Sarah Ditum discusses student sex work with Jane Garvey on Woman's Hour

What is Kaya Corbridge going to do when she gets older, no longer gets the money shes on now? Cant see flipping burgers as a good alternative to prostitution money wise. But no way will she get a decent job anywhere else. Remember that employers Google (or should) potential employees.

Government needs to really really look at the consequences of austerity and the social changes from the internet like the ubiquity of porn, very carefully
On the porn aspect, the UK government could ban porn overnight but we have to take on the rest of the worlds governments to ban it. The internet being a easy port to any countries web sites.
On the austerity I too agree, but that's not the only reason driving prostitution. I dont know how many of the trafficked women even show as claiming benefits etc.

The downside of all this is that eventually women will no longer go to university, then again women will miss out on lifelong advantages. Or other women will rise up and create women only universities. And other places that women need.

Kaya Corbridge, from Colne, Lancashire, earns £30,420 a month selling snaps on Onlyfand. 30K A MONTH

Sounds like an MLM sales pitch, but for sex work instead of wax melts.

For every Kaya earning thus amount of money only selling photos, how many desperate, drug addicted and abused women do you think there are being forced into a £10 a go blow job in a grimy back alley to line a pimps pockets?

Its so easy to quote the tiny number of women claiming yo be making thousands for "only" flashing their tits and minge on a camera, whilst closing your eyes to the actual realities of the vast numbers of sex workers face.

Comes down to values.

Not everything is about money.

Kaya Corbridge, from Colne, Lancashire, earns £30,420 a month selling snaps on Onlyfand. 30K A MONTH. No meeting in person.

A 28 yr old Medical student by the name of SweetArches makes 58K PER YEAR selling photos of.....her feet!

That's not so seedy and dangerous. She's not being exposed to the dark world of gangs and crack cocaine. She's posting bloody toe photos.

What if she doesn't meet punters. What if she has a private OnlyFans account? The amount of money some of these women are making from an online - no contact in person - private account is insane. A lot of them don't even post nudes but sexually suggestive photographs. I'm talking thousands a week for bikini pics. Or a cleavage pic on snapchat for a couple hundred.

NVQ I'd have thought?

If it was merely ‘work’ there’s be a City & Guilds cert you could do in it surely?

So how will they react when a young woman is raped, beaten or murdered as a result of being told ‘Hey it’s just a job, we think it’s a good idea!’?

Minimising the dangers is absolutely concerning. I think a lot of young women buy into this idea because they need the cash so badly that it's either do it and feel disgusted or do it and pretend to feel empowered as a coping strategy until enough money is accrued and then go back to working a job that's safe and somewhat enjoyable. 😒

I’m also concerned that they’re presenting a hierarchy as if there are consequence-free forms of sex work. I used to know a woman who did phone lines work when she was hard up and she was still really emotionally fucked up by what she heard years later.

That was long before camera phones and cheap video recording equipment and the internet remembering everything. It’s dangerous in all its forms. Minimising that danger is lying and abusive.

It’s also not like there’s great non-stigmatised support available out there to help women emotionally and physically hurt, attacked or killed as part of doing this ‘job’..seeing as it’s just a job and known to be dangerous, we should be publishing all those stats and women’s stories and we should be able to fund that support really well. And women should be able to speak freely what has happened to them.. yet somehow..

Government needs to really really look at the consequences of austerity and the social changes from the internet like the ubiquity of porn, very carefully.

Your kid goes off to uni a schoolgirl, ready to conquer the world, and comes back a hooker?

Yes, fabulous...

This is so depressing. University is meant to be a way of providing and encouraging more future options for young women, not fewer and much more dangerous options. Why are universities fucking over young women like this?

It’s not work, it’s not taxed, pensioned, insured, sick paid, maternity leaves, whatever else. It’s just abuse. Are we so out of control with the cost of living and state support this is the best we can offer young women? Really?

Since stats show us that "sex work" is on the rise among women attending universities I think that universities have a responsibility to inform them of the dangers of it should they decide to bring it up.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/sex-work-students-university-sugar-dating-debt-living-costs-a9166311.html

However, I do think economics is a huge, huge driving force and a root cause.

The students in the article above turned to sex work, why? Because they were worried about money. The kind that working part time at Savers won't solve and with student debt and job losses on the rise that's not going to change overnight.

youth-time.eu/students-prostitution-on-rise/
www.independent.co.uk/voices/austerity-sex-survival-universal-credit-poverty-prostitution-un-report-a8925256.html

www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-more-students-are-turning-to-sex-work-during-covid-19-pandemic-12066700?espv=1

Should sex work (which includes faceless nudes, phone sex, feet videos, sex videos, being sugar babies and traditional prostitution) be encouraged, normalised or sugar coated by universities? Of course not. Should it be ignored or demonized...I don't think that's going to solve it either. There are pros and cons to say working at Odeon vs selling nudes online and that's just part of the new topsy turvy reality that we live in.

It's interesting that issues that have historically faced the lower classes are seeping into universities and the middle class.

Many uni students can go home. What about women who can't? Poverty hurts women and pushes us to contemplate putting ourselves in situations we have to pretend feel normal and empowering .

Poverty is going to increase in the UK what with covid job losses and god knows what covid+Brexit will = but it can't be good. More and more women will be tempted into doing sex work that they really don't want to do but feel there is no option. It's heartbreaking and I don't blame them. I for one have worked full time for a year straight and still not managed to get out of my overdraft, used sheets as curtains and had to buy junk food because it lasted longer. I felt suicidal and although I didn't start an only fans I seriously considered it.

When my lovely young uni student corrected me from saying Prostitution to “it’s sex work, Mum” I said no, it wasn’t “work” of an sort it was exploitation, the commodification of women and something to help women escape from, not engage it.

If it’s work like any other, where are the people trafficked into being baristas or supermarket staff?

If a student got a job as a burger flipper and she happened to serve her supervisor a burger one Saturday afternoon, noone would bat an eyelid.

What would the university's take be if a student's supervisor happened to be her punter? After all, it's just work, innit?

They aren’t going to put it on their cv are they? So it’s not ‘ok’ and they know it.