PROSTITUTION ROUNDUP

To the left, a brief nod to yesterday's Hallmark festival. Sadly, the Natural History Museum's Diamonds exhibition, of which this was a souvenir, had to close before I got to see it.

At the last minute, we were pleased to welcome Jahnet DeLight back on the show, who always has her own take on things, and is less depressed about the law changes than anyone she knows.

Others are less patient about the continuing refusal, by policy makers, to admit that sex has been sold for thousands of years, and will continue to be so, whatever the law says. All is not lost everywhere, though, as it was generally agreed that New Zealand currently has the most enlightened attitude to sex work.

Founder of the International Union of Sex Workers Dr Ana Lopes's main point was that without unionisation, it would have been much harder to get sex workers' voices heard during the consultation, and that the government stance on sex work should be about workers' safety and rights, rather than continuing to pathologise prostitution as a social problem.

She also made the very important point that if sex workers can unionise, with all the ongoing complications in their lives, then anyone can. This has implications for any groups of women, or anyone at all, who ought to be heard as one voice, such as single mothers, and women working at home. In fact, Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes reminded us that the majority of sex workers are single mothers. She also pointed out that, although there was disappointment when the idea of having special safety (or 'tolerance') zones was thrown out, the reality is that they would not have been enlightened utopian enclaves, but dark car parks in already dodgy areas that would attract more trouble for those working there.

Finally, here's more from Jahnet, in an email before the show:

"It is a business like any other and we should be able to work just like any therapist or entertainer.

"The street trade will always exist. It's the first and the easiest way to be able to trade. You don't need to be hired or judged to earn fast cash. You go there when you need and you get. The young, inexperienced, alone, desperate, on drugs, can earn enough money to survive.

"Respectable sex workers are a boon to society and only in this way can we change the status quo. Porn is now mainstream. I would like to see new definitions of our work that leads to men and women regarding us with interest and discovery. Perhaps even generating the need for training places that train students how to be a surrogate, how to massage, how to deal with stress, and how to run a business.

"Some kind of amnesty is needed as well, so we can all begin again, start afresh creating an industry and a revenue not just for ourselves but also the society we live in. We have done this in the past. Many of our great buildings were built on revenue from the sex trade. Let's not give it to an ugly black market that simply builds nightmares..."

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