Womans Hour www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000p0zn
Timestamp 28:00 Julie Bindel responds to growing online sex work during the pandemic, including OnlyFans selling online photos and videos for a monthly subscription (OnlyFans take 20%).
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TRANSCRIPT (JB part of it)
JB: I first want to address the language in this discussion - it is very one sided and belies a position using a term like ‘sex-worker’ instead of women who are prostituted and bland language when we’re talking about pornography, gives the impression that this is a sanitised version of prostitution from behind a camera. You can look at different levels of danger and clearly if there was a choice of on the street v behind a camera… you have to look at it in context. Make an assumption that men will suffer human rights if they can’t have access to women whether it’s direct or indirect. And some of the content on OnlyFans is directed by the punters who are paying is utterly grotesque and harmful to the women, despite the fact this is not seen as dangerous in any way. There are requests for women to dress as school girls, to choke themselves [JANE GARVEY INTERRUPTS], to film themselves defecating
[JANE GARVEY INTERRUPTS if anyone was upset by that perhaps I should have given a warning this would be explicit, so apologies for that…… can we just agree it gives some of these women a little more protection?].
JB: women have been stalked, their content has been dumped on sites such as pornhub, women are psychologically damaged by knowing that there is a permanent record of their prostitution, of their exploitation, that can be circulated evermore. Yes you can look at different levels of harm and risk, but it’s always risky. Prostitution is never safe. What we need to do is take the conversation off the women who are being exploited and who do have a human right, a basic human right to eat and feed their children, and we need to focus on the men, we need to focus on the demand.
JB: She said feminists have not been campaigning for better alternatives for women… we always have. We have been lobbying the government for time immemorial for exit strategies for women because the vast majority of women in prostitution. It’s feminists who want to see the end of prostitution and the criminalisation of demand. That took a case to the high court, which if successful would lead to the decriminalisation of any person in prostitution. So we were the ones who took that case.
Laura: you campaign for criminalisation of the sex industry by the criminalisation of clients, in other countries where that’s happened sex-workers have not been decriminalised. Throughout the pandemic, shocking harassment’s, police raids and arrests and this is not right. If the government are serious about stopping work they have to provide money and resources and not only exiting strategies because what are women existing into. We need the alternatives, the benefits at a level people can live on. Scrapping the 2 child limit and the 5 week wait would be the first thing.
JB: absolutely agree with Laura, we need to provide viable alternatives. It’s interesting though isn’t it? This is actually about women. This is about male violence and male dominance. This is not about men going hungry and starving and not being able to provide for their children during the pandemic, this is actually about women. We need to look at this as a symptom of patriarchy and male violence. That’s what the sex industry is