This essay first appeared in Cliterati on December 8th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
In the process of writing my blog, I read and scan a tremendous number of news stories every week, from websites based all over the world. I get many of them from links on Twitter, and my readers send many others; some of them I stumble onto by chance while looking at other things. The majority of sex work-related items end up in my weekly “That Was the Week That Was” news summary, which normally appears on Saturday; other interesting stories appear in my weekly “Links” column, which normally appears on Sunday. Some are worth quoting in a longer discussion, and others aren’t noteworthy enough to get any coverage in my work at all. But every once in awhile a story comes along which is so interesting, funny, horrible, odd or whatever, that I like to analyze it at length. Today I present such a story; it appeared in the Edinburgh News on October 30th, but the date hardly matters because it’s illustrative of so much of what’s wrong with the way the news media report on sex work.
Two prostitutes are plying their trade just yards from a bustling police station amid warnings that private flats are increasingly being used for business by sex workers. The cheeky sex workers are operating from a plush £700-a-week mews house in Dewar Place Lane to the rear of the busy West End police base in Torphichen Place. Their decision to “set up shop” in the shadow of the key station follows an unprecedented period of focus on the Capital’s sauna trade…
One distinguishing characteristic of the truly awful sex work story is its use of inane, annoying and dysphemistic language to pretend that sex work is “dirty”, “seedy”, titillating, lurid or otherwise fundamentally different from other kind of work. The language in many such articles is positively Victorian, but even when it isn’t, it’s still of a type only found in reference to sex work. It starts in the very first sentence: can you imagine caterers, carpenters, cartographers or cab drivers being described in an early-21st century article as “plying their trade”? Or that a reporter would find it noteworthy that a pub, pawnbroker, photographer or piano-tuner had set up shop near a police station (or to enclose that phrase in scare quotes)? The UK is not the US; prostitution is not illegal in Scotland, no matter how much the leadership of Police Scotland might wish otherwise. While I agree that it is a bit “cheeky” to do business so close to the hideout of a gang with a long history of violence against sex workers, that’s not the “spin” this reporter appears to be trying to put on it. Finally, there’s the mention of the rent…which would certainly not appear were the story about a medical practice or a law firm.
…one…Police Scotland insider said…“We’re going to see a lot more sex sold from private flats like this…with all the unique problems that can bring with it.” Sex industry insiders say more prostitutes are now operating from flats. And today Independent Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald warned it would lead to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases and attacks on prostitutes…
Sex has been sold from private residences for as long as private residences have existed; this is neither new nor “uniquely problematic”. Stories about sex work often present minor shifts in the number of women working in one type of venue or another as some sort of mass migration; in the US, it is commonly claimed that indoor sex work was practically nonexistent before the advent of the internet, when in reality the change was from about 15% of all sex workers on the street to perhaps 10% or a bit less…hardly a seismic shift. The same can be said about brothel workers starting to go independent in Edinburgh. And though I’m sure MSP MacDonald means well, if she’s concerned about STIs she should turn her attention to the amateurs; we professionals have far lower rates than they do, even without government nannies looking over our shoulders to be sure we wash properly.
…Our investigation was sparked by members of the public concerned at the comings and goings in the well-heeled cobbled street. The attractive pair – who aren’t linked to the saunas – are only believed to have arrived in the city a week ago. Their arrival, however, has merely swelled the ranks of a burgeoning scene which leaves prostitutes vulnerable to the whims of…violent pimps…
Can you imagine two new members of any other profession being described as “swelling the ranks” when there are already about 700?* As for “public concern”, that’s utter nonsense; escorts know how not to attract attention, and in the next section the reporter admits to making an appointment through a website. Without the directions provided by the sex workers, neither he nor the supposedly “concerned public” would have known where they were. But the worst part of this short paragraph is the insulting pretense, so beloved by prohibitionists, that whores are largely at the mercy of “pimps”, when actually nothing could be farther from the truth.
…Incredibly, officers pass the flat, as they use the lane for access, unaware of the seedy activities inside…a girlish voice called out to come up the spiral staircase to…a large and immaculate living room with…two empty wine glasses…on a low table alongside untouched finger food…Wearing heavy eye make-up and scantily dressed in a see-through negligee, black underwear and red high heels, she welcomed our reporter…
Every sentence has words intended to evoke a lurid atmosphere. A legal business is “seedy”, the sex worker is “girlish” (implying “underage”), the cleanliness of a business-place is somehow considered remarkable (would a hotel lobby be similarly described?), the empty glasses hint at a recently-departed client, and the descriptions of the sex worker’s makeup and attire would be more at home in a cheap novel than a serious news story.
…Asked whether she knew about the nearby police station she rolled her eyes, smiled and said: “I know, I know. I don’t mind. I’m doing nothing wrong. I don’t sell drugs, I pay my taxes. I’m quite happy about it”…She claimed to be working alone from the house, but the Evening News has learned that she is one of two prostitutes based there…The offence of brothel-keeping is only committed when two or more women work from the same home…Police officers have been informed by the News of [the] brothel…
In revealing that the women work from the same place, the reporter has guaranteed that the police will subject them to mindless violence in the name of upholding an asinine law, especially since he helpfully provided them the address in violation of every principle of journalistic ethics. This wicked game of outing sex workers is woefully common in UK journalism of the sleazier sort…which is to say, most of it.
But the worst part about the entire article is that the reporter seems to imagine himself to be genuinely concerned about sex workers’ safety, or is at least trying to convince the reader that he is. A reporter chooses whom to interview, which quotes to feature, how to parse them and how much weight to give each interviewee, so two different people with opposite agendas could produce two extremely different articles from the exact same set of interviews; this story comes back over and over again to the harm Police Scotland’s new harassment policy will inflict upon sex workers. Yet at the same time, it wallows in the lurid, is peppered liberally with dysphemisms and tortured phrases, presents sex workers as weak, dirty victims and even goes so far as to directly betray two of them to the tender mercies of the police, hinting that they have a lot of money so as to make them a more attractive target for a profit-motivated raid. If this is what passes for “sympathy” in British journalism, I’d hate to see what hostility looks like.
*This number comes from Scot-Pep, and though it seems a bit low to me we’ll go with it.
Yes, the “journalism” here is quite laughable. And the gratuitous business of the reporter going out of his way to inform the porktards about the Evil Sex Work going on in their backyard is reminiscent of the sort of journalism we have here in the US, where the reporters are basically just stenographers for the government, passing along press releases and asking why a Glenn Greenwald shouldn’t be arrested for not having done a citizen’s arrest on Edward Snowden. Courtiers to the powerful, etc.
I am curious about something that you alluded to, Maggie, when you mentioned that the rise of the internet had reduced the fraction of street work in general sex work from about 15% to 10%. I spent almost all my life not noticing (I saw my first escort just last year), but now I wonder: before the internet, how did clients find non-street providers? Was it all just by word-of-mouth? It’s sort of difficult to see how things were done, back in the dark ages.
Speaking only for the London scene, but before the internet, there was ads placed in “Daily Sports” type papers (a mix of tabloid and soft porn daily paper), and of course “phone box” advertisement which is still very popular now (see an example below – definitely NSFW! http://payphonepictures.com/main.php?g2_itemId=47275&g2_imageViewsIndex=1 ).
I don’t know that from experience though, having been to London only for a few years. I just hear older people telling their tales 🙂
I see that the Swedish Model has made it into that phone box. Although in this case I don’t really mind. 😉
I would imagine this is far more typical of such places…
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/12/01/brewing.ART_ART_12-01-08_B8_32C3D3P.html
There was also a brothel in Grandview in a strip mall, and the reporters seemed surprised that locals and neighbors either didn’t know what was going on, or worse, knew but didn’t really care.
The video has a date stamp apparently from 2003; surely that’s not right?
As for changing entrenched attitudes, whether in journos or their reading public it’s very difficult. So difficult that sometimes I wonder whether it’s possible, and whether it’s better to give up, and concentrate on younger generations whose minds haven’t calcified—follow the Jesuits’ advice, and get them when they are young.
Brit journalism? Can’t ya’ll take this opportunity to blame SCOTTISH journalism?
In this particular instance anyway? LOL – they want to be separate right? 😛
Well most of my forefathers had to leave Scotland or face the hangman’s noose – they didn’t like being British … well, at least not until they came to the New World and then embraced the Torys!
British journalism at its best! (I love this country but the general journalism standards are … how to put it … distressingly appalling!) Lucky those ladies are that our fearless reporters didn’t hack their voicemails to pick up some ‘seedy’ details …
Meanwhile I had a quick look on AW and it seems that neither of the girls mentioned in the article have a profile in Edinburgh – so one way or another they aren’t at this location anymore. I hope for them that they managed to move out before being “rescued”. Small consolation: at least ‘Nina’ managed to get £100 out of the rotten hack 🙂
LOL – I had to giggle … isn’t most sex “sold” in private flats? 😛
I agree that they mostly are – however, when it comes to private residences like apartments or even houses in subdivisions – the difficulty factor shoots up considerably …
There is just about no where that you can live these days – unless you’re in some rural area – where you’re not going to have nosey, gossiping neighbors.
The problem isn’t the escort – it’s the procession of men in and out of the residence. Eventually they are noticed by the neighbors – who always leap to the most destructive conclusions – that the men are criminals … drug addicts … pedophiles … violent pimps. Then the alarm goes out because … “OMG! We have elderly people, single women, and children in this neighborhood who could be harmed!!”
This kind of fear is fueled by the kind of reporting in this article and, it’s only too easy since it appears (in my experience) that so many people alive today live boring – uninteresting lives … so they’re constantly in search of drama. They just eat this shit up.
It’s like Rob Thomas (Matchbox Twenty) wrote in “Bright Lights” …
Though they won’t admit it – a lot of people out there live lives so boring they unconciously crave to be victimized – or at least to FEEL victimized – in order to make their lives more worthwhile to them – more exciting.
Men who visit residences ought to practice some discretion themselves. Like dressing like a cable TV guy … or an electrician … or an AC repairman … or …
A guitar instructor. Nobody suspects a long-hair with a guitar case in his hands! LOL – not that I would know!! 😉
What’s the point in protecting the confidentiality of a reporter’s sources of the reporters are just going to turn them over to the police? If I were living over there, I’d be scared to talk to a reporter about my pumpkin bread recipe, much less anything potentially illegal.
As I type this, I’m watching a news story which has all the earmarks of human trafficking. But it’s construction work, not sex work, so this is the first and probably the last I’m hearing of it.