THE SEXUAL FREEDOM COALITION

Sex Work
It’s important to understand that sex workers do specific jobs, each of which should be respected. A stripper may feel as far away from whoring as the average housewife. A sex therapist may whore on the side but be shy of letting people see her/himself naked. Most porn stars will charge money to screw on set but never accept private assignations.

Categories
People who work on the sex phone lines
Strippers, live sex performers and erotic performance artists
People who work in fantasy including doms, subs and those catering to fetishes
Photographic and artists models
Sexual surrogates including those who work with people with disabilities
Pornographic actors and actresses
Sex teachers and therapists including Tantric workshop facilitators, group leaders, sex therapists and agony aunts and uncles, lecturers, educators, researchers and experimentalists
Prostitutes including street workers, erotic masseuses and masseurs, sauna staff, escorts, call girls and boys, amateurs and hosts / hostesses, plus people employed to get money out of clients by being sexy
Supporting staff including maids, receptionists, cleaners, fluffer
Landlords / landladies, brothel, massage parlour and sauna owners, escort agencies, pimps, sex holiday companies and people who come up with various scams in order to avoid the laws and provide secret avenues for sex hungry/adventurous people to pay for sexual satisfaction.

Things are not always as they always seem. Many people have an official and unofficial side to their activities. There are people who:-
• cannot pay their rent may “pay in kind” but never consider themselves to be a whore
• feel more inclined to have sex with someone who has the influence to save the world from ruin and so do it for the future of the planet
• may go out cruising and have dozens of partners in the forest and may play whore for fun, but would never enter conventional prostitution
• allow themselves to be taken out for expensive dinners and have sex as part of the deal, but they would never take money — unless it was won at the gambling table
• marry someone rich in order to live a lazy lifestyle, or else carry on with their chosen work which does not earn them their keep
• screw their spouses in order to be bought a washing machine or Range Rover

So most of us are whores, to some extent.
Sex for money can take many forms which makes it very difficult to quantify sex work. During the sex workers strike in France, they reckoned there were 6,000 prostitutes in Paris.
Sex is sold in all all levels of society, including respectable society but the sex work trade gets the blame for all the ills of society
This is more important to consider when you take into account the full range, from stigma to glory that has attributed to sex work. The whores in ancient temples were regarded as Godesses even though they were doing the same as the hookers who pacify, mother, heal and sexually satisfy clients today. Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, dozens of teenage Vogue cover models and pop stars such as Prince could be described as selling sex, but they are generally regarded as heros.
They are seldom accused as encouraging rape or violence against women, but strippers, prostitutes and phone sex workers carry that blame.
British Laws on Prostitution were laid down in order to protect vulnerable women against greedy landlords and exploitative brothel keepers. Things have changed over the last 40 years yet MPs are afraid of speaking to prostitutes (quote Baroness Masham “our working party politicians said they could not be seen in the same room as working women, so we could not bring them into the consultation”) the laws are currently very little to do with the present situation. Indeed, sadly they are veering towards the fashionable “politically-correct” anti-sex, anti-male feminist notion that all men are potential rapists and all women need to be protected.
Indeed, a growing number of women are switching to work in sex rather than in other jobs because they find it gives them more freedom and job satisfaction. It is becoming recognised that many men really need to be able to pay for sexual gratification and emotional solice because they cannot find either elsewhere (see Shadow Syndromes — The Mild Forms of Major Mental Disorders that Sabotage Us by John J Ratey and Catherine Johnson).

Current Laws
It is not illegal to sell sex in Britain. However, the laws that exist make it almost impossible to do so.
Offences Against the Person Act 1861 makes it illegal for a dominatrice to mark her client or pierce for pleasure (applies equally to people outside the trade)
Sexual Offences Act 1956 — causing prostitution and immoral earnings
Licencing Act 1964 — prostitutes being allowed to drink alcohol whilst copulating
Telecommunications Act 1984 — talking sexy on the phone is illegal
Disorderly Houses Act 1751 and common law of Keeping a Disorderly House — keeping the “lower sort of person” from indulging in riotous pleasure - outlawing brothels, sex parties etc
Street Offences Act 1959 — stops soliciting.

Abolishing the Laws is Not Enough
The police generally tolerate prostitutes and other sex workers to operate at their convenience, so long as they are sensible, there are no children involved and drugs are not part of the equation. However, the News of the World, probably acting for the government, will often expose nicely run brothels, especially when they are in the home counties or somewhere “respectable” such as next door to a Royal palace and upset the applecart, feeding fear and guilt into every sex worker and every client for years to come.
The News of the World and the Government control the very system which keeps people sexually calm and free. They want us all to be uptight and nervous so we rush around like caged chickens fearful of life; imprisoned slaves to the system.
Essentially, selling sex and being a legitimate wage earner at the same time makes people feel uncomfortable. Probably this is one reason why the government has a hard time giving sex workers credibility. But that is largely because the government is so disrespectful of sex, never offering citizens privacy outside the marital bed.

Recommendations
1) The Laws around Prostitution should be abolished
Sex workers have been campaigning for the decriminalisation of sex work for decades.
They do not want their trade legalised because that makes it vulnerable to state control. In Germany, for example, state run brothels are soul-less places where the employees are enforced to work shifts for low pay. Many girls in Germany prefer to work outside the system even though this means they have no state benefits.
Sex Workers want prostitution to be regarded, and regulated exactly the same as any other trade. Trafficking is illegal, as is sex with a person underage. Problems in the street can be dealt with by the laws against causing a nuisance or obstruction (eg the Public Order Act).
If the police put their efforts into arresting traffickers and other criminals that do harm, consenting adults can get on with their business with no harm to anyone.
The laws which censor erotic material on phone lines and live sex shows, pornographic acting and modelling are out of date, not in line with the rest of Europe and need to be abolished.

2) Reform
Even with the abolishion of the sex laws and laws surrounding prostitution, there some problems to be addressed.

Street Workers
Street Workers create a wide variety of problems — with local residents, violence and health and safety risks for themselves and clients.
Answers:
i) Create Safe Spaces Each city finds an area, by negotiation amongst all parties, where street prostitutes can work without upsetting local residents and where they are safe (ie not on bleak industrial estates). Office and non-residential inner city areas are ideal. Large cities may need several. London could, for example, use Victoria Street for MPs, the grounds of St Pauls for city gents and The Mall for tourists.
ii) Provide Facilities This area be designated and provided with facilities, ie waste bins, drop in centres, 24-hour condoms and needle exchange booths, support for people wishing to leave the industry and newcomers, and a supportive police presence.
iii) The Legal System to respect and protect sex workers The police and courts be educated on sex work so that prostitutes can feel it’s not a waste of time to report the frequent violence and rape committed against them.
Once sex workers feel less frought, they may take more command over their work, improve the standards of service and without laws forbidding them to work together, start working together indoors.
iv) Sex workers who are dependent on IV drugs need much greater outreach. They pose a huge health risk (ten times more likely to be infected with HIV of hepititis) and being on drugs makes them less likely to take control during the transaction and more desperate for money, resulting in the fact that they may agree to unsafe sex.
It is madness that the state spend so much money trying to prevent people smoking cannabis or other harmless drugs and seem to do very little to prevent sex workers spreading incurable diseases to clients and their partners, in order to be able to take life-threatening drugs!

Strippers
There is a current trend to insist that venues for striptease pay hefty licences which is creating a situation where the only work is in the American style lap dance parlours. This strippers are losing their freedom to dance as they wish and work when the want.
Answer: Allow striptease acts to take place wherever people want to see them and get rid of the licences.

Tax
Many sex workers sign on because they know no other way to avoid the tax man who is likely to make unreasonable demands. Some become self employed with some fictitious career such as therapist. They live in trepidation of being tumbled and getting an enormous tax bill.
Answer: Treat the sex trade like any other.

Tenancies
Most leases say the landlord can evict if the place is being used for immoral earnings. This gives prostitutes no security and deters them from improving their working environment. Many prostitutes live in fear that if their landlord finds out what they do he will either evict or slam a hefty increase in the rent.
Answer: make this clause unforcable in court.

Pimping
Some pimps look after their sex workers well but if a man is pushing a girl into sex work and starting her off on a drug habit, he is exploiting her in the same way as a Hollywood film director who bribes a girl with promises of film work in return for sleeping with him and gets her into a coke habit. So long as she is over the age of sexual consent, there is little the law can do.
Answer: Sex and drug education in schools.

Clip Joints and Rip-off adverts in magazines etc
While there is sexual guilt and people feel deep down that sex is dirty, there will always be a market for rubbish.
Answer: Education and end respect for the church which perpetuates the lies.

Public attitude
Most wives feel edgy once they know it’s a hooker working next door because they hate the idea of their husbands visiting a prostitute. But husbands do, mostly behind their backs.
In an era when most people value an honest, meaningful relationship with their partner, this dilemma needs to be addressed.
Many men look upon female prostitutes as bad girls — girls they can use, abuse and cheat on. They look upon male prostitutes as disgusting poofters who excite them (therefore they bash them — nearly all clients of rent boys are married men).
Prostitutes feel they need to be on their guard every minute they are working.
Answer: sex education —If all this were to be resolved (and we have a long way to go), the prostitute could get on with giving the client a good time, instead of looking over her shoulder. Women need to understand and work out how to cope with the reality that men visit whores. Men (and women) will hopefully one day adore prostitutes as sex experts and use them when necessary, without shame.

The Sex Industry — Porn and Paraphernalia
The Sex Industry is a multi-million pound international industry with porn barons now being quoted on the stock exchange.
The distinction between the sex trade and non-sex is blurring as there is more erotic imagery in lifestyle magazines and on the TV and Paris fashion designers produce outfits in rubber and see-through or otherwise provocative styles.
The industry is made up of:-

Publishers of magazines, newspapers and internet sites
Publishers of listings and adverts
TV companies
Internet websites
Film makers
Advertising agencies
Phone sex line companies
Fashion designers
Fetish and S/M equipment manufacturers
Sex aid manifacturers
Sex educators
Shop keepers
Distributors
Club proprietors and promoters
Writers
Photographers
Stylists
Aritists
Gallery Owners.

The Laws
Our Laws are ancient and very strict beside those of most other countries in the world, except for Singapore and Arab countries.

There a three common laws:
• Conspiracy to corrupt public morals,
• Obscene libel and
• Public exhibition of indecent activities, pictures or things.

The sale of porn is restricted by the following acts:-

Customs Consolidation Act 1876 — restricts the importation of porn
Video Recordings Act 1984 — censorship and restricting sales to licenced sex shops only
Cinemas Act 1985 — censorship of films
Criminal Justice Act 1988 and Public Order Act 1994 — censorship of indecent pictures
Post Office Act — stops people sending erotic correspondence (!)
Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and 1964 — censorship of porn
Theatres Act 1968 — censoring the theatre
Criminal Law Act 1977 — restricts freedom of expression
Civic Government Act 1982 (Scotland) — restricts freedom of expression
Cable and Broadcasting Act 1984 — restricts freedom of expression
Section 27 Local Government Act 1988 — no books on homosexuality in Local Authority libraries etc. (now repealed in Scotland)
Broadcasting Act 1990 — censors erotic TV shows and forbids people proscribing to foreign satellite services
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1994 — criminalises computer porn
Broadcasting Act 1996 and 1966 — prohibits certain types of programme
City of Westminster Act 1996 — suppresses unlicenced sex shops

The argument most commonly put forward for censorship is to keep sexually explicit material out of the hands of children. We suggest that they look the children in Holland, who have been allowed to see hard core porn on news stands beside their own books for over twenty years. Have they been harmed?
Limiting the sale of R18 videos to licenced sex shops means that most of the British public cannot easily purchase them, as there are only a limited number of shops. Licences for such shops cost £18,000 a year, which means that only the very wealthy large companies can afford to have them. Sale by mail order is illegal.
The police are frustrated that the laws are unworkable and Customs and Excise have conflicting ideas about what is allowed so you get the ridiculous situation whereby British citizens are prosecuted for importing material which is already sitting on the shelves in our shops!

It has already been established that Porn is not harmful. The Danish government did a ten year study which concluded that looking at porno is not harmful to adults or children. They lifted its ban on pornography in 1965, admitting that it was a violation of human rights to prevent individuals deriving pleasure from porn. They were right: sex crime rate in Denmark fell by 66 per cent.
The Danes bought a lot to begin with, then didn’t bother much any more. It didn’t really change their lives or values. It just made them feel safer because the sex crime rate had dropped.
Interestingly, they don’t sell kiddy porn in Denmark because they think it’s immoral (and the market so small it’s no great loss) So you see — when people are given freedom they don’t go mad or become evil — they take responsibility for their lives and in their work.
So why, Oh why couldn’t Britain follow their example? Ten years later, a British study culminated in the Williams Report which reached similar conclusions but rejected by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 Governments know that by controlling our sexuality, they can control us. People can go to prison for selling erotic images — but not if you get a trial by jury because juries never seem to think there’s anything wrong in it — nor is there!

Porn is actually beneficial in society
1) Acting as a safety valve
Looking at porn which shows people all the wild sex they may never get, and produces orgasm to releive tension. Thus people are less likely to commit sex crimes.
2) It’s useful In sex therapy. Looking at porn reduces sexual anxiety.
Showing a picture of a gorgeous pussy isn’t going to turn a homosexual into a heterosexual. Nor should it . But porn is used to educate and help people accept sexual activities better. Most men know that cocks vary a lot in size and shape and so don’t worry about being weird, but women often go mad worrying, expecially nervous that they played with themselves and made the labia become weird shapes. By looking at photos of all the various kinds of pussies and they relax.
Showing couples how blow-jobs look helps them feel less nervous, showing pictures of masturbation helps lessen the guilt. Once couples find out it’s OK to masturbate together, sex therapy proceeds quickly and successfully.
3 It spices up the sexlives of millions of couples who’ve been together for a long time. They look at the porn together, get turned on and have hot sex.
Most people have fantasies about having group sex or doing wild things that are difficult to organise or realise. So porn allows you to witness the scenes of your longings, without all the worries of jealousy, breaking friendships, — your neighbours might not speak to you again if you invite them round for an orgy — or breaking the law.
4 Porn provides spicy fantasy lives for people without partner or are in a dull relationship. Women tend to read novels and men look at top-shelf mags, films and videos, or satellite TV.
5 Porno is very popular. When the photographic process was discovered it was used to create porn before anything else.
The reverend Chad Varah, founder of The Samaritans, related a story that in the 60’s Sight and Sound magazine did a survey of West End cinemas during the afternoon and found there were four times as many viewers squashed on uncomfortable seats in tiny basement porno theatres than in the plush cinemas showing big movies! People love porn!
6 Porn provides orgasms, which is beneficial for people’s health, strengthening the heart and lungs, circulation and leaving them with a feeling of well-being. When I go for a medical check-up, they always say “You must be an athlete” — and I just say “No, I enjoy a lot of big orgasms”
7 Porn is beneficial to many of the people in it. You may find this hard to beleive but being sexual in front of a camera can have a profound effect — especially on women — they blossom sexually. Porn is a fun job for those who are good at performing in front of the camera. It’s a myth that women are drugged and dragging into pornography.
8 Porn is amusing and lots of people watch it at parties or show it around in the pub, which lowers inhibitions so that people feel less worried about discussing their sex lives. Laughter and sex go together happily as both are joyful.
9 Porn is shocking This might be the most difficult one to accept but people love to be shocked. Seeing something shocking challenges everyday standards, helps people put things into perspective, makes life less grey, and is cathartic — bringing all your repressed emotions to the surface and thus refreshing you.
10 Porn is educational This is especially true in fetish and S/M porn, where it’s sometimes difficult to find out how to give an enema, put someone in bondage or whip them without damaging them. I wish it were more so, teaching shy people how to make sexual approaches, and educating society that disabled people can be great lovers. People can learn about safer sex from those books and films that show it.
11 Porn can be enjoyed by everyone whatever their education and class (unlike the media which provides different messages to each). The rich and sophisticated can enjoy their erotic art and when that gets taken to court, the judge is in a dilemma because it breaks the rule that the refined don’t show their sexual feelings, and how can he ban a work of a great artist?
12 Porn is subversive It’s an insult to British adults to ban us seeing hard porn. It’s a way of nannying us, and controlling us. It’s a very clever devise — because to control the people’s sexuality, you control the people. Porno is thus subversive, and subversion of a police state is very a important benefit to society.
Pornographers often have political motivation — and use it to discredit careerists, embarrass hypocrits and make political statements.

The last three are reasons why banning porn is harmful to society:
13 Banning porn is an insult to sex — if we can see pictures of everything else, why not sex. Sex is beautiful, not shameful
14 Banning porn means that the authorities get to see it all, and we don’t. If it depraves and corrupts that means we have depraved and corrupt authorities, and if it doesn’t, then what’s the point of the ban?
15 Finally, Banning porn means society is not free to make our own choices. We don’t need someone else to decide what we may and may not read and view and certainly adults don’t need to be reduced to only seeing things suitable for a five year old!

Slippery Slope Theory
Don’t worry — there is no slippery slope — in porn, or drugs. Cannabis does not lead to heroin, and watching a beautiful blow job doesn’t lead to snuff movies. This is a false argument to keep us afraid.
Nobody I have ever met has seen a snuff movie. They don’t exist. They are a figment of the gutter press’s imagination and food for their “double porn”. The News of the World sells millions of papers every Sunday, creating scandals and exposing orgiasts so they can turn its readers on then tell them it’s disgusting.
It’s very important to me that the British stop being repressed, it’s time to take our freedom back, and make our society a safe and happy place.
Recommendations
Get rid of all censorship and restrictions on the importation of porn.

The Sexual Freedom Coalition
Prostitution Pride
International Union of Sex Workers
Radical Anthropological Group
Eros Foundation, Australia
and sex workers groups around the world

September 2003