- Join the France 24 community here
- Log in
Latest update: 14/04/2011
- France - law - prostitution
Sex clients could be fined, jailed under proposed law
Soliciting sex could soon be criminalised, with jail sentences and hefty fines for offenders, if French lawmakers pass legislation that has been recommended by a parliamentary report published on Wednesday.
By Tony Todd (text)
An association of French prostitutes has slammed a parliamentary report recommending that paying for sex should be criminalised.
Published on Wednesday, the report recommends a €3,000 fine and up to six months in jail for those who solicit sex. Prostitution is not illegal in France, but procuring or soliciting other people for sex is.
Penned by lawmakers Danielle Bousquet (Socialist Party) and Guy Geoffrey (ruling UMP), the report argues that, “Punishing clients would make them understand that they are engaged in a form of exploitation.”
The new proposals would help demystify the trade, say the authors. “It would reaffirm the principle of non-commercialisation of the human body and bury the myth that prostitution is simply the ‘oldest trade in the world’ once and for all.”
‘Pimps would be the only winners’
But Mistress Gilda, a spokesperson for the French prostitutes’ union STRASS, said the law would push the sex trade further underground and would have a profoundly negative impact on thousands of women – and men – who work in the sex trade in France.
“It would send prostitution even further to the fringes and put some of the most vulnerable people on the streets, under complete control of exploitative pimps,” she told FRANCE 24.
“Prostitution is not going to vanish. And these pimps would be the only winners.”
Until 1946, Paris had a flourishing sex industry based around a number of established brothels, or maisons closes, which benefitted particularly from the patronage of the occupying German army during World War II.
A 1946 law closed the estimated 1,400 brothels across France, ending a system that had regulated prostitution in the country since 1804.
France became officially “abolitionist” in 1960, when it signed the 1949 UN Convention on the Suppression of Trafficking and the Exploitation of Prostitution.
In 2003, then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy passed a law banning “passive solicitation”, a vague term aimed at curbing a manner of “dress and attitude” that advertises sexual services.
‘We want to pay our taxes’
If a law to criminalise sex clients is passed, France would join Norway, Iceland and Sweden, where clients face a fine of six months’ pay and six months in jail.
But in Germany, sex workers get the same state benefits as other taxpayers – a system that Mistress Gilda said would be welcomed by the prostitutes working in France.
“We want to pay our taxes and we want to contribute to the social security system,” she said. “There is no reason why we should not have the same status as an artisan, a taxi driver or a freelance journalist.”
Related Content
‘Darth Vader’ demands free land from Ukrainian government
Browse all editions
FRANCE 24 PARTNERS
Comments (29)
Pimps are exploiters. Women
Pimps are exploiters. Women freely choosing and controlling what they want to do with their bodies is empowerment, not exploitation, and is nobody's business but theirs. Janitors have to clean up human feces, urine, and vomit for minimum wage and 2nd class social status. Now that borders on exploitation, but thank god we haven't outlawed that occupation.
Forget about it...
Prostitution has survived centuries and still exists in countries where prostitution attracts a death penalty. What is so wrong about paying for sex? How is it defined anyway? What if someone meets another on a dating website, where you have to pay for membership, and arrange to have sex the first time you meet, or right after you've both spent a lot of money on dinner and drinks? Seriously, what is the difference? How is one morally superior to the other? Oh well, good luck wasting taxpayer money and police time...
This is clearly intended to
This is clearly intended to cause pudgy, aging, balding men even more stress, loneliness and anxiety, while making certain that women can only have dinner, a movie, and a glass of wine to help pay their bills.
Human nature, prostitutes
"End commercialisation of the human body." It would be funny if it weren't so stupid. Next they will be arresting advertisers who hire runway models. As an American I am proud that we have forced the government to stay out of our bedrooms. We have repealed laws against various forms of sex. Where they are still on the books no one bothers to enforce them. What business is it of the government if a woman wants to sell her body? None, it is her body. Prostitution has always been with us, it will always be with us. Only communists and socialists think they can change human nature.
Slave trade
The thing that bothers me about sex for $ is that more than some are pimped out by a slave trade. Women from Asia or Eastern Europe. The thought of that sickens me. But a woman who decides to do this and profit on her own should be allowed. Selon moi, anyway.
Myth?
"... and bury the myth that prostitution is the oldest trade in the world..."
Since when is that a myth? It's fact!
For those of you that think prostitution is the reason your marriages break up, try looking to your own shortcomings and consider why a husband would seek such services.
Where there is demand there will always be the service. No law will change that other than make it more complicated and dangerous for those that are involved.
Simple
It's simple, the world would be better off if pimps' money were used by states to whatever is good for the society.
Tell Mistress Gilda to get a
Tell Mistress Gilda to get a real job - one that doesn't involve partnering with men to destroy their marriage contracts, wife and kids. Or one that doesn't involve the unstoppable spread of HPV (causes many female cancers, can lie dormant in his poor wife for 30 years before striking)- found all over the bodies of these human filth who pass themselves off as women. Prostitutes get what they deserve, let them be buried "underground" and the hell out of normal, sane women's lives. Parents please, please teach your little girls that this life is a lie - prostitution results in crime, drugs, pedophilia, MONEY ADDICTION, rape and death. Because once your little girl get's started making more in an hour than she does in a week? Little chance for parole . . . once a whore always a whore.
Fail
The prostitution law has failed in Sweden with increased street prostitution, trafficking, pimping and also abuse of young girls and boys. Women can legally sell sex but as soon as they organize in some form of brothels police arrest them. The law has made the life of the prostitute much harder and more dangerous, people buying sex are not deterred and police waste time hunting adult people who of free will engage in this while real criminals get away. Respecting adult people and controlling the trade like Germany has done is the best solution.
Sacré Bleu!
Sacré Bleu!
What about those who can't get sex?
I am ugly, I must admit. No woman has ever wanted to have sex with me for free. Am I condemned to a lifetime of lonely masturbation?
Criminalization will not work
- Alcohol: They passed Prohibition in the U.S.; it made the Mafia a major force in crime and society. When it was cancelled, the problem declined a bit.
- Drugs: They passed laws against marijuana, and now the largest contingent of U.S. prisoners consists of people convicted of marijuana users. The drug cartels are undermining Latin American governments.
- Cigarettes: They're more addictive and harmful than marijuana, but they're still legal. There's a health issue, but not a criminal problem.
- So now someone wants to criminalize Prostitution? It will be like the second example: Sex Wars instead of Drug Wars. Will people never learn?
The price is right
Naughty fem-fems at it again, saying men must buy (marriage), but not rent.
Meanwhile... in Thailand...
sex trade criminalised
What nonsense, so the french want to go backwards, then the pimps and the human traffickers make tons of untaxed money, aids and HIV will spread like wildfire, and I thought only American politicians were that stupid.
Because only attractive men
Because only attractive men should be allowed to have sex, right? How is paying for a service that another person wishes to provide for money, exploitation?
The only way it's exploitation is if the professional doesn't have a choice in the matter.
But then, since the ugly are already marginalized, it's all right to punish them even more.
And yes, I'm pretty ugly. I don't live in France though, so take this for what it's worth to you.
Services
Something I've wondered about: if prostitution is legal, do the "services" involved get counted in the nation's GNP? If it's illegal, they don't, right? It's an indication of how arbitrary (and therefore lacking in real meaning) such figures can be.
Misogynists
Maybe they could vote to make them wear those burlap sacks too...
So now women there will have to be like women in the states and settle for movies, dinners, drinks and maybe a weekend trip to somewhere... why would the government want them to have actual taxable cash instead of the old black market barter system?
So, getting paid is exploitation...
A woman owns her body.
Anything that's owned can be leased out by the owner to a lessee under mutually agreeable terms without having to obtain the permission of a third party.
comfort girls
Allegedly going to have to sack up half of their lawyers. Now I am not saying that is true. I do know that the french are fond of their women and that most of them are not anything but wonderful housewives and professional women. Professional can be described as business workers, managers, amd owners of small businesses. Some are even in government.
They may be the ones who are going to pass these new laws??? You reckon??
No Comparison
If there are no more French whores, what shall we say someone smells like?
Sex workers
Prostitutes should have the same status as journalists?
Yeah, I'll agree to that, at least in the US.
Mais, oui! In France you an
Mais, oui! In France you an an "artiste", but in Norway, Iceland, and Sweden you just a "couck-sukier"...
exploitation?
Exploitation? These girls are paid and paid well for providing sex services. The only ones being exploited are citizens of this country. Figures a cow and a queer come out (no pun) against normal pleasure for real men.
The more power you give
The more power you give women, in general, the more feminized and less free society becomes. Take the right to vote away from women (and get rid of the UN) and you will be free once again my fellow sheep....
Forbidding and inhibiting
Forbidding and inhibiting people from having consensual, private sex provides big and little tyrants with the ultimate feeling of power.
Prostitution in FRance
Justice would seem to demand that the "john" also be fined.
Jail time only increases costs to the state for 'the world's oldest profession.' Of course, the French government might simply'nationalize' the whole sex industry and make a new Ministry of Fun and Games to regulate the trade.
This is "enlightened"
This is "enlightened" France??
Just leave 'em alone, for God's sake...you've got more important things to push your nose into...sheesh!
Sex
Sex is another thing government should get out of. But, we should stop all the advertising, glorifying sex on TV, movies and magazines.
We do misuse 'free speech' a little. The little ones shouldn't be almost forced into learning about it.
Will they arrest all Politicians then?
Will they arrest all the politicians then?
Post new comment