Sanction the customer? The prostitutional question becomes a public affair. The debate on the oldest profession in the world divides political family, intellectuals and associations.
Selling your body: is it the ultimate form of the oppression of women or is it a profession like any other? Such opposition is problematic. Far from being monolithic, the phenomenon of prostitution is complex, plural and paradoxical. Entering it in a false constraint-liberty dichotomy, woman victim or free agent woman, is harmful and reducing. We now have to create institutions, debate spaces, to invent other mediations to treat politically in an area where everyone is in uncertainty about their own desire. The question is not: how to provide a real political response to the demand, recognized and assumed, of sexual service?
The law penalizing prostitutes’ clients has appeared in the Official Journal Thursday, April 14, 2016 and has entered into force from this day. Rejected several times since November 2013, the law supposed to fight against prostitution was finally adopted by the National Assembly on April 6, 2016. Inspired by a Swedish text in force since 1999, the law has the main measure of the penalization of customers by a fine of 1,500 euros maximum. In the event of a recurrence, it could amount to up to 3,500 euros, with mention in the criminal record. In the same way as motorists who commit rehearsal offenses, customers are also likely to have to carry out awareness internships … under prostitution conditions.
The offense of soliciting is deleted. With this abrogation, it is a new status which is offered to prostitutes. They are no longer the culprits, but the victims of the sex market. The association “Dare feminism!” said in a statement to be “Very proud of this victory which is the result of a mobilization carried out for more than 5 years“. The High Council for Equality (HCE) and the former Minister of Families, Childhood and Women’s Rights, Laurence Rossignol, consider this new law as”A historical advance for women’s rights and equality between women and men“.
Although the opinions on the government side and associations are positive, sex workers do not hear it. They fear that this new law will accentuate their precariousness and force them to commit offenses to find more customers. Professionals who are by their side (doctors for example) are afraid that they no longer contract diseases and debts. First concerned by this decision, prostitutes were not requested in the discussions around the law.
Another question is still unanswered: how to understand the suspects of these crimes? For the police, the answers are still vague.
The reports on the Bois de Boulogne make the big hours of first parts of the evening. The series Close house, diary of a call girl Or The Girlfriend Experience have caracole at the top of the audiences. From Claire Denis to François Ozon, the cinema has also taken over these escort-girls who are sold to pay off overprices … But it would seem that the “whore” again violently evokes the cursed part, in any case a danger for public order and the values of the Republic. The feelings that the trade of sexuality arouses are either fascination or rejection and stigma, (these two feelings do not excuse).
The first representation is on the side of a delightful frivolity (we speak of “girls of joy”). It is based on tenacious clichés: literature and cinema have largely contributed to the image of “Libertine to the big heart”, from the novels of Maupassant to the films of Guédiguian via the cinema of the 1950s and the essential Pretty Woman.
In the second case, the fantasies of violence and domination relationships are largely maintained (and sordidly) by a vision of prostitution in the neighborhoods, associated with the networks of “Eastern girls”, with AIDS, drugs, mafia. Regularly, the press, radio, television echoes events in the “environment”. And journalists are not particularly “grove”. The proliferation of “touting” reports shows above all that the subject and its naughty connotations always make a recipe.
Prostitution has transformed through the ages by adapting to geographic and technological changes that structure social relationships. So she follows the meanders of developments in urban space, manners, behavior or police orders. As evidenced by several ancient texts, including the Bible, it seems that at various times certain women, as well as young men, offered their charms in exchange for material goods or protection.
From the Middle Ages, the expansion of trade, wars and distant expeditions make more and more men must be absent from their homes for long periods. Brothels are set up, aimed at meeting the needs of travelers and soldiers, while “protecting” women from the nobility.
With the intensification of the migratory movements of campaigns to cities and urban concentration, prostitution is gradually organizing and becomes an institution. From the middle of the 13th century, the “meretrix” were familiar figures of city life. They are often found in squares, in the streets, at the doors of the churches and in the taverns. They are often invited to wedding and banquets …
The application of the Napoleon code which was used during the first half of the 19th century considers prostitution as a necessary evil which ensures public tranquility. But the industrial revolution and the rural exodus cause overcrowding in cities that do not have adequate health networks. Around the middle of the 19th century, venereal diseases, in particular syphilis, are wreaking havoc. Prostitution becomes a “health” problem, a closed system that has its place: the tolerance house, the hospital, the prison, the establishment of recovery.
Then the brothel becomes its paradigm. We enter it following its registration on the customs police file.
Then, the political struggle against the trafficking of women led to international agreements (agreements on the “slave trade” of 1904, 1910, 1921, 1933) and to positions of the League of Nations.
The law “Marthe Richard”, named after the municipal councilor of Paris who was the inspiration of it, was voted in France in 1946. It prohibited closed houses and, by extension, attacks certain forms of pimping.
In the early 1960s, France joined abolitionist theses by ratifying the 1949 UN Convention. Sexuality was then legally redefined and prostitutes were considered victims suffering from socio -cultural disabilities. These are private associations, such as the Association of the NID, which take care of the “social treatment” of this world with very low and marginalized cohesion.
However, during the wars of Indochina and Algeria and until recently, the BMC (campaign military brothels), itinerant lupanars, are established by military commands during the reconquest and employ women contractually recruited. In the era of European construction, all the terms, all the positions between the different actors who act in this field seem to be renegotiating.
“France’s policy with regard to pimping is clear. It is much more ambiguous with regard to prostitution”concluded the delegation to the women’s rights of the Senate, in its report on public policies and prostitution published in 2001.
Formally abolitionist, France does not consider prostitution as an offense and its client benefited, until today, from a kind of consensual indulgence. French criminal law ignored the consumer male unless the physical damage took place on the person of a minor under the age of fifteen.
Provided that public order is preserved, nothing, in law, prohibits prostitution, which, once again, is a free activity. But the practice of texts highlights a regime of freedom, random and upset. First of all, prostitution being the prerequisite of pimping, it is closely monitored because it must be demonstrated to be able to worry the pimps.
The tax authorities and case law consider prostitution income as entering the category of non -commercial profits (BNC), in accordance with article 92 of the General Tax Code, which constitutes the legal tax base of the liberal professions, charges and offices whose holders do not have the quality of merchants.
These income taxes do not make prostitutes of full -fledged citizens. They have no social security coverage and contribute does not give them the right to the Assesdic or a retirement.
In Germany
Germany is a regulations and has created “Eros Centers”, a kind of sex hypermarkets, built in special areas on the outskirts of major cities. This legal “industry” is very profitable for the financiers who invest there and for the State thanks to the taxes. Prostitutes are subject to regular health control, sanctioned by “good for service” certificates.
In the Netherlands
With a desire to fully integrate prostitution into economic and social life, just like another activity, the Netherlands go even further in regulatoryism. The management of passing places is the responsibility of the municipalities: the town halls sign agreements with the tenants who include hygiene, comfort and working conditions. Prostitutes are professionals; They are recruited by official job offers and can follow a specialized course to learn the underside of the profession. In addition, they adhere to the most powerful union center in the country, category “public services”. The tenants are managers grouped into an association that defends their interests: the organization for prostitution in the window.
In California, in the United States
Since 1995, there has been a “customer school”, which is part of the program for primary prostitution offenders and whose principle is based “on the fact that most customers know nothing about the realities of prostitution and what prostitutes feel”. The customers arrested have the choice between work of general interest or a fine and a day in this school of customers, where former prostitutes come to explain their point of view to them, tell them about their experiences.
In Sweden
Parliament has decided to punish “the purchase of sexual services”. Since January 1, 1999, the customer has been considered an operator, in the same way as the pimp; It is liable, at best a fine, at the worst of six months in prison. In any case, he must follow psychotherapy. The prostitute is however not at all pursued (no breaking offense). To set up this policy, the government has released more than 10 million euros (including 3 million for the police training).
Asphalters, crushy, Belle-de-Nuits, Boucanières, Cocottes, runners, crunchy, half-people, women of small virtue, gallant, macadam flowers, left-handers, gourgandines, cranes, hetaïres, horizontals, love merchants, pots, michestonners, skins, peripateticists, stones, Sirens, mice, triple, Turfers, Catins … The “sex workers” evolve in an ambient relativism. They are the translation of the constant extension of the liberal-libertarian, economic and moral model at the same time, difficult to counter right for reasons of economic creed and difficult to counter on the left for reasons of moral creed.
Classic executives of the solidarity economy can, then, be seen as a response: that of cooperative erotic services, controlled by the State, organized independently and whose payment relationship is not excluded.
