AIBU to tell you that Dr Brooke Magnanti reads AIBU...

[warmandwooly]

waves at Dr Brooke Magnanti

I wonder if she reads the Feminist topic?

She certainly puts the lie to the "all sex workers are victims" spiel.

Oh yes. . She's not an addict out of a care home with a controlling pimp.

Yes all prostitutes are like her. rolls eyes.

Please let's not deify her

Who's deifying her?

She seems interesting, like I said. I was a bit about something I read of hers. I forget what, but I do remember thinking it was a bit A-level Sociology. Seeing as I scraped a 2:2 myself I'm not really in a position to get sniffy though

Please let's not deify her

"Not slagging her off" is hardly deification!

Mind you...St Magnanti, patron saint of Ladies Of The Night jas a ring to it :o

I don't know if it's the way that article is written, but it's pretty disgusting to respond to someone telling you about a raped 13-year-old by saying it's important for people to say sex work is ok. Why would anyone want to be an 'ally' to that?

Gosh you're easily impressed, op.

LRD I had to read that bit twice; clearly it is hideous that the girl was pilloried and clearly she needed an ally.

If we didn't take such a dim view of women working in the sex industry, the girl who was raped at 13 might not have had such a hard time from her peers. I think that's what Magnanti is getting at, and I'm inclined to agree.

I don't agree.

Would it somehow be ok if that girl's peers had responded with delight at what a wonderful thing happened to her? Obviously not. In fact it'd be pretty sick and sad if they had, surely?

She was raped. She was 13. There is no excuse for responding to that fact with a soundbite about your views on adults selling sex, IMO.

(I don't mean you, btw! I mean her.)

Of course it wouldn't have been OK if her peers had responded with delight, although at least then the girl wouldn't have been punished for what had happened to her.

Totally agree that responding with a soundbite is shit though.

I just reckon she hadn't thought it through - she knew she wanted to talk about how important it is to her to promote prostitution so she didn't react to the context.

My feeling is, yes, after Belle de Jour it's possible teenage girls would react with more 'ooh, how exciting, you're like Billie Piper', IMO that is just exchanging one appalling narrative for another. It wouldn't make the situation better.

Sorry, I should stop going on about it, it's horrible and sad.

OK, I think I might be getting my head around this a bit. An analogy might be: an underage boy is raped in a bar frequented by gay men. He needs an ally clearly, but when he returns to school, he is bulllied by his peers for being gay.

I don't think it's a brilliant analogy btw, but I suspect this is what Magnani is getting at when she says "there?s a lot of similarity between being a sex worker now and being gay 20 years ago"

x-post!

I'm sat firmly on the fence. Or rather I'm tied into all sorts of liberal knots.

Yeah, I think you're right that's what she's getting at. It's just that the humane response isn't 'but being gay is fine!' it's 'rape is not fine'. And you could argue that it's actually quite damaging to be insisting it's important to tell a raped child that selling sex is fine - it is surely the last possible thing that child would ever want to hear.

I'm not on the fence which I suspect makes it easier.

I agree with LRD. It seems to me that the worst thing that happened to the 13 year old girl was not that she was ostracised by her peers (terrible though that was) but that she was raped by an older man. It's kind of odd to respond to that fact with a comment that we shouldn't demonise sex workers. Well, maybe we shouldn't, but I don't see how that helps here. More important, surely, is that we don't rape 13 year old girls.

You put that better than I did - agree, hackmum.

I certainly think we shouldn't demonize sex workers. That's a nasty position to take on several levels.

Yes, hackmum puts that well. Thank you! :)

We shouldn't demonise sex workers, but we should demonise their clients and the circumstances that force (yes force) these people into bad choices. Very few sex workers are doing it out of any position of strength, as Dr Magnanti was when she did it.

Is the gist of Magnani's argument regarding prostitution that for some women it is a legitimate choice, (possibly educated and fairly privileged women like herself)? I still don't get how that benefits women in society as a whole and it seems unfeminist.

Agreed. My brother works with people, lots of whom are in and out of prison, some of whom have done life sentences, lots of very violent people, lots of drug users - he says the one thing that really upsets him is when he has to work with prostitutes and their pimps, because it is such a nasty dynamic and these women are in such a horrible position.

Sorry, the 'agreed' was to carabos' post.

It saddens me to know that anyone would give this woman the time of day. She has glamourised prostitution making life much more difficult for real life woman and women who work as prostitutes.

Apologies all , I know this is a zombie, I watched an Oxford university talk by brooke on YouTube, and then searched the archives here for different topics debated on, and found this thread, and wondered if brooke, still reads mumsnet ?