Sarah Ditum discusses student sex work with Jane Garvey on Woman's Hour

[HecatesCatsInXmasHats]

Sarah Ditum was excellent speaking to Jane Garvey about Leicester Uni's Student Sex Worker Policy Toolkit earlier. The academic before her not so much: "Students have always looked for part time work" pretty low on analysis of the differences between say working in a shop and prostitution. Sarah's section, in which she states it's the wrong approach for a university to take, starts at around 39 minutes in:

"The university should be giving the message that these are dangerous things for young women to get involved with"

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3gx

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

Can you imagine sending your daughter off you uni as a 17 or 18 year old - first time away from home - and seeing the uni advice given out ‘hey girl! Why not stretch that student loan further by going on the game? It’s tax freeeeeee!’

[LizzieSiddal]

I heard this, Sarah was excellent. Why are the BBC trailing this as an ok choice to make for young adults?

[terryleather]

@LizzieSiddal

I heard this, Sarah was excellent. Why are the BBC trailing this as an ok choice to make for young adults?

It's the normalisation of so called "sex work" innit, after all that's the "correct" position along with genderism, critical social justice and all the rest of the so called "progessive" guff that the BBC never tires of farting out these days...

[BrassicaRabbit]

I'd love to know the percentage of BBC employees' kids that are "sex workers".

[HecatesCatsInXmasHats]

Nope ThatIs. No one is really waving their daughter off to university hoping that she'll do a bit of sex work on the side to supplement her income.

[Imnobody4]

I'm so angry about this. Let's hope the bill to criminalise buying sex gets through. It passed the first reading and is due for its second reading in Jan/Feb
twitter.com/APPG_CSE/status/1336686777281753088?s=19

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

Is this advice given to the boys too?

[HecatesCatsInXmasHats]

According to the female academic involved there are male and trans student prostitutes, but when questioned by Jane Garvey she admitted that their numbers are extremely small compared to females.

[Grellbunt]

Call me old fashioned, but I was sold the notion that going to university was supposed to be one of the ways a Woman could get as far as she possibly could from ever needing to sell sexual services...

[UppityPuppity]

Sarah Ditum was great.

The normalising of prostituted women either in person or online by universities is a disgrace. They need to help young women away from this.


Good degree with prostituted honours?

I won’t encourage my DDs

[sashagabadon]

Yes the first woman’s argument was odd and back to front ( and remind me never to send my daughter to Leicester uni). Even Jane G was exasperated with her.
Funny how it is the female students encouraged into “safe” sex work ( as students have “always had part time jobs to pay for their studies”) and not the male students. Presumably they can just get normal jobs in a supermarket or a local pub.
Any uni that encourages this as a “part time job” rather than actively strongly without reservations discouraging sex work for 18 year olds fresh from living with mum and dad needs to take a long hard look at itself.

[sashagabadon]

@ThatIsNotMyUsername

Can you imagine sending your daughter off you uni as a 17 or 18 year old - first time away from home - and seeing the uni advice given out ‘hey girl! Why not stretch that student loan further by going on the game? It’s tax freeeeeee!’

Exactly! It’s grooming.

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

I was such a baby when I went to uni - 17 and very naive. They are supposed to protect and look after the mental (and physical) health of these young people in their care for gods sake. Do they also give a directory of local drug dealers?

[mollscroll]

Can't believe you can't trust universities not to feed this shit to young people. On the one hand it's all got to be safe spaces and Rhodes Must Fall and nobody must challenge an orthodoxy - on the other hand, have you thought about giving blow jobs to strangers to pay your termly bill?

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

And as I trotted off to check out my LinkedIn I see this from a charity I support...

[Grellbunt]

Funny how women are always bottom of the pile

[PlanDeRaccordement]

Horrible this is still going on. My university in the 90s did similar. Several of my friends worked as strippers/exotic dancers while in uni.
I had many offers to do this too, but never did. Instead I cleaned public toilets and waitressed.

[teawamutu]

@sashagabadon

Yes the first woman’s argument was odd and back to front ( and remind me never to send my daughter to Leicester uni). Even Jane G was exasperated with her.
Funny how it is the female students encouraged into “safe” sex work ( as students have “always had part time jobs to pay for their studies”) and not the male students. Presumably they can just get normal jobs in a supermarket or a local pub.
Any uni that encourages this as a “part time job” rather than actively strongly without reservations discouraging sex work for 18 year olds fresh from living with mum and dad needs to take a long hard look at itself.

Almost like they think the girls can do sex work to leave the 'normal' jobs free for the boys.

[anotherhumanfemale]

I wonder what uni careers services say about this. Given that students' part time jobs can be listed on their CVs for graduate jobs, would the careers service recommend putting sex work on there? If not, why not when unis are saying it's a valid form of work?

I wonder too just how many male academics - ie the ones who usually reach the top positions - advise their daughters to straddle dildos on the internet to add to their student loan? Or is it just other people's daughters who should be doing that?

I'm also wondering whether universities are no longer advising students to be careful with social media profiles when looking for jobs. We used to be told that companies could search us online before hiring us, so to be careful of privacy settings on Facebook. Is this advice no longer given? Surely a photo of you drunk on Facebook is less off putting to a potential employer than that video of you masturbating in crotchless panties that can never be removed from the Internet? Or is the idea that employers who search potential employees actually only search by given name, not by any photo they find attached to that name etc? Or is it the idea that face recognition technology doesn't really work all that well?

All interesting questions, I find.

[picklemewalnuts]

So what is in the toolkit? Does it say 'this is a dangerous and damaging way to stretch your grant. You can make it safer by: (methods of reducing risk). Please remember there are hardship grants which can be applied for here:

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

I suppose the university's point of view would be similar to drug use. People are going to do it, so let's give them some information so they might just do it in a less risky way.

The problem with this is it's going to affect women a lot more than men. Also, nobody should be encouraging anyone to get involved in sex work. I wonder what they're doing to discourage male students from objectifying women.

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

Does it also compare the rates of assault/murder of various money making ventures? ‘The money can be ok but you have a 1000% more chance of being murdered than doing the graveyard shift alone in an off license...’

[mollscroll]

Tool kit is exactly what this is.

[testing987654321]

Back in the 80s I had a full grant, which you could just about live within if you were careful.

Also call me old-fashioned, prostitution is not something anyone should aspire to and men who abuse women in this way are scum.

[Ifonlyus]

@Grellbunt

Call me old fashioned, but I was sold the notion that going to university was supposed to be one of the ways a Woman could get as far as she possibly could from ever needing to sell sexual services...

Yep. Why go to University? No degree needed to get in to 'sex work'. Might as well have school careers advisors recommending they go straight in to that line of work and cut out the student fees.