In Italy the debate on Berlusconi’s disgusting world is heavily reproducing the stigmatisation of all forms of sex work – so Giuila Garofalo wrote this article to try and make the difference between ‘prostitution’ (clear exchange of sex against money or material advantages) and the non-negotiable request of sex against favors, promises, jobs, that women have to deal with in large parts of Italian society.

By Giulia Garofalo, 28 January 2011, originally published in Rivista Il Mulino

translated by PG

The commerce of sex is no rare thing, not only in Italy but in all European countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom— countries that distinguish themselves for their low level of corruption, for the accountability of their political class and for the existence of policies against women’s discrimination and harassment in the workplace – especially where public values are produced, as it happens in the media and in politics.

That is to say that prostitution is something very different from the illicit trade outrage that surrounds our Prime Minister.

In criticizing Silvio Berlusconi, and all the people – men and women – who do business with him, we must be careful not to confuse different levels of analysis. One of the risks at stake is the reproduction of the “stigma of prostitution,” i.e. that set of opinions, behaviours and laws that isolate, discriminate and punish anyone who explicitly trades their sex work for cash.

Stated by sex workers’ organisations since the eighties (in Italy by the Comitato per i Diritti Civili delle Prostitute), and by now widely documented by research (see the manifold work of anthropologist Laura Agustín), the forms of this exchange vary consistently by different rules and organization, as also the services offered differ, ranging from more “normal” to more “creative”. Street prostitution, escorting, working in flats are just some examples. According to the values that one holds most dear, one would tend to condemn some forms and maybe not others. For example, those who care about the much-quoted “decorum” will be happy to see the women and transgender women working in the street criminalised (and expelled if foreign), as required by the Carfagna bill, and in recent years, supported by many local governments from right to left. They will prefer discreet practices and hidden sites. But they will also mostly prefer not to talk seriously about those who, like all sex workers in Italy (including those who work with wealthy clients) may theoretically have the capacity to work (if they hold European citizenship), but are instead made invisible in all debates, punishable when working with colleagues, when they advertise or when they employ a secretary, deemed not credible in front of the police and of judicial authorities, subject to evictions if working from a house they rent, blackmailed if holding another job, forced to a life of subterfuges and lies to prevent their children to be taken away from them, or their partners arrested. And the list is not at all over.

Those who care about women’s rights, a concept that has been recently mobilised in Italy, condemn the ‘cleansing’ policy because they recognise that it not only increases the invisibility and exploitation (and forced labor) of sex workers, but it also weakens the workers’ contractual power, while strengthening the power of the rackets. Yet, perhaps, those same people will not quite know what to think of prostitution in other sites, because the debate in Italy on this is often confused.

For clarity, it may not be useless to recall some elements of material order. With the Merlin Law (1958, still in force) which ruled the closure of the so-called “closed houses”—state structures that ensured the access of men of all classes to socio-economically well-organized and legal sexual services. So ended the shame for workers holding no basic rights such as voting, nor the ability to change their jobs or even workplace, but also so ended the specific rights of the trade, and the possibility to say no to a particular customer or sexual service. So ended the monopoly of the state, given that before any form of prostitution exchange outside the brothels was liable. Since then, an era of greater power for many women (and, increasingly since the late seventies, also transgender women and men) unfolded, who were to provide sexual services to clients in such a clear, transparent and negotiated way that it would not fall into the category (now more legitimised?) of “amante” (lover) or “protetta” (protected). It is them the “prostitutes”, in the most neutral and correct sense of the term: for a negotiated for and specific service they charge in advance, receiving cash or material goods, but in not promises of “favors” or “support”. Hence the law and society punish and isolate them, while they do not punish the exchange of “favors” and “support” against sex. This type of work is often, for those who do it, the best available options in the workplace, according to their aspirations.

If we are not willing to consider hundreds of thousands of women as mere, agency void “victims” or “naive”, and if we are unwilling to condemn women’s aspirations to economic independence, educational and career development, then the only problem about prostitution from the point of view of women’s rights could only be its criminalization, and the few other options available to achieve these aspirations – amongst which fall becoming the “lover” or the “protected”, too. In any case, buying sexual services from a sex worker in a respectful and correct way, as it actually happens in most cases, cannot be likened to the way that in Italy politicians, leaders, teachers, and relatives obtain sex by offering positions, favors, contracts, qualifications, family support, or sometimes just promises.

Prostitute, amanti, protette
(in Italian)
By Giulia Garofalo, 28 January 2011, originally published in Rivista Il Mulino

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