Prostitution - Old profession, new debate

[SEAJ]

A piece from "The Economist," 27 October 2012

http://www.economist.com/news/china/...ssionnewdebate

Prostitution
Old profession, new debate
One woman’s controversial campaign to legalise prostitution

Oct 27th 2012 | BEIJING | from the print edition


WHEN an activist, Ye Haiyan, was attacked by eight men in May near her home in the south-western province of Guangxi, she was not completely surprised. Nor was she shocked when local police raided the China Grassroots Women’s Rights Centre where she works. The incidents followed her participation in a controversial stunt in January when she volunteered as a prostitute for two days to highlight sex workers’ plight. She then described her experiences in minute detail on Weibo, a popular microblog. The stunt was meant to boost awareness about Ms Ye’s campaign to legalise prostitution, and it succeeded. Online debate about China’s booming sex trade has raged ever since.

Chairman Mao abolished overt prostitution after 1949, and it remains illegal in China today. (To avoid repercussions Ms Ye did not charge for sex during her stint in the brothel.) But now China has between four and six million sex workers, according to a paper published in 2010 by the World Health Organisation. In small towns and large cities across the country, skimpily dressed women sit in the windows of hair salons and loiter in karaoke bars, openly offering sexual services.

Ms Ye, who is 37, describes squalid conditions in the hotel-brothel where she volunteered in the city of Yulin in Guangxi province. Workers rent cramped cubicles with no windows for 15 yuan ($2.50) a day. There are no showers. Most prostitutes are middle-aged, with scant education and no job prospects or connections. In a society with little welfare or national-health benefits, poverty-stricken women often sell their bodies out of desperation. “Providing sex services is the only way to survive,” says Ms Ye, who believes legalising prostitution will keep women safer and protect public health.

Don’t go there
But plenty of people in what is still a sexually conservative society disagree, and the subject is highly politicised. Many government officials would approve of legalisation to help spur the economy, but few will say so out loud, says Pan Suiming of Renmin University’s Institute for Sexuality and Gender in Beijing.

Ms Ye has some prominent allies. Chi Susheng, a lawyer, says China should build red-light districts, license sex workers, and standardise regulations to prevent the spread of HIV. She cites the example of Taiwan, which decriminalised prostitution in designated red-light districts last year, and Sweden, where prostitutes can register to pay taxes. Since 2003, Ms Chi has submitted three proposals to legalise prostitution to the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament. All have failed.

Meanwhile, prostitutes in China, as elsewhere in the world, remain socially stigmatised and are often victimised by corrupt police (who pocket fines), violent clients and pimps. While solicitation is illegal, men who visit prostitutes are not usually punished, whereas prostitutes rounded up in periodic sweeps by police can be sent to education-through-labour camps for up to two years.

Last week, a video of a policeman interviewing naked girls in a raid on a Beijing health club suspected of operating as a brothel provoked over 73,000 comments on a Chinese website. One scene in the clip shows a girl with a bowed head shielding her body on a bed, as another girl stands naked against a wall before a plain-clothed officer. Web users expressed dismay that suspects were not allowed to get dressed before questioning.

But translating such outrage into action, or indeed policy, is hard. None of Ms Ye’s assailants has been caught. Still, she plans to continue her work, stoking debate and operating grassroots centres, including a hotline for sex workers.

Chinese sex workers will continue their work too. Lan Lan charges 50 yuan ($8) a time in a massage parlour in the northern city of Tianjin. She used to wash dishes in a restaurant. For her, prostitution is a step up, providing flexible working hours, no heavy labour and a bigger income, she says. She earns 5,000 yuan ($800) a month, and volunteers at an HIV-awareness charity that provides condoms and advice to fellow sex workers. “I respect what I do,” she says. “It is better than washing dishes.”