Global Policy Forum

By Lilian Mathieu*

The crime of soliciting has been restored to France's penal code. After 30 years of a more enlightened approach to prostitution, it seems that there has been a return to repression and contempt.

One of feminism's major achievements has been to change views about prostitution. Using prostitutes is no longer seen as a harmless activity: it is seen as deviant behaviour and not an ordinary, even banal, part of male sexuality. Sweden made it a punishable offence in 1999. And perceptions of those who practice prostitution have also changed. Moral condemnation of "women of ill repute" has given way to greater compassion. Prostitutes are now seen as victims of social and economic difficulties, psychological deficiencies or violence from pimps, rather than women who incite debauchery or spread venereal disease.

But progress is difficult. The French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, proved that when he recently decided to penalise soliciting again - it had been deleted from the Penal Code in 1993 (1). There seems to have been a return to repression, replacing the remedial approach that France has adopted since the 1960s. The consequences are disastrous for prostitutes: it has made them more secretive, vulnerable, insecure, exposed to HIV, and dependent on pimps.

Any improvement in conditions is partial, since the image of prostitution conveyed by most feminists and abolitionists (2) usually overlooks an essential aspect, the social dimension. That omission leads to an incomplete representation of prostitution and, importantly, draws conclusions out of touch with the real aspirations, concerns and needs of prostitutes. Links between prostitution and social precariousness are not just forgotten; they are denied. One abolitionist author has written that "prostitutes come from all social classes" and that "prostitution is no longer the exclusive domain of the underprivileged" (3), which statement contradicts all the studies that have looked at the social origins and itineraries of prostitutes. A study conducted by Franí§ois-Rodolphe Ingold found that, in a sample survey of 241 male and female Parisian prostitutes, there was an over-representation (41%) of people coming from "modest, very modest, or marginal social backgrounds" (4).

The Norwegian researchers Cecilie Hí¸igí¥rd and Liv Finstad concluded: "Women from the working class and the lumpenproletariat are recruited into prostitution" (5). Prostitutes' levels of schooling are also very limited, as Ingold points out: "Professional training does take place (in 52% of cases), but it is often quite basic: apprenticeships or CAP [Certificat d'Aptitude Professionnelle], which rarely result in actual diplomas" (6).

Prostitutes' living conditions are insecure. A survey conducted in 1995 of 355 male and female prostitutes in French cities found that 61% had no social security, only half had steady accommodation, 41% lived in hotels and 2% were homeless (7). The study emphasises how often assaults happen: a third of those questioned had been assaulted at least once between January and May 1995.

These figures make prostitution one of the most vicious expressions of male dominance and an extreme manifestation of economic and social hardship. Since the job market is closed to the most economically and culturally deprived sectors of the population, especially women, prostitution means that selling your body or, more specifically, renting it out for sexual use, is a last resort when legitimate sources of income (work or social assistance) are denied. Prostitution is part of a casual economy that includes theft, drug dealing, begging and, in countries like the United States where it is a transaction, blood donation. Contrary to what associations of prostitutes suggest, no one gets involved in venal sexuality deliberately or voluntarily. It happens because there are no other solutions and always arises from constraint or, at best, a resigned adaptation to situations marked by distress, need, or violence.

The idea of constraint is most directly felt in the most precarious and subjugated groups: marginal youths not yet entitled to the RMI (Revenu minimum d'insertion, a minimum monthly income available to those who have used up their unemployment benefits), drug addicts who need money to feed their habit or foreign mothers without papers, for whom social assistance is insufficient or inaccessible. They often see no other solution for survival (or the survival of their children) than to accept a proposition of sex for money.

Constraint is not only economic. It can also absorb varying degrees of emotional blackmail and physical violence used by pimps. The recent emergence of particularly violent foreign mafia networks of pimps does not make the rationales mutually exclusive. Procuring, like all organised crime, provides quick money to working-class men without any other future in the legal economy. It fulfils a similar function for the women under their control. Whether they were tricked by false job offers or knowingly left their countries to work in prostitution abroad (underestimating the level of violence and exploitation they would experience), all were looking for a better future than they could expect in their own countries, which are often economic and social ruins.

Not all of these prostitutes are subject to such brutal and direct constraint. Social frustration is another significant motive for getting involved, and then staying, in the sex market. Prostitution is one of the few ways of attaining a standard of living otherwise impossible for someone of modest social origins and few professional qualifications. Having made the first step and accepted the indignity, some prostitutes cannot see themselves leaving the streets. They know the job market is closed to them and anyway they could not earn as much through a regular job.

Better-off prostitutes claim recognition of their activity as a distinct trade. For them, that means access to social security and retirement funds from which they are excluded. Feminists and abolitionists strongly oppose these demands, which seem to work against the more precarious prostitutes, whom the true professionals accuse of cutting prices, accepting clients' requests for unprotected sex, and practicing unfair competition. All this proves how vulnerable the profession is. Prostitutes can hope for day-to-day survival or, at best, economic integration into social life, but all of them are without protection against the hazards of life - illness, assault, accidents - to which they are particularly exposed.

Prostitution is a direct product of the social disenfranchisement so well described by Robert Castel (8), who says that, on the margins of the working world, prostitution represents a vulnerability zone. It is at the limits of integration and exclusion, where individuals are reduced to degrading, dangerous and often clandestine activity to avoid sinking into social oblivion. Restricting prostitution to specific places such as brothels or urban zones is meaningless. Neighbourhood associations inconvenienced by prostitutes sometimes call for this option, but it is just a "not in my back yard" reaction. Like the campaign against soliciting, the aim of red-light districts is to remove prostitution from the public eye and banish it to underground or isolated areas where prostitutes are even more vulnerable.

Those who want prostitution to disappear cannot take this social dimension into account or demand a real social policy for prostitutes (9). They cannot make sense of the rationale that leads to so many women and men on the streets. They see only two types of prostitute: those who depend on pimps, whose interests they defend and perpetuate, and the maladjusted, victims of psychological problems. That view denies prostitutes any hope of voicing their claims.

Some abolitionists entrench themselves in positions unacceptable to prostitutes, who suspect them of puritanism. So prostitutes cut themselves off from a basis of support in their legitimate and necessary fight against Sarkozy's policy to criminalise poverty.

*About the Author: Lilian Mathieu is a sociologist and researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Endnotes

(1) The act "by any means, includes by attire or attitude, of publicly soliciting with the intent of inciting another person to sexual relations in exchange for payment or promise of payment" is now an indictable offence carrying a fine of €3,750 ($4,200) and two months in prison.
(2) Referring to those who favour abolishing prostitution, such as, in France, the Mouvement du Nid, the Scelles Foundation and the Mouvement pour l'abolition de la prostitution et de la pornographie.
(3) Claudine Legardinier, La Prostitution, Milan, Toulouse, 1996.
(4) Franí§ois-Rodolphe Ingold, Le Travail sexuel, la consommation des drogues et le HIV, IRLP, Paris, 1993.
(5) Cecilie Hí¸igí¥rd and Liv Finstad, Backstreets: Prostitution, Money and Love, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992.
(6) Op cit.
(7) Anne Serre et al. "Conditions de vie des personnes prostituées: conséquences sur la prévention de l'infection í  VIH", Revue d'épidémiologie et de santé publique, 1996.
(8) Robert Castel, Les Métamorphoses de la question social, Fayard, Paris, 1995.
(9) Outlines for such a policy were traced in Lilian Mathieu, "La prostitution, zone de vulnérabilité sociale", Nouvelles Questions Féministes, vol 21, n° 2, 2002.

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