review of Paid For part 3

There are several different aspects to this book. One aspect, her own personal experiences, is very interesting. Another aspect, her comments on her experiences, is not interesting. For example, in Chapter 10 she says that she met 'advantaged middle-class women' who were prostitutes. That is interesting, because it contradicts what the 'abolitionists' say. When Moran comments that these women must all have something wrong with them, probably child abuse, that is not interesting, because that's just her opinion.

"They were privileged. They were educated, only to second level usually but even so, I am talking about well-to-do fee-paying private schools. They seemed to have had other viable choices open to them; they could have gone to university, they could have gone to work in daddy's business, but yet here they were in this awful place doing something they clearly hated and that obviously made them miserable." Chapter 10 page 96.

Moran wrote in the same chapter that she knew one woman who managed to save ten thousand pounds. This woman would have been even better off if she hadn't spent so much money on overheads - rent, advertising, mobile phone, taxis, clothes and shoes. Moran criticised her for this: "The whole idea was supposed to be about making a half-decent living, I'd say to her, for God's sake" page 92.

The ex-preacher Gavin Shuker (now an MP but not for much longer I hope) said this in a debate about prostitution in the House of Commons: "There is undoubtedly a huge supply of money, estimated by some to be £5 billion or £6 billion of our economy, but that money is not finding its way into the pockets of women who are exploited through this trade; it ends up in the pockets of pimps, exploiters and those who benefit from trafficking."

In the debate Moran's book was mentioned three times. It's almost as if they haven't read it. She wrote that the reason she and others became prostitutes was 'the opportunity to put roofs over our heads and food in our mouths' page 73. She didn't hand over her money to 'pimps, exploiters and those who benefit from trafficking'. So her experiences contradict what Shuker and other abolitionists say.

This leads us on to the question of is it a good idea to remove the opportunity for women to put roofs over their heads and food in their mouths. This is a question that has been answered by Molly Smith and Juno Mac in their excellent book 'Revolting Prostitutes'. On page 150 they write this:-

"One anti-prostitution organization, the Women's Support Project, write in support of the Nordic model: 'If men were not prepared to buy sex, then prostitution would not work as a survival behaviour.' When you enact a policy that makes a survival strategy 'not work' any more, some of the people using it to attempt to survive may no longer survive."

I don't believe that all women who become prostitutes do so because they would otherwise be homeless or starve. Many will survive by low-paid work and then they turn to prostitution when they want something better than survival. We can all agree that there should be social security so that nobody remains homeless or hungry.

If you really believed that prostitution exists because of destitution, then you would campaign to eliminate destitution. Prostitution would disappear, together with destitution, without the need to put men and women in prison or fine them. Without taking away anyone's rights. Without removing that safety net that should still be there while society works to achieve the goal of removing destitution, which is a worthwhile goal in itself. They don't campaign for that though.

Another important question that Molly Smith and Juno Mac answer in their book is about how some laws can make prostitution more dangerous for women. It is important for sex workers to be able to screen potential clients. Street sex workers could do this but the 1993 law in Ireland and the 1999 law in Sweden made this much more difficult. On page 144 they write this:-

"Everywhere in the world, regardless of the legal model, street-based sex workers use a familiar range of safety strategies. For example, they might work together with a couple of friends, they might take time to assess a client before getting into his car, and they might have a friend write down his car's number plate to signal to him that someone will know who she's with."

A woman who is was a street-based sex worker (as Moran was) either had to give up working on the street and work indoors (as Moran mostly did) or continue under more difficult circumstances. In either case she can no longer screen her clients in the way she used to. Moran said this was a big problem with the 1993 Irish law. Smith and Mac say this was a big problem with the 1999 Swedish law. Yet Moran and others successfully campaigned for the Swedish law to be enacted in Ireland. This happened in 2017, and according to newspaper reports it seems to have been a complete disaster.

A major theme of this book is trauma. She writes that she was traumatised by having to have sex for money. People don't usually do things that traumatise them a second time. You might think that she was forced to do it because she had no other way of making money. However, she seemed to have quite a few different ways of making money. I'm not talking about her early attempts at erotic dancing and erotic photography. I'm talking about her drug dealing and her pimping.

"I had progressed to snorting cocaine at that point and would procure it for certain punters, making a mark-up on it, so that I was profiting from the drug transaction as well as whatever bizarre fantasies I was helping these men indulge." Chapter 9 page 87.

"I rented an apartment in Terenure for a short time and opened an escort agency of my own. I was seventeen at the time and I'm quite sure I was the youngest person advertising an escort agency in Ireland. It was a very simple thing to do and only required an apartment, a mobile phone and an advertisement in the back of In Dublin magazine, but when I had to deal with the reality of the ridiculous overheads, I soon got rid of the apartment and advertised for call-outs only. I worked mainly in the brothels and escort agencies of others from then on and did my own call-outs to homes and hotels. If I'd get a request for a call-in on my agency line I'd use a bedroom in the brothel of one of the women I was associating with at that time. I'd pay them a fee for the use of the room, which was common practice. I'd made money that way when I had my own apartment." Chapter 10 page 93.

As someone who has spent years on Job Seeker’s Allowance I'm not very sympathetic to people who sell drugs or pimp and who justify it by saying they needed the money. I never did that, I lived within my means on benefits. Many people in Ireland travelled to England and worked night shifts in factories. So to say she had no other option is far from the truth.

She wrote that she never had the opportunity to do an ordinary job, such as working in a bank. She wrote that she didn't feel worthy of that type of work. Well I would never have been allowed to work in a bank. You don't have to feel worthy to live on the dole or work in a factory.

Many women and men become full-time drug dealers or pimps. If she hated 'paid intercourse' so much why did she not do one or both of these? She said she didn't want to deal with the reality of the ridiculous overheads. Is she saying that prostitutes keep more money than pimps? She was 17 and hadn't yet developed her cocaine addiction. I'm not saying that women should do anything apart from prostitution, but if you are really traumatised by it then it's odd you should continue because of something about overheads.

Not once in this book does she express regret about the harm she did when she sold drugs or pimped. She does express regret about having been a prostitute. I don't expect anyone to feel guilty about being a prostitute, but I do expect people to feel guilty about dealing or pimping. Especially when pimps (and men like me) are demonized by people like her.

I have said that there are several different aspects to this book. One of them is her own personal experience. Another is her comments about her experiences. A third aspect is the quotations from Ruhama and others which begin each chapter and which I commented on in the first part of my review of this book.

There is a fourth aspect, and this is where she writes about some of her experiences but in a very vague and ambiguous way. It is clear what she intends us to believe, but it is not clear if there is evidence to back that interpretation. Consider this:-

"What was going on was the very same thing that was going on when I was lifting my skirt in a backstreet alley. The nature of prostitution does not change with its surroundings. It does not morph into something else because your arse is rubbing up against white linen as opposed to roughened concrete." Chapter 10 page 100.

She said that she only did handjobs and oral sex up till 1993. Then, after a change in the law, she had to start working indoors. She went back onto the streets sometimes though. One can only assume this was because on the streets she didn't have to do the 'paid intercourse' that she disliked so much and only did 'sporadically'. So why is she writing about her arse rubbing up against roughened concrete? How would she know what street girls do?

My understanding is that street girls don't wear skirts. They wear jeans, and they pull them down a bit and bend forward so they can be taken from behind. So they don't experience their arses rubbing up against concrete, either that of paving or a wall. But then again, maybe they did it differently in Ireland in the 1990s. Why doesn't she make clear what the facts are?

Another thing that is odd is that for the first two years men accepted that she didn't want to do vaginal or anal sex. Later they accepted that she didn't want to do anal sex. Yet they didn't accept that she didn't want to be penetrated with fingers or objects both vaginally and anally. She says that men didn't accept the limits of the 'agreed contractual exchange'.

My own experience of prostitution is that few women allow digital penetration. It is not usual for a prostitute to say beforehand that she doesn't allow it. If I ask for it she will most likely say no, or sometimes she will say she charges extra for that. Occasionally she will let it happen without additional payment. I have never forced anything upon a woman.

If Moran had written "I told him to stop but he wouldn't listen" or "I told him he would have to pay extra for that but he went ahead anyway" then we would be clear about what happened. That would be sexual assault or rape. But she doesn't write that.

In Chapter 23 on page 252 Moran writes this:-

"A 2005 Ruhama research report on barriers affecting women in prostitution states: 'Studies in Ireland have found that 38% of women involved in prostitution have attempted suicide and 25% suffered from diagnosed depression and were in receipt of medical treatment'. It is my personal conviction that the twenty-five percent of prostitutes recorded as having depression in Ireland is a significant underestimate of the true figure and that many prostitutes have not been diagnosed simply because they have not presented their symptoms to a doctor."

If you look for this Ruhama report it does indeed say this:-

"There are also high levels of stress related illnesses. Studies in Ireland have found that 38% of women involved in prostitution have attempted suicide and 25% have suffered from diagnosed depression (O’Connor, 1994)."

The Ruhama report is Factors affecting prostitution – Damage and survival mechanisms. In the references section they give the full title of the work they say they derive these statistics from: O’Connor, A. M. (1994) Health Needs of Women Working in Prostitution in the Republic of Ireland, First Report for EUROPAP, Dublin: Eastern Health Board.

However, the O'Connor 1994 document says nothing about either suicide or depression. What's going on? There is another document, written by O'Connor and somebody else that does contain these statistics. It is O’ Neill, M. and O Connor, A.M. (1999) Drug Using Women Working in Prostitution, Report prepared by the Women’s Health Project, Dublin: Eastern Health Board.

Now that we know the correct title of the document we can tell immediately that it is not about prostitutes in general in Ireland, but about prostitutes who are drug addicts in Dublin. As the study itself says "Numerous studies have highlighted the fact that women working in prostitution who are drug users, particularly intravenous drug users (IDUs), appear to be a different population from those who are non-IDUs." The number of drug addicted prostitutes is a fraction of the total number of prostitutes.

The study was of 77 women. All were drug users. 95% were working on the streets. 45% were homeless. Between 11% and 28% had HIV. 52% had been charged with soliciting. This had resulted in 20% of those women being imprisoned and 12% fined. 29 of the 77 (38%) reported having attempted suicide. 19 of the 77 (25%) suffered from diagnosed depression and had received treatment.

"Living with drugs causes considerable strains. A woman drug user who is also a mother faces specific problems organising her drug-related needs around her commitments as a parent, especially where young children are involved. Another dimension to the drugs issue for women is dealing with the reality of prison sentences for themselves, their partners, their siblings or their adult children. Prison sentences for drug related offences severely cut across family networks and reduce still further levels of support for women." O’ Neill, M. and O Connor, A.M. (1999)

Their problems were numerous: addiction, homelessness, imprisonment, fines, and risk of HIV as well as street prostitution. We know that drugs can increase depression, and people with depression may be more vulnerable to addiction. So to say that a quarter of prostitutes are so unhappy in prostitution that they suffer from depression and that even more attempt suicide is simply wrong. It is a deliberate distortion of research. They have hidden the facts.

What they are doing is using research that applies only to drug addicted street prostitutes and pretending that it applies to all prostitutes. They have used this tactic time and time again. It is dishonest. Another tactic they use is to bury information. Instead of referring us directly to the research which is the source of the statistic, they refer instead to a document that refers to it. Or a document that refers to another document that refers to the research.

So if someone tells you that the number of active sex buyers in Sweden is the lowest in Europe, or that there is no evidence that criminalizing men increases the risk to women, you should remember that you have to trace the evidence back to the original study. They know that most people, no matter how much they say they care, can't be bothered to do that.

The O'Connor 1994 study is interesting, resulting from interviews with 18 street-based sex workers after the introduction of the 1993 law. It says twice that they are not a representative sample of sex workers in Ireland.

"Three (17%) of the women felt very strongly that the new law is leading to the emergence of pimps (male protectors) and therefore, an increase in violence and intimidation on the streets. One said "anyone with enough money to rent an apartment and a mobile phone can go into business as a pimp. These men are offering protection and a "safe house" to women who are working. "They leech (latch) onto the women providing protection and paying bail, that's when the violence comes in"." O'Connor, A.M. (1994)

We know that at least one woman was leeching onto the women and that was Rachel Moran. It seems that sex workers don't hate people like me, they hate people like her. I think that O'Connor and O'Neill did good work interviewing street-based sex workers. Their data should have been used to improve the lives of the most vulnerable women. Instead it has been abused by Moran (former pimp) and Ruhama (The Church) to bring in legislation that harms the most vulnerable women. She exploited them then and she's exploiting them now.

The only time Moran mentions decriminalisation is when she writes about the Nordic model decriminalising the sale of sex. It doesn't. Prostitutes go to jail under the Nordic model. There is no mention of New Zealand where prostitutes are genuinely decriminalised: they do not go to jail. She is not presenting both sides of the argument. She does not mention the difference between legalisation and decriminalisation.

There is the issue of why do sex workers get paid so much. At the end of Chapter 19 page 204 she writes this: "Their higher pay does not reflect gender parity; it reflects the difficulty involved in earning it". In a way she's right.

Incidentally, on this page she uses her most florid language. Phrases such as 'the decision to sell the flesh on one's bones' and 'to bear the burden of its corruption on their bodies' may go down well with the abolitionist audience and especially the Christians but to me they are laughable.

If you go to Manchester the going rate for half an hour with a sex worker is £35 to £40. If you go to Liverpool it is £70. In Liverpool the going rate for a straight massage with nothing sexual is £25 to £30 for a half hour. The reason why Liverpool sex workers demand more than Manchester sex workers is not because they hate what they are doing more but because the police have a different attitude. In Liverpool women find it more difficult to work and keep themselves safe. It is the police who create the difficulty not the punters.

Note that she doesn't say that the money goes to pimps and traffickers and not to the women.

In the epilogue on page 293 Moran writes that "Prostitution first fell sharply in one place and one place only. That is in the nation which suppressed demand. A global implementation of Sweden's laws, which criminalise demand, is the one thing I'd most like to see before I die." This repeats her statement that "prostitution in Sweden has plummeted" in Chapter 20 page 215. Although there has been an effect on street prostitution, none of the reports from Sweden show an overall reduction in demand. I have devoted a page to this issue, and I have devoted a post to the disaster that is happening now that the Nordic model has come to Ireland, with women being jailed not decriminalised. This dishonest book helped to bring this situation about.

In Chapter 21 page 233 she writes about 'pro-prostitution groups' who march in Gay Pride Festivals around the world. She writes that the gay community is being used and 'the pro-prostitution lobby is trying to pull a fast one here'.

By pro-prostitution groups/advocates/lobby she means people who believe in genuine decriminalisation for sex workers, as happens in New Zealand. They are not 'pro-prostitution', they just don't want sex workers to be arrested for working together for safety. It is the 'abolitionists' who are trying to pull a fast one by pretending that they don't want 'prostituted' women to be arrested. Ruhama is now pretending that they never intended this to happen in Ireland even though this issue was discussed before 2017.

Abolitionists are a threat to gay men and lesbian women. They are a threat to transsexual people. Jim Wells, the Northern Ireland DUP politician, is a Christian. He is a Creationist who has got into trouble with his views on abortion and gay rights.

He was instrumental in getting the Nordic model adopted in Northern Ireland, where the first man to be arrested was arrested along with three women. He used a false statistic to do that. He said in the Northern Ireland Assembly that 127 prostitutes were murdered in the Netherlands after legalisation there.

Rachel Moran repeated this false statistic on radio. Julie Bindel and Kat Banyard quote 'Mr Wells' in their recent books. Banyard uses his false statistic.

So it's not surprising that sex workers and people who genuinely believe in their decriminalisation are welcome at Gay Pride Festivals. Obviously they aren't a sexual minority, but then neither are transsexuals who are also welcome and also threatened by people like 'Mr Wells'. Third-wave sex-positive feminists belong here too.

If the abolitionists don't like it then they can have their own parade. What would that look like? They could have Jim Wells to lead it, but then maybe they would keep him out of sight because you don't want to let the mask slip. But you could have another evangelical like Ian Paisley junior or Gavin Shuker. Ian Paisley junior has said "We don't like poofs" and was Chair in a debate where Gavin Shuker and Fiona Bruce spoke in favour of the Nordic model.

Or MP Fiona Bruce from the Evangelical Alliance. She is trying to get the Nordic model adopted in Britain. She voted against gay marriage and wants to restrict abortion. The nuns of Ruhama would be there, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters could each have their own floats. It might seem odd that Evangelicals, Catholics and Radical Feminist lesbians can work together but one thing unites them: they don't like men and women having casual sex.

Radical Feminists like Julie Bindel and Kat Banyard would be there. There could be a guest speaker from America, a social conservative who could talk about incarceration of men and women: after all the American model is the same as the Nordic model just without the hypocrisy. Another guest could be an African preacher or politician, one of the ones who put gay men and lesbian women in prison. Maybe someone from the Taliban?

Pride of place would be the survivors. Women like Rachel Moran and Anna, who we are all supposed to be listening to, despite the fact that they tell different stories. Anna's book 'Slave' makes 'Paid For' look like 'Belle de Jour'. Dr Brooke Magnanti wouldn't be invited because she doesn't count as a survivor. Also she's an expert in statistics so she might upset the nuns.

The biggest problem with this book is that the main message is women go into prostitution to avoid poverty. This is different from the 'abolitionist' message and Anna's book which says it is all about violent pimps or traffickers. Also, Moran contradicts her own message when she writes about the 'advantaged middle-class women' that she knew.

A big problem for her message is that if you say that women do it to avoid poverty then you are open to the criticism that most people work to avoid poverty. If your answer to that is saying that you feel offended by someone saying that sex work might have some similarity to working in a factory (even though she compared sex workers to bank robbers) and something about someone putting his penis up your anus (even though no-one put his penis up her anus) it's not convincing.

I found these on a Radical Feminist site

review of Paid For part 2

In my previous post I began my review of Paid For by Rachel Moran, which is her account of her life in prostitution in Ireland. I commented mainly on the people whose quotations were used at the beginning of each chapter. It's interesting that so many of them were either nuns or the type of Radical Feminists who don't have sex with men as a policy.

You have to question their motives in trying to stop prostitution. Do they really want to help prostitutes or are they trying to stop men and women from having sex and especially promiscuous sex? Are they motivated by a disgust and fear of lust? Do they suppress their own sexual feelings and feel anger towards those who don't? Why are they not concerned about all forms of modern slavery? Why do they use false statistics to promote their cause?

I have now started reading part two of Moran's book and have come across something fascinating. She begins part two still working on the streets. She wrote that she had more control over who she would have sex with than when she worked in brothels/massage parlours or as an escort. She wrote that the 1993 Sexual Offences Act changed everything: she was forced to work indoors and for the first time have vaginal sex. Up till then she had been able to do only hand relief or oral sex.

The change is described as "traumatic" and caused "an inordinate level of suffering" for many women, not just her. "If you are working for yourself, you cannot adequately assess a man down the phone-line, and if you are working for someone else, you do not even have the chance to try." A woman working on her own is vulnerable, and a woman working in a brothel, massage parlour or for an agency is too.

However, what she doesn't mention is where two or more women work together for safety. That's illegal in Britain, Ireland and Sweden. It's not illegal in New Zealand though. The system they have in Soho where a young woman is looked after by an older more experienced woman also solves that problem. Even if you have already agreed over the phone for a man to come to the flat, you can look at him through the peephole and talk to him after you have opened the door before letting him in. If you don't like him tell him to go and if anything goes wrong there are two women there.

There is another good page about Ruhama, the organization connected to nuns who ran the Magdalene Laundries. Someone posted a comment on the page about the impact of the 1993 Sexual Offences Act in Ireland.

"The 1993 sexual offences criminalised soliciting (later reinforced by some aspects of the 1994 public order act) forcing independent sex workers STRAIGHT INTO THE ARMS of brothels and organised crime which had restructured itself to receive them for at least a year prior to the law being changed. This left sex workers who had formerly kept all their earning, or handed over 20% AT MOST with no choice but hand over 50% – 60% of their earning just to be able to go on earning a living at all and paying bills (at the time the law came into operation September, like most mothers, many of them were frantic to find the cash for school uniforms, books and quite often fees)."

This confirms what Moran has written about it. So obviously she is aware that new laws that try to control prostitution can have a different effect from what was intended. An effect that harms women. It is curious then that she supported the introduction of the Nordic model in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland.

Ex prostitutes are called 'survivors' by Radical Feminists (and now by the nuns of Ruhama). They are told that prostitution has been abolished in Sweden which is why no prostitutes have been killed since. The truth though is that we have no reason to believe there is less prostitution in Sweden today than before. No prostitute was killed in Sweden for many years before the new law was introduced, so it can't be said that it stopped women from being killed.

In Chapter 20 Moran writes "The Swedish inquiry reveals that prostitution in Sweden has plummeted in the years since the implementation of the 1999 ban and states that: 'Since the introduction of the ban on the purchase of sexual services, street prostitution in Sweden has been halved. This reduction may be considered to be a direct result of the criminalisation of sex purchases'."

The inquiry she refers to is the 2010 Skarhed report Prohibition of the purchase of sexual services and it says nothing about prostitution plummeting. Instead it says 'The overall picture we have obtained is that, while there has been an increase in prostitution in our neighbouring Nordic countries in the last decade, as far as we can see, prostitution has at least not increased in Sweden. There may be several explanations for this but, given the major similarities in all other respects between the Nordic countries, it is reasonable to assume that prostitution would also have increased in Sweden if we had not had a ban on the purchase of sexual services. Criminalisation has therefore helped to combat prostitution'.

That's a lot of assumptions. The report is not claiming that there has been a reduction in prostitution in Sweden, just that it hasn't increased as much as some other countries. There are other reports which people like Moran ignore because their findings 'do not suit their agenda'. The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden did three reports. This is from their third (2007) report 'It is also difficult to discern any clear trend of development: has the extent of prostitution increased or decreased? We cannot give any unambiguous answer to that question. At most, we can discern that street prostitution is slowly returning, after swiftly disappearing in the wake of the law against purchasing sexual services. But as said, that refers to street prostitution, which is the most obvious manifestation. With regard to increases and decreases in other areas of prostitution – the “hidden prostitution” – we are even less able to make any statements.'

 It also states 'For instance, representatives of the Stockholm Prostitution Centre say that prostitution initially vanished from the streets when the law was passed, only to later return at about half the former extent. Now about two thirds of street prostitution is back, compared to the situation before the law against purchasing sexual services went into effect.'

So the only 'plummeting' going on was when women vanished from the streets for a time. Like women been thrown off a cliff. In 2007 in the capital two thirds of them were back.

Moran insists that these missing women couldn't have started working as prostitutes indoors. If that was the case then it would be as bad as the 1993 Irish law that created such 'disastrous personal consequences' for her and other women in her opinion. The 1999 Swedish law is different she wrote because its intended effect is 'eradicating prostitution'. As we have seen, we have no reason to believe that it has eradicated prostitution or even reduced it overall, or that it has had any effect except on street prostitutes.

The 2010 Skarhed report doesn't think that former street prostitutes have moved indoors and on the internet for sex work. They don't know though. There is no research that says this has not happened. The Skarhed report does say this though "For example, some people with experience of offering sexual services in the street environment now say that they only go out on the street "when the phone stops ringing". Some contacts that are made in street prostitution now only involve exchanging phone numbers for later use. The use of mobile phones has facilitated contacts between people in prostitution, but there are no data showing that this in itself has led to an increase in prostitution."

The figures for the number of street sex workers is given in detail in the Skarhed report but they are very patchy. There are no figures earlier than 1998 or later than 2008. There is a drop to begin with, then the numbers rise and fall. We cannot say what the situation is today, ten years after the report. Estimates of the relative numbers of street sex workers and indoor workers are varied. There does seem to have been an increase in internet contacts.

Moran said on radio that 127 prostitutes were murdered in the Netherlands since legalization there. This is false. Most were killed before legalization not after. Who told her this false statistic? I don't know, but it could have been religious bigot Jim Wells. I've detailed his 'sins' elsewhere so I won't repeat myself.

It seems that a lot of her problems were to do with being a prostitute in a sexually repressed society. She said she felt contaminated and socially excluded. She said that others must feel like her: bank robbers is one example she gives (I think sex workers would be offended to be compared to bank robbers, just as she seemed to be offended by sex workers being compared to factory workers). An intelligent bank robber will start his own legitimate business or something else. It's not just 'money laundering', it's what any intelligent person would do if they have cash. I hope in the future we will live in a society where sex workers don't feel unworthy but I don't think the nuns of Ruhama are helping.

Before she left the streets she smoked cannabis. Later she snorted cocaine with a client. I haven't got to the bit where she starts taking crack cocaine and heroin, if she does. Catherine A MacKinnon was wrong, this isn't the best book about prostitution ever. Read My Name is Angel by Rhea Coombs, written by a south London prostitute. That will tell you the depths that people can sink to - without all the bullshit propaganda.

review of Paid For

Review of Paid For by Rachel Moran part 1

This book is an odd mixture of the author's personal experiences of being a prostitute with Radical Feminist ideology. The oddest thing about it is the numerous quotations from women who are so extreme in their attitudes to sex that they don't have sex with men, under any circumstances. Each chapter of the book begins with a quotation. Five chapters begin with quotations from Ruhama.

Ruhama is an Irish organization that works with prostitutes. It is run partly by nuns from two orders, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters. Both of them ran Magdalene Laundries for decades. These were institutions where women and girls were imprisoned, because they were unmarried mothers or because they had sex outside of marriage.

A 2014 UN report stated: “Girls placed in the institutions were forced to work in slavery-like conditions and were often subject to inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment as well as to physical and sexual abuse. They were deprived of their identity, of education and often of food … imposed with an obligation of silence and prohibited from having any contact with the outside world … unmarried girls who gave birth before entering or while incarcerated in the laundries had their babies forcibly removed from them.”

According to this site, on their website, the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity boasted of “a long history of involvement with marginalised women, including those involved with prostitution”. They are quick to ignore that this 'long history' is a deeply troubled one – one that women all around Ireland try their best to forget and during which women and children were buried in unmarked graves.

Ruhama uses the language of Radical Feminists to campaign for the Swedish model, where men are criminalized for paying for sex. In 2015 the Criminal Law Bill did just that in Ireland.

We know that nuns don't have sex with men, but what about the other women whose quotations were used? Chapter 11 begins with a quotation from Sheila Jeffreys. According to an article by Julie Bindel in The Guardian, Jeffreys was the main author of Love Your Enemy which states "all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women."

I thought that a 'woman who does not fuck men' is called a nun. Sheila Jeffreys doesn't have sex with men and neither does Julie Bindel. They might not have sex with women either: their definition of lesbianism is a bit different from most people's.

Two of the chapters (10 and 19) begin with quotations from Andrea Dworkin. At the front of the book is an endorsement by Catharine A MacKinnon who states "THE BEST WORK BY ANYONE ON PROSTITUTION EVER". Dworkin and MacKinnon worked together on the theory of objectification. They took the philosopher Immanuel Kant's theory of objectification, changed it, and brought it into feminism.

Kant's theory was an attempt to find a secular reason why sex outside of marriage is unacceptable. Dworkin and MacKinnon however said that any sex between men and women objectifies women. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says "For MacKinnon and Dworkin, all women's consent to be sexually used by men cannot be true consent under the existing conditions of gender inequality." and "For Dworkin and MacKinnon, however, Kant's suggested solution is inappropriate. Objectification, according to these feminists, is present within all heterosexual relationships in our society and harms women's humanity. Marriage, or any other heterosexual relationship for that matter, is clearly not regarded as an exception by them."

The nuns of Ruhama, Sheila Jeffreys, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon don't have sex with men for religious or ideological reasons. Are they really the best people to ask about issues such as prostitution? Is it not probable that they are motivated not by concern for the welfare of prostitutes but by a desire to stop men from having sex with women? Or stop promiscuity between men and women? They can't stop ordinary men and women from having sex with each other on a Friday or Saturday night or on holiday, but they can stop men paying for sex. Or they think they can.

Dworkin's quotations in the book include “... we are talking about the use of the mouth, the vagina, and the rectum" (chapter 10) and "It is the use of a woman's body for sex by a man, he pays money, he does what he wants" (chapter 19). From this you will get the impression that a man can do anything he wants to a prostitute, including anal sex. Dworkin goes on "It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects ...".

My experience is that a man can't do anything he wants. Anal sex is rarely available. Even rarer is penetration by hands: it is weird that she should write that. What's more, in Moran's book she states quite clearly that prostitutes decide what they will and won't do.

"Some men will cite examples to back up their certainties. Usually these will refer to the fact that most prostitutes try to impose physical boundaries on the sexual act. It is true that they do. I avoided vaginal intercourse for the first two years of my prostitution life and anal intercourse for all of it. That is very unusual. I met many women who would never perform anal sex; that was not at all unusual. One particular young woman I met in my first months on the streets would not perform oral sex, ever. She just could not stand to do it and she could not understand how I was of the opposite mindset. I clearly remember her wrinkling her nose up in disgust and shuddering when I told her that all of my jobs were either hand-relief or oral."

Moran's personal experience contradicts what Dworkin wants us to believe. It also contradicts what Moran said herself on television: "You don't go into a factory and have the boss put his penis in your mouth, and the janitor put his penis up your anus". Moran writes that prostitutes will do what is least sickening to them, but that it is still sickening, so they don't have a choice. Choice is a myth.

What is sickening about hand-relief? I can't see how it is any more sickening that working as a bikini waxer or a dentist. As for oral sex, there's a big difference between oral sex with a condom, oral sex without a condom, and a man ejaculating into a woman's mouth. Some women do it for fun. She's missed the point though, the point is that what Dworkin and others have stated or implied is false. Men can't do anything they want to prostitutes. It's a myth.

Chapters 12 and 17 begin with quotes from Melissa Farley, who is the nearest thing that the Radical Feminist have to an academic. Farley thinks that men see prostitutes because they like control. We've addressed the issue of what men can and can't do. If you see someone and you have to pay cash up front, you know you can't get your money back, and they are getting an hourly rate higher than anything you have ever earned, how does that give you a sense of control?

I realise this post is getting very long, so I will come back to it with part 2 in another post.

Meghan Murphy, Rachel Moran and Rupert Everett

I had an interesting exchange with Meghan Murphy, a leading feminist in Canada. I commented on her site, called FeministCurrent. Her reaction to one of my comments was to reply "Oh gawd. You are full of shit. Stop lying. This is a waste of time if you are just going to be dishonest."

What was my comment that provoked such a reaction? She had written that her abolitionist movement was led by prostitution 'survivors' and that I (unlike them) didn't know what I was talking about. My reply was that Rachel Moran and Rebecca Mott - both 'survivors' - have said things that don't make sense to anyone who knows about the subject.

She accused me of 'saying things that aren't accurate' then of 'lying' and being dishonest.

I thought I had heard Rachel Moran on radio saying that prostitution can't be a job because anal penetration isn't part of a proper job. It wasn't on radio though, it was on a TV documentary with Rupert Everett called Love For Sale: Why People Sell Sex (episode 1). What she actually said is this:-

"You don't go into a factory and have the boss put his penis in your mouth, and the janitor put his penis up your anus. What we need to understand here is that unwanted sex  - even if you are paid for it - is damaging. And it's very flippant and I feel totally inappropriate to compare that to what goes on in a factory."

Which is interesting, because in her book she wrote that she never did anal sex. She wrote that she avoided vaginal penetration too for the first two years, by which I assume she only did oral sex. She also wrote that some fellow prostitutes disliked oral sex and refused to do it.

So it seems that I was accurate when I wrote that 'they don't have to do things they don't want to'. As a punter I know this from experience. Juno Mac and Molly Smith explain this in their book Revolting Prostitutes. Why is Rachel Moran telling people that prostitution is men abusing women in any way they want to, something that wouldn't be tolerated in a workplace, and therefore it can't be a real job? Is that not dishonest?

According to Juno Mac and Molly Smith, Rachel was 'hurt' by people not believing she had been a prostitute. "My truths do not suit them, so my truths must be silenced" she said to Meghan Murphy. Silenced? She's been on radio giving a false statistic (127 prostitutes murdered in the Netherlands after legalization) and on TV saying that prostitution can't be a real job because someone will 'put his penis up your anus'.

Which of your truths do you expect people to accept, Rachel? The TV truth or the autobiography truth? For the record, I do accept that you used to be a prostitute, but if you want people to believe you then you have to stop the false statistics and the contradictions.

When you were a prostitute, was that a real job because nobody put his penis up your anus, and they only put their penis in your mouth because you preferred that to vaginal penetration?

There are women who claim to have been prostitutes, write a book about it and change government policy (as you have done). We know for sure that at least one of them has fabricated it. In the Netherlands there was a woman called Valérie Lempereur who did just that.

Many jobs have unique features. They can still be compared to working in a factory, if you are pointing out that people do it because they need the money. You don't go into a factory and have to handle dead bodies the way an undertaker has to. You don't go into a factory and have to kill hundreds of animals the way a slaughterperson has to. People gravitate towards what they dislike least. Some people would hate handling dead bodies, and some people would hate someone putting his penis up their anus.

If you don't want a penis up your anus you can still be a sex worker, because most don't do anal sex. Can you imagine an undertaker saying he or she is only prepared to handle women's bodies, or a slaughterperson saying he or she is only willing to kill sheep but not pigs? In that sense it's not like a real job. In most jobs there's less choice, you do what you're told.

When Rupert Everett said to Rachel Moran in the documentary that factory workers too are forced into what they do by poverty, she replied that she was offended by what he said. Then she said 'You don't go into a factory and have the boss put his penis in your mouth ...'. I don't see why she was offended, he made a valid point. I am offended by her dishonesty, as we all should be.

Below I have put a transcript of my exchange with Meghan Murphy. When I first started commenting on her site I used my usual persona 'Pyramus', same as on this blog. More recently though I was on Facebook and instead of bothering to log in with Google and my usual persona, I used my Facebook persona which is 'Jennifer Shaw'. I have had this Facebook persona for years and it has been useful but I don't expect Ms Murphy will be happy when she knows Ms Shaw is really a man: she doesn't seem to like women who are really men, which is what she thinks trans women are.

This is the transcript:-

Meghan Murphy: The women leading the abolitionist fight are women who survived prostitution... Also transition house workers, grassroots activists, etc. You don't seem to have any idea who or what you are talking about. It is ridiculous to claim that either people who have lived this or women who are fighting male violence against women, for no other reason beside the fact that they care about women's lives and wellbeing, are 'seeing everything through ideological blinkers' or 'don't care about victims'. You should actually get out and talk to the people you claim to be critical of. You are the one who appears to exist in a bubble of your own making.

Me (Jennifer Shaw): How do you know that I'm not one of them? You know, when Rachel Moran comes on radio and says prostitution is not a job because what job is it when you get anally penetrated, that might sound plausible to anyone who doesn't know about the subject. But people who do know that most sex workers don't do anal, they don't have to do things they don't want to. When Rebecca Mott comes on TV and says men used to punch her unconscious to avoid paying, that might sound plausible to anyone who doesn't know about the subject. But people who know know that men always pay first, so what is she saying, that men have sex with her unconscious body? You should read some of the academics like Dr Nick Mai, Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon and Dr Brook Magnanti.

Meghan Murphy: Again, because you are saying things that aren't accurate. You don't understand the politics or activism of those you are attempting to criticize.

Me (Jennifer Shaw): So why is it that you don't seem to have any concern for the victims of other types of modern slavery? Why is it that you use false statistics? Why do you want the Nordic model when you know damn well that it doesn't work?

Meghan Murphy: Oh gawd. You are full of shit. Stop lying. This is a waste of time if you are just going to be dishonest.

There was another revealing discussion I had with Meghan Murphy on the same web page. The page is about feminists and right-wing social conservatives coming together in campaigns. What I said was that these two groups often have a hidden agenda. They say that they want to help women involved in prostitution, but really they just don't like men and women having sex - especially if it's outside a long-term relationship.

She said that I should 'engage with people's arguments with integrity, fairly and in good faith' and not accuse people of having a hidden agenda. My reply was that she had called Amnesty International as 'pro-prostitution' and having 'trafficker allies'. I then went on to say that radical feminists such as Julie Bindel, Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin believe that women are objectified if they have sex with men - even if they are married - and espouse lesbianism.

She didn't believe that she had said that about Amnesty and challenged me to say where the quote came from. She didn't believe that Bindel etc had said women shouldn't have sex with men. She wrote 'What on earth are you talking about? No one has said this. Not Bindel. Not Dworkin. You really need to try reading and listening before attempting to form arguments. You just sound dumb.'

So I gave a Bindel quote from a Guardian newspaper article and a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy about MacKinnon and Dworkin. Her rather pathetic reply was that I just didn't understand their theories.

She didn't know about their theories. When I told Murphy about them she didn't believed me. When I gave quotes that proved I am right she said I didn't understand their theories! Years ago I wrote a page about the various theories of objectification from Kant, through MacKinnon and Dworkin, to Nussbaum. And she says it is me who sounds dumb!

And she says her site is "Canada’s leading feminist website"!

I have put on my blog a page with a previous conversation with Meghan Murphy. I gave lots of evidence that the Nordic model isn't working and harms women. I also have a page where I criticize what Rachel Moran has said.

Sex, Lies, and Paperbacks

I heard the feminist Julie Bindel recently on the radio talking about prostitution. I thought it would be interesting to read her new book and was delighted to find that no one seems to have a copy. I could get one off Amazon of course but I'm not going to pay for it. I've asked in libraries and been told I can request it, which I don't want to do. It's not in bookshops. There is a feminist/socialist bookshop in Bold Street in Liverpool and they had a copy but it wasn't on the shelf and they had to look for it.

So even though she's had free publicity for her book from Woman's Hour and free publicity from The Guardian it doesn't look as if many people are going to read it. I could get the gist of what she's saying from the radio programme and the newspaper article. I was pleased to see that she's no longer claiming that when she went to Nevada they found learning disabled women who were being double pimped.

She had claimed that on an earlier appearance on Woman's Hour, although that hadn't been in her report. The report said that one learning disabled woman had been found, which is one too many obviously, but hardly any indication of what will happen here if we legalize brothels.

In her Guardian article she makes no claim that there is less prostitution in Sweden now because of the law criminalizing men for paying for sex. She writes that prostitution is 'a consequence of women’s inequality' and that 'it should be possible to eradicate it'. Yet Sweden is held up as the best example of an equal society, and after 18 years of the law they haven't eradicated it.

While looking for her book I came across a similar book by Kat Banyard called Pimp Nation. I read Chapter 5 in the bookshop and was annoyed that she is repeating a false statistic that I've seen before. Around the year 2000 prostitution was legalized in the Netherlands, but in Sweden they began to prosecute men for paying for sex. Banyard writes that 127 prostitutes were killed in the Netherlands during that time but only one in Sweden.

I heard Rachel Moran state this on Woman's Hour, and it's false. The 127 prostitutes were killed over a 30 year period, not 15 years, and most of them were killed before prostitution was legalized not after. So it looks as if fewer women are being killed in the Netherlands now than before legalization. Not more, which is what they are trying to pretend.

What's more, no prostitutes were killed in Sweden in the 9 years before the new law prosecuting punters. Banyard tries to dismiss the one killing since 2000 as 'domestic'. It wasn't domestic, the authorities handed over Petite Jasmine's kids to a violent ex-partner because she was a prostitute, who then killed her. This is what the authorities in Sweden do. They take away their children. They also deport them or get them evicted.

Banyard doesn't mention this in her book of course. She's happy to point out that in New Zealand prostitution might not be called fully decriminalized because prostitutes aren't allowed to solicit near schools, but she doesn't mention the extra-judicial punishments of prostitutes in Sweden. She doesn't mention that two women who choose to work together for safety can be arrested in Sweden, as also happens in Britain.

Prostitutes can be treated like pimps, as can their landlords if they don't cooperate with the police to evict them. I would like to know if it is men or women who are prosecuted, and if it is women whether they are younger or older. My guess is that it is women in their 20s and 30s who get prosecuted, not so much men or older women.

There are police in Sweden (and Norway) whose job it is to identify prostitutes, find out who their landlords are, contact them, and get the women evicted. Or deport them, or take their children away. Then they tell the world that they treat prostitutes as victims. Victims, yes, but of the police. 'Violence against women', yes, but it is this Nordic model which is violence against women, not prostitution.

Woman's Hour has got a lot to answer for. They let Julie Bindel pretend that she'd found learning disabled women (in the plural) being double pimped in Nevada. They let Rachel Moran state the false 127 statistic. Then Bindel again plugging her new book.

I used to like Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour until she started having a go at the transsexual woman guest whose only crime was to contradict Murray by saying she didn't think it was too much of an imposition for a top hotel to require their female employees to shave their legs when in skirts with bare legs. Jenni later came out with a statement stating that trans women aren't really women, that they can't understand what it's like to be a woman. I think that it's Jenny who is the one who is out of touch with how most women feel.

Kat Banyard got the false statistic from Jim Wells, who was a politician in Northern Ireland (before he started making homophobic comments). He's a Protestant Christian so he together with Catholics in the south of Ireland have campaigned to ban sex work. Radical feminists like Kat Banyard ally themselves with social conservatives like Jim Wells, she quotes him in her book.

She thinks that if a man pays for sex with a woman then he can do anything he wants with her during that time, and that men like nothing better than asphyxiating prostitutes by forcing their erect penises down their throats. That's why she thinks sex work can't be a real job, because you can't be taught that. The reality is a sex worker will tell her clients what she will and will not accept: most that I've encountered don't allow kissing, fingering, oral sex without a condom or anal sex (or asphyxiation). She can even tell her client she doesn't want him to get on top of her if he's too big (that has happened to me twice, I'm tall and slightly overweight: I respected what they wanted).

This blog allies itself with sex workers, transexuals and gay men. Not that I think these three groups have anything in common except that they are under threat by people like Jim Wells. It allies itself with sex-positive feminists, as opposed to radical feminists like Bindel and Banyard.

I ally myself with sex workers like Laura Lee who after she was presented with the false 127 statistic at the Northern Ireland Assembly found out the truth about it. I ally myself with all the sex workers who are arrested just for trying to make themselves safe by working together, and the ones targeted by the punishment squads in Sweden and Norway. I ally myself with transsexuals and support their right to be who they really are. I ally myself with gay men and women and believe they can make parents who are just as good as heterosexual couples. Jim Wells - who doesn't believe that - can keep his opinions to himself. So can all the liars with their false statistics and their hidden agendas. I know what side I'm on.

I realize that many will doubt that sex workers are arrested and evicted in Sweden and Norway. The whole idea of the Nordic Model is that prostitutes aren't punished. Bindel said in her recent Woman's Hour appearance "They shouldn't be arrested - ever". I have collected all the evidence on my blog page The truth about the Swedish Model. Even more on my new page don't erase or edit out Petite Jasmine. You can also read my An Open Letter to Rachel Moran for more information about the 127 statistic. You may want to read my review of feminist Natasha Walter's book Living Dolls where I expose her false statistics.

UPDATE: After reading more about Petite Jasmine I can see that there are people who are trying to say that she didn't have her children taken away because she was a sex worker. There is no evidence that she was drinking and taking drugs, although she was accused of these things.

Jasmine wrote in a letter to a Swedish MP after her house had been stormed by social workers and her children forcibly taken into custody "I was subjected to an investigation which in a desperate way tried to find all those signs that they already from the start were convinced would be there, because I had been selling sex. Drug abuse, sexual abuse, emotional disturbance. They had a difficult time finding any of this, but it should certainly be known that they tried." So before she died, she herself had said that it was because she was a sex worker, and I believe her.

Someone asked why we don't mention the four women who have been killed in New Zealand since their change of law in 2002. We have no reason to believe that these four women (Mellory, Suzie, Anna, and Sky) would have not died if New Zealand had different laws. It isn't the policies of the New Zealand government that have resulted in the deaths of these four women, but it is the policies of the Swedish government that have resulted in the death of Petite Jasmine. That is why we protest at the policies of the Swedish government.

Sweden has not reduced prostitution. Neither can they claim that their policies have resulted in an end to the murder of sex workers. There were no murders in the nine years before the introduction of the new law. They want us to believe that the Swedish law has stopped women from being killed because prostitution is no longer tolerated there. They want us to believe that prostitutes are treated nicely there. All three of these are false: there has been no reduction in deaths, prostitution is just a common as before, and women are persecuted.

It wasn't just Petite Jasmine who was the victim. Her children witnessed their father stab and murder her, and stab and seriously injure a social worker. I want to leave you with more of what Petite Jasmine has written. I do this not to use emotion to promote my point of view, but to show what she was like and as a tribute to this brave woman. It is a translation from the Swedish so it might not be always grammatical.

"After one year and three months finally see her standing in front of me. The feeling when she runs into my arms and hug me, to get sniff her hair immediately becomes soaking wet of my tears, drag your finger along her small nose and chin, stroking her little hand and hold on her tiny body hard in my embrace and kiss her eleven thousand times in the forehead. To finally get to see her in the eye and say seventeen thousand times how missed and loved she is. And never want to let go again, but must. Created by my body when we two have been and we are part of each other forever. The love for my children is indescribable. (And justice system as said joint custody and half the time, where were you when everything was going on?)"

the prostitution debate on Woman's Hour

On the BBC Radio 4 programme Woman's Hour recently (03/03/14) Gavin Shuker MP talked about the results of the cross party committee report he chaired on reforming prostitution laws. He is a former Evangelical Christian (Pentecostal) pastor and he talks the language of radical feminists. It's a clear example of how religious groups and radical feminists are 'singing from the same hymn sheet'.

Here's what he had to say "There's always going to be a small group of people for whom it's a choice that they've made actively, but for the vast majority of women involved in prostitution it's a choice that's been made for them or a choice they're trapped in."

To which presenter Jane Garvey replied "And surely - you would imagine - that the vast majority of men who choose to pay for sex will know that the women who are doing it don't want to be there or there are a string of reasons why they find themselves in that position." No pun intended I'm sure.

The point is that the vast majority of men who choose to pay for sex are well aware of what all the research shows - that in Britain coercion is very rare. Neither is there any credible research to show that women are trapped in prostitution.

He goes on to say "The challenge is to men's attitudes of buying sex and in countries where they've successfully changed the law and made a difference to the prevalence of selling sex that's what they've done. They've tackled it head on and said it's unacceptable to purchase sex and our law's going to back that up rather than the other way around."

He's obviously referring to Sweden and some other Nordic countries. It's generally agreed that the law criminalizing the purchasers of sex in Sweden has had no effect at all on the majority of sex workers apart from making their lives more difficult. It has had some effect in reducing on-street sex work but that has always been a small part of the sex work industry and in Britain we have done much better through the use of ASBOs.

He also says "Prostitution is a form of violence against women and girls." This is just radical feminist propaganda and there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

He's obviously swallowed the radical feminist creed hook, line and sinker. He's just propagating radical feminist lies that have no foundation in reality. He continued "What you're confronted by though when you go into this with a genuinely open mind and you take more than 400 different submissions is you're confronted by alarmingly similar and consistent reports of the nature in which women have come into that trade. Many of which have come in under the age of 18 before they are able to even legally consent, with alarming numbers of care leavers, people that have been sexually exploited as a child, people that have been sexually exploited for money under the age of 18. Now if we're not going to take a serious look at our law in light of that ... then I think we need our heads looking at."

I have been trying to find out where is the research that shows that many prostitutes started before the age of 18. On the AVA site they state 'According to evidence submitted to the UK Government between 50-75% of women entered prostitution before they were 18, with 15 years being the average age of entry. [Home Office (2004). Paying the Price.]' However, when you look on the Home Office document Paying the Price: a consultation paper on prostitution July 2004 you can't find where it says that. On page 97 under Annex C (Age of first involvement in prostitution) the only place it mentions 15 years of age is where it mentions 3 studies, the largest of which was of 48 women and the most recent was 1998. Nowhere does it say that 15 years is the average age of entry. Just the opposite. The Home Office document does not make it clear what type of prostitutes these are; it seems that they are talking about street prostitutes who have always been a small minority among prostitutes and who hardly exist in Britain today because of ASBOs.

So when Gavin Shuker says on national radio "Now if we're not going to take a serious look at our law in light of that ... then I think we need our heads looking at" he is seriously misrepresenting the facts. Let him state where he gets his information from, because I can't find it. You can still listen to the programme here.

Rachel Moran

The next week on Woman's Hour (10/03/14) Jane Garvey talked to Rachel Moran and Ana. Rachel Moran said that she used to be a street girl and Ana said she was trafficked. However, blogger Maggie McNeill has good reasons to believe that Rachel Moran is not telling the truth. Another blogger, Laura Lee, believes the same thing. It seems that religion has reared it's ugly head again, only this time it's not Evangelicals like Gavin Shuker but Roman Catholics.

Ruhama is a Catholic organization connected with two orders of nuns. These nuns, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters, used to run the Magdalene laundries in Ireland where large numbers of young women were imprisoned without trial. A wide range of innocent women and girls were sent to Magdalene asylums because someone in authority felt they were sexually active or might become so.

Presenter Jane Garvey asked Rachel Moran "If the punters are criminalized, won’t this drive them and the prostitutes to even more risky circumstances?" To which Rachel replied "Well you only have to look at the difference between Sweden and Holland to get your answer to that. There’s been 127 women murdered in Dutch prostitution in the last 15 years. Now in Sweden there’s only been one prostituted woman murdered."

I have been unable to find this statistic anywhere on the web, although I did find on this page that 127 have been killed in the last 30 years. Prostitution in the Netherlands was not fully decriminalized until about 15 years ago so it's important to get the facts right. Were these women killed before or after decriminalization? Whatever the facts it seems that religious extremists, whether Evangelical or Catholic, are quite happy to say things that aren't true to further their cause.

As for Ana, the woman who said that she was kidnapped and taken to Ireland, I'm wondering why they had to go to Ireland to find a case of trafficking. I believe that trafficking does exist but that it is at a low level in countries like Britain. Could this perhaps be Ruhama again saying things that aren't true? You can still listen to the programme here.

Valerie Lempereur

It would not be the first time that someone pretending to have been a prostitute wrote a book and had an effect on the debate about changing the law. Dutch journalist Valerie Lempereur wrote the book Behind a Window in the Wallen (Achter het raam op de Wallen) under the name Patricia Perquin. People believed what she said and it had the effect of changing the law for the worse.

Maggie McNeill has written about this in a post on her blog, and in the same post she gives information about the situation in the Netherlands. In September of 2007 Amsterdam commissioned a study which was published in 2010; it’s 232 pages long and available only in Dutch. Maggie has put the conclusion and summary in English on her site. I've had a quick look at it and done a couple of searches using keywords but as far as I can see there is nothing about prostitutes getting murdered.

So I can only conclude that the authors of the study did not see murder as a problem for sex workers in Amsterdam because it doesn't happen. It looks as if Rachel Moran's statistic about 127 of them being killed in the last 15 years is totally wrong. This study also shows that underage prostitution is essentially nonexistent in Amsterdam. It looks as if Gavin Shuker's statistic about there being lots of underage prostitutes is also totally wrong.

One thing that I disliked in the Woman's Hour discussion of prostitution is when presenter Jane Garvey said that you can use statistics to prove anything. People can try to use statistics to prove anything but bad statistics can be challenged. I don't think the BBC should just allow false statistics to be broadcast if they can't be backed up. The BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less is very good at debunking incorrect statistics.

Dr Brooke Magnanti's book The Sex Myth debunks many of the statistics used by people who want to ban pornography, erotic dancing and prostitution. I especially like the chapter in her book about the belief that the presence of lap dancing clubs in Camden has increased the incidence of rape. Dr Magnanti - who is a trained statistician and a former sex worker - shows that this belief is false.

So statistics are important because they support the cause of decriminalizing sex work and not criminalizing the clients of sex workers. I can't accept the idea that statistics can prove anything and we just have to go with our gut feelings. Are most sex workers in Britain coerced or aren't they? It's not that difficult to get to the truth. The debate is hotting up, and the consequences could be that the lives of sex workers are made more difficult and dangerous if the law is changed on the basis of the falsehood of religious extremists and radical feminists.

UPDATE: I've just found out that Croydon Community Against Trafficking are screening a film about trafficking at the New Life Christian Centre in Croydon. "Our fellowship is in the evangelical and Pentecostal/charismatic traditions that lay emphasis on Bible based faith and an ongoing experience of the Holy Spirit." The same type of Christian are causing trouble for gays in Africa.

As it says in this Independent article 'Roger Ross Williams, the director of God Loves Uganda, a documentary about the influence of conservative US Christians in the East African nation, said, “The anti-homosexuality bill would never have come about without the involvement of American fundamentalist evangelicals.”' I'm sure that they would like to cause trouble for gay men and lesbian women in this country but public opinion won't allow it, but they can make trouble for sex workers by confusing people about the true nature of sex work.

I have been looking at the document produced by Evangelical/Pentecostal Gavin Shuker and his all party parliamentary group. There is very little in the way of facts and figures, it doesn't seem to refer to research, but there is a lot of opinion and some anecdotal evidence. They don't have any information to back up their assertions.

I've found out more about the 127 statistic. Laura Lee on this page states:-
"Given his obsession with this 127 statistic, I'd like to clarify: the statistic relates to 118 murders that occurred between 1985 and 2012 being investigated by a police cold case team in the Netherlands. In 25 of the cases, the victims were not sex workers, or it is not known if they were sex workers or not. Most of the sex worker victims were working illegally and outdoors, not indoors. Eighty-six of the murders took place before October 1, 2000 (i.e. before prostitution was legalised in the Netherlands)."

I don't know if Rachel Moran was ever really a sex worker and I don't know what her association with Ruhama is, but we can be sure her '127 women murdered in Dutch prostitution in the last 15 years' statistic is false. If she was really concerned about the deaths of prostitutes then she would try to get her facts straight.