Sex Work is Work
What is a Pimp?
Is it a exploitative trafficker, a business manager, or an admin assistent?
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The word may conjure up some idea in your mind: it’s probably a man; he might be a gangster caricature. He smokes oversized cigars and wears ostentatious jewelry. He’s a bad guy and a criminal.
Well, he might be all of those things, but there is a legal definition to be more precise.
In the UK, the term “pimp” is often used to refer to individuals involved in facilitating or controlling prostitution.
In general, pimping, also known as “controlling for gain” or “managing a brothel,” is illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (England & Wales), and under preceding laws as well.
Controlling for Gain: This involves an individual controlling another person’s prostitution activities for financial gain. It is an offense for someone to knowingly cause or incite prostitution for gain or to exercise control over another person’s prostitution activities in any way.
Managing a Brothel: It is illegal to own, manage, or control a brothel where prostitution services are offered by multiple individuals.
Exploitation: In addition to controlling for gain, the law also focuses on protecting individuals from being exploited for prostitution.
The laws in Scotland and Northern Ireland are similar.
The focus of legislation in the UK is on addressing the exploitative aspects of prostitution and providing support and protection to individuals involved in the sex industry.
This is a move away from the older laws that referred to living off immoral earnings. The approach has shifted more toward targeting those who exploit or harm sex workers rather than criminalizing sex workers themselves.
It is perfectly legal to be a sex worker in the UK.
There are similar laws in the USA. In many US states, laws specifically criminalize pimping, often referred to as “pandering.” This involves recruiting, harboring, transporting, or otherwise facilitating the engagement of an individual in prostitution for financial gain. Pandering laws aim to target those who profit from the prostitution of others.
Apart from pandering, other related offenses in the US may include operating or managing a brothel, living off the earnings of prostitution, or engaging in sex trafficking. The specifics of these offenses can differ from state to state.
To summarise, pimps take a cut of the money earned via prostitution and they are involved in organising the business. The law paints them as all bad, and this work is, by definition, criminal.
Some things are definitely wrong, for example, murder, rape, and theft. We know these things are wrong. Other things are criminal activities only because there is a law against doing them. But the law can be an ass.
This is the problem with sex worker and pimps.
No one wants gangsters in charge to determine all the rules of the business and take most of the profit. That sort of racketeering should be outlawed. And I think it is illegal under various laws to do with coercion, trafficking, blackmail, etc.
But the people who are actually prosecuted as pimps in the UK are completely the wrong people. They often aren’t the gangsters exploiting sex workers.
The people prosecuted as pimps have often been women working in the industry or employed by sex workers. Including:
- The elderly woman employed by sex workers as the cleaner
- The receptionist.
- A sex worker if she shares the place with another sex worker.
Recently, a sex worker who paid the bills by gathering money from the other “girls” in the brothel where the women worked on an equal “cooperative” basis. I have worked in places like these. Mostly, these places exist without any trouble or prosecutions, the police even visit to do welfare checks (I’ve been there when these police visits happen).
There is no reason for the prosecutions against these women who aren’t involved in any form of coersion or exploitation but to bolster solved crime statistics.
I have seen drivers described as pimps (by the brigade who are anti sex work and who believe 99% of sex work is exploutation and human trafficking).
So you would imagine the man doing the driving is in control of the business and the sex worker is in someway working for him. This is not how it works. I’ve known plenty of women who have employed drivers. And he’s just that, an employee who drives for a fee. He is no more in charge of the work than if she’d caught the bus.
I’m a sole trader. I manage every aspect of my work myself. It would be great to team up with other women and share premises, expensive advertising costs, and the time-sink burden of admin. But in the eyes of the law, we would all become pimps.
If we worked from the same premises, it would be classed as a brothel, and even if we didn’t work together, we’d still be at risk because our shared admin could be seen as controlling another person’s prostitution activities.
This is a great shame because sex workers are much better protected when we work together. It’s not just about physically having more people in the building, but it is about sharing information and offering support in the way that is typical in any workplace.
If admin, management, and running brothels and escort agencies weren’t illegal, you would have many capable women stepping up to do that work. I would do it. I’ve had a vast and terrific experience working with many angels in this industry who have set the gold standard in how to treat clients and look after workers. But as it’s currently illegal, it is not a risk I’m willing to take.
Bottomline, in the law, pimps can be anyone. They can be the cleaner, the taxi driver, the landlord, or sex workers who work together for safety and convenience, and efficiency.
Gangsters coercing women into sex work and taking the lion’s share of their money but doing nothing in return are bad. They are what we think of as pimps, and we don’t need them. But the people actually prosecuted as pimps are often not what you would think of as a pimp at all.