The National Assembly will for the first time vote on whether to make it a crime to pay for sex
By S.P. | PARIS
BEFORE they turn up on France’s city streets or wooded parks, the women (and sometimes men) recruited into prostitution are “bought and sold, swapped, detained, raped and tortured, deceived, trafficked, despoiled”. With those words Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the women’s minister, began an impassioned parliamentary speech last week in favour of “abolishing” prostitution in France. On December 4th, deputies in the National Assembly, the lower house, will for the first time vote on whether to make it a crime to pay for sex.
The law is an initiative of parliamentary Socialists, not of President François Hollande’s government. If passed, as it is likely to be, it will become a crime to pay for sex, subject to a fine of €1,500 ($2,000) for a first offence and €3,750 thereafter. “I don’t want a society in which women have a price,” declared Ms Vallaud-Belkacem. To try to protect prostitutes, the new law also decriminalises soliciting, and offers help for those who want a way out.
At a time when Germany is having second thoughts about its decision over a decade ago to legalise the world’s oldest profession, the French have decided to follow Sweden, Finland and Norway in tightening up on prostitution. Paying for sex in France is not currently illegal, although brothels, soliciting and pimping are. France is thought to have at least 20,000 sex workers, far fewer than the 400,000 or so thought to offer their services across the Rhine. But the nature of prostitution in France has changed radically over the past 20 years. Today about 90% of those working the streets in France are foreigners, up from 20% in 1990. Most are women, trafficked to France chiefly from Romania, Bulgaria, Nigeria and China by prostitution rings; many are subjected to violence, as are their families.
The law has divided the opposition, and prompted extra-parliamentary indignation. Prostitutes, many of them masked, have held marches against the law. “You sleep with us; you vote against us!”, chanted one angry group outside the National Assembly last week. A collection of literary types, calling themselves the “343 bastards”, caused a stir when they signed a petition denouncing the new law entitled Touche pasàma pute! (Hands off my whore!) a play on a French anti-racism slogan Touche pasàmon pote! (Hands off my friend!). Published in Causeur, a magazine edited by a woman, Elisabeth Lévy, it accused the abolitionists of “a war against men”, and claimed to defend “not prostitution, but liberty”. Feminists in turn slammed the stunt as indecent.
The French once had a famously tolerant approach towards prostitution. Filles de joies operated legally under Napoleon, and brothels were inspected for health standards. It was not until the post-war period that the French began to clamp down, outlawing maisons closes, or brothels, in 1946. Earlier this year, the Socialist Party put its progressive social liberalism on display when it legalised gay marriage. So why this newly illiberal streak? Ms Vallaud-Belkacem argues that the violent and criminal nature of prostitution rings requires an even tougher line. In 2012, 51 human-trafficking networks were closed down in France, 30% more than two years ago; and 572 pimps arrested. The worry, however, is that criminalising cash for sex could drive their murky business even further underground.
