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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Leeds managed zone 'glowing review'

62 replies

FoxBaseBeta · 10/07/2020 09:07

WTF

www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/glowing-review-holbecks-managed-approach-18568851

OP posts:
PaleBlueMoonlight · 10/07/2020 09:26

I am struggling to find a copy of the Review itself. Has it been made public?

FoxBaseBeta · 10/07/2020 09:29

Not that I can find either... I'm intrigued as to how they found this better than the Nordic model.

OP posts:
DianasLasso · 10/07/2020 09:42

Just remind me... this is the "managed zone" where local women can't go out to the shops for fear of being kerb-crawled by men, where women not in prostitution have been dragged off the street into cars and raped by punters.

Christ on a bike. If this was an "independent" report by the University of Huddersfield's Applied Criminology and Policing Centre, what this tells me is there's something rotten to the core about the current state of academia.

From the newspaper article:
Thirty people, including 12 sex workers, three police officers and two councillors, were interviewed as part of the review and the report says that almost 75 per cent of the interviewees said the scheme "should remain but needed to change in some way".

They also invited 1,940 Holbecks households to take part in a survey about the Managed Approach, but only 120 (6 per cent) responded.

The review described this response rate as "very poor" and said "the findings cannot be taken as representative of the people of Holbeck".

A sample of 30! And 40% of that sample were sex workers [sic] i.e. people with a vested financial interest in the system. And when the researchers realised that that their attempt to get a wider sample had led to a very poor response rate, rather than attempt to find a better way to engage with the wider community, they stopped trying.

Fuck me, that has to be some of the worst research methodology I've ever seen. They should be hanging their heads in shame.

MoltenLasagne · 10/07/2020 09:44

The quotes from the report in the article seem to suggest the opposite of this conclusion. I'd also like to review the report itself.

Interestingly, on the article the poll asking about the scheme currently 56% thinks the approach needs to end immediately and 24% thinks there needs to be significant changes. So not the positive community support implied from their reading of the 120 responses.

MoltenLasagne · 10/07/2020 09:48

I'd also like to point out that the question seems to be entirely around "has this improved sex work in the area for the better" and nothing on the impacts of women and children in the area, and the message it sends to men, women and children living in an area where vulnerable women are for sale.

I should declare I have a vested interest, being a woman who has moved out of the area because of the managed approach.

DianasLasso · 10/07/2020 10:04

Flowers Molten. Many, many years ago I used to go to an open mic session in one of the pubs in Holbeck, which I remember fondly. The area was rough, but I wouldn't have felt more unsafe than in, say, Beeston or Little London or Harehills. These days I wouldn't want to go near Holbeck.

FoxBaseBeta · 10/07/2020 10:17

I'll contact my local councillors for their thoughts (one of whom happens to be Sarah Field Smile)

OP posts:
Angryresister · 10/07/2020 10:28

The managed zone is a disaster for women and children. The men should be named and shamed ...with number plates published at the very least.. There should be substantial money available to help women get out of the clutches of the pimps and drug pushers. Leeds should be ashamed that this exists, and this study proves that it is not wanted.

PaleBlueMoonlight · 10/07/2020 10:37

Fox Could you also ask her where we might find a copy? Thanks

R0wantrees · 10/07/2020 10:48

Speech by Cllr Sarah Fields November 2018

"I am calling on this council to learn from Ipswich.Visit them and work with them and their police force. I am calling for this council to abolish the shocking and scandalous “managed zone” and commit to the Nordic model (continues)

concludes:
"Leeds has become a city where women cannot even meet to discuss changes to government legislation, but where men are openly raping women, soliciting for sex with children and offering to buy babies.

Our city has become a notorious illustration of misogyny and this scourge must be stopped immediately.

Our women deserve better, our children deserve better, our communities deserve better and the only way forward is to end this sanctioning of sexual violence that should be morally despised.

In memory of Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nichols, Paula Clennell and Daria Pionko."
thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3424059-You-have-an-ally-on-Leeds-City-Council

wellbehavedwomen · 10/07/2020 10:49

This is horrific. How is it allowed to continue, far less praised?

ChattyLion · 10/07/2020 10:49

Sorry because this shows how privileged and naive I am but fucking hell, every time I read about Holbeck I feel utterly horrified and angry. I mean who the fuck has the right to give over a neighbourhood to prostitution? How dare they? What the fuck did they think would happen there?

Clearyweary · 10/07/2020 10:51

I used to work in Holbeck. It was not pleasant when I had to walk back to my car from my office late at night, was stopped by men regularly. I really feel for the women and children who live here, it must be horrendous for them and incredibly difficult to get out of.

DianasLasso · 10/07/2020 10:52

The more I think about it, the more I think social sciences departments are prime examples of "institutional capture." They have been so thoroughly infiltrated by the pimp and punter lobby that no-one would get a research project okay-ed, get into a peer reviewed journal, get taken on as a member of staff, get their dissertation project accepted, if they were in any way critical of "sex positivity."

wellbehavedwomen · 10/07/2020 10:57

If you google Holbeck sexual assault, or Holbeck dragged into car, or any such combo, there are multiple hits. One lists three sexual assaults in 48 hours. In one suburb. Why the hell is this continuing? Just horrifying, the sheer contempt for women. They've handed over a whole area of a city to prostitution, without a single shiny shit given in terms of what that means for every single woman and girl living and/or working there. It gives men a green light to think sex is a commodity, and women simply the packaging it comes in.

seonaseona · 10/07/2020 11:08

You are all looking at the issue from the wrong angle.

Have you heard of universal credit?? sanctions??

What about campaigning for a proper welfare system, for properly funded services so women can exit??

Criminalisation may make you think you've 'solved' the problem, all the abstract concepts, but really criminalisation just pushes desperate women to take a higher level of risk.

As for the comment that a percentage of the respondents were "sex workers ie people with a vested financial interest in the system" - why the hell shouldn't the sex workers themselves have a say?? They are people, you can't on one hand label them as vulnerable and on the other hand discount their views. Why not try .. actually .. listening to them..

DianasLasso · 10/07/2020 11:11

Ah, yet another poster without a clue about the Nordic model pops up to tell us off.

The Nordic model decriminalises women in prostitution and supports exit strategies Nordic model proponents are often on the left and support adequate welfare support while women use exit strategies.

What it does criminalise (and rightly so) is the pimps and punters.

So before you go off on a rant, it's always a good idea to actually know what you're talking about.

Marmite27 · 10/07/2020 11:14

FFS! I’m so cross I can’t even formulate a better response Angry

DidoLamenting · 10/07/2020 11:18

The methodology is so abysmal they should be ashamed to exhibit it.

There has been a total failure of community engagement. No consideration has been given as to effects on quality of live of the women and men in the community who have no connections with prostitution or the effects it will have on their lives.

They are spending £200,000 per annum to make life easier for punters.

seonaseona · 10/07/2020 11:23

I do 'know what I'm talking about' thanks very much. I am an exited sex worker. I was a sex worker for 12 long hard horrible years.

Your ideology is all very well and good, but there is a big problem with it - the "adequate welfare support" you speak of - it just does not exist in this country!! Anywhere you look can tell you that. The welfare support is NOT adequate. 5 week waits for benefits, sanctions applied to those with mental health difficulties, rent payments not reflecting actual rents, bedroom tax, barriers to work.. I could go on and on.

My point is that until and unless there is an ADEQUATE welfare system in place, then criminalisation only serves to push vulnerable women engaging in survival sex work, to be forced to take more risks in order to survive.

Nordic model could only ever work with adequate welfare system in place. We don't have that. To push one without the other causes more harm to the women involved, which, if you allow them a voice in the debate at all, is what they are trying to tell you.

seonaseona · 10/07/2020 11:24

I know very well what Nordic model is, thanks very much!!

Michelleoftheresistance · 10/07/2020 11:26

I would like to know who was consulted in this review and to whom exactly this is a 'glowing success'. I doubt the women dragged into cars and raped for example think it's the model of progressive utopia.

Angryresister · 10/07/2020 11:29

seonaseona we all are very much aware of how inadequate welfare services and benefits are. However there is no excuse for maintaining a system for continuing abuse and putting money into the pockets of the pimps. We must end demand, not institutionalise it.

seonaseona · 10/07/2020 11:43

@Angryresister

So how do you expect these women who fall victim to the inadequate welfare system (you are agreeing is inadequate), to survive??

Until the welfare systems are adequate and services are properly funded, desperate women will continue to be forced into sex work. Only with Nordic model, it is more risky for us. That's what we are trying to tell you. The adequate welfare system needs to come first if you don't want to harm the women you purport to want to help.

Gwynfluff · 10/07/2020 11:49

vulnerable women engaging in survival sex work, to be forced to take more risks in order to survive.

I agree we need to have the welfare support system massively improved. I also understand your comment about your 12 horrible years in sex work. But sex work is inherently highly risky - I've read the statistics for risk of rape or murder. I also believe it is, in and of itself, traumatising for those who participate in it and traumatising in a distinctive way to other types of labour being exploited (as some on the left, who will never, ever enter in to sex work, like to suggest). Indeed some left wing men are up in arms that women should be employed, often by other women, in cleaning jobs in private homes but very happy that sex work is a valid form of employment.

It just isn't. I'm sorry you had to do it to survive, I do want a better welfare system, I would pay more taxes for that to happen. But I don't believe sex work is 'safer' when it's decriminalised and zoned because I don't believe it can be made safer - interesting that the tide may be turning in the Netherlands. Often the women in legitimised zoned area take more risks in a different way - more women are trafficked in, the price of services is massively reduced (it's completely capitalistic and yet some on the left fall all over it) and they have to take more risks to get more money - so agree to no condoms or to anal sex, for example.

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