You need to read this article about the Leeds red light district.

[DJLippy]

I read this blog about the Leeds red light district from someone who lives there. It's so illuminating. This needs a wider audience - please share on social media. This is what decriminalisation looks like.

littlegirlblue.blog/2018/05/25/living-in-the-red-light-district/

Sorry no italics!

Have read this thread and I am delighted for you OP that you have been given Blog of the Day. I wish you all the best of luck in reclaiming your area as a safe place for you.

I will share this.

I've moved just around the corner. I'm on a main road now though.

One night I was watching a film, can't remember the title but it was one I loved and was enjoying the re watch. For about 15 mins I could hear a van outside, engine still running.

Eventually I go out, it's half 11 but I want to watch the film in peace. I rap gently on the window which is opened by the man in the driver seat. I ask him if everything is okay, is his health okay, is he having a health issue and does he need help. Well next second this woman gets up from his lap. I go, ah okay. Laugh. But add, this area is full of CCTV and it's pretty early yet and some teenagers might pass by soon and I'm not sure the last train has come back yet. I suggested they move on.

I bade them goodnight.

The van was gone less than a minute later. It has never happened again. He probably chucked her out and went home to his wife and children.

Have a bump.
Everyone should read this.

They only mean talk to one type of "sex worker".

And at all costs, never talk to the exited ones. Because they might tell you the unvarnished truth.

They don’t even mean just talk to that one type, they mean accept what they say uncritically too e.g. when I hear ‘but women will starve without it’ I don’t conclude this is a good reason to keep it. I conclude that the threat of starvation is behind women entering the sex industry and that supports that women are not freely choosing this but rather inequality is reducing their choices.

I've changed my name for this, but I think there's so much about the 'other popular stuff' that the Feminists gets blasted for on MN, basically it's all about a certain relative minority group, that issues like Holbeck aren't really seen as issues per se.

Like people perhaps think well of course Holbeck doesn't like it, no one would want this on their door step.

There's 2 issues as highlighted, the sex workers and the community. Maybe it would be good for the Council to have a centre in Holbeck in the legalised zone so they can see what it's like, how they fear for the welfare of their staff, being in an area that is in an area where sex is sold pretty much 24/7 & the drug problem too.

Have some councillors based in this office, so they can see and experience for themselves what the residents see and experience. Fair enough it's unlikely to happen, but if they want others to live in such situations, it's only really fair that they get a real taste for it.

I'm so sick of reading about the new trendy PC subject of the moment.

Especially when there's communities like this, plus people like the woman who wrote the blog suffering as we can't get the basics of society right.

They say a nation gets judged on how it treats the poorest in society, I say that is well and truly rubbish. The blogger can't even get taxes she's paid back in benefits due to a tick box culture. If you compare what is paid to say the disabled, the people looking for jobs, to say over the water, the disparity is huge. I know it's slightly going off topic, but the new trendy journalism topics cover up the injustices going on elsewhere.

I refuse to even use the label as this isn't about that, but it's certainly clouding a lot of legitimate injustices such as Holbeck.

I don’t think I have ever heard a story from a sex worker that indicated they had freely chosen sex work TBH.

I would not go so far as to say it was not possible to freely choose sex work but all the stories re ‘positive’ and ‘empowering’ are centred on a particular type of sex work where the choice made was between poverty and a relatively large income that could not be achieved outside the sex industry for that person.

I don’t see those arguments as arguments in favour of sex work being empowering or as arguments re sex work being freely chosen. I see them as reasons to improve economic inequality that women suffer.

And I always usually think but why has society arbitrarily decided that sex work should be relatively well paid but that caring work should be unpaid/poverty wages?

Have any of them considered that?

Well done on the blog being shared more widely 👍

Two things, I remember a conversation years back that I possibly wasn't meant to hear, where men were laughing and joking why would you spend £100 on taking your wife out for the night when I can get a BJ for 'x' and a full service for 'y' it doesn't make economic sense. Especially when she's kept by me to look after the kids and house anyway.

I was relatively young, but it made me think we really are just seen as objects by men. They value our worth based on what they get out of the situation. I hasten to add not all, but I was born and grew up during a time when women were home makers, a woman working was even frowned upon by women, if you had children.

Another situation I know of is a person in a high paid job who wouldn't necessarily attract the kind of woman he wants. He was pretty open about the fact he'd used prostitutes for years, found one he liked, I think they lived together or he paid for her accommodation and luxuries, still effectively buying her time. It was/is a weird relationship. But the bit that got me was that there was no shame at all from him, in the fact he used prostitutes, or that he considered this woman his equal, as he thought he was still buying her by providing her with stuff she liked.

Sorry third example, I had two friends I knew for different reasons, friend A knew friend B had a good job, she said take me to London, to a posh hotel, wine me, dine me, buy me expensive things and I will do x/y/z. Friend B said no thanks. Friend A was even known in relationships to pretty expect pocket money, flashy treats, she wasn't as fussed about marriage as she was making sure she got a sparkler from a well known jeweller. Irrespective of the fact her partner would be paying a years salary pretty much for the ring, his family if they wanted a wedding would have to pay for it. She did pretty much suss out not only the guy but the parents too.

So the latter in reality shows that 'some' women can be shrewd and fully know what they're doing.

A bit like the Mrs Merton joke, what attracted you to the millionaire ...

This is essentially part of the problem though. Women who negotiate within the boundaries of their oppression are universally used as justification for said oppression.

I don’t know if lib fems have realised that is why rad fems are rad fems.

General consciousness has only gotten as far as calling that ‘complicit in their own oppression’ or ‘getting something out of it’ but entirely without actually treating the oppression/it as the fundamentally important factor.

They hyper focus on the complicit/getting.... no matter whether it’s used to blame women or to say women are empowered.

I don't know the difference between rad/lib fems.

The last example I gave was of a woman who used a particular skill set to try and get what she wanted.

Men who use prostitutes are just I'm not justifying that the first two examples are by any means right.

@Day

There are certain sections of feminism that are campaigning to legalise prostitution and think it's a womans right to sell her body. It's her right her choice. These tend to be 'lib fems'. They say this will protect the workers and ensure they have a safe work environment. The radfems think this is BS and that legalisation would increase demand - and girls get trafficked in from poor countries. Pimps are still taking most of the money only now it's all legitimate and the men don't have to feel guilty for buying sex. Amstardam is re-criminalising prostitution because of all of these problems. Reading articles like this makes you wonder what would happen to Holbeck. Maybe all towns get to have a Holbeck? That makes me so angry nobody should have to do such work and it feeds male entitlement and sexism.

I don’t mean you particularly day... just commenting on the general dynamic re mainstream thinking.

Lib fems broadly think feminist effort should work within the system to change it from the inside. Rad fems think feminist effort should be directed to radically changing the system.

Not all lib fems think sex work is all choosey choice though... liberal feminism has been rather hijacked by individualism and capitalism at the mo.

I tend to think that kind of hijacking and subverting is what tends to happen when you try to work within the system TBH. Obviously rad fems suffer from the fact that radical change is much harder to achieve.

I fall more toward radical solutions re most equalities issues TBH not just with a feminist hat on.

I think there is a lot made of the lib fem/ rad fem divide but there is so much that unites them. Especially in the last few years women have started talking about sexual abuse and young women are interested. It feels a bit like the chickens are coming home to roost. Post Weinstein it's become a lot less about 'empowerment' and a lot more shouty. I think this legalisation stance will alienate many women. Is this what you want to spend your time campaigning for - mens right to buy sex?

Lib fem/rad fem is essentially another ‘all we need is more unity’ problem but liberal feminism has been thoroughly hijacked and turned on it’s head by individualism and capitalism.

I believe that is what happens when you try to work within the system and the system is individualistic/capitalistic. Liberal feminism, you may have noticed, has also now been hijacked to serve patriarchy too...

Empowerment has become all choosey choice and yay women choosing... it has been entirely divorced from actual empowerment, actual live fems must be very cross.

*lib

Current liberal feminism is neither liberal nor feminist for the most part.

Read blog with interest as a long term Leeds resident. I grew up in an area now referred to as ‘naice’ in this thread, but when I lived there you couldn’t get a taxi to take you home. We also had a prostitute briefly operating from the empty house next door to us, my parents did report to the police and complain. When vice came round, one of the officers had a baywatch sticker on the back of their clipboard . When I was growing up Spencer Place was pretty much a managed zone in all but name, with the same problems presented as that in Holbeck. It’s all plus ca change really. I’m disappointed to hear that the murder that took place changed little.

I think one bit I would challenge is the idea that women were working naicer areas and were moved on. Really? My parents still live in the aforementioned ‘naice’ area and I’ve never seen any evidence of street prostitution. I can see it would feel like people have just been dumped in the area, but wasn’t prostitution already happening in this area? It’s then about the failure of approach, surely. If you get rid of the zone, you’re not going to get rid of the underlying issues.