Prostitution is the world’s oldest exploitation: Will our MSPs act?

I was in my late teens, in a pub in Glasgow, and not yet a feminist when I was told this tale. I also wasn’t attuned to Marie Shears famous quote that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

A small back room off the street. Over in minutes, apparently. An exchange of drunken monies from a twenty-something idiot whose blood had rushed somewhere other than his brain. That was the excuse I was given.

I can’t quite recall, but if conversations since then are anything to go by, the lie that prostitution is “the world’s oldest profession,” were likely expressed. As many a feminist has pointed out, it is not: midwifery is. Prostitution on the other hand is the world’s oldest exploitation.

It was a lairy one-off, I was told by our mutual male friends, in response to my stony-faced reaction to their laddish giggling. They commented on the woman’s looks – disparagingly.

Her outfit – ill-fitting, leather. Her approach – obviously desperate. They didn’t mean desperation for money. To them, she’d been desperate to ‘service’ one of them. The acquaintance, to jeers and whoops (I am imagining this part) courteously obliged, not noticing the exploitative pimp lurking round the corner.

These young men – then friends - found the entire thing hilarious. It was a confrontation with the fact that men who exploit women are everywhere. They can even be otherwise good craic, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly foppish artsy types like those guys. I never looked the same way at that male acquaintance again.

The prostituted woman wasn’t at fault for trying to eke out her living. But men like him – and his laughing pals - perpetuate women’s exploitation. They seem able to view at least some women as not quite full human beings; buyable for penetration, for temporary solace, rage, as a power-play, no matter the effect it has on them.

Tomorrow, MSPs in the Scottish Parliament will vote on the principle of whether people (let us be honest and recognise it is almost entirely men) should be criminalised for buying the sexual services of women.

Ash Regan’s Unbuyable Bill (formally, the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill) follows the Nordic Model, which criminalises the buyer of sex, decriminalises women, and also wipes the record of women with ‘soliciting’ offences, making it far easier for them to leave prostitution.

Crucially, it also includes other measures to support women leaving the industry, by framing prostitution as a form of violence against women and girls; a form of commercial sexual exploitation. Which it is. This is something the SNP government has already tacitly agreed with.

Should MSPs vote in favour of Regan’s Bill – on the principle of the thing at least – it will offer solid foundations for the next parliament to build on. The unfortunate fact is, even should it achieve majority support at this stage, there is insufficient parliamentary time left this session for it to become law.

I would urge parliamentarians not to use that as an excuse to demonstrate unwillingness to address the issues at stake, and to centre the experiences of survivors. Their testimony is harrowing.

Venessa McLeod, a prostitution survivor from Edinburgh, has been a vocal supporter of Ms Regan’s Bill. Speaking on X, while urging legislators to support the Bill tomorrow, she said: “The manager at our brothel used threats to regularly access my body for his pleasure without paying me. He was in his 60s. I was 17 and homeless. Name any other ‘job’ in which this would be permitted without the option of HR (and police!) involvement?”

The constant mantra from pro-prostitution lobby groups is that “sex work IS work!” As if Ms McLeod’s experiences are akin to a boss snatching some of your unpaid lunch break to demand you make him a sandwich, given you’ve already made a lot that day anyway. A service industry like any other.

Any notion that these are exchanges between equals can be disabused by looking at ‘review’ sites such as ‘Punternet.’ Here, all manner of vile comments about men displeased with their ‘service’ can be viewed; the most dehumanising complaints about women being ‘uncommunicative’ or ‘difficult.’

The idea that consent can be bought is the foundational lie at the heart of the global sex trade. Perhaps a comforting untruth for men like my former acquaintance and his bantering pals, incapable of registering the darkness they, as men, are capable of.

“To treat a woman as a commodity, it is necessary to first dehumanise her,” feminist writer Julie Bindel has said. With reports that as many as one in ten men have paid for sex, including – according to Ash Regan – some sitting MSPs, tomorrow’s debate will require acknowledging this.

I think of my old acquaintance, who, last time I heard is now married with children. It’s unfortunate that men often seem unable to compute that all women are as fully human as the ones they love and who care about them. But, would he be content for his girls to encounter a man like he was, I wonder? Did the shame he reportedly felt after his Amsterdam adventure subsequently change his attitude? I hope so.

Prostitution is not inevitable, or just something we have to accept will always happen. As Venessa McLeod says, when campaigning to put a stop to it, “I do not want that future for our girls and frankly, I think they deserve so much better than that.”