Irish Examiner view: Sex workers are in real jeopardy

We cannot be selectively outraged, every member of this society must be protected.

The publication, maybe two decades ago, of the first shocking reports into the abuses inflicted in one residential setting or another provoked many reactions, primarily horror. There was then a period when the how-could-this-happen question had some authenticity. Time hollowed out that response. So much so that the recent mother and baby homes report not only provoked horror but also saw a strong focus on responsibility, on culpability. This evolution, albeit glacial in pace, recognised the whole picture. This may go some way provoking the societal responsibilities those reports, one after the other, demanded.

Today we report on another area where we are shirking societal responsibilities. We report on how the pandemic has made sex workers more vulnerable than they already are.

“Poverty is coercive,” warned Kate McGrew, of the Sex Workers’ Alliance Ireland. She warned that sex workers’ incomes have fallen by 80%. This, she says, has forced people to take risks they would, in other circumstances, not consider.

For decades, we hypocritically turned a blind eye to the all too frequent inhumanities in places we imagined as refuges. This looking away ignored reality and facilitated terrible cruelties. That equation is relevant today in how our hypocrisy exposes sex workers to exploitation, poverty, and, during lockdown, very real dangers. We cannot be selectively moral or outraged, every member of this society must be protected.