Prostitution resource help please

[Mooncupdotcom]

I'm supervising a sixth form essay (EPQ, like a mini dissertation) on the theme of selling sex and asking if a law that prohibits prostitution protects or infringes their rights. I've got my own very clear and FWR influenced view on this (!) but need to find a wide range of useful organisations or articles to help and I guess to balance my own view too... Could anyone offer me some links? Thanks

Alan Canton celst.co.uk/index.php/2019/04/16/managed-approach-plays-into-hands-of-pimps-says-former-police-officer-who-took-action-after-ipswich-murders/

This documentary on Holbeck, an area in Leeds where prostitution was endorsed by the police and a red light district was created is an eye opener. I would really recommend it as an education on the reality of prostitution.

The desperation and degradation of the prostituted women was painful to watch. You would not wish it on anyone. It’s a life of poverty, violence and despair.

All of the women had severe problems that had led them to the lives they were now living.
It’s a sobering, real life counterpoint to the fluffy language used by those who advocate for prostitution. There’s no empowerment or glamour, just misery.

Episode 1

You can link to the rest of the episodes from that one.

Also as mentioned up thread Rachel Moran’s personal account of her life as a child in care who was trafficked into prostitution aged 15 and who finally found a way out. The book is called ‘Paid for’

www.amazon.co.uk/Paid-Rachel-Moran/dp/0717156028?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Rachel is a remarkable woman who calls a spade a spade. One of the quotes I remember from it is: “When a woman is poor and hungry, the humane thing to do is put food in her mouth, not your dick”

And agree with stumbled in with regards to the ECP. Very shady organisation with no transparency about where they receive funding or who controls them or indeed who they represent.
They have a property in an expensive part of London and they always have spokespeople on hand to sing the praises of prostitution in the media, opinion pieces that benefit those who control the commercial sex trade of women and children.
It is reasonable to ask questions about whether these two things are connected.

For two completely different perspectives:

AS BAD AS IT GETS IN THE UK?

See Holbeck links in previous posts plus the "SaveOurEyes" campaign below about the impact of the "Managed Zone" on other residents, including women and children abducted and raped, the grandmother stopped in the street while pushing a pram - by a man who wanted to "buy the baby for an hour", etc.

"Man 'tried to buy a BABY for an hour' in Holbeck sex zone"
www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/man-tried-buy-baby-hour-15409375

"I was abducted from a Holbeck street and raped after being mistaken for a prostitute"
saveoureyes.co.uk/abducted-from-holbeck-street-raped-after-being-mistaken-for-prostitute/

"I lost my child-like 17 year old niece to a Holbeck rapist who escaped conviction by claiming she was a prostitute"
saveoureyes.co.uk/child-like-17-year-old-holbeck-rapist-escaped-conviction/

"A “dirty man” asked me for sex at the bus stop. I’m 13."
saveoureyes.co.uk/dirty-man-asked-me-for-sex-im-13/

"How the managed approach to prostitution affects children in Leeds"
saveoureyes.co.uk/managed-approach-to-prostitution-affects-children-in-leeds/

"Facts about the “managed zone” aka “managed approach”
saveoureyes.co.uk/about-the-zone/

"Save Our Eyes - Blog and News"
saveoureyes.co.uk/blog-news/

AS GOOD AS IT GETS?

A Very British Brothel
Channel 4 Documentary 2015, Sheffield

"A documentary about the City Sauna brothel in Sheffield, run by a mother and daughter."
www.imdb.com/title/tt4926664/

The thread seems to have gone a long way from the original question as set out by the OP. It is not about Holbeck or brothels .

If I understand it correctly the OP's question is how do you balance the individual “right” of a person to do with their body as they please against the societal view that she/he may be damaging themselves and the possible harms caused by prostitution to wider society.

Isnt Holbeck a good example of where women’s “ freedom” to be abused and men’s rights to abuse and exploit them clash with the rights and freedoms of others who live and work in the area ?

You can’t look at anyone’s rights in isolation when exercising that right has implications for others.

I might have the legal right to burn down my house, but that creates risk for my neighbours and risks for the fire fighters who will come to stop the fire spreading .

Do I have the moral right to make my children homeless and demand that the public pay to house them and me? And pay for grants to get me furniture?

What about the mortgage company who own most of my house - what about their rights and their shareholders?

I certainly can’t claim my house insurance or I will go to prison.

So why don’t I have rights over my own property ? Why isn’t it as simple as I own it and can do what I like with it and everyone else has to suffer the consequence of my choice ?

So why don’t I have rights over my own property ? Why isn’t it as simple as I own it and can do what I like with it and everyone else has to suffer the consequence of my choice ?

That was rather the question OP & I posed was it not?

I am going through some immense RL challenges at the moment so please excuse my scant posting here

The desperation and degradation of the prostituted women was painful to watch. You would not wish it on anyone. It’s a life of poverty, violence and despair.
All of the women had severe problems that had led them to the lives they were now living.
It’s a sobering, real life counterpoint to the fluffy language used by those who advocate for prostitution. There’s no empowerment or glamour, just misery.

Episode 1
www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Oma_yvMh8

You can link to the rest of the episodes from that one.

Thank you for posting this. The whole series makes for horrifying watching. It is these very women, some of the most vulnerable, traumatised and abused women in society, whose lives would be changed and helped beyond recognition by the NHS presciption of diamorphine as facilitated by the British system.

There is another interesting documentary series on the BBC called Cops Like Us that follows the work of an underfunded, depleted police service in Stoke on Trent.

The 3rd and final episode shows a situation where a young women addicted to drugs and with a habit costing hundreds of pounds a day uses shoplifting to fund her habit. The police are persuaded by a shop owner to use criminal proceedings against the women and she is arrested. One of the cops is exhausted and depressed by the situaiton because thousands of pounds of public money and countless hours of police time will be spent prosecuting a drug addicted woman over a £12 theft from a shop.

The fact is that vulnerable people who are addicted to drugs have lives that descend into crime and chaos and cause all kinds of harms to themselves and to society. It is completely unneccessary. The costs of prescribing diamorphine and providing, if wanted, counselling, health care, advocacy, assistance with housing, are miniscule compared to the financial and other costs to society of dealing with the crime wave related to addiction.

The continuing war on drugs and legislation that treats substance misuse as a criminal, rather than a health, issue is a kind of collective insanity, a societal gaslighting that harms everyone but most of all it harms the most vulnerable people in society, generates immense wealth for organised criminals and leaves our police service with an impossible task.

(Intrigued hoodathunkit by you reference to them. They / the Centre have been exposed a number of time for their cultish behaviour, but they continue to survive, contribute to the media and MP enquiries, and are the only Women's Centre that somehow had enough money to buy a building)

My concerns about them go back decades. They used to be called the Kings Cross Women's Centre.

They hold a group called "single mother's self defence" which is not about learning fighting skills it is about managing poverty.

Given that they have the ECP there and that many of the women there wear different "hats" and form part of the various different groups there it is easy to see how single mothers, struggling with debt, bailiffs etc, could attend their meetings, meet sex workers and discover a not so wonderful way to deal with their financial problems.

People do not need to be pimps or traffickers to recruit people into sex work. People get involved via social contagion in the same way that they get involved with cults.

It is also true, and I have personal experience of this, that people involved in sex work will try to help their friends who are struggling financially by introducing them to punters and to sex work. The recruiters in this instance may be well intentioned and wanting to help their friends.

I am living in a precarious situation and over the last 2 years, even as an older woman, have had several offers to "help" me that have involved sex work.

The people offering to help I think partly genuinely want to help but also may, in some instances, be motivated by self interest that they have dissociated from mentally.

These things are usually complex and nuanced

Also of course, while I do not believe that sex work is a mentally or physically healthy way for most people to live their lives, living in fear of the knock on the door from the bailiffs is a very unhealthy way to live, as is not being able to pay the rent or feed your children.

In my experience sex ork can feel like a magical, wonderful way to earn money for some people for some of the time.

As people get older and their social circles increasingly comprise of sex workers, punters and exploiters (or of people who do not know and who believe untruths - some sex workers have double lives) the mental and physical toll of engaging in commercial sex increases over time.

Very few people save money and invest it well so they can exit comfortably. Most (I'm not claiming all but most) in this category turn to earning commission from the exploitation of others.

It is my experience that cultic dynamics arise in all areas of life where there are power imbalances and where people are vulnerable.

It is therefore understandable that the sex industry will be subjected to cultic dynamics . It is also unsurprising that religious, personal development and therapy cults generate revenue via prostitution.

This is something that we need to think about with extreme care. It is a controversial issue as it related to issues of bodily autonomy, personal choice, brainwashing / gaslighting and of course, appalling exploitation.

Many of these issues resonate with ones I will be referring to on the thread about Aristasia and "Miss Martindale”.

Firstly I would like to start by sharing with readers some links relating to a cult that was notorious for the sexual abuse of children and for the sexual exploitation of women via escorting (aka ESing) and “flirty fishing” (aka FFing). Women were expected to use seduction and sex to recruit and indoctrinate men into the cult as well as to generate revenue for the cult. Anyone interested in coercive control, cults, brainwashing and also in issues relating to bodily autonomy and the sex industry would do well to study this particular cult, although be warned it is extremely disturbing.

I manage my anxiety and trauma by doing my very best to learn as much as possible and to think as much as possible about the things that scare and threaten me and others. Some people deal with their anxieties and trauma by avoiding such things as they find them “triggering". Readers in the latter category are advised not to check the following links or at least to exercise extreme caution.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160516044759/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg398.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160516044759/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg398.pdf

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160617093312/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg403.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160617093312/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg403.pdf

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160515225905/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg394-397.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160515225905/media.xfamily.org/docs/fam/hh/hh-v4-pg394-397.pdf

further archival documentation in PDF form can be found here
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180510105144/www.xfamily.org/index.php/Heavenly_Helpers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20180510105144/www.xfamily.org/index.php/Heavenly_Helpers

videos here
Deborah Davis on Flirty Fishing and her father David Berg

Faith Berg describes how Flirty Fishing began

20/20 documentary (incomplete - FFing at 23.35)

Thanks hoodathunkit

I am old enough to remember the original Wages for Housework where they had a reputation for creating a cult like feeling in their various groups, eg Wages for Black Lesbians, English Collective of Prostitutes, later migrant groups. In most instances the same 3/4 women were the leaders of these groups. (At that time women's liberation groups were all - or meant to be - collective in practice.)

But the other part of their history is their entryism. ie the number of groups they destroyed by having a few women join a functioning group which ended up being coopted by WfH. This happened at Greenham Common towards the end. And on one occassion they put out a press release claiming that the national Women's Liberation Conference that year was in fact their own. Other tactics were, for example, at the anual IWD March through central London, waiting for the march to move off, and then rush to the front with their banner to them through visual imagery claim it as their own. (I think Sisters Uncut have learnt tactics from them.)

The problem was that they appeared to have been a creation of Selma James who had, still has, a big reputation. Much loved by the Guardian etc..

Many women thought women being paid to maintain households wasn't a bad theory, but as with their campaign around prostitution, it ends up seeming to say this is the only work women can expect to get so lets pay them and give them workers rights. they never have campaigns about breaking the cycle of oppression and exploitation.

And as ever, the mainstream media despite some exposing some of the damage they have done to women who innocently join them, they are still given media coverage. Unlike gender critical / radical feminists.

I am old enough to remember the original Wages for Housework where they had a reputation for creating a cult like feeling in their various groups, eg Wages for Black Lesbians, English Collective of Prostitutes, later migrant groups. In most instances the same 3/4 women were the leaders of these groups. (At that time women's liberation groups were all - or meant to be - collective in practice.)

Yes, I'm unsure of the numbers but it was the same handfull of women who were involved in all the different groups.

But the other part of their history is their entryism. ie the number of groups they destroyed by having a few women join a functioning group which ended up being coopted by WfH. This happened at Greenham Common towards the end. And on one occassion they put out a press release claiming that the national Women's Liberation Conference that year was in fact their own. Other tactics were, for example, at the anual IWD March through central London, waiting for the march to move off, and then rush to the front with their banner to them through visual imagery claim it as their own. (I think Sisters Uncut have learnt tactics from them.)

I think that the entryism is the important issue here.

Let us imagine that we are living under a system of "divide and conquer" in which some hostile foreign power, or a network of puppet masters or useful idiots in power here use astroturfing and entryism to undermine all manner of good causes and grass roots activit movements.

It would make absolute sense to use WfH / The KCWC / CWC to act as the public face of grass roots feminst activism while at the same time making an absolute mockery of such activism by demading wages for black lesbians / WfH and the like.

There are many parallels with the cultic elements within the TRA movement IMO.

I don't give diddly squat what consenting adults get up to sexually. I will support any gender non-conforming person and have done so at risk to my own safety in the past.

I will not ever join in with some kind of collective brainwashing programme where I am invited to testify that TWAW or call myself "cis".

At one level this is all about how far it is supportive and helpful to a person to validate their delusions.

I used to be good friends with someone who had a psychotic breakdown and ended up believing that she was a disowned member of the royal family. Meaningful, coded messages to her from her loyal subjects transmitted via the radio were involved.

If I tried to reasons with her that the radio was not sending her messages or that she was not really a princess she would get extremely distressed. Because I did not wish to distress her I did not challenge her delusions. If she talked about being royal I would just smile and try to change the subject. However I never called her "your Majesty" or "your Royal Highness" because to do so, apart from being a lie, would be cruel in some other way.

Many women thought women being paid to maintain households wasn't a bad theory, but as with their campaign around prostitution, it ends up seeming to say this is the only work women can expect to get so lets pay them and give them workers rights. they never have campaigns about breaking the cycle of oppression and exploitation.

The important thing to notice about the campaigns for wages due lesbians / WfH and the like is that it makes them look like the kind of batshit "wimmin" featured in the Private Eye coulumn of the same name

And as ever, the mainstream media despite some exposing some of the damage they have done to women who innocently join them, they are still given media coverage. Unlike gender critical / radical feminists.

To be fair some radical feminists have always gotten a lot of exposure in the Graun, a fact that I find quite confusing given the Graun's support for the more extreme elements of the trans movment.

The BBC have always used the KCWC/CWC as a go-to group for soundbites. It may be because there are very few groups out there with spokeswomen willing to step up and provide content?

I had some minor contact with them at one point where I tried to explain something important to do with safeguarding.

"Oh but you don't really mean that do you?" said the KCWC droid, with a syruppy voice, while attempting to get me to think and behave in the exact opposite way that I wanted to think and behave.

I cannot express how much I loathe that kind of thing.

It reminds me of the scene near the end of The Office Christmas Special where Chris Finch is penetrating some drunk woman from behind in the car park. She is on her knees and says something like "oh no! Can you just stop for a minute, my knees hurt!" and he says, in a deeply soothing and reassuring voice "oh no they don't" as he carries on regardless

Fascinating info in this thread, especially stumbledin and hoodathunkit, (although I'm not sure I'm in the best place/mood for those links at the moment). Wait until the weekend and a strong gin.

Just checked, in a thread titled "Prostitution resource help please", the OP posted..."but need to find a wide range of useful organisations or articles to help and I guess to balance my own view too... Could anyone offer me some links?"

So all the information is potentially useful and not reliant on a narrow reading of one question posed in the intro. Good, glad that's clear.

I bought "The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth" at the start of last year but had not got much further than Chapter 3, which discusses ECP, Selma James & Wages for Housework and Scot Pep, hence my fascination with the above discussion. Anyhow since my earlier post I've been re-reading, with notes this time 😆👍

The intro is absolutely compelling, from Josephine Butler, to the murdered Yorkshire women in the late 70s, onto the totally tragic story of Emma Humphreys and all the work Julie Bindel has done around the globe on this topic. This book is certainly comprehensive & each chapter is well referenced.

Couple of points so far. It seems important to understand "the false distinction between forced and chosen sex work" promoted by advocates of the trade. As the grim stories associated with Holbeck in this thread illustrate, the tentacles of this abusive trade run deeper than 'individual empowerment'. Indeed Sweden promoted the 'Nordic Model' in their pursuit of developing a more equal society for everyone. What kind of society do we want to live in is one useful question, another, is it a human right to buy someone's body? (Or is sex a HR?)

The book is chockablock full of survivors, at least 50 are given voice & the organisations they have set up to support each other. And the book remembers some of the many who did not survive.

Prostitution is dangerous & abusive for far too many women & children, especially poor women & children. "The global sex trade is built on the exploitation of women & could not exist without the institutionalised opressions of gender, race & class". Crying that individual empowerment should have precedence over the wholesale abuse of women & girls is bullshit. As the indomitable survivor Fiona Broadfoot said (CEASE conference I went to a couple of years ago) "it's not sex & it's not work". Awesome woman that she is. The more I've listened to survivors the more this message comes across.

Right, back to chapter 3 again!

exponential - "The thread seems to have gone a long way from the original question as set out by the OP."

Surely up to the OP to decide how much of this thread is helpful and relevant?

Some of us have interpreted the OP's request one way, you another. That's all.

A lot of people here are posting links re the approach used in Leeds which tolerates street-prostitution/kerb-crawling in a specified area.

It's worth pointing out in the UK street-prostitution on the street is illegal and for the most part uncommon, and that most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting".

traceyracer - "It's worth pointing out in the UK street-prostitution on the street is illegal and for the most part uncommon, and that most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting".

It is also worth pointing out that:

• being illegal does not stop something happening (if it wasn't happening nobody would have bothered to make a law against it)

• "for the most part uncommon" depends on where you live and/or work.

• I have no idea whether or not "most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting" - but what I do have an idea about is that in all these cases there is a direct impact on people who are neither punters nor prostitutes, including children.

If you live next door or in the same street as a brothel you may or may not be aware of this - if you are aware then it will likely have been brought to your attention in an unpleasant way.

Similarly, hotels. Hotels frequented by "escorts" are not pleasant places, sometimes not safe places, for other women to be, whether alone or accompanied.

Holbeck needs very much to be highlighted as an example of how a Council can completely ignore the interests, views and safety of residents.

If they want to experiment on people, I wonder why they chose Holbeck, rather than an area of Leeds where the houses are most expensive? Why experiment with "street prostitution" in Holbeck rather than a brothel in a posh residential area? Or a posh hotel?

@Molesmokes It is not in the interests of prostitutes to draw attention to themselves and most operate quietly and discretely.

In my area when there are occasional visits by the police to premises to check for possible victims of exploitation or trafficking the neighbours express surprise at what was going on. There is little or no direct impact on the neighbourhood.

Similarly those prostitutes who use hotels –I don’t know where you get the idea that those hotels are not pleasant places, sometimes not safe places, for other women to be, whether alone or accompanied. Prostitutes are not prowling the corridors and accosting people.

exponential - "It is not in the interests of prostitutes to draw attention to themselves and most operate quietly and discretely.

In my area when there are occasional visits by the police to premises to check for possible victims of exploitation or trafficking the neighbours express surprise at what was going on. There is little or no direct impact on the neighbourhood."

You forgot to add: "YMMV" (Your Mileage May Vary)

"Prostitutes are not prowling the corridors and accosting people."

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

I did not say that that it was the prostitutes who are responsible for making those hotels "not pleasant places, sometimes not safe places, for other women to be, whether alone or accompanied."

I did not mention "corridors".

Clues:

• it is not the prostitutes in and around the Holbeck area who are propositioning children at bus stops and abducting and raping women.

• punters do not wander the corridors of Hotels looking for prostitutes.

It's worth pointing out in the UK street-prostitution on the street is illegal and for the most part uncommon, and that most prostitution that takes places is the legal-form which is indoors either in people's own home's or hotels in the form of "escorting".

I have an issue with this statement

In my experience anyone with an opinion on this issue will speak from their own experience and the experiences of people they know personally.

There is nothing wrong with this, it is how people naturally form opinions.

However given that women who are abused and trafficked are likely to have experience of knowing other women who are abused and trafficked, and given that women who experience sex work as liberating usually have friends who hold the same view, it is highly likely that people hold opposing views operate within echo chambers where their views become entrenched via confirmation bias.

It seems to me that whether we are talking about extremely vulnerable people who are addicted to drugs, mothers living in poverty, students engaging in sex work to pay for their education, escorts of various kinds, courtesans or whoever, the one thing all of these groups have in common is that they prefer to operate clandestinely if possible due to the stigma attached to sex work.

This makes it incredibly difficult to know which groups are the bigggest or smallest whatever side of the debate you are on.

I posted some links to a website run by former members of the Children of God cult, a seriously criminal cult that coerced and brainwashed women to work as escorts and to use sex and seduction to raise money and to recruit new cult members.

The Children of God was not the only cult to do this. Unfortunately cultic prostitution is extremely common and continues to this day.

Anyone reading the documents I linked to will see that that the women working as escorts, and encouraging other women to do likewise, were enthusing about sex work as a way of saving people for Jesus.

Now to most sane, rational people this appears delluded and disturbing but for the women working as Flirty Fish they were adamant that they loved to spread God's word in this way.

This raises a load of isses about personal bodily autonomy and consent and the manipulation of consent.

So I'm saying that there are a lot of nuances and grey areas here, grey areas relating to the following:

the uncertaintly regarding numbers / % of people invovled in different types of transactional sex - the only thing people can agree on is that this is an extremely controversial issue with different sides providing different stats

different levels of transaction in sexual encounters (some would say that marriage is sometimes transactional - it certainly involves contract law) some sexual encounters are explicitly transactional some less explicitly so some not at all there is a continuum and it is not always easy to know exactly where on the continuum any particular act falls

different levels of power imbalance - hugely important

different levels of abuse and exploitation (as I demonstrated with the Flirty Fishing links many exploited women appeared to be happy and enthusiastic about their "choices")

the changing nature of sex work since the advent of the Internet and the exposion of "women's empowerment" cults promoting sex work as a sacred spritutual path

the rise of the nerds, often lonely, socially arkward, neuro-atypical people with computer hacking skills and the potential to earn very high salaries. It is my understanding that many extremely vulnerble men (and sometimes women) are exploited by various actors selling not just sex but "bliss" and "intimacy" as a form of therapy and personal development.

I'm a bit pushed for time, but basically want to say that the sex industry has changed beyond all recognition over the last few years and that we need to examine the new trends with care if we are to fight abuses and exploitation and protect the most vulnerable people in society.

@hoodathunkit anyone with an opinion on this issue will speak from their own experience and the experiences of people they know personally while this is often true-as one can see from posts on Mumsnet, there is a better way-and that is to look at the proper research which is more reliable.

So we do know a fair amount which groups are the biggest or smallest police in various areas do have an idea of numbers in street prostitution and this is much smaller than those working indoors (in massage parlours, saunas, agenicies or independently etc). Other sources are information are the numbers who engage with support services here also information from counting prostitutes advertisements
here and here, plus we do have estimates of the number of clients of prostitutes from NATSAL surveys here.
Now none of these methods is perfect and all are subject to errors but by combining such results it is possible to get a picture of the quantified typology of prostitution in the UK.

Nowhere in these figures or any of the information does your cultish “flirty fishing” appear so if it exists at all it must be a very minor component of the sex industry

I missed out a reference here and dulicated another-sorry

Some of the admins on the saafe website will be able to furnish you with a lot of detailed first hand information. Try enquiring directly on there.