to feel really sad when murder victims are described as "Prostitutes"

[Ladyanonymous]

• Sadly yet another spate of street workers being murdered, this time in Bradford.

Why, when the press report this do they desribe these woman as "prostitutes" and not just "woman"?

AIBU to feel really sad to hear women described like this in 2010, have we not moved on from defining people by the fact they were in a position that they needed to sell sex to survive. That is just one dimension of their lives - but makes people "downgrade" their death somehow or dismiss it.

Its like they are a third species, if the woman was a waitress she would still be described as a woman for example Claudia Lawrence is described as "the chef Claudia Lawrence".

I just wonder how it feels for the friends and families of the victims to hear that every time its mentioned in the press, it must double the pain.

They may have taken a turn in life most would not understand, but they were still people, with personalities, with lives and were loved and cared for by their parents and friends and children.

They are not just "prostitutes"

TSC, the phrase 'normal' was lifted directly from the quote from SanFranDisco, and was in reply to her.

I am not happy that a killer is 'only' killing prostitutes either. None of it makes me happy. But it is relevant to why they are being murdered. You are the one guilty of naivety if you cannot see that. They are hugely disproportionately more likely to be murdered (by an unrelated man) than women with 'mainstream' lives and 'mainstream' occupations. To acknowledge that is not to sit in moral judgement of them. You may feel sorry for their families, you may feel great compassion and empathy for their situation, and that makes you a very nice understanding person, but it doesn't alter the facts! And you still haven't answered the question.

Just why are they 'forced' to go on the street, and what do you think we could do about it? How do you propose we enable them to fund their drug habits? After all, if I am not to be guilty of over-simplification then I have to accept that they can't just stop, can they? It's complicated.

If what you mean is: 'Isn't it sad that so many women fall into such a degrading and desperate cycle of addiction that causes them to resort to such measures' then yes, I agree with you, 100%. It is sad. But please don't imply that we as a society have 'forced' them onto the street by keeping them and their children in abject poverty. I'm sure many working poor, or people managing on benefits who struggle daily to makes ends meet would be offended at that.

LadyA - great post.

I have also worked with young homeless people (probably three quarters of whom have serious addiction problems, and a good half of the girls and maybe a third of the boys have been involved in prostitution). These things aren't black and white - not ever.

Personally, I find the 'Josie Bloggs, 38, prostitute' thing the press does deeply distrubing.

It is, otherwise, very often, 'Josie Bloggs, 38, mother of two'.

See the difference in those two pictures?

One says 'awful crime committed against innocent, loving mother', the other says 'crime committed against slag'. Sorry, but it does. Open your eyes.

You know, many prostitutes are mothers, too. Yet so rarely is it mentioned.

ZoopAZoop - of course everyone sees the difference.

Did you not see my earlier post?

What do you want - if there is a situation whereby someone is targeting / attacking / killing prostitutes, do you think this common link should be omitted in any reporting? Any other groups of people where we 'shouldn't mention the war'? And who decides which groups are OK to mention and which aren't?

I really don't get the use of the word 'slag'. It just seems like people want to brush a vital fact under the carpet, purely because it may have negative connotations to some. It is disingenuous and naive. These women are prostitutes, after all - you could just as easily say it's nothing to be ashamed of, yet those who want to obliterate this fact make it feel like it is.

Again - if a group of accountants or sky-divers were being killed, no-one would bat an eye at their common description being used in reporting.

"But please don't imply that we as a society have 'forced' them onto the street by keeping them and their children in abject poverty. I'm sure many working poor, or people managing on benefits who struggle daily to makes ends meet would be offended at that. "

We as a society fail a lot of kids. Kids who have drug addicted parents are still expected to achieve the same as kids from "normal" families. Our social care system is at bursting point and social work only seems to be an attractive career for the very naive, and it quickly loses its appeal for even them, because we are fighting an uphill battle against a serious lack of funding and lack of people prepared to be foster carers, and even then it is not the magic answer we seem to believe it is, its the start of a whole load of more problems and struggles - and those kids get moved (from family/area/school/friends)about every two years because most of them can't be adopted for many reasons.

70% of homeless people and people in jail have been thorugh the Great British Care System

We are one of the best countries in Europe when it comes to providing services for drug and alcohol users and per head of users per population have one of the lowest rates of transmission of BBVs (blood borne virus's). We are, however, shit at preventing the problem in the first place.

Yes - we as a society have forced them onto the streets, and it is all our problem while we pretend its someone elses.

"I am not happy that a killer is 'only' killing prostitutes either. None of it makes me happy. But it is relevant to why they are being murdered."

No, the only factor that is relevant to these women being murdered is what is going on in the murderer's head. And the fact of being a woman.

And women with 'mainstream lives and occupations' are disproportionately more likely to be murdered by a man related to them than any other type of murder. Homicide by someone related to you or in a relationship with you is a leading cause of women's deaths. Some US statistics -- here's a sobering one: in 1994, 39% of people receiving treatment in A&E departments in hospitals in the US were women. Of these women, 84% (self-reported perhaps, so maybe more, maybe less) had suffered the injuries at the hands of intimate partners.

Maybe it makes women feel less threatened, more wrapped in cotton wool, to assume that there are risk factors that we can avoid and then everything will be fine for us. It's a false sense of security.

LadyA, what a moving and brave post. xx

LadyA, what a great post, you must be so proud of yourself.

YANBU.

I agree that other women (I feel its less likely with me) are described by their occupation but it tends to be used for a little while and then dropped.

Not in all cases but mostly. With Claudia Laurence they may refer to her a chef but they also keep making veiled illusions to some sort of rampant sex life. Awful for her family.

When those poor women in Suffolk were murdered they were continually referred to by their occupation long after the whole world would have known what they did to earn money.

I remember vividly the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. The utter outrage that an 'innocent' young woman was killed as opposed to a prostitute. Things went crazy when the first non sex worker was killed.

Women who work as prostitutes are more vunerable. But if we concentrate soley on their working lives we are at risk of leaving all women in the area vunerable because it is making the crime exclusive - normal people wont be harmed.

Some killers target prostitutes because they think they are evil and should be wiped out but I would bet that the majority of prostitutes are killed because they are vunerable rather than immoral.

When that woman in the USA killed her clients (Aleene Werner or similar) I dont remember any reports saying 'well what did they expect, putting themselves in danger like that. They were asking for it'.

I hear on the news the man is now being questioned over the murder of three prostitutes.

Ladyanonymous - good post and I agree with everything you said, but that is a much deeper and more complex social issue which is only loosely relevant to this topic.
Whenever I've heard prostitutes interviewed they all talk of their desperation, their need to feed and support their kids, and (inevitably) their need to fund their addictions, which it seems, is almost always the overriding justification. As I said right at the beginning of this, I understand that many of them (by no means all) will have had deeply dysfunctional and chaotic lives, no parental support, and their current situation just perpetuates that cycle for their children. Why do you think we are so shit at preventing the recurring cycle in the first place?

mathanxiety that's exactly why I made the point about prostitutes being more likely to be killed by unknown men. Because they are a specific target for the kind of (fairly rare) nutters who plan to kill. The 'mainstream' women (i.e. the rest of us who are not prostitutes) who will be killed or raped by a man are far more likely to suffer at the hands of a known man in some form of domestic violence/abuse. But other than that, we have absolutely nothing else in common. So the (rare) kind of man who goes out on a mission to kill, targets the (rare) kind of woman who ends up in prostitution, because it is easier than dragging a woman off the street, and because he will usually have anger/hate/control issues, mother/son issues, and probably sexual performance issues and chances are that prostitutes will have already played a part in alleiviating all those issues for him. He's just taking it to the next level.

It's the 'elephant in the room.' It would be lovely to think of them as just normal women who were very very unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time - but it's not true, is it?

They are just normal women who are very, very unlucky though. Unlucky in so many ways besides being killed.

There's absolutely no reason to feel reassured as a woman that because you're 'mainstream' you'll avoid the fate of someone 'outside the mainstream' who is associating with the wrong kind of man, late at night, in secluded spots. For women, associating with men pretty much assures you will have some violence perpetrated against you, from a slap to rape to murder -- the statistics tell the story. Murder by an intimate partner causes more women's deaths than breast cancer does every year.

The basic fact that we have to recognise when any women are killed by men is that the killers have a choice about whether to kill or not; responsibility lies with them only.

When women are differentiated from each other by occupation in reports of crimes, one effect is to make us think 'it couldn't happen to me', a notion one look at the dv statics should dispel, and another is to reinforce the age-old and disgraceful notion that women who behave or dress "provocatively" are somehow asking for violence, be it rape or murder. Placing the responsibility for the crime, even partially, and even by implication (by calling a murder victim a prostitute) on the victim makes it easier for criminals.

somebodies daughter.

As someone who knew one of the women murdered in Ipswich, I am a supported of "somebodies daughter"

The woman I knew had a son, and was pregnant.

People (especially the hounding press who I DETEST after the way they were leaching me and my family for details that December) need to realise it is NOT ACCEPTABLE to be so dismissive.

Now I do agree that the press probably want the 'dirt' on the story of a prostitute in a way that quite possibly wouldn't be the same for any other woman. Having said that, look at Claudia Lawrence - quite alot has been made of the fact that she had an interesting and varied, rather secretive love life. But so do most attractive, sociable, single independent women! I know I did - if anything had happened to me (before I married) at the hands of a boyfriend or lover it would have been quite some feat to track down which particular BF I was with on which particular night - they did all rather overlap for a while, and not all of them were well known to my girlfriends and family.

oops sorry chesgirl just realised I've doubled up on your post about CL - I nipped out for ten minutes and didn't catch up properly!

What they have in common is that sex sells newspapers?

A woman's sex life is much more likely to make it to the newspapers if she is a murder victim than a man's is.

I forgive you Tiggy

Just dont do it again

that's true.

Having lived in a red light district, I was often propositioned by men in cars, as I was getting off the bus and going home.

The men saw me as a woman on the street
They thought I was a prostitute, didn't they?
Sometimes I'd finish work late at night, things got even worse. Horrible. Often getting verbal abuse from them.

Horrible times
Often getting abuse from the women as I was walking down the street, telling me to piss off, long story.

Poor women, pitiful, shitty men, kerb crawling, drugs rife, vulnerable people.

Press, shitty
C

Sent too soon

Poor Claudia Lawrence, her story is 'baffling everyone' as she's not a prostitute, just a chef, but, walking to work early in the morning, about 5.30

Her poor family
Shitty press making stories of her private life
Disgusts me

Who knows what the answers are.

It would take a wiser person than me to know that.

I do think that we need as parents to teach our chidren to focus on their strengths, to be confident, not to be scared to go for what they want, and be who they are whatever that may be if it isn't hurting anyone else to have goals which they want to strive to achieve and to have pride when they to reach those goals. To care about other people and the environment we live in. To learn to cope with the down side of life without using drink and drugs to excess, to respect themselves and other people, and to use the anger within them for positive change.

I think if individuals make little changes they will have a domino affect to bigger changes and if we bring up a nation of people who feel good about themselves and accept they have to "do their bit" we may change attitudes a little.

Politically? I have no idea, but we need more resources and front line staff within social care to protect the vulnerable within our society, and those workers need to be protected more when things go wrong, not hung out to dry.

One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou.

"?I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.?

Katiekitty, I agree. How upside down and inside out is it to focus on the victim's life and not on the fact that someone with murderous intent encountered her and decided to kill her. There's nothing at all to be baffled about if you focus on the fact that there is a man out there who decided to murder her, or murder someone. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she could have been anyone^.

(Very apt quote LadyA.)

I read the coverage of this case in the Times this morning, and although obviously there is the link that they were all tagretted as prostitutes, and it seems that the suspect had a jack the ripper/prostitute fixation, I thought the mood of the piece was extremely compassionate, not remotely muck-raking or sensationalist, and respectful of the victims and their familes.

The BBC report on this just now described the women first and foremost as women, and mothers, talking about how many children they had, and a little about their lives.

It is an improvement on what we saw with the murders in Ipswich.