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SEX WORKERS

France holds its first festival for sex workers in Paris

Documentaries, photographs and a "full service" performance tent were on display at the weekend at France's first festival for sex workers aiming to promote their rights and criticise a prostitution law.

Published: 5 November 2018 10:33 CET
France holds its first festival for sex workers in Paris
Documentaries, photographs and a "full service" performance tent were on display at France's first festival for sex workers. Photo: AFP
The Paris “Snap!” festival's militant approach sought to increase political visibility for prostitutes with exhibitions and performances with titles such as “Whores and Feminists” and “Sex Work Is Work”.
   
“We are trying to create our own discourse as artists and sex workers,” said Marianne Chargois, whose documentary “Empower” tackles the precarious lives and discrimination faced by three prostitutes.
   
“Self-proclaimed specialists constantly make laws on our behalf and want to 'save us' from our activities as sex workers.”
   
A French law in April 2016 introduced harsher penalties for clients of prostitutes of up to 1,500 euros ($1,700) and more than double that amount in the case of repeat offenders.
 
Photo: AFP
 
“This law has lowered the income of sex workers and increased the violence against them,” said Thierry Schaffauser, a spokesperson for Strass, the sex workers union and one of the organisers of the festival in Point Ephemere, north Paris.
   
Violence against sex workers made headlines in France in August when transgender sex worker Vanesa Campos was killed in Paris's Bois de Boulogne.
   
Schaffauser said the law had forced sex workers to meet clients in more isolated places away from police where they are more exposed to attacks.
   
“As long as there is no decriminalisation of sex work, nothing will change,” said Maia Izzo-Foulquier, curator of the photo exhibition at the festival.
 
Strass and other associations and sex workers have filed an appeal questioning the law's constitutionality. The request will be examined on Monday.
   
But beyond legal questions, the festival also reflected on the nature of sex as work.
   
Swiss performer Daniel Hellmann set up his tent at the festival entrance with a sign promising “full service”.
   
“It can range from fellatio to writing a poem or some spiritual advice. We agree in advance on the price and the delivery of service,” he said.
   
“The idea is to question our relationship to work, and I am not talking about only sex work.”
   
“Talking about sex work makes us more visible said Mia, a sex worker from western France. “This festival shows we are not just sex machines.”

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SEX WORKERS

Danish government scraps plans to reform sex workers’ rights

A parliamentary focus group appointed by the previous government to assess possible reform of rights for sex workers has been disbanded.

Published: 30 October 2019 10:09 CET
Danish government scraps plans to reform sex workers' rights
File photo: Linda Kastrup/Ritzau Scanpix

The approach by the previous administration to the issue was wrong, according to new Minister of Social Affairs Astrid Krag.

Krag said that sex workers should not be seen as part of an industry on an equal footing with professions such as, for example, carpentry or teaching, but part of a social problem that must be tackled, Politiken reports.

The minister has therefore chosen to shut down a cross-ministry focus group which has since January this year been considering ways to improve conditions for sex workers in Denmark.

“It makes no sense to me to go down the route of looking at prostitution in the wrong way. We don’t want conclusions telling us how we can make prostitution a recognized trade,” the minister told Politiken.

The now-shelved focus group had been tasked with assessing ways in which sex workers could become entitled to social security such as unemployment insurance and sick pay (Danish: dagpenge).

Additionally, the group was to set out ways to help sex workers leave the industry.

Those conclusions will not be made use of by the Social Democratic government, which will now focus solely on a so-called 'exit pack' for sex workers, detailed in the 2020 budget proposal.

Conservative MP Mai Mercado, the minister for social affairs and children under the previous government, expressed her disappointment at the decision.

“It is so hypocritical that we want their [sex workers, ed.] income tax but don’t want to give them the rights that correspond to such taxes. I almost can’t stand it,” Mercado said to Politiken.

The former minister also said that she agreed exit strategies for sex workers is an important area for improvement.

But not giving sex workers more employment rights is a denial of reality by the new government, Mercado argued.

NGO The Street Lawyers (Gadejuristen), which assisted the now-dissolved focus group, called the decision a “step backwards for sex workers”, and said that exit programmes alone were insufficient support.

“This was a new way in which to view sex workers whereby experts, NGOs and sex workers were brought together to see how conditions could be improved. We welcomed the project. So it is very regrettable and disappointing that the government is now ending that work,”  Maja Løvbjerg Hansen of Gadejuristen said to Politiken.

READ ALSO: ‘Record number' of human trafficking victims in Denmark

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