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Lessons from a German Brothel
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Date Posted on this Site
July 9, 2006
Publication
National Post
Publication Date
July 7, 2006
Published Content
Lessons from a German Brothel
John Turley-Ewart
Having been schooled by Italy in the semi-finals of the World Cup tournament it's hosting, Germany has lost any claim to soccer supremacy. But the nation has much to teach us on a more important issue: prostitution. Four years ago, the country passed legislation decriminalizing both brothels and those who engage in what our own criminal law refers to as "communicating for the purposes of prostitution" (i.e., soliciting johns in media advertisements, or on the street). Canada would do well to follow suit.
Germany's liberal approach to prostitution has been controversial. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, claims the policy offers an open invitation to criminal gangs that exploit vulnerable women. And according to the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives panel on human rights, Republican Christopher Smith, "the clear losers [in the World Cup] will be the thousands of women and children trafficked and sold into Germany's legal sex industry to accommodate the huge influx of [potential clients]." His fears were echoed by widely circulated claims that 40,000 women from Eastern Europe were going to be smuggled into the country for just such a purpose.
Europeans are more liberal-minded about such things. But even many in Europe think Germany has gone too far. Among them is Juliette Engel, who directs the MiraMed Institute, a Moscow-based charity. The German government, she says, is acting as "an official 'pimp' for the 2006 World Cup." And Claes Borgstrom, the Equal Opportunity Ombudsman for Sweden, unsuccessfully called on his country's soccer team to boycott the World Cup over the issue. (In Sweden, buying sex is a criminal act. But selling it has been decriminalized. This reflects the ultra-progressive view that prostitution is a form of male violence against women; and so punishing the prostitute would be to victimize her twice.)
But as the World Cup draws to a close this Sunday, it is clear that Germany's critics got it wrong. According to a report released on Tuesday by the International Organization for Migration, there is no basis in the claim that thousands of women from Eastern Europe were frogmarched into the pleasure trade for the benefit of randy soccer fans. Indeed, business at many brothels has reportedly been quite flat.
The assumption underlying much of the bad press Germany has received is that decriminalization is a boon to the underworld. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. Prostitution is like any other industry. Make it illegal, and you give criminals a monopoly. Legalize it, and you give law-abiding enterprises a chance to compete.
Christel Humme, a German MP and member of the left-of-centre Social Democratic Party (SPD), was one of the German politicians who helped change the country's prostitution laws in 2002 (a move supported by the country's NDP-esque Green Party). Every day, she noted in an interview, more than a million men in Germany (a country with a male adult population of about 40-million), seek out the services of the nation's estimated 400,000 sex workers. "This is the reality," she says.
Several considerations convinced the SPD to make changes. The first was a desire to improve the safety of prostitutes by bringing their industry into the open and giving them legal rights -- so they no longer had to rely on abusive pimps for protection.
The second was the need to ensure that the benefits of Germany's welfare state -- health care and pensions, for instance -- were made available to prostitutes. Giving prostitutes access to doctors would also help improve public health, by allowing the state to identify and treat those sex-trade workers infected with sexually transmitted diseases.
Prostitution and the trafficking of women are separate issues, Ms. Humme told me. In at least one way, in fact, legalizing prostitution has helped stop trafficking: Police are now able to apply their scarce resources to closing down those unregulated brothels where women are forced into the sex trade.
According to Ms. Humme's research, recriminalizing prostitution wouldn't stop the flow of women from poor countries. That, she believes, will happen only when more governments in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, begin to take seriously the problem at cooperate more fully with other countries to stop it.
HYDRA, the German Association of Female and Male Prostitutes, lobbied hard for decriminalization and believes prostitutes that work in the legal system are much safer today than they were before 2002.
According to Katharina Zetin, a former prostitute and a spokesperson for HYDRA, johns were more likely to be violent or to refuse to pay when they knew prostitutes would be prosecuted if they took their concerns to the police. Moreover, she notes in an interview, health and safety standards are far better in today's brothels. Safe sex can no longer be negotiated away by an intimidating john who didn't feel like wearing a condom.
Moreover, regulated brothels now are operated as legitimate businesses, and so attract professional managers -- as opposed to underworld thugs. Prostitutes can choose where they want to work, and can quit when they want without fear of reprisal. Finally, prostitutes work for themselves and not the brothel. They pay a fee to the brothel owner. But it is up to them who they will have sex with, and what kind of sex act they will perform.
Earlier this year, a National Post editorial criticizing Justice Minister Vic Toews for dismissing decriminalization of the prostitution trade sparked a heated debate on our letters page. Mr. Toews argued that decriminalization would put more women and girls at risk, and strengthen the hands of organized crime. Many letter writers agreed with him.
The underlying assumption of the Minister was that no woman would choose to be a prostitute. But Ms. Zetin says that is nonsense. "No one asks a cashier if she is doing her job of free will," she notes. So why make assumptions about a prostitute? There will always be some women who choose to be prostitutes -- just as she once decided to do -- says Ms. Zetin.
Canada is currently in the same place Germany was in 2001. Brothels are illegal; so is solicitation -- though, technically, the act of having sex in exchange for money is itself not a crime. It is time Canadian politicians realized what their German counterparts did four years ago -- that there will always be men willing to pay for sex and women willing to sell it. We may not like that fact, but it is not something that can be willed away. For all concerned, the best course of action is to bring this business under the ambit of the law. When prostitutes need protection, to whom do we want them to turn -- thugs and mafiosi, or doctors and police?
John Turley-Ewart is the National Post's Deputy Comment Editor
My Response Letter
Far from empowering women, prostitution does little more than reduce women to instruments of pleasure and impersonal objects for sexual gratification. If the German government truly desired to protect women, it would allocate more funds for alternatives for women who feel they need to participate in the sex trade. (Because, really, how many of those 400,000 women would work as prostitutes if there were jobs with commensurate salaries available?) The real lesson here is plain and simple: human dignity can be legislated away.
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
Yes (slightly edited)