On November 4th, MP Fiona Patten, leader of the Reason Party, formerly known as the Australian Sex Party, shared an article on her Facebook page that glamorises the reality of the sex trade. The article, promulgated by the ABC claims that there is a growing number of females paying for sex. Patten shared the article alongside comments that treat prostitution with levity; suggesting it is something your everyday white collared woman might consider after a long week at the office, to relieve the stress from work.
The reality for the majority of women within the trade in Australia is very different to what Patten makes it out to look like. According to research published by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), current findings from Sydney indicate that the majority of ‘sex workers’ in the metro area are migrants mainly from Thailand and China, with an increasing population immigrating from South Korea. The data surrounding migrant prostituted women is however, still being fleshed out and comprehensively exposed, as setbacks are due to the underground, illicit nature of sex trafficking.
According to the research collated by the AIC, 70% of the research respondents were classified as migrants. For the remaining 29%, migrant status was missing or unknown. Furthermore, no official statistics of the population of prostitutes is known, reiterating the dire need to expose the unlawful reality for those who are ‘not on the grid.’
The degree of assault inflicted upon migrant prostituted women is largely unknown. A small-scale survey of Chinese-born women in the industry in Australia indicated that 44% of the 43 participants of the study experienced sexual assault. The reality is more severe than the research cares to suggest, as many migrant women face language barriers, discrimination and stigma, which are factors that influence the level of assault disclosure. Furthermore, many of these women are living ‘under the radar’ where their voices are simply not heard. For fear of being murdered by their handlers, they are in no position to come forward to authorities, and thus the research regarding true crime rates in the trade, remain significantly undisclosed.
Furthermore, Patten fosters a belief that those involved in the sex trade, or buying services within Australia, are educated females. The everyday professional female buying sex is a highly glamorised notion that seeks to foster sex trade profiteer ideologies that is starkly at odds with the reality, where 97% of migrant and 93% of non-migrant prostituted women are female. This demonstrates that the predominant purchasers of sex are male. In addition to the male-centric demand for prostitutes contrary to what the aforesaid ABC news article might have you entertain, is the fact that the vast majority of individuals in the sex trade (who are migrant women) were former students before arriving in Australia, and are seeking to clear their travel debts. Non-migrant females in the industry are also very likely to be attempting to pay off debts, thus quashing any liberal feminist concepts regarding a female’s ‘right to sell her body, because sex work is real work.’
The real issue regarding Patten’s public stance on the matter is that she paints a highly romanticised and narrow view of the reality of prostituted women in Australia. By focalising on the consumers’ apparent rights rather than the suppliers’ rights, Patten ignores the harrowing fact that the sex trade is allowing unprecedented trafficking to proliferate amongst new migrant women in particularly vulnerable, low socio-economic situations. While the very small percentage of white collared females may experience some ‘benefits’ through lawfully accessing prostituted individuals, the vast majority of slaves will be held against their will or within coercive or exploitative circumstances, at the mercy of male domination.
Turning a blind eye to these victims is reckless. Fabricating a fictional reality where office women benefit from the sex trade is even worse. Patten’s comments and the highly idealised articles regarding prostitution that she disseminates through her social media, creates nothing other than an entitled culture; one that reaps supposed rewards from prostitution legislation at the expense of highly vulnerable migrant women, who continue to suffer in silence while our solipsistic culture romanticises an ongoing and brutal reality.
