Easy virtue threatens grave consequences
The issue of the world’s oldest profession well known to all was raised last Monday by a team of researchers from the Ukrainian Institute for Social Research, led by Olha Balakirieva, Candidate of Sciences in sociology, during the presentation of the book, The Sex Business in Ukraine: A Tentative Social Analysis. Those present discussed the legal, economic, social, and other aspects. The book is based on a study carried out by Ukrainian sociologists jointly with the UNAIDS program in Ukraine and supported by the German government. It is actually Ukraine’s first attempt to practice a scientific approach to the notoriously controversial issue of prostitution. UISR polled 636 women involved in the sex industry in Ukraine’s twelve large cities and complemented it with a fundamental analysis of the legal framework.
“Is there prostitution in Ukraine? No. Are there prostitutes? Yes.” This once popular Soviet anecdote is no longer funny, for the reality is too grim. There are no reliable prostitution statistics, yet sociologists believe this to constitute no obstacle to studying the issue. “It is demanded by the times,” Ms. Balakirieva told The Day, adding that the need is obvious without even stepping into the street. Press, television, police (militia), border guard, and Foreign Ministry reports are all alarming signals that prostitution in Ukraine is gaining a threatening scope. After the USSR’s collapse, Ukrainian women without visas but on call have become quite popular on the sex market the world over.
HUSTLING OVERSEAS
A number of trend-setting international agreements are currently in effect regulating the sex industry in practically all countries, particularly the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of Prostitution by Third Parties, whereby pimping, or procurement, is criminally prosecuted (Ukraine acceded to the convention in November 1954).
Meanwhile, different national laws interpret the sex industry differently, reads the UISR book and offers interesting examples. Such laws dealing with prostitution could be divided into three groups: (a) those decriminalizing prostitution, (b) restricting, and (c) abolishing it. Of these the first group deserves special notice.
Holland, Germany, Australia, Greece, Sweden, Israel, Turkey, Peru, Ecuador, and other countries have long shown tolerance toward prostitution. “By introducing this system, the state tries to keep track of prostitutes; they must have special medical certificates,” write the authors, stressing that revenues in the sex industry are taxed.
In Turkey, for example, a woman embarking on the world’s oldest career is relieved of her ID papers as a citizen and is issued instead a prostitute ID card and a medical certificate where the results of weekly checkups are entered (a so-called pink card). In Greece, a prostitute is considered illegal unless duly registered; if arrested, she will be prosecuted and could get a prison term. In Germany, prostitution income is referred to as miscellaneous, and the rates are higher than the rest, reads the UISR book. Also, German prostitutes are denied tax exemptions, old-age pension and social protection (the German civil code does not refer the sex industry to business). In France, the owners of brothels and streetwalkers are levied taxes referred to budget revenues.
A host of other examples could be cited. However, the important thing is that by decriminalizing prostitution the state can not only exercise medical, fiscal, and law enforcement control over the lewd livelihood but also automatically place extramarital affairs on a basis of business self-regulation. First, it is clear that most customers feel more enthusiastic about legally and medically controlled red- light institutions rather than solo hustlers. Second, the competition in the sex market automatically regulates supply. According to the UISR experts, 80% of Dutch prostitutes work for clubs, in the lit windows of the famous red light district or for procurement agencies. Naturally, this kind of structuring benefits the state. On the one hand, it simplifies tax procedures; on the other, it helps maintain public order. Norwegian law prohibits “vulgar conduct in the street.” In Germany, a streetwalker in the wrong place at the wrong time can be arrested and given administrative punishment. In Great Britain, with its limited decriminalization stand, “the law looks for ways to avoid serious problems for society; prostitutes are forbidden open solicitation in public places, they cannot behave provocatively and hang around waysides.”
Such excessive permissiveness (by Ukrainian standards) has a number of hazardous aspects. Morality is not the biggest problem, including the civil law inferiority of all those call girls. Renting one’s body for sexual activity is a matter of personal choice, in any case and in any country, while the moral responsibility seems to rest with the prostitute’s customer in equal measure. Olha Balakirieva noted that it is practically impossible to regulate the sex industry. UISR experts offer statistics reading that 400 prostitutes were officially registered in Athens in 1995, with some 5,000 hustling off the record; about 5,000 in Germany, with approximately 150,000 actually employed in the sex industry. “A large number of migrant prostitutes cannot get registered, having no social status in this or the other country,” they write in the book. “As a result, most such women not only face punishment from the authorities, but also fall into the hands of criminal dealers.” What happens afterward is described rather discretely: “hard ordeals with unpredictable consequences.” What countries do women emigrate from in search of a better living? This is a rhetorical question.
HOW AND WHY HERE
True to Soviet tradition, Ukraine prohibits and declares its resolve to uproot prostitution. Contrary to the plummeting cultural standard, the sociologists point out, the state is dedicated to combating all manifestations of immorality. This is a very proper stand, of course, but market demand begets supply. Moralizing on decriminalization perhaps makes no sense under the circumstances, just as no legal or other taboos are going to have any effect. Moreover, as Zaporizhzhia lawyer Ruslan Synelnyk told The Day, the “absence of prostitution” in the Soviet Union caused the legal framework of control over the sex industry in Ukraine to remain embryonic. Prostitution is banned. How, then, can one discuss any shortcomings of the legislation? Answers to this question are found on all big Ukrainian city streets and sidewalks.
Until recently, Ukrainian fallen women were given only administrative punishments. Under Article 181, Chapter 14 of the Administrative Code of Ukraine, prostitution (engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment in money, expensive presents, alcoholic drinks, etc.) entailed a warning or a fine in the amount of 5-10 untaxed minimum citizen’s incomes; such conduct repeated during the same year entailed a fine of 8- 15 such incomes. Naturally, such punishments (Soviet relics) could not guide such women to the straight and narrow. On the contrary, the sex market thrived (a good example of state deregulation of the business sector). “The sex business in today’s Ukraine is a socioeconomic phenomenon, because its blossoming is stipulated by our realities,” write the authors of the Tentative Social Analysis, pointing to objective reasons: incomes that cannot keep a person above even the poverty line, unemployment, etc. Doubtless, they are right in very many respects.
Yet, their poll shows that the situation is far more complex. 73% of the responding prostitutes explained their occupation by being loath to earn token money sitting in some office; 49% believe that “the sex business is no better or worse than any other job,” and 20% simply like it. What is this? Final moral degradation, determination to earn much and quickly? Despair? Or both? Most unmarried call girls replied that they would quit once they met a decent man, a reliable lifelong companion, the alternative being a decent job allowing to make at least as much as they did, employing their body (an average of around 800 hryvnias a month). Be it as it may, the Ukrainian government is apparently unable to secure the citizenry a living wage of $100-150.
All this presents far from the biggest hardships confronting the authorities in their attempt to uproot prostitution using the law. After the USSR collapsed, the controls over the sex industry controls stayed unmanned only a short while. Asocial elements considerably more dangerous than prostitution took over procurement and supply on the other side of the law. Thus, actually, they made white slave trade a threatening and intractable problem.
The new criminal code (enacted by Verkhovna Rada last September) makes women employing their body for sexual activity criminally prosecutable. Ruslan Synelnyk told The Day that the pertinent articles envisage criminal prosecution only when carrying the plague of the twenty-first century and “systematically offering sexual services.” “Apparently, proving both the former and latter is practically rather difficult. There are no means of effectively combating prostitution in Ukraine today,” stressed the lawyer. Meanwhile, tightening the screws legally has made the promiscuous women even more leery of pimps; the new legislation allows the latter an extra edge on their charges. This is all true enough.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF DOMESTIC ABOLITIONISM
“The girls work to support their families, children, and to pay the militia. I’ll never believe there is an honest militiaman,” a Kharkiv prostitute complained to the UISR pollsters, revealing yet another amazing, albeit easily explicable, problem of the profession. In fact, 45% of the respondents pointed to the omnipotent law enforcement authorities as their greatest peril (only 18% mentioned violence). The problem here is not only law enforcement personnel acting in the line of duty. The sociologists stress that focus group polling shows different patterns of relationships between the law and the prostitutes in different Ukrainian cities, “probably depending on the environment that breeds crime in every given region. Analyzing interviews with various representatives of the sex business, one often comes across acts of violence and coercion by the law enforcement authorities; women are ordered to part with money and physically abused.” By way of “enriching” the criminal code, law enforcers mete out their own punishment, making prostitutes attend voluntary unpaid work; in this case, the prostitutes must offer their bodies free to all who wish to use them.
Together with this, the sociologists write, “The law very often uses such women as valuable sources of information about the underworld.” A call girl in Donetsk, for example, admits that “the militia demand information about pimps and customers.” O tempora! O mores! However, such confessions do not shed enough light on the problem of prostitute-police relations. A well-informed source told The Day that some law enforcement people, apart from everything else, willingly act as sex industry tax collectors where there is no “protection.” Their tax rates are anything but soft: 10-30%. Needless to say, none of this money goes to the state budget. What will the state stand to lose by bringing prostitution officially under control? The sociologists’ poll has no answer.
“In actuality, the prostitutes in Ukraine constitute a practically unprotected category of the population,” Ms. Balakirieva told The Day. The poll shows that about 60% of call girls have faced various acts of violence. The incidence of rape tends to increase, depending on the given veteran’s service record in the sex market. The highest risk area is in the south of Ukraine (as indicated by 68% respondents). Kyiv is relatively safe (only two-fifths of the respondents mentioned rape). 67% admit to having been raped by their customers and 35% by strangers. “There is no use asking the militia for help; they say you’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” says a prostitute from Mykolayiv. Small wonder, considering that 27% of the respondents insist they were raped by law enforcement personnel.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that, cast in the social gutter, a fallen woman can cause far more trouble than the highest carnal delight experienced by her customer. The poll indicates that about half the prostitutes use contraceptives on a regular basis and over 66% indulge in unprotected sex; 37% of the respondents admit to having sustained venereal diseases (of whom 9% got the dose after only six months of work). Every sixth prostitute agrees to have unprotected sex for an additional sum; every fourth is on drugs. The list of additional pleasures the customer could get from such women could be made much longer, but the point is that most respondents mention difficulties in getting medical aid. Often they are refused even physicals. Dr. Balakirieva says that AIDS and VD incidence are two underlying justifications for studying the sex industry in Ukraine. It is hard to say how the authorities can find a way out of the situation. One thing is certain. Anyone about to send for a call girl should think twice.
