NOT A SERVICE LIKE ANY OTHER -

Reply to article calling for clients of prostitutes to be prosecuted - by Julie Bindel.

I notice you mention, once only, the fact that men as well as women can be sex workers. I wonder if you've ever looked at the adverts for Male Escorts in any of the free gay magazines which are available at various pubs, clubs and shops on the gay circuit?

The idea that most of these are vulnerable people who have been forced into sex work by gangs, pimps, drug addiction or human traffickers is laughable. They are all adult men, some very mature (one who advertises regularly is 58 years old), who (along with strippers, lap dancers, etc.) find the sex trade a lucrative profession.

It is also often described as the 'oldest profession', and it will always exist. To try and stamp it out by criminalizing either the sex workers themselves or their clients is not only doomed to failure, it would be disastrous, driving it completely underground and into the hands of criminal gangs.

I would prefer the exact opposite. That prostitution was made entirely legal, and that sex workers were provided (free of charge for certain people of severely limited financial circumstances) on the NHS.

Who are you and the other politically correct and religious moralizers to dictate that only young, good-looking people, or those who have managed to find a partner/spouse thru mutual attraction, can have sex, and everyone else is condemned to a celibate life? What about those too old to attract partners, widows and widowers, the disabled, the unattractive or hideously deformed? Don't they have a right to a sex life? Doesn't everyone? Isn't it as much a fundamental human need as food?

I'm a gay man, as you may have gathered, and I only know about the male escort scene. I have visited male prostitutes, and will continue to do so from time to time. They provide a much needed service, as I'm sure do their female counterparts. Even for those with regular partners, sex workers can provide a very important service, for example by role-playing, dressing up and acting out fantasies which the partner/spouse may be unwilling to do.

My now deceased gay life partner (we were together 21 years till his death) used to be a sex worker, as were most of his friends and acquaintances. It was a life they freely chose. One continued this kind of work right into his 40s, hustling in full drag outside the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. If anything it was the clients who were being exploited, and still are. Not only was he pretending to be something he wasn't, i.e. a real woman, but frequently sex workers have been known to steal off clients, or at least charge exorbitant prices. Indeed it is the big financial rewards which make the business so attractive. Sex is power, and a sex worker can have enormous power over a client to extract as much money/presents as he or she wishes. However, many are like my partner; caring individuals who always try to give value for money, and would never dream of robbing a client. Sex workers are as much social workers as anything, provided a much needed service to the community.

My partner and his friends insisted that were it not for prostitutes, both male and female, there would be far more rapes, sexual assaults and child molestations. Sex workers act as a safety valve, allowing people to act out their sexual fantasies, and so long as neither party is under the age of consent, and provided the sex worker is not being co-erced into the business, the law should not intervene.

Brothels should be legalized, so sex workers can ply their trade in a safe environment, with regular health checks. There would then be no need for women (and some men) to work the streets, a particularly dangerous practice.

The complete legalization of prostitution, and the provision of sex workers at tax-payers' expense on the NHS for those who need but can't afford sexual services, is the way forward in an enlightened, liberated society. It is not in anybody's interest to deny people access to sex because of their age, disability, looks or circumstances.

And, finally, why should clients be criminalized for paying a sex worker for his/her services, when society condones women, and men for that matter, marrying 'into money' or to improve their social status, rather than for love? A woman marrying into money, a title or privilege is regarded as having done well for herself, rarely is she described as 'a common prostitute'. So society seems to be saying attach yourself to a wealthy man (or woman) for life and you are to be praised, go with many men for money and you are condemned. Were Diana or the Queen Mother described as 'common prostitutes' because they married into privilege and wealth? There is a word for these double standards - hypocrisy! Class also comes into it - it is OK to better yourself by marrying to improve your financial/social status, but society condemns working-class men and women who provide a much needed sexual and social service for financial reward.

There's a lot of truth in the saying: 'we are all prostitutes'. Does it really matter if we exchange genuine love for love, sex for sex, money for sex (whether thru marriage or prostitution) or privilege for sex?

My partner had a saying I'm sure you won't appreciate: 'Put a prostitute on every street corner!' He was convinced this would be of benefit to society and stop most of the rapes and child molestation. Of course he didn't mean it literally, far better the sex workers were in licensed brothels, or working for the NHS under supervision, than standing around on street corners.

Gay men were once very vulnerable; we were being murdered, mugged and beaten up in cruising grounds out in parks/towpaths/woods/heathland at night, in public toilets, even in their own homes. It was only when it recently became legal for gay bars and clubs to provide areas where sex could take place on the premises, that we got a safe environment to act out our lifestyles. Sex workers should be afforded the same sort of facilities. There should be no need for vulnerable women, or men, to walk the streets and get into cars with complete strangers.

(I shall post this email on my website: www.btinternet.com/~tony.papard/ where you or anybody else are free to post their own comments. I'll put it under the heading Legalize Sex Work under the Gay category, since my contact with sex workers has been mainly with male escorts working with gay men, apart from some female sex workers my partner and his friends knew.)