DIANE ABBOTT AND SEX WORK ARTICLE IN THE TIMES

[Mollyollydolly]

Diane tweeted about sex work
'Horrific that Durham University is offering training to students who want to be sex workers part-time. Sex work is degrading, dangerous and exploitative. Uni should have nothing to do with it'.
If you really want to depress yourself look at the responses to her tweet. I really don't understand what went wrong on the left, how is prostitution progressive? I just don't get it, some of the replies from the likes of Femi and blue tick Independent journalists make me feel sick. They sound like pimps.

Saddest of all are the young women who have been gaslight into thinking this is a good career choice. So depressing.

I imagine the reaction (both generally and on here) would be a bit different if it was safe sex work tips for older women. Pension feeling a bit low? Try OnlyFans!

Of course people are all for it when they imagine it’s blushing young students or fruity housewives. It’s like the 1970s never went away. Of course people like Margarita want to think it’s all 20 year olds on webcams and not think about trafficked or middle aged street prostitutes. It doesn’t fit the “high class escorting/bit of sexy fun” idea at all.

According to a young woman (20)who was writing about this earlier this year on man,
men are saying to women “It’s ok for you, You can go on Only Fans” They are already treating it like a normal job option.

Not on ‘man’ . I meant Mumsnet

foxgoosefinch; my housekeeping money is running a bit low this month. Maybe I'll try OnlyFans to supplement it!
I agree with your other comments BTW. Being abused or beaten up as part of the 'job' is an aspect that seems not to occur to those advocating for it as a career path.

Yeah, the “sex work is work” brigade always ignore the fact that if you did treat it as actual work, you’d immediately have to outlaw it again on grounds of it being unsafe. There are no health and safety/dignity at work/harassment/employment policies or laws within which prostitution would fit, unless you make special cases for them not applying - in which case it’s not just work akin to a shift on a Tesco till at all, is it.

None of the pro-sex industry posters ever acknowledge this.

"Germany: 55 sex workers murdered by johns in 13 years. The Netherlands: 28 sex workers murdered by johns in 15 years. Sweden: Zero sex workers murdered by johns in 16 years"

Eva-Marree aka Petite Jasmine was murdered.

www.thelocal.se/20130717/49120/

And in France, 10 sex workers were murdered in just 6 months under the Nordic model.

Germany population: 83m
France population: 67m
Sweden population: 10m

See what I'm getting at?

Murders aside, here are some stats regarding the situation in N. Ireland. In N. Ireland, it is still illegal for sex workers to work together same as Sweden (which results in police raids and women being criminalised).

*"Key findings of the review:

No decrease in the number of sex workers in Northern Ireland following the law change

56.7% of sex workers surveyed felt that the law had made sex work more dangerous, while 29.1% felt that it had made no difference to their safety

Sex workers reported “higher levels of anxiety and unease, and increased stigmatisation”

The legislation provided no new “exit” services for people wishing to leave sex work and no new funding for existing support services"*

Forgot the link

www.swarmcollective.org/blog/2019/9/20/nordic-model-in-northern-ireland-a-total-failure-no-decrease-in-sex-work-but-increases-in-violence-and-stigma

But why are you so invested in sex work, Margarita?

I don't understand why you seem to be so interested or why you don't understand the damage that can be caused to young women. Could you explain please?

Someone on mumsnet added an amusing comment to a thread on this topic about how if ‘sex work’ were really work, the health and safety gear necessary for avoiding possible harm to the worker would render the act impossible.

Eva Marree Kullander Smith (24 April 1986 – 11 July 2013), also known as Petite Jasmine, was a Swedish woman who lost custody of her two children to her abusive ex-boyfriend when authorities learned about her job as an escort girl which she only practiced for two weeks . She then became a sex workers' rights activist. She was murdered in 2013 by her ex-boyfriend, leading to protests by sex worker support groups around the world.

MPIE why let the truth get in the way if your argument, eh? The above is from Wikipedia.

French murder rate is 10.54 per million. Germany is 8.44.

55 murders divided by eight (so per ten million, comparable with Swedish population) is 6.8. That's Germany.

Ten murders in France divided by seven is about 1.4 per ten million. Divided by six its 1.67.

So the rate in Germany is massively higher although the murder rate overall in Germany is lower than in France.

@ScrollingLeaves

According to a young woman (20)who was writing about this earlier this year on man, men are saying to women “It’s ok for you, You can go on Only Fans” They are already treating it like a normal job option.

It all links back to the profoundly incel view that women are 'privileged' because they can commodify their bodies to make money in a way that men can't. It also links back to the idea that women are the 'gatekeepers' of sex.

The 'sex work is work' crowd seem to have taken their ideas of prostitution from such 'sources' as Diary of a Call Girl. The middle class, young woman who does it for a bit of extra money. It completely ignores the women forced into it from sheer desperation, the trafficked women and girls, and the women and girls coerced into it by abusive partners.

There was a woman who had been coerced into sex with strangers for money by an abusive ex - partner who very bravely spoke on an earlier thread about when she was doing it, she had justified to herself that she was 'empowered'. Once she had managed to escape, she was able to admit to herself that she had been abused and forced into something she didn't want to do.

The 'sex work is work' crowd seem to have taken their ideas of prostitution from such 'sources' as Diary of a Call Girl. The middle class, young woman who does it for a bit of extra money.

Indeed; and one might think this was exaggerating, except for the fact that @MargaritaPie has on very many threads explicitly pointed to Dr Brooke Magnanti, (whose PhD is in statistics, but who wrote a sensationalist and titillating anonymous book about being a high class call girl for around 18 months when she was young and attractive, which was then turned into the titillating TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl starring Billie Piper) — as a great expert on the policy and demographics of the sex industry.

Indeed. It seems to be a topic where pp actually posts links in an attempt to back up their assertions. There is a great deal of effort put in to convince us we seem to be mistaken about any negative effect of sex work on a female and that estimated numbers for trafficking etc are incorrect.

And even in the case of the 'middle class young woman doing it for extra cash' (a minority of cases overall, I strongly suspect), it's still not the harm-free, empowering utopia which 'sex work is work' devotees seem to be determined to promote. Offering your body as a service is more dangerous than working in a shop, or office, or a fast food restaurant. That is undeniable. And even if it's 'remote' (i.e. Onlyfans or cam work), there's issues there as well. There was a recent thread where someone's friend wanted to do teacher training but had a current Onlyfans account. Not only did posters tell the OP to tell their friend to take it down immediately, but that if it became common knowledge decades down the line, it would jeopardise a teaching career.

Julie Bindel calls middle class young women who do a bit of stripping or online (until they twig there is zero money in it) 'sex work' for a week or so and then campaign for the industry, 'Tourists'.

I think that sums it up well.

@FlyingOink

Eva Marree Kullander Smith (24 April 1986 – 11 July 2013), also known as Petite Jasmine, was a Swedish woman who lost custody of her two children to her abusive ex-boyfriend when authorities learned about her job as an escort girl which she only practiced for two weeks . She then became a sex workers' rights activist. She was murdered in 2013 by her ex-boyfriend, leading to protests by sex worker support groups around the world.

MPIE why let the truth get in the way if your argument, eh? The above is from Wikipedia.

Yes that's correct.

Do you think sex workers should lose custody of their children for selling sexual services?

@Helleofabore

Indeed. It seems to be a topic where pp actually posts links in an attempt to back up their assertions. There is a great deal of effort put in to convince us we seem to be mistaken about any negative effect of sex work on a female and that estimated numbers for trafficking etc are incorrect.

Re trafficking I'm just going to leave this here

www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails

@loislovesstewie

Would you honestly want your daughter to be a'sex worker'/prostitute @ MargaritaPie ? If not why not? If yes, why?

I missed this question.

No, but if they were I would prefer the law to be complete decriminalisation over the "Swedish model". I would also prefer they weren't evicted by their landlord and didn't lose custody of their own children if they had any because they sold sexual services.

So why then are you advocating that Universities, of all places, tell them how to work safely? I would suggest that it would be better to point out the pitfalls of carrying out prostitution.

Why are you posting something from 2009? and you posted this previously I believe, on a similar thread in January.

In fact, you never did tell us why you were so determined to push the agenda that there were no trafficked prostitutes.

And besides, that was 11 years ago. Are you also saying there are no people brought into the country as unregistered workers, or also known as modern slaves? Are you denying that they exist as well?

www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/taking-a-closer-look-into-the-uks-human-trafficking-crisis

Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery where vulnerable victims are coerced into sexual exploitation for profit. Almost 66% of the human trafficking economy is from commercial sexual exploitation, and the global sex trade exploits two million children worldwide. In 2010, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) reportedthat approximately 30,000 women were involved in off-street prostitution in England and Wales and that 2,600 were trafficked. The Home Office estimates that there are up to 4,000 victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation in the UK at any one time.

Sexual exploitation in the UK has increased significantly from 2017-2020. Recent data released through Freedom Of Information requests (FOI) suggest cases rose from 158 in May 2017 to 543 in April 2020. Escaped victims reveal that they are beaten, forcibly injected with narcotics, and pressured to watch their own families' physical abuse. The NRM discovered that the most prevalent type of exploitation for children was sexual, including forced prostitution. Although many children forced into exploitation are from vulnerable backgrounds, the issue of child trafficking is not limited to any particular demographic or socio-economic boundaries. Human traffickers operate at a specialist level, routinely manipulating children and recruiting them by targeting insecurities. Sex traffickers prey on vulnerabilities and use incline classified advertisements and social media platforms to lure and sell young women. In 2017, Michael Miller, a sex trafficker who recruited young girls online and prostituted them in New York, admitted to using Backpage.com to advertise his illegal operations.

If you are going to post evidence Pie, I would suggest you go for current data rather than using a failed report as a 'gotcha'. And frankly, it says a great deal about YOU that you posted that report as some kind of 'gotcha'.

Laura Farris MP is v much not of the same politics as Diane Abbott but v clearly made the case against sex work being normalised for students today: twitter.com/Laura__Farris/status/1460629359245639682?s=20

In fact, Margarita, maybe you would like to visit ONS

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/modernslaveryintheukappendixtables

In the year of 2018, the number of referrals for sexual exploitation for female adults was 1194 (total for all exploitation types was 1844) and for female minors was 532 (total for all exploitation types was 880). And that was just those reported....

Maybe you can ghoulishly crow about how low the numbers of trafficked women and girls a bit more. After all, it is fucking shameful that so few are reported and how many simply get moved on.

But... you do you Margarita.