A TAXING JOB?

A Milanese prostitute who was unable to explain her affluent lifestyle [she owned six large apartments and two expensive cars] to the satisfaction of the Italian tax authorities has been ordered to pay tax on her income: this sets a precedent and now, in theory, all prostitutes in Italy will have to do so. You can read the whole story here.

Prostitution is tolerated in Italy but exploitation of it is not. In this most Catholic of countires, drive along any major road and you will see the ladies sitting provocatively at the roadside quite openly. As numbers of prostitutes in Italy have increased since the most recent expansion of the EU, the State is now considering fining their clients. Many of the women, from both within and outside the EU, have been “trafficked” into Italy, having been convinced that they were going to bona fide jobs. Then they found themselves having to pay for their journey by working as prostitutes. This law, at least, is an enlightened attempt at a partial solution.

In Britain prostitutes’ organisations have long been campaigning for legalisation, so that their activities would be recognised as “work” and they would therefore pay taxes. Both Ellee and Steven Bainbridge have posted on it , and, like Steven, I find it an issue fraught with difficulties and am not sure where I stand.

The first difficulty is, surely, what exactly is prostitution? What do we call it when someone allows a man or woman to set them up and keep them when there is no love? What is a mistress who accepts material comforts from her lover because she knows he will never offer her marriage? What do we call it when a woman remains in a loveless marriage for economic reasons? Yes, in a marriage there are likely to be other considerations but even so, the line is thin:

“ For the colonel’s lady an' Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins"
wrote Kipling.

Now, I can see the arguments for legalisation and regulation, with health and hygiene issues, protecting the women and getting prostitutes off the streets of residential areas being three of these. But still they have to go somewhere and where would that be? Illegal activity would continue for where there is a business there are surely always those who would try to undercut it. And I’m uneasy with the “People will do it anyway so let’s legalise it” school of thought because that could be applied to anything.

The nineteenth century reformer Josephine Butler’s main objection to regulation was inequality, with the law recognising no fault in the male client; however, she also objected in principle to what, in her eyes, amounted to State sponsorship of immorality. Butler was largely responsible for the repeal of the Contagious Disease Acts in Britain: under these Acts the women were humiliated, subjected to brutal “health” checks and generally treated inhumanely. If there were regulation today, I’m not suggesting that it would be handled so insensitively but I doubt whether all the implications have been thought through.

And yet..… as so often in life, a situation you know of personally can change your thinking or cause you to question it. I have a friend who has a brain-damaged son. Now an adult, he has sexual desires like everybody else. These have sometimes been manifested in disturbing ways. “I’d pay for him to visit a prostitute if there was a way of finding a clean one!” my friend cried to me in desperation after one of these incidents. This, I believe, is an aspect of the matter which few legislators have considered.


One thing I am sure about: I get angry when prostitution is called a “profession” and, although I am more sympathetic than not towards women who feel they have no choice but to ply this trade, they are not feminists and they are not liberated women. For the trafficked women or for those otherwise forced into this way of life, I feel nothing but sorrow and the situation makes me wonder how much has really changed since Josephine Butler’s day.

So: fine the clients / punish those who profit from the activity / punish the prostitutes themselves / legalise and regulate – what do you think?