By Inge Kleine

There is no crisis nor catastrophe that could not somehow be made worse, and in Germany there is no brutality that some clever people won’t want to turn into profit. Probably that’s true anywhere. But in Germany there are people brainwashed to the point of such utter naivete that they view this as self-evident, desirable, perfectly normal at the very least. And it is self-evident, after all. It is “normal”. It is societal practice.

This approach is being summarised succinctly, with breath-taking precision, in a pretty question: 

“… can women affected by violence temporarily be sheltered in closed down brothels?”

This is no joke and no satire in spite of the bitter irony here, in spite of an attitude whose unmasking is surpassed only by the mockery of the women meant here, of all women, and of our society. With society deserving it.

So maybe the headline with the stimulus package is the best one here.

Specifically, this is about the German Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, about the statement issued by the spokeswomen on women’s affairs of the Green Party and now a statement by the BSD, the German brothel keepers’ association, a recognized lobbying association. Keeping to the order of events, it is about a now apparently retracted idea by some people within the Ministry for Families, and the Berlin Senate, to counter the expected shortages in shelters for women exposed to male violence in their relationships through “pragmatic and unconventional solutions”, and apparently these encompassed using the temporarily shut down brothels.

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Update: Responding to Huschke Mau, the German Ministry for Family Affairs (etc.) has denied making such a request. So. The BSD is lying? Wishful Thinking? Definitely a possibility. Their press statement is still out there (and we have screenshots due to experience. Such stuff gets sanitised very fast.) What remains is individuals in the Berlin Senate, and of course individual honks anywhere.

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We see worries across the globe that violent men use the various lockdowns together with the violence they have already established in their relationships to escalate this violence, be that in direct physical (to be clear here: life-threatening) violence or in the entire range of manipulative power of control over the women. Both the federal state and the laender, the individual states, have largely been in denial regarding the situation of the enormous number of women exposed to male violence in relationships so that women’s shelters are underfunded, there aren’t enough places and there isn’t enough protection, and there is practically no prevention of this violence. Now numbers could rise, the Istanbul-Convention demands action, and we are witnessing how consistently our state deals with this violence.

The BSD was happy to respond with a loud “yes!”. After all, the brothels are shut down due to the crisis, the women who have until now financed these brothels through prostitution cannot pay the horrendous rent for the rooms there and are either homeless or have travelled home or still reside in the brothels and watch their rents and with these their debts pile up ad infinitum, which will yield fat revenue to the brothel keepers and good financial control of the women, but which serves them nothing at the moment.

What bright idea then to expose other women affected by violence to the brothel keepers.

What bright idea then to take the situation of women affected by violence, of marginalised women, women without any means of their own, without any remaining resources, with all the public failings towards these women, and to use all of this to compensate for the loss of revenue and income that brothel keepers usually generate by – what exactly? What else gets the cash in? What else gets women into prostitution and into brothels, but all of this: Violence in their childhood (and a society that looks away), marginalisation, a denying of resources, poverty, exclusion … and a state that not only looks the other way, but supports a business model in which all of this is viewed as a welcome resource for profits.

Germany’s consistency is admirable: If brothel-keepers suffer from currently not being able to exploit a certain group of women because there’s this stupid crisis around, let’s just deliver up a new group of women in a similar situation and let’s bill the state. A hotel room also costs money, after all. So let’s throw prostituted women into the streets or let them go into debt, and in order for the enterprises to survive the crises we’ll just deliver another set of women to them. It’s almost as if abused women were being used in this crisis as a resource for brothel keepers. Oh. Wait. That isn’t the crisis. That is the usual procedure. It’s only spilling over into the public right now.

Apparently, some within the Berlin Senate or the Ministry with brains or ethics or both pulled the plug on that one.

The BSD regrets this in its press statement, and certify this as “moralistic”: The brothels, the apartments housing them, are perfect: small, private, anonymous, not to be recognized from outside … so much for the great transparency regarding prostitution as out in the open in Germany and not “underground” as in Sweden.

The brothel keepers could have been such great listeners to the women, such great counsellors, the topics are so similar, the statement reads. Indeed:

This too belongs to the merciless normalisation of sexist violence in Germany that the BSD doesn’t even see the gigantic own goal they are scoring here. Oh – the topics are similar? There are parallels in the situation of women who cannot leave their partners and those who cannot leave prostitution? Colour me shocked. There are parallels in the violence, the “private worries”, beginning “with insufficient earnings, disaffection with the job, the trouble with the husband/partner, a child’s wish for a special present, the worries about the family at home, homesickness, new loves, the problems with the German language and a new culture, etc.” Both groups are affected by such? Really? Yes, dammit, that affects both groups. And “trouble with the husband/partner” puts suitable words to the “understanding” just as “disaffection with the job” does: a choice of expression that sheds just enough light on the violence to make it exploitable.

This is the transparency of violence in Germany, a transparency that serves better to hide it than any “dark corner”, any “underground” could, because it is displayed so openly that we take it to be more normal than a bush in a park. Until a woman has seen it. And then can’t shut her eyes any more.

Listening is something the “brothel keepers ace and are practised at”  the statement reads – we can bet on that: They need this type of information to make sure the women won’t be able to leave, to tie the women to themselves, they need it for manipulation and ain’t it great that they can now recruit a few more women without a tour through cumbersome counselling! Ain’t it great that brothel keepers are now the people to have access to such personal information! I bet they can also help the women out with short-terms loans.

This pretty idea has floundered, but the brothel keepers still have allies they can count on. While abolitionists could push through a punishment of johns in one single German city, Karlsruhe, to have it added to the prohibitive model that is also directed against the women, while we try to get municipalities and the entire state to understand that the women need immediate help now, this instant, that they need exit possibilities, a separation from the brothels, financial support, shelter, anonymous access to food, clothing and hygiene products, that it must be clear now that any woman in prostitution during this crisis definitely isn’t there voluntarily, that this is the moment for the Nordic Model -  the spokeswomen of the Green Party - a party which has some abolitionists, and that has worked hard to lose our support, congratulations, you got that done with many of us! -  are worried that women could actually be leaving the brothels. There is no way to put it differently.

The spokeswomen’s demands include: “In the case of shut down prostitution venues rent debts must be avoided.” That at least, we concur, it would be even nicer if we could read how, and “avoided”? Maybe clearer terms would be an improvement – “ruled out”? “precluded”? “averted”? But we know which segment within the sex industry provides the Greens with information and keywords, so they’re not going over the top here. Then: “Sleeping in closed prostitution venues must be permitted/possible.” Incredibly brave demand – only: this is permitted and possible. Now anyway since (officially) there is no prostitution activity, at other times as the stipulation under §18,2 of the Prostitutes’ Protection Act, that the rooms used for “sexual services” are not to be used as bed- or living rooms” is not enforced. The aim behind this stipulation directed at brothel keepers was that those in prostitution wouldn’t have to sleep in the rooms they serve the buyers in. In practice this means further costs to the women and therefore the rule is not strictly enforced “for pragmatic reasons”. The demand is a cheap zero-sum game. Then, last demand: “Mandatory reporting at health offices must be suspended”. (The current Prostitutes’ Protection Act (aka the European Medieval Model) demands women to be counselled (not examined!) by health offices at regular intervals.) The demand is not to scrap the mandatory registration, no, it targets the counselling at health offices. Great. Implementing this means that during a pandemic, women would be cut off from the only access to health counselling and counselling that pimps and brothel keepers must grant them. Most health offices are likely to be shut right now, so this point is moot, another zero-sum game, still: Let’s just bang the last door shut, too.

With women disappearing now – who would notice?

As a society we must finally think of the different forms of violence against women as connected. And as a society we must manage to exit prostitution.

We demand the Swedish approach to ending prostitution NOW, immediately, and be that at the municipal level:

·        Decriminalisation of the women, men, trans* in prostitution

·        Support for the women, the others, solid and viable exit support

·        Prevention through public campaigns, police training and the training of advocacy centres

·        Prohibition of pimping and of brothel keeping, consistent prosecutions of trafficking

·        The punishment of buyers as the cause and the financers of the violence.