Belle De Jour revealed to be

[onebatmother]

...a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol.

she doesn'r sound fucked up at all. We all have some issues - that's a far cry from fucked up. It is the oldest profession for a reason

I think fair play to her. I enjoyed her book, she's obviously smart and successful, and she outed herself to pre-empt whatever nasty misogynistic crap the Daily Mail was planning to spew.

excited ? Nope.

There was a very interesting article about her in Tech Crunch - NSFW: ?Tis Pity She?s A Success ? Belle de Jour and the Impossibility of Anonymous Blogging

I think the chances of her being forced into the publicity are very very likely, tbh.

I wouldn't want to be in the PR department for the University of Bristol at the moment. Although I'm sure they would point to the quality of her medical research. . .
Great story!

India Knight is on The Media Show on R4 talking about this just now if anyone's interested.

Lenin, the usual royalty for any work will be pretty standard, most contracts involve a percentage of the cover price once they have worked out the advance. And remember, the writer gets to keep the advance even if the book does not sell.

Having heard all the fuss on the news about this and seeing the book on cheap thought I'd give it a go. Have given up halfway through. It's really dull isn't it? Peppered with bits that make me feel that something is wrong for this person. Not the prostitution but the relationships she has, being "in love" with a guy she wants to meet in order to be slapped around the face, enjoying sexual beatings that make her bleed. The hooker side with the respectful blokes does seem happy compared to what she had in real life!

At the London Reclaim the Night a couple of weeks ago one of the (great) speeches mentioned this talking about the recent law changes etc:

"For the first time the eyes of the law will be turned on those who fuel the demand for women and children in prostitution. This shows that laws can be changed, that history can be made, that the future can be re-written for the better.

Not surprisingly, this has not been the story in our media, as they are more obsessed with the recent outing of ?Belle Du Jour?. So - Dr. Brooke Magnanti, aka ?Belle Du Jour? - we are sorry you had to fund your education through prostitution. We are sorry that it is prostitution that has made you famous, rather than your studies in science and medicine. And we invite you to join us - in campaigns for the return of the student grant, for free education and for a world where all women are worth more than what some man is willing to pay for them."
full text of speech here

Oh sweet Jesus, just seen the father thing. That is just awful. Poor bloody woman.

God dittany, that blog extract was so depressing.
I think the media reflects back to us an image of society through men's eyes. As a teenager and young adult I believed the media images of women as being truths. In this I include books, classics, written by men.
Examples of media images I believed:
The happy prostitute
Mothers'/Womens' work (teaching, nursing, childrearing) is inferior and unimportant; that the pay women receive for this work is low because it reflects this inferiority
The "invisible" middle aged woman, whose body is no longer useful to men, and whose voice is unimportant, and who therefore all but dissappears from public view altogether.

Only in my late twenties have I realised what a pile of crap all these images of women are through mens' eyes. Its only now I understand the hatred and loathing of women thats behind the prostitution industry; I understand that giving birth and being a mother is one of the most important things a human being can do, and that men suffer from extreme womb envy (!) How did I get to the age of 25 (when I gave birth) without realising just how signifcant it was to create a new life? Why is this process not glorified? In fact mothers are treated with contempt in the media to the extent that I started to despise them myself for the fact they weren't doing important work, just messing around with babies. And I now understand that middle-aged women are wise, and bring lots of experience to their work, and they are often altruistic, working for charities, sponsoring children in third world countries: this is all the work of middle-aged women.

The hard thing is that the men around me believed these images too. And even sadder is that some women believe them.

Women need to stop pandering to men's view of them; we have to start completely ignoring what men think of us, and mens' definitions of who we are and what we think (the happy prostitute!). We'll be okay as long as women don't start believing these images. Its so sad when you get an educated woman like this belle de jour feeding into the male view of the world. It really does silence all the voices of the girls and prostitutes who are suffering.

Having said that, credit where its due: there have been a few men who`ve "got it" and have worked hard, through their art, to show that prostitutes and women are human beings. Dostoyevski takes great pains to show how vulnerable a prostitute is, how easily they are advantage of, and how they are most certainly not "happy". Stephen King has also done a lot for women. The sad fact is, though, that when men draw attention to our problems, they are taken more seriously than when women do. Unless of course a woman like this Belle de Jour comes along and feeds the image, then she is listened to.

Urgh, I just read the father's interview:
"I will not condemn her for doing what she had to do to pay for her education"

Umm, what? You won't condemn her. How generous of you. And yet the article takes this comment at face value, as though this idiots decision to "not condemn" his daughter has some weight or bearing on reality.
Aargh, I've got to get off this thread now.