agenda 21 — a government initiative to revitalise the state’s economy — has authorised the redeeming of casino chips and wheel of fortune bonuses at local brothels. Taking the point further, Labor opposition member, Jan McClean, speaking of the hypocrisy surrounding Victoria’s prostitution trade, said that ‘Our scummy casino chips are accepted as legal currency in local brothels [and] that is apparently is quite acceptable’. With the Top of the Town brothel claiming a 30% boost to its daytime trade, McClean drew the obvious conclusion that ‘clearly despite condemnation by the Premier Mr Kennett, this was ultimately part of Liberal party policy to promote brothels, especially in the daytime, for the workers’. It was the future implication of this trend that McClean found deeply disturbing. ‘The commodification of women would only intensify’ she argued, ‘as Australia is part of a new wave of world tourism that is made up of package tours with all services supplied including prostitution’.

Sex work or legalised exploitation?

For feminists, one of the most persuasive arguments underpinning legalisation was that once prostitution ceased to be a criminal offence, prostituted women would be able to choose their own working conditions, their johns, and, if working for an employer, would have industry health and safety standards in place. The experience of Victoria dispels the claim that legalisation empowers women. Large operators — former pimps now given status as respectable businessmen — dominate the industry.

This take-over by sex industrialists was aggravated by the failure of Victoria’s specialist prostitution licensing board, the Prostitution Control Board (PCB), to effectively monitor licensing. Although illegal, multi-ownership existed, with instances of one proprietor owning as many as six brothels. Licensing procedures will prove even more inadequate in the future, as 1999 saw the PCB replaced by a general Business Licensing Authority with no specialist knowledge. This is perhaps indicative of just how far the government has moved along the path to seeing the sale and commodification of women as being like any other business.

A further, and more fundamental barrier to prostitutes taking control of brothels was that legal parlours tend to be expensive, capital-intensive buildings, allowing for the monopolisation of the industry by more wealthy owners. When the 1994 Prostitution Act was passed, brothels were changing hands for over $A1,000,000. Some concession was made in the Prostitution Control (Amendment) Act 1997 to allow for a cottage type industry where one or two women could work in private parlours. These remain illegal in residential areas.

Women’s ‘choice’ to control their own working environment is therefore still restricted. The only option for prostituted women to work on a small-scale basis legally is, in reality, in industrial backblocks or docklands. This leaves already vulnerable women open to violence, fear and isolation. Prostituted women face exorbitant costs as well, as they are required to disclose their business to landlords, who in turn, charge grossly inflated rents. It is really part of this crazy hypocrisy that we market women’s bodies so openly and yet must keep prostitution away from children and ‘nice’ suburbs. What other respectable business must be kept out of the sight of children?

For women working in legal brothels, managers and owners demand up to 50% to 60% of takings. This is in the face of strong competition among prostituted women for johns as increasing numbers of women enter prostitution, and, as men now have an excess of sexual services on offer for them to buy. It is difficult to see how sex industry advocates could claim that women in the trade are even economically better off after legalisation.

The major area where prostitution law does deal with the conditions of women in legal brothels is in regulations accompanying the 1994 prostitution legislation. This requires prostituted women to register and have regular health check-ups for STDs and the AIDS virus. The 1988 Report on the First National AIDS Conference concluded that such a requirement only created barriers to health care for workers as women do not wish to identify themselves as sex workers and would not access health services. Moreover, registration totally bars women from the illegal sector of the trade from seeking health care.

Such regulation places the blame upon the prostituted women for the spread of STDs and, as feminist foresisters pointed out in campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts in the nineteenth century, it leaves the male sex unchallenged. This hypocritical double standard was the focus of these earlier feminist campaigns. The Acts had allowed compulsory examination of women suspected of prostitution in garrison towns and ports in UK and Australia. Feminists argued that they were an abuse of women’s civil liberties and they were repealed. Today in Victoria the state chooses to ignore this historical example.

The violence of prostitution

Legalisation promised greater safety to prostituted women. But prostitution, as spokeswomen from the survivors’ movement such as Evelina Giobbe of WHISPER argue, is violence in and of itself, commercial sexual violence. In the everyday practices of the industry women must engage in acts that are sexually and physically degrading and are forced to disassociate by using drugs or alcohol to survive. The acts that men buy the right to perform on prostituted women include all the forms of sexual violence that feminists are seeking to eliminate from women’s beds, homes, workplaces, streets. One is that of sexual harassment.

In Victoria at a time when other women are seeking to desexualise their workplace, assisted by union organisations, women employed in the sex industry are expected to endure behaviour not tolerated in other work environment. Spokespersons for the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria (PCV) have explained to me that men are more demanding in the type of services they want and the demand for oral sex, for instance, has been replaced by the demand for anal sex frequently demonstrated by men simply sticking their fingers into women’s anuses during their ‘bookings’. Other ‘normal practices’ they say ‘include women being lined up and looked over like any other commodity’ and sex without condoms. These views are supported by a 1998 study conducted by the Macfarlane Burnett Centre for Medical Research done in conjunction with the PCV. Forty per cent of men in the study did not use condoms when using prostituted women.

Prostituted women who need money are forced to engage in whatever the customer requires. Further studies conducted by the PCV and Victoria’s La Trobe University substantiated that women who are economically vulnerable often have little choice to refuse services which they found unacceptable, or, from a health aspect likely to cause diseases such as hepatitis, chlamydia and genital herpes, let alone AIDS. One young woman student wrote in an issue of Working Girl/Working Boy of the pain experienced by having men repeatedly thrust their penis in her vagina as they attempted to climax. She would need to artificially lubricate her vagina because it was dry and painful but some men became aggressive especially if they were drunk, her actions seemingly a threat to their maleness. At tabletop dancing venues a private shower performance entails a dancer having her naked body lathered by a group of men who have consumed alcohol. Pauline Burgess, a Women’s Policy Officer evaluating the working conditions of tabletop dancers reported that the experience was so disturbing that women were moving into the area of peep shows to prevent personal contact with the men who abused them.

Street prostitution

Legalisation is not in the interest of women. The clearest evidence that the government never seriously addressed the concerns of women in the industry is that, alongside the marketing of women’s bodies in state legitimised brothels, there is the ongoing criminalisation of street prostitution. Street prostitution still exists because it is related to wider social problems, such as drug abuse, homelessness, sexual abuse. Street prostitutes are women, children, males and transsexuals. The government’s Advisory Committee on prostitution determined that women are the vast majority of street prostitutes and remain in the industry for between 10–15 years, ‘entrenched in a life cycle of prostitution, drugs and prison’. A study, ‘Off Our Backs 1996’ confirmed that 80% of street prostituted women are heavy drug users, with a $A100–500 a day drug problem. 46% are mothers with children in protective care.

Because of the illicit nature of their work, prostituted women are moreover doubly vulnerable to violence that has not been paid for. Statistics produced by the PCV prior to the passing of the 1994 Act reveal that that rapes of prostituted women averaged 2 rapes per week, with one assault per night and 2 murders over the last year. Street prostituted women are harassed by police and gutter crawlers. However, where prostituted women are criminalised, women cannot demand police protection or claim legal recourse for robbery or coercion, for they thereby expose themselves as implicated in a criminalised trade. The Victorian government nonetheless ignores the violence committed against street prostitution putting it in the ‘too hard’ basket.

The rise of a black market

Legalisation was intended to eliminate organised crime from the sex industry. In fact the reverse has happened. Convicted criminals, fronted by supposedly more reputable people, remain in the business. Fred Lelah who owns Sasha’s International, one of Melbourne’s inner suburban legal brothels, is currently before the Melbourne Magistrate’s court for introducing girls 10-15 into his business. Lelah has already served a two year term for the same offence.

Recently it has been revealed that Victoria sex industrialists are involved in the lucrative international sex trade run by crime syndicates which is worth $A30 million in Australia. An Australian Institute of Criminology study estimated that Australian brothels earned $1 million a week from this illegal trade. Some examples of the trade have come to light in the last few months. One concerns a Melbourne businessman bringing 40 Thai women in as contract workers, depriving them of their passports and earnings until their contracts were worked off. In another case 25 Asian workers were found in similar circumstances in one of Melbourne’s legal brothels. These incidences are likely to be but the tip of the iceberg.

The commercial sexual exploitation of young people in Metropolitan Melbourne is also rife. According to ECPAT’s 1998 report for the Australian National Inquiry on child prostitution, of all the states and territories, the highest number of reported incidences came from Victoria. There was clear evidence of organised commercial exploitation of children. In a study conducted by the Victorian Department of Human Services young people involved in commercial sexual activities were identified as having ‘significant’ contact with paedophile rings. These young people disclosed that as a consequence of their involvement with paedophile rings they experienced rape and were forced into pornography.

Feminist campaigners who worked through the League of Nations against the traffic in women between the wars argued that licensed brothels acted as warehouses for trafficked women. Currently they create a demand for constant new recruits, and fuel the illegal trafficking industry.

The reality is that prostitution cannot be made respectable. Legalisation has caused the business of sexual exploitation to flourish. Men have been taught that it is their right to buy and abuse women and they are clearly indiscriminate about whether they use the legal or illegal industry. The normalisation of prostitution as a job just like any other has also eased the way for pimps, traffickers and brothel owners to draw women into the trade.

However it is not just women in the industry who are affected by the expansion of Victoria’s sex industry. Recently sex clubs featuring table-top dancers as part of their promotions are targeting the corporate world for product launches, conferences and the like. These new ‘men’s clubs’ simply ensure the old glass ceiling stays intact. In addition men using these clubs have been found to be sexually aggressive to women they encounter outside the clubs, denying women the right to use public space. All of the customers relate to women in some way and these relationships are impoverished as men are taught to enjoy subordinating women. The legalisation of prostitution erodes the status of all women.