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

Does any parent want their daughters involved in this? I know I was the one who made the comment about University education meaning one shouldn’t need to do this, but honestly, it’s my belief that NOONE should have to do this. It’s simply demeaning by definition. I just felt I had to say that. I’m sickened that anyone feels that being paid to do this sort of thing is empowering.

My DD had her best friend from her old school to stay around the time of that thread. Her friend was filling me in on all the gossip about the school and other classmates as we moved away from the area some years ago. I was shocked and saddened by some of her updates. One girl is on Only Fans, and reportedly in the top 1% or something, apparently she has earned £90k, presumably in the year or two since leaving school. Her Instagram page is a teaser for the only fans and features many disturbing pictures, wearing fetish gear, hoods etc.

The obvious problem is it is lucrative and appears to be easy money, how else can school leavers earn that sort of money? Meanwhile career and educational development are neglected so that it is increasingly hard to change direction.

Another of their friends has been spending lockdown making masks and has earned a fraction of that amount of money so I bought some of her masks for Christmas presents to support her fledgling business.

"...being a sex worker allows me to be a
be a good therapist and allows me to afford my studies”

Selected quotes are interesting.

Although I do see merit in the argument that "women are going to do this anyway, so they need help to stay safe", this comes across as normalising and almost encouraging. The tone I'd like to see is "You have nothing to be ashamed of, and we do not judge you in any way. You have got into an area which is dangerous for your mental and physical health, and we'd like to help and support you to find other ways, if you'd like to"

In particular I was struck by this post:

"I've resurrected an extremely old name for this post as it's all still very close to the bone for me. I had a similar situation a couple of years ago with my uni age daughter, and without going into too much detail it ended up with her being stalked and the police and CPS being involved.

I don't feel comfortable saying too much as it's her story not mine, but it was all horrendous for a while and in some ways still is. And that's the thing that might give your daughter pause for thought. Mine was all very cavalier about it - 'everyone does it these days Mum, it's fine, you don't know anything about it' - but when it went wrong it went badly wrong. As the saying (almost) goes, a stalker is for life, not just for Christmas. The men who are the end users of these services are not always decent, well-adjusted people.

Like lots of girls her age, the internet is an integral part of my daughter's life, which was a factor in how she got drawn into this. Now she can't do anything online with a public profile. All her accounts have maximum privacy settings and she can't use certain platforms. She works in an arts/media field but can't have an online portfolio of her work with contact details because he'll know where she is and where she's been. She can't advertise any freelance services. She can't have a linkedin account. Employers in her field expect to be able to see an online presence and she is hugely disadvantaged by not having that.

She truly thought she was doing something empowering and so much better and cleverer than going out to work for minimum wage in a shop or pub, but just didn't realise the potential implications. I don't think she ever worried about her safety, but I think if she'd been aware that her future freedom could be so compromised she would have thought twice. Once you've given away your privacy and anonymity it's almost impossible to get it back.

Those posters saying ‘my daughter would never do this’, you are supremely unhelpful. OP, you are not a bad mother, and your daughter isn’t bad either. This is a result of a clash between pornsick, misogynist society, the all-consuming influence of the internet in young people’s lives (particularly instagram, in the case of many young women) and libfem ‘sex work is work’, girlpower culture. I’d agree with pp – keep the lines of communication very much open, lots of affection and conversation, listen for subtexts in what she’s saying, and grasp any opportunities you can to boost her self-esteem. "

Does the tool kit mention any of these types of risks and problems I wonder? Rhetorical question

Link to a previous related thread.

DD selling her body online www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4037569-DD-selling-her-body-online

You can download the policy here

t.co/d2NdAwZBui?amp=1

Lots of "reducing stigma", obvs

This toolkit has been produced with the Student Union. I'll give you one guess at the biological sex of the Women's Officer at the Leicester Student Union...

Looks like a few of us are old fashioned then. Proud of it too.

It could be like those iSpy books we had as kids - tick off the smelly one, the violent one, the one who likes to humiliate ....

Hope the tool kit is illustrated with pictures of punters.

I’m guessing the policy toolkit includes rules that make it even less safe, like no bringing customers back to your student accommodation room or meeting in the stacks at the library because you’ll face a fine. Maybe other rules about how university WiFi is not licensed for hosting web cam sessions, so you’ll need to pay for and use your own hot spot.

Back in the 80s I had a full grant, which you could just about live within if you were careful.

Also call me old-fashioned, prostitution is not something anyone should aspire to and men who abuse women in this way are scum.

Tool kit is exactly what this is.

Does it also compare the rates of assault/murder of various money making ventures? ‘The money can be ok but you have a 1000% more chance of being murdered than doing the graveyard shift alone in an off license...’

I suppose the university's point of view would be similar to drug use. People are going to do it, so let's give them some information so they might just do it in a less risky way.

The problem with this is it's going to affect women a lot more than men. Also, nobody should be encouraging anyone to get involved in sex work. I wonder what they're doing to discourage male students from objectifying women.

So what is in the toolkit? Does it say 'this is a dangerous and damaging way to stretch your grant. You can make it safer by: (methods of reducing risk). Please remember there are hardship grants which can be applied for here:

I wonder what uni careers services say about this. Given that students' part time jobs can be listed on their CVs for graduate jobs, would the careers service recommend putting sex work on there? If not, why not when unis are saying it's a valid form of work?

I wonder too just how many male academics - ie the ones who usually reach the top positions - advise their daughters to straddle dildos on the internet to add to their student loan? Or is it just other people's daughters who should be doing that?

I'm also wondering whether universities are no longer advising students to be careful with social media profiles when looking for jobs. We used to be told that companies could search us online before hiring us, so to be careful of privacy settings on Facebook. Is this advice no longer given? Surely a photo of you drunk on Facebook is less off putting to a potential employer than that video of you masturbating in crotchless panties that can never be removed from the Internet? Or is the idea that employers who search potential employees actually only search by given name, not by any photo they find attached to that name etc? Or is it the idea that face recognition technology doesn't really work all that well?

All interesting questions, I find.

Horrible this is still going on. My university in the 90s did similar. Several of my friends worked as strippers/exotic dancers while in uni.
I had many offers to do this too, but never did. Instead I cleaned public toilets and waitressed.

Funny how women are always bottom of the pile

And as I trotted off to check out my LinkedIn I see this from a charity I support...

Can't believe you can't trust universities not to feed this shit to young people. On the one hand it's all got to be safe spaces and Rhodes Must Fall and nobody must challenge an orthodoxy - on the other hand, have you thought about giving blow jobs to strangers to pay your termly bill?