“Sex Work Is Work Too!”: Hundreds Protest Anti-Prostitution Plans In France
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Hundreds of French sex workers turned up on the streets of Paris on Saturday, reported Reuters, to protest a government plan to make prostitution illegal and criticise a French minister’s remarks on the sex industry.
Hundreds of French sex workers turned up on the streets of Paris on Saturday, reported Reuters, to protest a government plan to make prostitution illegal and criticise a French minister’s remarks on the sex industry.
The protest was organised by numerous sex workers’ unions in France and was in response to a proposal made by France’s minister for women’s rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who called for prostitution to “disappear.”
At present, prostitution is not considered to be illegal in France, with an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 prostitutes working in the country according to a 2012 report by the Scelles Foundation; though laws exist that prohibit pimping, human trafficking and soliciting sex in public.
Vallaud-Belkacem had wished to add an additional regulation, which punished all clients from engaging prostitutes, but the sex workers’ unions argued that these regulations would drive the sex industry underground, thereby endangering prostitutes further.
[quote]”It would create an American-style prohibition, to the joy of all the gangs that would be happy to organize encounters between customers and sex workers in secret,” claimed Maitresse Gilda, a transgender sex worker.[/quote]Related: Spain’s High-End Escorts Go On Strike – By Withholding Sex – Against Bankers
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“Before making public statements, she (Vallaud-Belkacem) needs to do her homework, to find out about the reality of prostitution,” added Morgane Mertreuil, head of the Strass sex workers’ union.
“There isn’t one kind of prostitution. There are different ways of exercising this activity. And every situation merits a response that is adapted to it. The fight against forced labour is not incompatible with the idea of giving rights to a person who exercises this activity with consent,” Metreuil went on to say.
At Place Pigalle, in the heart of Paris’ red-light district, dozens of other protestors chanted pro-prostitution slogans through loudspeakers and waved signs that read “Penalised clients = murdered prostitutes” and “Sex work is work too”.
Ending prostitution was in Francois Hollande’s presidential manifesto, though according to EuroNews, 54 per cent of French citizens disagree with the idea.
Nevertheless, the French government appears to be ramping up measures to take on the industry, particularly with the influx of Eastern European prostitution gangs who routinely traffick sex workers into the country.
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“These are highly organized systems with up to 50 girls,” said Jean-Philippe Lenormand, a senior police official of Paris’ vice squad, with Le Monde last year. “They are operated by one or two people who regularly travel back and forth from the Balkans, but there are also people smugglers, “cabbies” to drive the girls to the streets and minders who keep an eye on the network’s patch. “
[quote]“In these networks, there’s a lot of violence, constraints, and threats on the prostitutes and their families who stayed back home.”[/quote]Video – Protest for France sex workers:
