Julie Bindel's new book

Julie Bindel was on Woman's Hour today talking about her new book. Nice free publicity for her although I don't expect it will do her any more good than with her last book.

She stated that women need to reclaim feminism because of the influence of men. Men are taking leadership roles in feminist groups and that's why some women have started believing things that she doesn't agree with. The idea that prostitution shouldn't be banned, for example.

That's ridiculous though because the books that have influenced me the most are by women authors. Molly Smith, Juno Mac and Emily Kenway. Also the feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum. I can't think of one male author.

She said she wanted to see a world without rape, domestic violence and prostitution. No doubt that will resonate with suburban housewives although I'm not sure how many still listen to Woman's Hour.

Her idea is that feminist policies shouldn't please men. However there are some men who are very pleased with Julie Bindel's policies. Jim Wells for example. He is a religious bigot who, like her, wants to get rid of prostitution, pornography and erotic dancing. Gavin Shuker is very pleased with the policies of Jess Phillips who has worked with him and other Evangelicals in the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation. Gary Haugen of the IJM was very pleased with Laura Lederer. William Hudnut was very pleased with Catharine MacKinnon.

The worst kind of patriarchal men hate prostitution, pornography and erotic dancing. Also gay rights and abortion. They are happy to work with Radical Feminists. The liberal men who Bindel doesn't like don't believe that the way to solve social problems is to give the police more powers and arrest more people.

There is a male influence in feminism that women should reclaim feminism from. In her previous book Julie Bindel quoted 'Mr Wells'. Mr Wells is the Northern Ireland politician Jim Wells, who is a religious bigot. He is an Evangelical Christian. Kat Banyard also quoted him extensively, in her book that came out about the same time. Banyard also used his false statistic.

When Julie Bindel and other Radical Feminists say that men who pay for sex - like me - are like rapists and wife beaters, where does that idea come from? You can understand why right wing religious bigots will say that. They hate promiscuity in all its forms. They associate sex with aggression, violence and death.

They are disgusted by prostitution and don't believe that there are some women who aren't. So they think that sex workers must have something wrong with them, be coerced, or desperately poor. They cannot believe that there are some women who choose prostitution for the same reason that other people choose their jobs; a combination of financial reward, number of hours worked and like or dislike.

They might say if I think it's valid job why don't I do it? I think being a waiter or a masseur is a valid job but I'm not doing those either. I wouldn't want to do those jobs because they like sex work involve meeting lots of new people, anticipating their needs then remembering them if they return. Some people like that. I don't.

On page 71 Julie Bindel states that 'abolitionist feminists' succeeded in 'effectively decriminalising large numbers of formerly prostituted women'. She uses this belief to counter the accusation that her kind of feminist is 'carceral'. Carceral means thinking that you can solve social problems by giving the police more powers to arrest people. It means wanting to arrest men who pay for sex. Radical Feminists have always said that they want to stop women from being arrested, so I don't see how women no longer having to disclose criminal records for soliciting defends them from the accusation of being carceral.

It wasn't the Radical Feminists by themselves who achieved this judicial review. It was academics (who Bindel hates) and 'feminist lawyers' too. She doesn't say if these feminist lawyers were Radical Feminists or other feminists. The judicial review doesn't decriminalise sex workers. Why isn't Bindel campaigning to allow women to work together for safety? Why isn't she campaigning to allow soliciting? Why isn't she campaigning to remove criminal records for brothel-keeping? Other feminists are campaigning for these things. This would be the real decriminalisation.

People who support the Nordic model say that they want to decriminalise prostitutes. They say they want to shift the 'burden of criminality' from prostitutes to their clients, from women onto men. Yet there is no Nordic model country that has done this. People like Bindel don't campaign for it. Occasionally they will say that you can't decriminalise women until you criminalise men. Former Irish justice minister Frances Fitzgerald doubled the penalties for brothel-keeping with the introduction of the Nordic model there. She gave some stupid excuse for that but it seems that genuine decriminalisation for sex workers would compromise the ability of the police and the state to wipe out prostitution. Which is weird because the evidence is that the Nordic model increases demand.

In this book Julie Bindel implies that anal sex is standard for sex workers. She wants to know if men would rather 'take it up the ass' than work in McDonald's. She mentions Rachel Moran and her book several times. Rachel Moran never had anal sex in all the years she worked as a prostitute. She didn't even have vaginal sex for the first two years. She only started vaginal sex after 1993 when a law was introduced which restricted prostitution. Even then she only did penetrative sex 'sporadically', preferring to do domination.

As for oral sex, there is a difference between oral sex with a condom, oral sex without a condom and cum-in-mouth. Lots of prostitutes don't do cum-in-mouth. In fact, lots of sex workers only do hand relief. There are a great many establishments where women do massage and hand relief. They don't do oral sex or penetrative sex. I'm not sure that the word 'prostitute' is even appropriate for these women which is one reason why the term 'sex worker' is better.

Women don't sell blowjobs on Hartlepool harbour for five pounds (page 131). I have never encountered anything like that even though I have been to red light districts where I met drug addicts.

On page 219 she briefly mentions 'women escaping prostitution in Cambodia'. Most prostitutes in Cambodia are not coerced into it. If they work in a brothel they are not kept there and do not need to escape. The only time they need to escape is when they are arrested by the police and taken somewhere, often somewhere run by American Evangelicals such as those in the International Justice Mission.

If you are talking about sex workers who would like to do something different (often after they have built up considerable savings) there is an organisation called Empower in Thailand that did literacy classes for them. Empower was refused funding by the American government because they refused to sign an oath that they do not support or condone prostitution in its many manifestations and that no funds will be going toward harm prevention among sex workers. Some feminists such as Laura Lederer worked with the Evangelicals, they justify it by saying they are fighting trafficking.

In 2003, as part of the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act Reauthorization Act, the administration announced that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would stop funding any group perceived as encouraging sex work. The new policy stated that groups “advocating prostitution as an employment choice or which advocate or support the legalization of prostitution are not appropriate partners for USAID antitrafficking grants or contracts” (Hill 2003). This rule meant that nonabolitionist groups doing AIDS/HIV outreach or offering other harm-reduction services to sex workers were no longer eligible for funds from USAID. Among the international programs partially funded by the United States was a sex workers’ literacy class run by Thailand’s Empower, a group that since 1985 has advocated for the rights of women in the entertainment industry in that country.

Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition by Gretchen Soderlund