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Positive Reforms in Germany - Not only Legal but Moral Prostitution
The legislation of prostitution is so hotly
debated that at times it appears as if the bodies of women and men involved in
sex work aren’t as important as the questions of morality surrounding the
profession. One country has attempted to legislate morality in the hopes that it
will lead to better treatment of the people involved. For three years running,
prostitution in Germany is—by law—no longer immoral. Since prostitution in
Germany has always been technically “legal,” what does this change mean in
concrete terms?
Katharina Cetin is the spokeswoman for HYDRA, a counseling center and a meeting
point for sex workers in Berlin. According to her, the law has brought some
positive changes to the lives of prostitutes working in Germany. “The new
legislation has created a lot of changes since 2002. Women are no longer
stigmatized the way they once were. They can go to a judge if they don’t get the
money [from a client]. In the past that was not possible.”
Since the changes, brothel owners are able to provide better working conditions
for prostitutes, whereas in the past brothel owners could be punished for
providing prostitutes with condoms, clean bathrooms, towels and proper sanitary
conditions. Police would accuse clean brothel owners of encouraging
prostitution. Further making their jobs unsafe was the fact that in the past sex
workers were ineligible to apply for state health care. Now they are required to
register as self-employed, granting them access to state benefits. Pimps are
still under penalty by law for economically and/or emotionally exploiting women
so that now women can easily take them to court and press charges.
The visibility of prostitution is important, according to Cetin, because “if
women start to talk and think more openly about sex work or imagine what it
would be like to be a prostitute they can start to think about their own
sexuality in new ways. This is very important. Sometimes, we have found,
prostitutes choose to go into prostitution because it is clandestine … if a
woman has more possibilities to talk about [prostitution], it is easier for her
to make a decision in general about whether it will be good for her or not.” But
getting to the stage where the pros and cons of prostitution can be openly
discussed and without judgment isn’t as quick to develop as is the legislation.
According to Cetin, in some small German towns, women don’t want to register as
self-employed “because, for example, the clerk might be the friend of her
brother. And the profession is still so stigmatized.” Yet if she doesn’t apply
for a tax id number to pay taxes on her earnings, she can be fined not only for
that year but for every year that she has worked “illegally.” In other cities,
prostitutes can only work in sperrbezirks verordnung (tolerance zones): areas of
the city or apartment buildings that are designated for prostitution.
Unfortunately, some landlords take advantage of this restriction and charge
higher rates for women renting in such zones. If a prostitute chooses not to
work in a tolerance zone, her only other option is to work outside the city
where it is dark and there are no toilets or showers. Pimps inevitably get
involved so that women have some degree of protection but in return they may
take a large percentage of her earnings.
While the legislation in Germany is far from perfect, it is one place where some
sex workers can enjoy some amount of autonomy over their profession and their
bodies. In places where prostitution is legal and openly discussed—such as
Nevada, where one group has established an online forum for prostitutes, clients
and “newbies”—the flaws of current prostitution legislation and the problems
that arise for sex workers come to the surface. This kind of open discussion is
what will most effectively begin to change society’s larger moral outlook
regarding sex work. HYDRA would like to see Germany’s legislation upheld and
further progress made to fight de facto discriminatory practices affecting
prostitutes, but when the legislation is up for evaluation this fall, advocates
fear that what positive steps have been made could be lost or undermined.
Leading the campaign to dismantle the current legislation are the conservative
CSU (Christian Social Union in Bavaria) and CDU (Christian Democratic Union of
Germany) parties. They argue that the law is protecting traffickers and have
proposed legislation that would punish clients. But HYDRA argues that punishing
clients often results in worse conditions for trafficked women because they are
taken to even more remote places in order not to be found. The reality that
women’s safety often becomes secondary even when legislation is intended to
protect them may be the crux of the controversy around legislating sex work.
Perhaps, nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the issue of trafficked
women. Nearly 80% of Germany’s sex workers are migrants, placing those who work
illegally outside of German law. Of these, about 1% have been trafficked.
HYDRA works with an immigration lawyer to find which women have been trafficked
and assists them in testifying against their pimps. They are the only
organization that is allowed to enter the Kopenick Deportation Prison in the
Kopenick region of Berlin, where women caught working illegally are detained and
charged 60 Euros a night for their stay. “We go from room to room and talk to
each of them,” Cetin says. “This is often difficult because, for instance, right
now there are nine Chinese women who need a translator and we can’t find anyone
to help us. This has been a problem for nine months.”
At the EU Congress of Sex Workers in autumn, women and men currently working as
prostitutes will draft a sex worker’s bill of rights to offer to Brussels.
Hopefully, the document will articulate some of the actions that the EU can take
in order to best protect them and their bodies, so long as sex work continues to
employ women and men, moral or not.
Source: http://www.sexherald.com/adult-feature-articles/legislating_morality__legalizing_p.html