Anna Kontula speaks on behalf of sex workers

Churchgoing sociologist sees most prostitutes as courageous, independent women, not victims

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By Panu Räty
     
      Sociologist Anna Kontula has placed a card on the side of her door. The picture is that of a woman with high-heeled shoes. Next to it is the slogan: “Sex workers’ human rights are everybody’s human rights”.
      Kontula opens the door and places the mail on her office table. At that table she has been putting the finishing touches on her doctoral thesis called Punainen eksodus (“Red Exodus”). The thesis, which she will defend in early October, is about the relationship that Finnish prostitutes, and those who live in this country on a long-term basis, have with their work.
      The 31-year-old Kontula is known for her outspoken views on prostitution. She feels that most of the images that people have about commercial sex are nonsense.
      Her views can be condensed as follows: A Finnish sex worker is not a victim of human trafficking, chained to a room in a cellar. In most cases sex workers have chosen their work themselves, and their decisions need to be respected.
      Kontula’s views have sparked amazement, anger, and downright fury. The most frightening messages have threatened the life of the “defender of harlots”. For that reason, the home address of the Tampere-based researcher is a secret. Her mail is delivered to her office near the University of Tampere.
      Kontula shakes her head.
      “I don’t think that sex work is without problems, but for the 25 women whom I have interviewed, sex work offers the opportunity to control their lives.”
     
Kontula’s binders stand in a neat row on the shelf of the tiny office. The shelf also contains books in English on the subject of sex work, as well as a sex toy guide and a book about the persecution of witches in Europe.
     Kontula has a collection of porn magazines in a cardboard box. Some of the sex workers whom she has interviewed appear disrobed on the pages of one of the publications.
     Kontula prefers the expression “sex worker” over “prostitute”. She feels that “prostitute” carries too many old connotations, and does not sufficiently emphasise that sex work is work.
     From the pile of porn magazines the researcher picks out one called Spread, an American publication geared for prostitutes.
     Kontula says that the most common reason why people get into sex work is a need for money.
     
“Many of my interviewees have the same attitude about their work as summer workers at building sites do. They want to earn some money and then move on to something else. For most, sex work is a temporary profession practiced from a few months to a few years. A small percentage of them notice that this is actually what I want from my life and this is what I have a talent for.”
      Kontula knows what she is talking about. She has spoken about sex work with hundreds of prostitutes both in Finland and abroad. The core of her thesis involves interviews with 25 prostitutes who are Finns, or who live in Finland. In addition, she takes material from a restricted on-line discussion board on a sex-oriented website.
     The most disconcerting for ordinary citizens is that the women interviewed by Kontula might also have other possibilities. They simply feel that sex work is more attractive than the low-paid jobs available in the service industry for university-aged women.
     
Money goes a long way to explain the choice of professions. A half hour usually costs a client at least EUR 100, and the price for a whole hour can be as much as EUR 300. A brief sojourn in a bedroom yields in better earnings than a full working day in an old people’s home or a hamburger restaurant.
     “If a person is living on a student grant, a single client can increase a month’s income by 50 per cent. Two clients will double it.”
     Few sex workers are in it to get rich. Full-time professionals earn about EUR 2,000. To get this they see one or two clients a day. Most do not pay taxes.
     Many choose sex work simply because it offers a maximum of free time with a minimum of work. One might use sex work to pay for her studies, others for an expensive hobby, while a third might invest in her children. Some use the money they charge their clients to buy items which exceed the limits of their day-to-day budget, ranging from glasses to a washing machine.
     
The sex trade exploded onto the Finnish scene in the years of the recession of the 1990s. Helsinki had about a dozen erotic restaurants, and personals ads offering company for “daytime coffee”. Some even wanted to hire topless barbers.
      Helsinki residents generally looked askance at open street prostitution on Vaasankatu and Aleksis Kiven Katu, where itinerant workers from Russia and Estonia plied their trade in high heels.
      In the early years of this decade there was intense debate in Finland on whether or not to make buying sex services a crime. Some saw prostitution as a problem that could be eliminated by tightening the law. Others felt that a severe law would send prostitutes into hiding, out of reach of any help.
     
Kontula had just written her master’s thesis in sociology about the young hard-line communists of the 1970s. The researcher was angry that the debate on prostitution excluded the views of the prostitutes themselves. That is why she took part in the founding meeting of Salli - the United Sex Professionals of Finland.
      Most of the prostitutes did not want to come out in public with their own names. Kontula, who had been active in the radical Left Youth, was ready to go to the barricades. She was immediately chosen as the vice president of Salli.
     “I felt that it was extremely important for sex workers to get their own voice.”
     The first goal of Salli was to prevent passage of the proposal for a ban on buying sex services that was to be considered in Parliament. As a representative of the organisation, Kontula attended seminars, public debates, and interviews. She saw opposition to a ban on buying sex to be a human rights issue: even prostitutes deserve freedom to work.
     Soon researcher Kontula realised that vice president Kontula’s address book constituted a unique source of research material. There had been attempts to study sex work before, but prostitutes have not trusted researchers. The vice president of a prostitutes’ organisation, on the other hand, was one of their own.
      Kontula drew up a list of 80 questions and began to look for people to interview through the organisation.
     
When Kontula reported on the progress of her study to her fellow researchers, she did not get much praise. Perhaps they were perturbed by Kontula’s dual role. After all, the colleague set herself out to be both an independent researcher of the sex trade and a lobbyist for the sex business.
      Kontula does not see any credibility problem in her dual role. “There is a long tradition in sociology for research that takes a stand.”
     Her lobbying work for Salli went better, even though there were some complications along the way. A Swedish MEP expressed suspicions in the tabloid Expressen that Kontula’s research might be financed by the Mafia.
     Currently the purchase of sex services in Finland is illegal only in public places. Buying sex is also banned if the trade involves procurement or human trafficking, or if the provider of the service is below the legal age.
     The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) estimates that about 500 prostitutes ply their trade in Finland every day. Kontula, for her part, estimated in her report to the Sexpo Foundation that there could be as many as 8,000 who sell sex in a single year. She included those who might turn a few tricks on a trial basis. She says that they could actually form the majority of all prostitutes.
     
Nobody knows how many prostitutes there really are in Finland. However, there is general agreement, that about half of the sex workers who operate regularly in Finland are Finns, and that a majority work part time.
     Many foreign prostitutes work with the support, or under the command of a pimp. The Finns usually operate independently.
     “Finnish sex workers see working under a pimp as being under the control of an outsider, as working at McDonald’s would be”, Kontula says.
     As the street trade is banned, Finnish red light districts can be found in cyberspace - on sex pages on the Internet and in personals ads. Foreign sex workers also sell their services in night clubs and Thai massage parlours.
     
Wearing a toffee-coloured blouse, brown jeans and red boots, Kontula marches into the back room of the Hertta Culture Café. She puts down her cup of fair trade coffee.
     Sitting in the non-profit café run by a cooperative is appropriate for Kontula’s world view. The researcher has run for Parliament twice as a candidate of the Left Alliance. In the latest municipal elections she was elected to the Tampere City Council.
     Kontula grew into left-wing politics in a home in Pispala, where the philosophy of the hard line minority faction of the Finnish Communist Party predominated. Her mother, who worked as a librarian, sent Anna and her two younger sisters to Pioneer camp each summer. Her stepfather, who worked as a construction painter encouraged her to oppose authority, including her class teacher at school. Her grandmother sang to the children in a gentle voice about killing Whites in the civil war.
     “I was conditioned on left wing politics already before I knew how to talk.”
     
Perhaps it was because of her budding political career that Kontula likes to take stands on matters. Climate change, breadlines, the text messages of former Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, undocumented immigrants, Pentti Linkola, socialist camaraderie, and sexual harassment are all dealt with in her blog.
     Even on the City Council, Kontula has not forgotten sex workers. Last autumn a training programme began in Tampere in which social and health care personnel were trained to deal with the problems of sex workers.
     
Fellow party members had trouble handling the views taken by Kontula on the sex trade. The traditional belief among the left has been that prostitution can be eliminated through social reform.
     Some women in the Left Alliance refuse to speak to Kontula.
     “When the subject turns to sex work, even old men will flee the room or try to make jokes”, she says.
     It is easy to understand fellow party members, especially as Kontula can even find political dimensions, and an obvious rebellion in the work of a prostitute.
     Many of those interviewed by Kontula praised the independence and freedom of their work. Some of them felt that they were breaking down the stiff role models of women. Some even spoke of prostitution as “women’s warrior culture”.
     “However, lifestyle prostitutes are a rarity. There are more of those who combine earning money with an element of adventure.”
     
Kontula’s independent and free sex worker bears no resemblance to the victim of male lust, which is how the women’s movement sees prostitution. The Feminist Association Unioni feels that prostitution harms the rights of all women by making a woman a trade commodity.
     So doesn’t prostitution mean the oppression of women and the promotion of male dominance?
     Kontula sniffs. She feels that Finnish feminism is mired in themes that were dealt with in Central Europe already in the 1980s. She mentions radical feminist theoretician Andrea Dworkin, whose views shine through in the background of Finnish mainstream feminism.
     “According to Dworkin, heterosexual sex is always an act of violence of a man against a woman - even when a woman wants sex and a man does not. In radical feminism, everything evil and demonic is associated with men, and everything good and clean with women. A direct conclusion to be drawn is that prostitution is always violence that targets women.
     Kontula also considers herself a feminist.
     On the pages of her thesis she links her research with the views of revolutionary sex radicals. Their thoughts on prostitution are completely different from those of radical feminists. They concede that there are many mechanisms in sex that oppress women. However, they do not feel that commercial sex is inherently oppressive.
     
Attention: now we are returning to the problems that Kontula mentioned earlier. However, the problems faced by prostitutes are not the ones that one might think of right away, such as violent clients.
     The researcher says that customers usually behave well. She believes that doctors at public health centres or vendors at kiosks open late at night have more dangerous jobs than a sex worker does. Sex workers see society and officials as a greater risk to themselves.
     “The most stressful part of sex work is the stigma”, Kontula says.
     She means that sex workers are often seen through the prejudices that are linked with “whores”. When the work is disclosed, there are problems with the spouse, neighbours, and officials. A sex worker with a family might have to deal with child welfare officials.
     According to Kontula, the labelling has also led to legislation which, in spite of intentions to the contrary, weakens the position of sex workers. For instance, the exchanging of street prostitution for Internet prostitution means a weakening of prostitutes’ social networks.
     
Being labelled a “fallen woman” also has consequences with respect to the Trade Register, where prostitution is seen as a business that goes against bonas mores. That is why prostitutes will often set up a “consultant’s service”.
     Prostitutes have even been suspected of being mentally disturbed - they can be seen as sex crazy, or incapable of enjoying sex, or even mentally retarded. Kontula rejects these beliefs as well.
     For instance, mental health problems did not come up very much in Kontula’s interviews. Nor were the women united by traumatic past experiences, such as being abused as a child. “As children most were responsible, good girls who got good grades at school.
     Kontula says that by attaching labels society gets an excuse to interfere with the lives of prostitutes. The real aim of labelling is not even linked with sex work. “Punishing sex workers serves as a warning to other women to keep them from engaging in inappropriate sexual relations. Even young girls modify their behaviour to keep from being labelled whores.”
     
We are on our way to Kontula’s home. We stop to wait for a green light. Tampere’s Liisanpuisto Park opens up in front of us.
     Behind it rises a large white building, the Kaleva Church.
     “It looks like a public swimming pool, but it is beautiful on the inside”, Kontula says.
     Kontula joined the Lutheran Church as an adult, so the golden cross that hangs from her neck is not just an ornament. One can imagine that the pious people who sent her threatening letters probably did not realise that the spokeswoman for fallen women was a fellow believer.
     The free-thinking researcher does not follow rigid practices, even in her faith. For her it means spiritual search and curiosity. In this way, her faith bears a slight resemblance to her scientific research.
     “Behind religion I see the same secret that science as well as art seek out for their part.
     
Kontula’s apartment building has six floors. Only the youngest of the family’s three children are at home. Four-year-old Joel has assembled a wooden Brio train track of interlocking pieces in the middle of the living room floor. He follows his mother and shows her how his toy computer works.
     Kontula’s husband Tomi Kuhanen works as the aide of Left Alliance MP Mikko Kuoppa. On the shelf of his office stands a collection of Che Guevara knick-knacks from a Cuban friend. Guevara’s eldest daughter Aleida stayed with the family during a lecture tour a couple of years ago.
     Kontula has organised her home’s bookshelf according to the classification system used in libraries.
     
Kontula admits that her thesis does not tell the whole truth about prostitution. The people that she interviewed are adult women who have the support of the safety nets of the welfare state. Finnish prostitutes who do well know how to handle themselves.
     However, prostitution is also an umbrella phenomenon under which different kinds of destinies will fit. For instance, the lives of foreign customers of Helsinki’s Pro-tukipiste support centre for prostitutes includes pimps, violence, and fear of deportation. Compared with them, the Finnish women who operate independently, and who pick their clients from the Internet, form a middle-class elite.
     Kontula admits that her study forced her to confront her own prejudices. “I found it hard to accept that there were many people in the trade who were not doing well. For instance, there are users of hard drugs among them.”
     
In late July, police released a study on procurement and human trafficking in Finland. The police had made inspections in restaurants and businesses where they assumed that sex services were on offer. The inspections did not yield women who would have worked as prostitutes with any obvious reluctance.
     This does not mean that there would not be any victims of trafficking in humans in Finland. The prostitutes who are the worst off work in apartments arranged for them by pimps.
     Kontula also takes a negative view of procurement. She feels that a sex worker must be able to decide on the most minute details of their work. She feels that exploitation linked with commercial sex does not differ from other economic oppression. In her view, sex workers should be included within the framework of labour law. She has approached the Service Union United PAM to lobby on the matter.
     “Improving the rights of sex workers is quite similar to other labour union activities. It even took me a year to understand that.”
     
Sex work often ends when a serious relationship begins. Sometimes a regular job puts an end to it. Very few will spend decades in the profession.
     Kontula sees her own profession as a calling. Her next study will focus on the construction industry. Again she will be sitting in front of a screen in a tiny room.
     Kontula hopes that she will not be labelled as someone who markets sex. She also has misgivings about prostitution as a profession, but the reasons differ from the typical ones.
     “Prostitution is capitalism, and capitalism is a bad thing.”
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.9.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Customers of prostitutes say buying sex is hassle-free (30.10.2007)
  Sex service marketing: off streets and online (26.10.2007)
  Report says most Finnish prostitutes work part-time (27.5.2005)

Links:
  SALLI - United Sex Professionals of Finland
  Pro-tukipiste

PANU RÄTY / Helsingin Sanomat