Hysteria about people-trafficking is causing considerable damage to the lives of sex workers in Australia, and around the world.

Women (and some men) do make rational, considered decisions to emigrate for sex work. We might prefer that wasn’t the case, but their adult decisions should be regarded as just that.

And they also decide to stay at home for the work – and this video from Cambodia shows the sort of damage done by attempts to stop them.

What does deserve a great deal more attention, and action, is the use of rape as a weapon of war, and the good news of the week is that the UN may finally be beginning to take this seriously.

The release of an official report on the effects of decriminalisation of prostitution in New Zealand has confirmed that it has had the expected positive effects (although of course it is by no means a panacea).

The number of sex workers has not increased, and workers reported that they knew about their rights, felt more able to say “no” to acts they did not want to perform, and that there had been some improvement in protection from violence.

The report was based on studies by the Christchurch School of Medicine and Victoria University’s Crime and Justice Research Centre, and the committee chaired by a former assistance police commissioner, so it would have to be, I’d suggest, treated with respect. (Although experience suggests that it won’t be.)

The government release on the subject adds:

The report shatters several myths with the following findings:
• Coercion is not widespread.
• Sex workers are more likely to be the victims of crime, rather than offenders.
• The links between crime and prostitution are tenuous and the report found no evidence of a specific link between them. The link between under-aged prostitutes and youth gangs is often a case of underage people hanging around with friends who happen to be in youth gangs.
• The reasons people joined and stayed in the sex industry are complex, however money was the main reason.
• Fewer than 17 per cent said they are working to support drug or alcohol use, although when broken down by sector street-based sex workers are more likely to report needing to pay for drugs or alcohol (45 per cent).
• The perceived scale of a ‘problem’ in a community can be directly linked to the amount and tone of media coverage it gets.
• Much of the reporting on the numbers of sex workers and underage involvement in prostitution has been exaggerated.
• There is no link in New Zealand between the sex industry and human trafficking.

The complete report can be found here.

Oddly, despite regular excited coverage about the “Swedish model” of criminalising the clients of prostitutes (of which the government there has refused any serious academic scrutiny whatsoever), there’s been no media coverage of this outside New Zealand that Google News can locate. There’s not even been much coverage in New Zealand – although perhaps that reflects the fact the decriminalisation has been widely accepted in the country.

Most of the Google hits seem to be within the past year, so I guess the term “freemale” is a fairly recent coining, referring to, quoting The Telegraph, “women are chosing to live a single life rather than share their money and time”.

It is out in force today, with British Office of National Statistic figures indicating that the percentage of women aged between 25 and 44 living along has now reached 8 per cent, double the figure of 20 years ago. “the ONS report cited recent research which showed that two-thirds of freemales feel that they can enjoy a happy and fulfilled life without a partner.” (Well yeah, I’ve been doing that for nearly all of the past 20 years, and looks like a good idea to me.)

Taking a more rounded view is Jane Shilling in The Times – who looks back to the post-WWI “spinsters”, and how they pioneered news ways of single female life.

(A largely depressing collection – you have been warned.)

If you’ve ever wondered by women in cultures where “honour killings” occur seem to collude, or at least not resist, their occurrence, here is your answer:

Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband – the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal ‘honour’ killing for which he has shown no remorse…. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital.

And this situation isn’t just in unstable places like Basra – in Iraqi Kurdistan, the relatively stable, “safe” part, there’s been an explosion of violence against women:

“At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone,” a doctor told AFP in the region’s second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.
“Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances” — apparently the victims of “honour” killings.
“Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves,” the doctor added, asking not to be identified.

But on the positive side, in some parts of the world, we have come a long way – as late as 1978, the British military was debating whether it would be “safe or prudent” for women members to carry guns.

“An army working party was also looking into arming women, and expressed concern that giving guns to women might also be seen as “provocative and indeed offensive”.