Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

This week's example of the all-too-rare phenomenon of actions matching rhetoric: the response to the murders of five prostitutes in small-town eastern England. It's so basic: it boils down to, "Yes, prostitutes are real people! They don't deserve to die!" Contrast this with the American response to the Green River murders, in which at least four dozen women died. "Police really don't care," said the mother of one victim, whose body has never been found. That killer, when he pled guilty in 2003, explained to the judge that he targeted streetwalkers "because I thought I could kill as many as I wanted to without getting caught."

Meanwhile, in Ipswich, England, Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull urges prostitutes to stay off the streets: "It's not safe to engage a client at this time." Those are the words. And here's the action: "Prostitutes in Ipswich are being given money by police and drug workers to stop them risking their lives by touting for business on the streets... As officers continue to hunt for a serial killer feared to have murdered five women, it was revealed that women who work in the red light area... are receiving cash handouts." According to various European papers, police, county employees, and charity workers are handing out cash, phone cards, food stamps, and methadone to prostitutes, to reduce to zero their reasons for working the streets.

And more actions: "While the streets of Ipswich were largely deserted after dark, there was a sizeable police presence. Everywhere were uniformed officers in pairs, police vehicles and even unmarked cars - single male drivers were stopped and their details checked." As for the public response, in a single day, Ipswich police got more than 2,000 calls from people phoning in tips.

Prostitutes are people (thank you, England, for acknowledging that); prostitution should be legal; but prostitution is sad as hell. As a Guardian columnist writes, "It is difficult to equate this idea of liberal, easygoing men with an innocent itch to scratch, with the more solid and real portrait of emotionally destroyed women, anaesthetising themselves with heroin and crack in order to get through the psychologically harrowing work of having sex for money. This split reveals a vast and damaging denial going on in the minds of men who use prostitutes. It is a psychological denial... which seems to be necessary in order for men to maintain a halo of eroticism around something that in reality is steeped in sadness."