A note on WRS

Published on 17 December 2020

Lees dit artikel in het Nederlands.

The government-proposed “Regulation on Sex Work” (Wet Regulering Sekswerk) is harming the rights of sex workers all over the Netherlands!

Amid a public health crisis that has been particularly hard on sex workers and their livelihoods, and despite the fact that during the public online consultation last February the WRS received overwhelming criticism from sex worker-led groups, service providers for sex workers, and individuals, the Dutch government insists on bringing up the WRS, yet again, presumably as a negotiation card for forming ruling coalitions after next years’ elections.

But what is the WRS and what are its implications for sex workers?

The stated intent of the Government is to “protect” the rights of sex workers and to combat human trafficking. The proposed law, among other things, provisions the following:

All these measures, stemming from a perspective that victimizes sex workers and views sex work as an inherently exploitative profession, have been tried in several other European countries and have failed to promote sex workers’ rights or protect victims of trafficking. The proposed regulations ignore the collective experience of the worldwide sex workers’ rights movement, which has seen their adverse effects on our working and social lives, safety, health, and dignity. [1]

A registration system creates a two-tier system, where few sex workers can enjoy some protections, while the more marginalized ones are being pushed further to the fringe. Immigrant sex workers, sex workers of colour, trans* sex workers, and others, find it difficult to pass the arbitrary hoops of a registration system, where, for example, the state interviews them trying to “figure out” whether they are victims of trafficking or not. Further, workers who could acquire such a registration often avoid doing so fearing breaches of their privacy and potential future repercussions due to prevalent stigma. It is well-documented by academic research that criminalized sex workers, fearing administrative fines, which under the proposed law can reach to 20.500 euros, do not ask for help when they are faced with physical or emotional violence, economic intimidation, or health issues. [2]

Currently, in the Netherlands, sex workers who work for an employer (window owners, escort agencies, sex houses, etc.) are covered by the license of their employers and pay taxes through the opt-in system, while sex workers who work independently (escorts, window workers, webcam models, porn actors, etc.) can register as freelancers to the KVK, under categories relevant to what they do, and work formally paying their taxes. The state requiring the registration of sex workers in a unified registry at the Ministry of Justice, then, has nothing to do with us working “legally” or paying our taxes. It has everything to do with the state exerting excessive and abusive control over our bodies under the pretext of protecting us. No other profession has to register under a single registry in the Ministry of Justice.

The proposed law further exposes us to danger by allowing municipalities to limit the number of public working spaces on arbitrary grounds of preference and “public order”. The scope of these limitations also affects the option of working from home. When asked, sex workers in the Netherlands indicated that having access to public or private safe working spaces is the single most contributing factor to the betterment of their physical safety, psychological well-being, and overall health. [3] Limiting those spaces pushes sex workers, who would otherwise choose not to, to meet clients in private facilities where all the support systems of a chosen public or private space are absent and exposes them to greater potential risk.

This, combined with the proposed criminalization of clients who meet with unregistered sex workers, has the potential to increase the incidents of violence against sex workers. The experience of Sweden, Ireland, and France, where different models of client criminalization are in place, provides us with plenty of hard evidence that this is to be expected. [4] Unregistered sex workers are going to be dealing with clients who are more comfortable with breaking the law, while the bargaining position of those sex workers will be weakened knowing they may face retribution by the law, if they report abuse. We are not saying our clients are violent. We are saying, though, that those who are, they are inadvertently protected by this law, and not us.

Finally, a lot of us, regardless of our current working status, depend on a number of third-parties to carry out our work safely. We have bookkeepers, to pay our due taxes, trusted taxi drivers to discreetly move us around, security guards to protect our physical integrity, online networks to signal our position, and many others. All these third-parties, who promote our safety and well-being in our work can be potentially viewed as our “pimps” under the new law, if we choose not to register or simply cannot do so, and they are at risk of administrative fines, or even jail time.

Overall, the new proposed law is nothing new to us. It is just another law that approaches sex work through the narrow lens of violence and moral judgement, positions the state in the role of a “saviour”, and strips sex workers’ of our agency, in effect, dehumanizing us and perpetuating stigma. Sex work can be challenging. If you want to make sex work safer for us, if you want to combat human trafficking, then listen to our voices. We are the ones best positioned in knowing what is good for ourselves, and the expert partners in combatting human trafficking.

The proposed law will only push more sex work underground and deteriorate our working conditions, while letting victims of human trafficking go unnoticed.

We will not allow that to happen! Nothing about us, without us!

Chris

Chris is your sex worker next door. He is a sex worker, and he lives next door. He is working on making Red Insight sustainable and reducing the word count of his thoughts.