Amazing music video "My dangerous loverboy" shown at The London Feminist Conference

Really glad it had that effect on a teenage girl. I really WANT it to work well to raise awareness, I just worried that so many of my friends (women aged 23-27) saw it as a moral tale.

I still wonder what on earth a blanching teenage girl can do to avoid that fate herself, having watched the video though. but I guess that's what the website's for.

And also there was no contstructive stuff in the video pointing towards how to avoid this happening to you, except presumably to not go out and meet boys.

I mean, how is a girl watching that to react? Well I'll live a life of celibacy then? Lest my boyfriend turns out to want to force me into prostitution?

I can believe this happens anywhere tbh. And has been going on in some shape or form for 100s of years. What our grandmothers might call the white slave trade. My parents always instilled in me the importance of safety in numbers and looking out for your friends and them looking out for you. Even at the grand old age of 35 My friends know that I will never leave them on a night out.
Shocking that we're so unaware, but not all young people have sensible parents/friends or a support network.
I like the way they have depicted a normal teenage scene and shown how badly it can go wrong, but wouldn't that message be lost on an unworldly not so streetwise teen?

E&M : wish I'd seen that before I posted, that?s exactly what I was getting at ? the men in the film are peripheral, but they're at the centre of the whole thing (note to self: learn to think and type faster!)

I?ve been trying to work out why I?m uncomfortable with it, and I think it?s because the main decision point in the film is hers ? she chooses to get in the car with the guys, and from that point on it?s pretty much deal done, she?s the victim. For me, the implication is the only person that could have stopped it happening is her, hence it?s her fault. Where are the decisions that the guys made, why do they think that it?s ok to do what they did? That?s probably a bit too complex for a 3 minute film, but I didn?t like the feeling that the whole thing could easily be dismissed with a simple ?well what did she expect??.

or even here

Sorry meant to say I quite agree with the analogy with the fucking awful "don't take unlicensed minicabs" poster.

It's like the "raped by elves" phrase that I've read elsewhere, where reporting of crimes against women and girls effectively disappear the male culprits from the story by using the passive case (is it a case? no grammar at my school)

Ah - the passive voice - interesting article about this [[http://hoydenabouttown.com/20070429.497/passive-aggression-foregrounding-the-object/ here]

and caged publicly

Good point E A and M

maybe there should have been more about the degradation of the boyfriend/pimp

I don't think it was a crap video - if other people liked it and thought the message worked then that's really good.

I don't know if maybe it was too much about her? That might sound weird but IIRC you didn't see a lot of the boyfriend/pimp or any other men. So it just became a bit of a Victorian moral fable about women seeking pleasure/love becoming degraded and sliding into prostitution etc all by themselves.

I did not see that video as encouraging women to abstain from alcohol - maybe naive of me, but I thought it was just setting the scene.

One of the reasons the video was so emotive for me was that it reminded me of similar scenes from my own teenage years - not leading to internal trafficking, but predatory behaviour all the same.

Not sure what more they could have done to portray the men involved as monsters.

I had a very depressing conversation with a female police officer tonight tabouleh who said that most of the reports she gets are 'false reports'.

I felt like screaming tbh.

But the answer is not to encourage women to abstain from alcohol and from "wanting to be loved" FFS!

There does need to be a much greater awareness of within uk trafficking - but not if the emphasis is on restricting women's freedoms.

The police need to get start getting serious with investigating these crimes and believing women who report rapes etc.

I suspect that the reality is that predators target young women who have been drinking and are wanting to be loved. Those things make you a bit more vulnerable to exploitation.

E&M - I liked it but I was torn because I had the same thought as you - in fact my thought was "bloody hell dittany would say that this is victimising the woman something chronic....."

It reminded me of the debate about that london transport poster about not taking unlicensed mini cabs...

I then saw that poster on the way home.

I need to have a look at the whole website and see if there are strong message about rape/sex trafficking being MEN's FAULT and see whether this mitigates the possible flaws in the video.

I was at the conference and the video was fantastic. It really showed that anyone's daughter can be roped into the seedy side of life. The young women portrayed was not shown as somekind of dead beat drunk she was an average young woman who just wanted to be loved. I remember feeling like that as a 16 year old, a long time ago though!

Very emotive. I wished i'd gone to the conference