my day trip to London

Encouraged by my pleasurable day trips to Sheffield I decided to make a day trip to London. Sheffield is two hours on the train from Liverpool and London just a bit longer. I wanted to revisit Soho and any erotic encounters with women would be an added pleasure.

I could see 8 Greek Street was closed but 2 Greens Court was still open. I went up the stairs but before I even rang the bell I could hear a woman's voice shouting that there's nobody here, come back later. When I went back later the door at street level was closed. I think probably the girl hadn't turned up so the maid had closed the door.

The girl's name wasn't outside the door. In the past their names were always outside. If you had a favourite then you could tell if she was there without knocking on the door. I didn't see any names anywhere. I think that the police have decided they shouldn't do it. I don't know why. I would have liked to see Poppy's name outside, she was the best.

I went up the stairs at 4 Greens Court. There was a young woman there who seemed Eastern European. Quite pretty but short. She gave me a nice smile and showed me the list of services. The cheapest one was £30. In the past it was nearly always £20. I'm glad they have increased the prices, they deserve more. She mentioned the £2 tip for the maid. I had forgotten all about that. I told her that I didn't have any change (which was true) and that I would come back later (which I knew I probably wouldn't).

One of the places I used to go was Little Newport Street so I made my way through Chinatown and went up the stairs. There was a nice Thai lady there and I decided to stay. I had sex with her, with all the noise of the street outside. The sounds from the street didn't put me off, in fact I quite liked them, the idea that there were people outside who had no idea what was happening a few feet away. The idea that you can step off the street and within minutes be looking at a naked woman who opens her legs for you.

Later I wanted to see another woman. In Peter Street was a lovely young blonde woman. I could have said girl because she looked about 20 but later she said she was 30. She is from Bulgaria. She has a very nice figure and a nice face. This is I feel what most men would go for. Young, slender and blonde. I got on top of her and shagged her.

It was a similar experience to the Thai lady. No name on the door, the same £30 for ten minutes, the same friendly smiles and conversation. There was something else that was the same too. When I was putting on my clothes both of them had sat on the bidet and washed their genitals. Both naked apart from their stockings. I found it very sexy. I realise that most men won't. That's a little kink of mine. I would have liked to photograph them on the bidet. Their faces wouldn't be seen.

Before I saw the blonde girl I had to wait. She was with another customer. The maid let me sit with her and her friend. She wanted the money from me before I saw the girl but assured me that she was beautiful. When I said I wanted the basic £30 service she said "Are you sure you wouldn't like a blowjob?". I could have asked them anything but all I could think to ask was if 8 Greek Street has closed permanently. She told me it had closed a long time ago, before the pandemic.

I would say about half of the walk ups have closed. I could have done more research before I went - finding the best girls and places - but I've never been good at planning in advance. There was a third woman in Lisle Street but the less said about her the better. Then it was time to go home.

I spent the same amount of money in Soho as I had in Sheffield. £90. Each sexual encounter in Sheffield cost £45, but it was for half an hour, not ten minutes. So Soho is not good value for money, even if you are able to orgasm within ten minutes using a normal thick condom. I expect most men spend more than the minimum £30.

UPDATE: I have since found out that 8 Greek Street has not closed. I was told something that was not true.

Some of you may be wondering if I found any culinary delights in Soho. Yes I did. I found a new chain that do salt beef. It is Tongue & Brisket in Wardour Street. When I lived in London I would sometimes have salt beef in Brick Lane or Selfridges Foodhall.

another day trip to Sheffield

I enjoyed myself in Sheffield so I decided to go again. I enjoyed it even more this time. Before taking the tram to paradise I thought I would have a look at Sheffield's indoor market. It was more interesting than the Winter Gardens I looked at last time. There were lots of food options and I chose a Nepalese curry.

I decided to go to City Sauna to begin with. Jenni off the telly was there. There were two sex workers. One was the tattooed lady who had been there on my previous visit. There was also Charlotte. I chose Charlotte. She is an older lady, quite tall and attractive. She smiles and talks a lot. She has black hair done up and wears stockings. I shagged her for a while but didn't manage to orgasm despite her best efforts.

She tried to wank me off. They know that wanking over tits works for most men. It doesn't work for me. I tried to wank myself but that didn't work either.

Honeypot has a good reputation so I went there. It wasn't so easy to find. The entrance is not in Attercliffe Road, it is in Worksop Road. It does have 774A in big letters on the front though. I went up the stairs and rang the bell. An old woman answered the door and explained that there was a man with the sex worker and another one waiting. She said I could come back later. I think she said the sex worker's name was Jessica. I thought Jessica seems to be very popular.

I thought I will have a look at the other brothels nearby. I could see Athena Massage and Diplomat clearly. There's supposed to be another one nearby called Escorts but I couldn't see it. Athena and Diplomat are a couple of doors away from each other and with both of them the entrance is at the back. I went into the alleyway at the back and thought about what to do next. Neither of these places has a good reputation.
 

is this the seediest alleyway in Britain?

I decided to go into Diplomat. I don't know why. It seemed quite nice, there was a bar and at the other end of the room were sofas with four women. One was a big black woman who was in charge. There were a couple of bored looking young women looking at their smart phones. And there was Alec.

Alec is an attractive blonde. She has a natural beauty but has a couple of tattoos, what look like enhanced breasts, and lips that might have been enhanced too. I thought she looked as if she could be a student. Later in the room I could see she was probably older than that but it was a wonderful experience. She is very friendly. I shagged her for a while but wasn't getting any further than I had with Charlotte. She seemed to be enjoying it, at one point she was playing with her clit while I was shagging her.

I don't like to ask if I can use one of my ultra-thin condoms. Usually the answer is no. I felt I could ask Alec. She asked to see them and then said that would be fine. So we put one on, I got back on top of her, and after a couple of minutes I had a powerful orgasm.

Alec took me downstairs to the bar and gave me a bottle of water from the fridge to take out with me. She's such a thoughtful nice girl. It wasn't a hot and humid day that day, unlike my previous trip, which I think was part of the problem.

Another thing that has happened to me is that I have found out one of the places where some of my favourite sex workers go to. I like to go to Rock Ferry Thai Massage near Birkenhead. I have a few favourites such as Joy. She works there some of the time but most of the time at other places.

Somewhere in Manchester is one place. Now I know that there is a flat in Southport. I went there a few days ago. The woman I saw, who will be there for a couple of weeks, was nice but I don't want to see her again.

I am planning a day trip to London. I intend to head straight to Greens Court in Soho to see if Poppy is still working there. I doubt it but I'll try there first. Then maybe head to Greek Street to find if they are still open.

my day trip to Sheffield

Last year I went to Manchester on a day trip. In previous years I went to Manchester often. I won't be going again. Last time was a disapointment, with many brothels I knew closed. I thought that I would try Sheffield. It's a bit further than Manchester but not too far. There are quite a few brothels in Sheffield, most of them along the Attercliffe Road.

I watched a TV series about one of these brothels. The series was called A Very British Brothel. The brothel - City Sauna - is run by a mother and daughter. They had another series called A Very Yorkshire Brothel. I thought the episodes were good, showing sex work as it mostly really is. The people at the Nordic Model Now! site were up in arms about it and made a complaint to ITV. 'They are concerned that women might be encouraged into prostitution on the basis of the programme.'

I thought it might be nice to go there. However, my research showed me that their place is not the best place to go in Sheffield. The best place seems to be GFE. I thought that I can go to Sheffield by train and have a look around the town centre, including Sheffield Winter Gardens. Then after lunch I could get a tram to Meadowhall South/Tinsley and walk to GFE. I expected there to be some young slender women there. I could enjoy spending time with one of them then perhaps go on to somewhere else that has the older fatter women that I prefer.

I think everyone who goes to GFE goes by car. It is easy though to get there by public transport, if you know how and don't get lost. You can walk along the canal from the tram stop a short distance and come out on the little road called Sheffield Road.

I went in and there was a man sitting behind a desk. That was different from what I'm used to. I asked him how many girls there are there today and he replied that there are three ladies. I had to give him £20. I can't remember if this was before or after I got to see the women. All of them were indeed young and mostly slender. There were two blondes but I chose the smaller black-haired girl. I thought she looked like she would be more friendly.

The man said I had to give the other £30 to the lady in the room, he had already explained that prices begin at £50. Millie led me to the room, chatting to me while she did so. I gave her £30 and she asked me to have a quick shower. On the bed she didn't seem to want to take her top off but was happy for me to look at and feel her pussy. I got on top of her and enjoyed looking at her pretty face. She told me she has Italian and Maltese ancestry as well as English.

After I made my way back to the tram stop which didn't take long. I got off somewhere near Attercliffe Road. I found City Sauna and went in. The daughter who I had seen in the TV series - Jenni - was there. I asked her how many girls she has there today. She said only one. There was a woman sitting on a sofa with lots of tattoos and a shaved head. I'm sure she must be some type of woman but I'm not sure what type but not my type. I said I'll leave it.

The funny thing is there were men sitting on other sofas in the same room. My guess is that there were other women there and these men were waiting for them to become available - having declined the offer of the tattooed lady.

Opposite City Sauna is another brothel called Pandoras. A sign said the entrance is at the back. I could see two doors at the back but they both seemed locked. Perhaps Pandoras opens later or maybe it has closed. I wanted to go to Honeypot further along Attercliffe Road because it has almost as good a reputation as GFE. I couldn't find it though because I had copied the number down incorrectly.

I found Caesars in Stanley Street easily enough. A woman spoke to me through a tiny hatch. She wanted me to give her £30 through the hatch. I asked how many girls she has and she said there is her and there is an Albanian girl. All I could see were her hands. She seemed to be African. I walked away. Finally I found Paradise Studio. The place seemed not only closed but abandoned. A large window had been smashed.

My conclusion is that the brothels of Sheffield are in decline. GFE was good and good value for money at £50. I think most men spend more there than £50. I would have liked to ask Millie what perversions she negotiates with her clients. She's not as innocent as she can look.

the Scottish government and the Nordic model

I found out recently that the Scottish government refuses to fund any women's sector organisation unless they accept that prostitution is a form of violence. Organisations have to sign up to the Equally Safe strategy or they won't get any money. The Scottish government also refuse to use the term 'sex work'.

The theory that prostitution is a form of violence against women and girls comes from Radical Feminist ideology. They say that a woman can't truly consent to sex with a man in a patriarchal society. If you accept this ideology then prostitution is not only violence it is also rape but all forms of heterosexual sex are rape too. You can't just apply the theory to prostitution.

The Scottish government think that they are using an accepted intellectual theory but there is no intellectual justification for it. They don't explain where this theory comes from, people are just expected to accept it, even though it's not the genuine theory. That's quite disturbing. Also, I can't find out who in the government brought in this policy: I would like to know if they are Radical Feminists or Evangelical Christians.

The Scottish government are copying what socially conservative Americans have done. President Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy, also known as the 2001 Global Gag Rule. It banned NGOs from receiving funding if they are pro choice about abortion. Then in 2003 USAID stopped funding any group perceived to be encouraging sex work, including HIV outreach groups. A literacy class for Thai sex workers was denied funding.

In 2003 the Bush administration passed a Global AIDS bill that prohibits international agencies from receiving funds unless they explicitly sign an oath that they do not support or condone prostitution and that no funds will be going toward harm prevention among sex workers. See Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition by Gretchen Soderlund.

It seems that the Scottish government is preparing itself to introduce the Nordic model into Scotland. That would be foolish because the official report into the effectiveness of the Nordic model in Northern Ireland shows that it has not reduced demand. There have been three reports into the effectiveness of the Nordic model in the Irish republic and none of them say there has been a reduction in demand.

I have been looking at books about women and violence. I looked at Enough: The Violence Against Women And How To End It by Harriet Johnson. As far as I can tell it has nothing to say about prostitution. It doesn't have an index but none of the chapter headings are about prostitution. It seems Harriet Johnson doesn't think prostitution is violence if it doesn't even get a mention.

I looked at Equal Power by Jo Swinson. She was the leader of the Liberal Democratic party. In Jo Swinson's book she writes about Sreypov Chan, who was 'sold into slavery in Cambodia as a seven-year-old girl'. "When she refused her first client, the pimp crushed up hot chilli peppers and pushed them into her vagina, then thrust a hot metal poker inside her." As an adult Srepoy Chan worked as an advocacy officer for the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Somaly Mam claimed to have been a sex slave and got others to make the same false claims. Long Pross and Meas Ratha were two of the girls who we know made false claims, and Sreypov Chan is another. Thomas Steinfatt has been looking into prostitution in Cambodia for a long time and has said that he has never encountered genuine instances of torture. Steinfatt has conducted research that shows coercion is not common.

So that's the fictional violence. What about the real violence against women in Cambodia? Sex workers are arrested by the police then held against their will in 'rescue' centres for months. Kept in poor conditions, there a near-total lack of psychological care for traumatized girls, an absence of meaningful job-training programs, and a blatant disregard for the young women’s privacy. One former worker said it was “like there was a revolving door for tourists and camera crews. It was like a zoo.”

American Evangelical organisations such as the International Justice Mission have conducted brothel raids in countries including Cambodia. The women they capture try to run away. IJM is funded by the American government. It would be good if the Biden administration stopped all funding to these organisations. It would help women more than the Scottish government refusing to fund good organisations such as Scot-Pep.

Jo Swinson learned about trafficking from Marie Claire magazine. Perhaps that is where Princess Eugenie learned about it too. She and one of her chums (Julia de Boinville) have teamed up to fight trafficking. It is clear that they support organisations such as the International Justice Mission and people like Nicholas Kristof. They are not doing good work helping women around the world, they are harming them. Instead of interviewing people like Kristof and the guy who made the Taken television series, they should interview people like Emily Kenway. At least they should read academics like Shelley Cavalieri and Gretchen Soderlund, who I have quoted below.

Below I have quoted from Between Victim and Agent: A Third-Way Feminist Account of Trafficking for Sex Work by Shelley Cavalieri.

In May 2003, law enforcement officers raided a brothel in Chiang Mai, the capital of the northern region of Thailand and the regional center for the many indigenous peoples or hill tribes that populate the surrounding mountains. They conducted this raid at the behest of a coalition of Thai non-governmental organizations and an American evangelical Christian organization [International Justice Mission]. The American organization, with funding from the U.S. government and in conjunction with the Thai non-governmental organizations, was dedicated to investigating and reporting brothels with children inside to the authorities, and tried to persuade the police to shut down such locales. The particular brothel raided in this story was a brothel like many others in the country, filled with ethnically Shan women from Burma. Most of the women were of the age of majority, but while accounts vary, some organizations asserted that there were teenagers working in the brothel as well. How these teenagers reached the brothel is unclear; the organizations claiming that teenage girls were there also asserted that the girls’ presence could not be voluntary due to their age and that the girls were victims of human trafficking.

The coalition of organizations effected what they termed a “rescue” of the women in the brothel because of the believed presence of children. What followed was a human rights debacle. Twenty-eight women and girls, most of whom were, by all accounts, adults, were involuntarily detained beyond the period of time that victims of trafficking may be confined under Thai law. They were not arrested or charged with crimes, but detained, according to the authorities, because they had been rescued from a situation of human trafficking. They were deprived of access to their belongings and saved earnings, which were locked inside the inaccessible brothel under police control; they never regained ownership of these possessions. After a lengthy period of time, the government deported many of these women to Burma. All of these actions, which the women experienced as both harmful and alienating, occurred under the guise of rescuing them from the brothel in which they worked.

According to social services workers who interviewed four women who escaped from the brothel as the police arrived, all of the women were ethnic Shan from Burma and were at least nineteen years of age at the time of the raid. Prior to immigrating to Thailand, their status as members of the Burmese Shan indigenous group rendered these women subject to summary detention and rape at any time at the hands of officers of the Burmese junta. Faced with the option of abuse by the authorities in a region of Burma overwhelmed by poverty, many Shan women chose, and continue to choose, to cross the mountains that demarcate the Thai-Burma border and move to a Thai city to work in a brothel. This choice has a certain logic, as forced labor, forced relocations, and food shortages remain an endemic problem in Burma. For many, work in a Thai brothel presented the opportunity to escape the repression of the Burmese junta and to send adequate money home in order to support families, educate children, and maintain households. From the perspective of these women, that they at times paid people to facilitate their passage to Thailand was merely incidental.

Further, the women who escaped the brothel prior to the raid claimed that they, like the women “rescued” in this particular scenario, and like many other Shan sex workers in Thailand, worked in the brothel of their own volition. According to these women, they were free to come and go as they liked; they were not subject to physical restraint in any way. They were not in debt bondage in the traditional sense of the phrase, although some did at times take pay advances from the brothel manager to travel home and back; they would repay such advances with a portion of their earnings over time, much like a loan against future paychecks that some workplaces offer in the United States. Yet from the perspective of the American evangelical organization doing this work, the women in the brothel, particularly the minors, needed to be rescued from the brothel. According to the IJM employee with whom I spoke during the summer following the raid, as all of the women had traveled across borders and left their communities to work in the sex industry, they qualified as exploited women in need of assistance, even when they personally denied that they experienced harm in the brothels. That they may have paid others to facilitate their migration was presented as further evidence of their exploitation.

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

Journalist Maggie Jones’s interviews with safe house managers indicate that shelter escapes are commonplace in areas where anti-trafficking groups are currently targeting their efforts (2003). The manager of the Phnom Penh home that took in the 37 prostitutes after the Dateline initiated raids reported to Jones that at least 40 percent of the women and girls taken to his shelter escape and return to work in Svay Pak’s brothels. Indeed, six of the teens taken by MSNBC/IJM had run away from the home within a week of the televised busts. When Phil Marshall of the United Nations Project on Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia’s Mekong Region was asked by Jones what he thought of current rehabilitation strategies, he said he had “never seen an issue where there is less interest in hearing from those who are most affected by it” (Jones 2003,1). In 2003, Empower, a sex workers’ advocacy program, issued a report documenting a brothel raid in Chiang Mai, Thailand conducted by International Justice Mission in which several of the 28 arrested (or “rescued,” in abolitionist parlance) Burmese women escaped from a local institution in the first 24 hours. According to Empower, the raid—conducted ostensibly for humanitarian purposes—took on many of the same features as a criminal arrest:

As soon as they had their mobile phones returned [the] women contacted Empower. They are only permitted to use their phones for a short time each evening and must hide in the bathroom to take calls outside that time. They report that they have been subjected to continual interrogation and coercion by Trafcord [an anti-trafficking NGO formed in 2002 with U.S. financial support]. Women understand that if they continue to maintain that they want to remain in Thailand and return to work that they will be held in the Public Welfare Boys Home or [a] similar institution until they recant. Similarly, they understand that refusing to be witnesses against their “traffickers” will further delay their release. (Empower 2003)

By the end of the month, more than half of the women had escaped from the shelter. What does it mean that so-called sex slaves often thwart rescue attempts? Is it intellectually and ethically responsible to call every instance of a practice “slavery” when many women involved demonstratively reject the process of protection and rehabilitation, and when they escape from supposed rescuers who aim to force them out of a life of prostitution (“captivity”) and into a life of factory work or employment in the low-paying service sector (“freedom”)?

finding out about good places

I decided that I would go to Rock Ferry Thai Massage once a month this year. I can avoid spending too much money by limiting myself to one paid-for sex session each month. Rock Ferry Thai Massage is not the cheapest brothel but it's nearer to me than other places. It's worth the small amount more because I nearly always have a nice time there.

It has worked out quite well for me so far. In January I had sex with Emma. She's older but I was attracted to her. In February I had sex with Maya. She's middle-aged but that's what I like best. I took a viagra one and a half hours before going. I used their condoms instead of my own thinner ones. Even so I didn't have any problems having an orgasm with either of them.

Things didn't work out so well in March. Sometimes I think I might be bipolar. When I am slightly manic it works out well but when I am slightly depressive I don't orgasm. I saw several women in March, at Rock Ferry Thai Massage and at other places.

April and May have been the best months yet. In April I saw Maya again. She was even more friendly than when I saw her in February. She was talking about her life. She said that after a week or two in Rock Ferry she goes to Manchester. There is somewhere Victoria station. I think she might have said it is a hotel. Then after a week or two she goes somewhere else and then she has a holiday.

One of the places I went to in March was a brothel in Liverpool called Christys. I have posted about it before. It is also called 69 and it is near to Aintree racecourse. I just turned up there and I was surprised because a new fence has been erected where the steps lead up to the top floor flat. When I rang the doorbell I could see that the flat was being redecorated. Becky answered the door and told me there weren't any 'girls' there that day. They would be open tomorrow. I said to Becky that I would leave it a couple of days then come back.

Christys was always a bit of a dump. My first review of it was negative. Then I got to like the place. However, she seemed to have big problems getting women to come and work for her. Often I would phone and there would be no 'girls' there. She told me she lost contact with Jodie, who was my favourite. So she can't have been making much of a profit. All the more surprising that she would be willing to spend the money to redecorate.

In April I was ready to go back. I wanted to see what she had made of the place. However, when I phoned Becky she told me there were no girls there. I said shall I phone back later in the week. She said I could if I wanted. I could have gone there and had sex with Becky but I decided to go to Rock Ferry instead.

Good thing I did because there was a delightful young woman there. She is tall with a very nice figure. I will call her 'Coke' which is not her real name. I saw her again the next week and we had a snog together. She probably doesn't do that with all her customers so I don't want men turning up to see her expecting a snog when that is at her discretion.

Both times with Coke I had an orgasm. The second time with all the snogging was even better. Afterwards I could see that she wasn't quite as young as I had thought. She looks in her 20s but if you look closer she could be 40. I make a note of the women I have sex with and give the experience a score out of 5. The first time with Coke was 5 and the second time I had to increase the scale and go up to 6.

I didn't ask Coke if I could snog her. It's just something that happened. At one point she put her tongue in my mouth. I did ask her if she wanted me to lick her pussy. Straight away she said yes, so I did. She doesn't like thin condoms though, which is fair enough. I'm going to phone up next week and if Coke or Joy are there I will go again. My money saving strategy has gone out the window. Coke told me Joy might be there, I saw Joy twice last year, she is very nice and told me I can use thin condoms.

On an internet forum I have been finding out about different things. I wanted to find out about Christys. I wanted to know if anyone had been there since the redecoration. I wanted to know what's going on there: has it turned into some kind of sex club where debauchery of many kinds occurs behind closed doors? Somebody said that it's probably just that Becky will be working there on her own now. Perhaps that makes it legal so no chance of being closed down so why not spend money on the place? Especially because she lives there and will want it to be nice.

I have also been finding out about a flat not far from Rock Ferry Thai Massage. I have told you about it before. Different Thai women use the flat for a week or two. Some offer full sex, some only offer massage and hand relief. There was a ladyboy there recently. I've found out that the way to find out who is there is to go onto the adultwork site and type in 'Birkenhead'. The Thai girl that comes up will probably be working from there. You have to book, you can't just turn up there like you can with Rock Ferry Thai Massage.

There is a new Thai massage place in New Ferry/Bebington. There used to be a seedy brothel round the corner from it called The Penthouse but that seems to have closed permanently. Most Thai massage places in the Wirral don't do anything sexual, but apparently this place does hand relief. It's called Tongdee. I won't be going there. There's only one place I want to go now.

Natasha Walter and Mary Whitehouse

 In my last post I said that I had listened to a radio programme about Mary Whitehouse, the anti-pornography campaigner. Since then I have watched both episodes of a television documentary about her. In the second part the anti-censorship campaigner Nicolas Walter was mentioned. Then his daughter Natasha was interviewed.

She said she now believes that her father was naive. The permissive society was a mistake. I did a post about her in 2013. In her book Living Dolls she writes that the number of sexual assaults increased in Camden Town in London after lap-dancing clubs opened. This is totally false. Dr Brooke Magnanti in two of her books (The Sex Myth and Sex Lies & Statistics) shows how this is false.

So who is the one who is naive? She is naive for believing all of the false statistics. It seems more and more obvious now that the reason why some people want to end prostitution is because it is a form of promiscuity. They hate punters like me because we are promiscuous. They want to roll back the permissive society.

That is the real reason: nothing to do with compassion for prostitutes.

Another thing they don't realise in their naivety that promiscuity is nothing new. It didn't start in the 1960s. You only have to think about the people around Winston Churchill. Women such as Daisy Fellowes and Doris Castlerosse. Or the Prince of Wales with all of his mistresses (the one who became briefly Edward VIII). Rich people have always been promiscuous.

pornography and violence

This blog is not about pornography. However, I came across some recent research about pornography and violence that I would like to share with you. It is Pornography and Sexual Aggression: Can Meta-Analysis Find a Link? The main conclusion is that "evidence did not suggest that nonviolent pornography was associated with sexual aggression". They found a weak link with violent pornography, but didn't know if this is just because violent people select violent pornography. This is especially interesting: "Population studies suggested that increased availability of pornography is associated with reduced sexual aggression at the population level".

So what journalist Libby Purves wrote recently in The Times is untrue. She wrote "Yet research across the world makes it clear that selling sex is not only an immediate risk but reduces the safety of all women. Men who buy it, whether online or physically, are significantly more likely than other men to rape or commit other violence against women." I'm not sure what she means by 'online' as opposed to 'physically', but it seems she is talking about pornography.

She doesn't give a reference for this 'research across the world' but it seems that she means the research done by Melissa Farley. I have dealt with this in a previous post. I am offended by the false allegation that someone like me 'reduces the safety of all women'. It is prudish journalists with their false statistics who endanger the safety of women: you can't have good laws based on fabricated statistics.

I have blogged about Sara Pascoe's book Sex Power Money. What I wrote is that I feel she has been very fair on the subject of pornography but unfair on the subject of prostitution. People might say why are you quoting a comedian, what would she know, but she has looked at the research.

page 198. "Some heartening statistics: if porn encouraged rape, then we'd expect rape rates to rise along with the availability of the internet. The 'Porn Up, Rape Down' study conducted at Northwestern University School of Law found that the incidence of reported rape declined by 85 per cent in the United States after technology made porn freely available."

page 200. "For comparison, twenty-eight thousand people completed the University of Chicago's General Social Survey between 1974 and 2010, and they found no connection between porn and sexism."

page 202. "The truth is that while there are plenty of hairless pussies, there is a rainforest of unshavens and anyone who is watching porn regularly has seen everything. Some interesting evidence against the influence of porn on young people is that all recent surveys have reported that up to 90 per cent of men prefer their partner to have pubic hair."

page 204. "The received wisdom is that porn is becoming alarmingly aggressive because easily bored consumers are demanding it. If this concerns you, the study 'Harder and Harder' published by the Journal of Sex Research in 2018 might put your mind at rest. Sociologists from McGill University in Canada studied the most popular videos on Pornhub, assessed the aggressive content in a random selection and found it wasn't true that viewers preferred aggressive content, or that the content was becoming more aggressive over time. They actually found, when measuring the length of time spent on visible aggression (biting, slapping, choking etc.) in these videos, that violence was a declining trend. And films where the female performer seemed to be enjoying herself were far more popular (in views and 'likes') than any in which women simulated or experienced distress."

page 224. "All I've found in my own research is middle ground. And that's reassuring - there is loads of middle ground, with extremes at either end."

page 227. "Hollywood releases about six hundred films per annum, so if you wanted to find out how many of those are violent (answer: loads) at least you could watch them all."

These are real researchers, not like biased Radical Feminist Melissa Farley. Real journalists (not Libby Purves) would look at real researchers (not Melissa Farley).

Since posting the above I have listened to a radio programme about Mary Whitehouse. Many decades ago she campaigned against pornography. She was a Christian. What she didn't realise was that a fellow campaigner and fellow Christian was a very sick criminal sadist who was a preacher for many years. His name was John Smyth.

It just goes to show that violence can come from sexual repression. Celibacy should not be encouraged as an ideal. This is what worries me about both Christianity and Radical Feminism. Mary Whitehouse was worried about violence but she was looking in the wrong places. She was also a great fan of Jimmy Savile (although you wouldn't know that from reading what Louise Perry has written about Whitehouse and Savile: Whitehouse was an enabler of Savile and Smyth).

In the book Hags by Victoria Smith she repeats what Louise Perry wrote about women like Mary Whitehouse saying no to men like Jimmy Savile. Mary Whitehouse didn't though, she gave him an award.

I couldn't help liking Mary Whitehouse. At least she was honest. Not like the Christians and Radical Feminists now who use false statistics and tell lies about the lives of sex workers. She would not have pretended that she has the interests of sex workers at heart. There was no hidden agenda with her.

Unlike Julie Bindel. She has recently said that Pornhub have a new porn category called 'Ukrainian girls and war rape videos'. Except they haven't. Somebody just made that up. It isn't true.

It looks like the originator of this belief was trafficking activist Tom Farr. He tweeted something that was later put onto a page on the Exodus Cry site. According to Wikipedia "Exodus Cry is a Christian non-profit advocacy organization seeking the abolition of the legal commercial sex industry, including pornography, strip clubs, and sex work, as well as illegal sex trafficking. It has been described by the New York Daily News, TheWrap, and others as anti-LGBT, with ties to the anti-abortion movement". I have stated many times on this blog that Radical Feminists share false statistics with Evangelical Christians.

review of Radical Feminism by Finn Mackay

Finn Mackay has a lot to say about sex work in her book. Before we come on to that I want to tell you about her attitude to political lesbianism and celibacy. Radical Feminists often say that women should become lesbians: it doesn't mean having sex with women but it does mean definitely not having sex with men.

I've always suspected that this means that most of them don't have sex with anyone, they are celibate. They are trying to stop men and women from having sex together, and this is their main motivation in wanting to ban sex work. It's not that they are full of compassion for sex workers and wish to end their suffering.

Let us have a look at what is the clearest explanation of how political lesbianism usually means celibacy. Page 67.

"Contrary to much rumour since, the paper was not suggesting that women should simply pursue same-sex sexual activity. It was about the political choice to dedicate one's life to women. In fact, in the paper, the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group clearly reassured heterosexuals that the lesbian bit is not compulsory, and that celibacy is always an option."

The idea of heterosexual lesbians is an interesting one. Particularly as they are always telling us about reality and fiction. It is a fiction that a man can become a woman, it is not reality, so they tell us. Considering that most people are heterosexual, then most political lesbians would be celibate. Like the nuns of Ruhama they want to stop men and women fornicating. Ruhama campaigned for the Nordic model in Ireland.

The paper she is referring to is 'Political Lesbianism' by the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group which was led by Sheila Jeffreys. Jeffreys wrote "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." 

Mackay explains that there are in fact four different types of feminist. The Radicals and the Revolutionaries, who are similar. Then there are the Liberals and the Socialists. I don't think this includes Third Wave feminists, who she doesn't have much time for.

Mackay quotes the opinion of an activist about sex work: "It is a form of exploitation, slavery: and a very specific one. I don't like the red umbrellas one bit." Page 207. Slaves don't get paid, neither do they choose their work or how they work. Sex work is the opposite of that: they are paid more than most people, and they do what they do in preference to the alternatives, having a great deal of autonomy in how they do it. Of course, there is modern slavery within sex work just as there is modern slavery within other types of work.

Mackay writes that so many feminists oppose prostitution because "they are against the presumption of a male right to sexual access to women's bodies."  Page 208. I don't have a right to have sex with any sex worker, she can turn me down if I don't meet her criteria. Lots of sex work involves a masseur using her hands not just for massage but to bring her client to orgasm. Is that 'sexual access to women's bodies'? If not, then presumably she doesn't have a problem with it. Except of course she does because they always have a problem with sex between men and women, even in marriage.

She writes that under the Nordic model 'women are not criminalised'. She also writes that 'Any such legal move must go alongside a large and dedicated financial investment in both harm-minimisation and exit services ... ' (page 210). She doesn't know that women are arrested in Nordic model countries for brothel keeping just like in Britain. Women are evicted from their homes and deported. The promised exit services don't materialise and the authorities don't like anyone giving them condoms.

She doesn't distinguish between legalisation and decriminalisation. She writes that the ECP (English Collective of Prostitutes) and the IUSW (International Union of Sex Workers) advocate the New Zealand model. The ECP 'favour small owner-operated ventures over larger big business brothel chains.' Page 211. The big business chains are thriving in New Zealand though, she writes, and there was a planning application for a 15-storey brothel. Well, that's not true.

She writes that legalisation would result in a bigger demand and more women involved in prostitution. She also writes that there will be an illegal sector. Page 212. However, in New Zealand there was not an expansion of prostitution after decriminalisation.

There is no reason why exit services should not still exist under decriminalisation. If a factory worker wants to retrain to become an office worker they should be helped to do that. If a sex worker wants to retrain they should be helped too. They should be offered advice about debt, benefits and housing. For the minority who take drugs they should be offered rehab.

A sex worker is not a commodity. She is not like a bale of cotton that I can take home with me and later sell. She is offering a service, like millions of other people.

There is no reason why sex work needs to be more dangerous than other forms of work. It isn't true that 'the average age of entry into prostitution worldwide estimated at around only 14 years old.' Page 211. There is no credible evidence that the Nordic model reduces the amount of prostitution or the number of murders of prostitutes.

She goes on to write about 'markedly gendered' and 'structural inequalities' as if these phrases mean anything. They 'cannot be overlooked' she writes, without spelling out precisely what she means.

Below I have quoted from her book and replied to what she has written:-

Page 217. "To put it bluntly, being a builder does not involve making one's body sexually available to one's employers; the same is true of journalists, academics, waiters etc."

She is trying here to say that sex work is different from any other type of work. The only thing that she can come up with is that sex work has distinguishing characteristics. All types of work have their own distinguishing characteristics though. Working in an undertakers is the only work where you have to handle dead bodies: that doesn't mean that in essence it is not work.

Page 217. "But the debate around prostitution cannot and should not be shut down by turning to the refrain that all work is like prostitution - because it patently is not; and the great majority of people understand this."

In what way is all work not like prostitution, or prostitution not like all work? People have customers, they negotiate a price for a service. They choose their form of work by looking at how much it pays, how long it takes to earn money, and what it is required for them to do. I can see how celibates will never be able to accept this.

Page 220. "No feminist I know is arguing for those in prostitution to be criminalised."

She obviously hasn't read the web site of Nordic Model Now! They say quite clearly that they do not want the repeal of the law that criminalises women for running a brothel. This is the main law used to arrest women in prostitution. That law always stays in place when a country adopts the Nordic model. There is in addition the law that gets sex workers evicted from their homes.

Page 220. "It would be nonsensical to suggest that all those people - women, young people, men - earning an income through prostitution are forced or coerced in the bluntest sense. However, the fact that there are probably some people successfully navigating the 'sex industry' without any negative experiences, for both the love and the money of it, should not negate the fact that research suggests this is far from the experience of the majority."

There is no evidence that most sex workers are coerced, either in Britain or around the world. Some sex workers have had a negative experience. That is the same as in other types of work. Sex workers can minimise these experiences by working together. Another way is to end up with a limited number of regular clients. Some sex workers only see men that they have seen before, they don't have to advertise and they can refuse to see a man they don't like. When police raid a flat they arrest women who work together and confiscate their phones thus disrupting safe activity. 

Page 221. "It is usually acceptable to say that one is against trafficking, although some sex-industry lobby groups do try to suggest that it is extremely rare and they prefer to talk about 'migration for sex work'. Indeed reliable statistics are hard to find when dealing with an illegal trade where people are hidden or hiding and I do not deny that some government attempts at statistics can never be anything else than guesses."

There is a reason why experts on the subject of trafficking say it is rare and instead talk about 'migration for sex work'. Before George W Bush became president the word 'trafficking' had to by definition mean coercion or deception. He put Evangelical Christians in positions of authority and they decided to change the definition. They didn't want to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary sex work.

The UK decided to do the same. The rest of the world didn't. So it's not surprising that experts don't use the US and UK definition and instead stick to the Geneva Protocol. Below I quote two paragraphs from a recent Daily Mail article by Julie Bindel:-

"A few years ago, I attended a conference in Vienna about prostitution. I was one of only four delegates out of 185 who sat on a panel declaring we were troubled by the vile trade at all. The others held the view that all aspects of the sex industry should be decriminalised."

"Progress on the issue has been slow in recent years, however — at least in part because the language around prostitution has been unhelpfully sanitised. The trade in women has been cleaned up as ‘sex work'. Pimps are often described as ‘managers' and, especially within academia, the trafficking of women into prostitution has been rewritten as ‘migration for sex work'."

We should listen to what the academics say, not Radical/Revolutionary Feminists such as Finn Mackay or Julie Bindel.

Page 222. "it is not surprising then that global research finds that around 90 per cent of those in it would leave if they had the economic freedom to do so (Farley et al 2003)."

The 'global research' she mentions is not lots of researchers around the world. It all comes from Melissa Farley who is a Radical Feminist. I have dealt with this particular piece of research here.

Page 223. "It is time to envision a society, and a world, without prostitution. This may sound idealistic, but the theory matters, the direction of travel matters, the aspiration matters, because if we can't envision such a society, then we cannot even begin to build it."

Page 224. "This is not natural, it is not inevitable, and it can be reduced, maybe ended; at the very least it can be challenged, rather than glamourised, normalised and condoned.

The real question about prostitution is the question of men's rights and, whether we as a society believe that men have the right to buy and sell women's bodies or whether they do not."

Page 224. "Imagine if every country stood up and said that this is not acceptable, as Sweden has done, stood up and said that every woman is worth more than what some man will pay for her and that we will criminalise rather than condone men who assume the right to buy the body of another human being."

There is no reason to believe that the Nordic model reduces the amount of prostitution. They have manipulated the statistics to make it appear so. The official report into the Northern Ireland law says that there has been an increase. The statistics from Sweden show an increase in the proportion of Swedish men who are active sex buyers and an increase in the proportion of Swedish women who have sold sex at some time in their life. They also show a decrease in the proportion of Swedish men who have bought sex at some time in their life, the widely reported drop from 13% to 8%, followed by an increase.

If it were possible to end prostitution, that would be one thing. But to burden sex workers and make their lives more difficult with no end in sight is not something we should contemplate.

I have never bought a woman's body. Trying to link it to slavery doesn't make any sense. I don't believe that women are only good for sex - only worth 'what some man will pay for her'. This explains more about why punters are hated - people are being told that we buy women and that we think that women have no value apart from sex. This kind of hatred can only come from a repressed sexuality.

If I go to see a doctor, and it turns out to be a female doctor, do you think that I would say 'I don't want to see you, you're a woman, you're only good for sex'? Of course not. I have respect for women, and I have respect for sex workers.

Page 225. "This is despite the changes in the Policing and Crime Act 2009 under the last Labour government, which were indeed a step forward, for the first time directing the eyes of the law onto those who fuel prostitution - punters. This victory was a result of the tireless campaigning by women's groups, led by the feminist, abolitionist 'Demand Change' campaign."

She must be referring to the law that can criminalise a man if he pays for sex with a woman who has been coerced or deceived, even if he didn't know. In some parts of the country no man has been convicted. The law was based on a false idea that most women in prostitution are coerced or deceived. It's not surprising that celibates like Finn Mackay believe that.

According to this study "section 14 had not been used by the majority (81%) of police forces across England and Wales". According to MP Fiona Mactaggart "In the first year of that being law there were 49 prosecutions—I was a bit disappointed because I did not think that was very many—with the men being found guilty in 43 cases. The following year there were 17 prosecutions, with 12 guilty verdicts, and the year after there were nine prosecutions, with six guilty verdicts".

So it's hardly some kind of great victory for the prohibitionists. They obviously thought that it was going to be their foot in the door. However, they are just wasting everybody's time. We would have to be mad to introduce the Nordic model in Britain.

my review of the year 2021

I have been going to the brothel in Liverpool called Angel Lodge. I saw Katy, Taylor, Alicia and Lucia once each, but I saw Megan 3 times. She is the sort of big blonde that I like and she lets me use my ultrathin condoms. I have only been to Christys once this year.

I went to Manchester once this year, but it's not as good as it was. Cosmopolitan is still good though.

In the summer I found myself near Queensferry in Wales. I remembered that there is a brothel there. I found the number through a Google search on my mobile. When I went there I was pleasantly surprised. It's a nice place (called Dollys) and the sex worker there was lovely. I thought I was onto a good thing.

Pippa is very talkative and seems to want to please. She is a big blonde like Megan and Jodie. She is prettier though, and I liked the way she has her hair up. The first time I saw her she said I can bring thin condoms next time. I saw her three Mondays in a row.

Although she seems to want to please, she didn't seem to want to do the one thing that I want. I like to get on top of a woman and shag her till I come. She let me shag her for a while but then wanted to do something else. So I didn't orgasm with Pippa.

The second two times I saw Pippa I went afterwards to another brothel in Wales. Temptations in Flint. These two brothels are not difficult to get to by bus from Chester. At Temptations I shagged Lola. She didn't talk much, didn't seem to want to please me, but was quite happy for me to get on top of her and shag her till I came. Even though I didn't ask to use my thin condoms with Lola, I came both times with her.

There is a strange brothel in Wallasey called Jays. If you go there on a Wednesday there are two women there. One of them is an old woman called Celia but also called Sharon. The other is Keira and I think she has a different name too. Keira looks middle aged but is probably elderly too: she looks as if she has had some cosmetic surgery. Celia and Keira work together. If you want both of them to suck your cock, at the same time, you can have that. Without a condom if you pay both of them an extra £10.

I saw them twice this year. The second time was very odd. Celia was her usual helpful self but Keira was preoccupied. She stood in the same room as us but looked out the window, commenting about a man who would be returning soon. I think there is a pimp here who is in the room above and watches through the mirrors on the ceiling. I asked them to turn a light on, they told me they were unable to comply, but later the light came on by itself. I'm not going to go there again.

Talking about old women, I saw Diane and Jackie in Chester. Diane has a flat near the racecourse and Jackie uses a friend's house in Bache near the hospital. I won't be going to see either of them again either. All of the women that I have mentioned so far in this post have been English, or possibly Welsh. I say this because some people believe that the majority of women in brothels are Romanian. "Leicestershire police reported that 86% of the women in brothels they visited were Romanian". Not near me.

I will be going to Rock Ferry Thai Massage again though. I saw a lovely woman called Jasmine in January. I saw a delightful young woman called Joy twice recently. I would have seen her a third time but I was told she'd gone. To Manchester. They are there for a couple of weeks then they go to work somewhere else. Then they come back again.

There is another Thai woman who works nearby. Her name is Yaya. She doesn't move to different places. She is pretty and speaks English very well and seems educated. She shares the flat with another Thai girl who only does massage with hand relief. Her name is Maeya.

Maeya only does hand relief. Yaya does full sex but doesn't move to different parts of the country. Joy and the other women at Rock Ferry Thai Massage do full sex and move around. That will be through their own choices, how much money they wish to make and what they are prepared to do for it.

Usually at Thai massage places you don't get full sex. At Rock Ferry Thai Massage you do though. Another place I have been to is Sakura in Liverpool. You don't get full sex there (not usually) but you do get more than just a massage with hand relief. With some of the women at Sakura. I've been there four times this year, but I don't think I will return. Another Chinese place is the newly opened Pink Peony.

So I won't be seeing any old women again. You may wonder why I ever did but some of them are attractive. I don't think I will be going to Wales again, why bother when I can get what I want closer to home? I don't even need to go into Liverpool. My favourite two women this year have been Jasmine and Joy from Rock Ferry Thai Massage. I hope to see both of them again.

my porn experiment

In my last post I wrote that Sara Pascoe is very fair on the subject of pornography but not so much on the subject of prostitution. The Oxford Professor Amia Srinivasan is the opposite though. She has written that internet porn sites control what people see, 'bringing their sexual tastes into conformity'.

"As Shira Tarrant, author of The Pornography Industry, observes: 'If you are interested in something like double oral, and you put that into a browser, you're going to get two women giving one guy a blowjob ... you're not likely to get two men or two people giving a woman oral sex' She adds: 'Online-porn users don't necessarily realize that their porn-use patterns are largely moulded by a corporation.'"

People who are anti porn will just believe this, as Amia seems to have done. I though decided to see for myself, and the results were quite interesting. I typed 'double oral' into Google and was presented with twenty images. I chose to look at images rather than videos because my wifi doesn't allow me to look at PornHub or the main video sites. I could have seen a tiny picture of each video in Google search but in my experience it's not so easy to assess the content of the videos from just a tiny pic or even from the title.

By the way, I have managed to circumvent this censorship. I have found a site which not only can I look at with my wifi but I can download videos from. It is called porntrex.com. You can't download from PornHub now, as I reported a few posts back. I have downloaded lots of videos featuring beautiful Japanese women. I don't have a thing for East Asian women, I have a thing for beautiful women: for some reason the most beautiful women appear in Japanese porn. I would love to interview Kotomi Asakura and ask her about her life.

Getting back to my porn experiment, eight out of the twenty pictures that I saw when I Googled 'double oral' were of two women and one man. Seven showed two men with one woman. Two of them were indistinct. One of them showed two gay men. One of them showed two men and a 'shemale'. One of them was two women giving oral sex to another woman.

And if you don't believe me, try it for yourself. You probably won't get exactly the same results but you can see that what porn critic Shira Tarrant wrote is nonsense. It isn't true that it's all the same. There is enormous diversity. Men's sexual desires aren't being 'moulded by a corporation'. What is presented has been moulded by people's desires. Heterosexual, homosexual, trans, cis.

They say that porn is ubiquitous in modern society. In one way it is, although I can't access PornHub. In another way it isn't, because it seems that so many people haven't looked at it. If they had, they wouldn't say the stupidest things about it. They are convinced that it is all violent. Society has become sexualized, so they say.

I wish I could show you all of the pictures but I don't want this blog to show pornographic images. I will show you the one where the two women give oral sex to another woman. You can't see anyone's genitals or breasts. You can see pubic hair though, some people believe that it's never seen in porn - people who have never seen it. Some people will be disgusted and horrified but I think it's quite sweet.

There's a film, Cinema Paradiso, where at the end a compilation of censored bits of films are shown. They are of people kissing and so on. It shows life, it shows joy, it shows passion.

sex work and the transgender issue

I've been reading a lot about trans issues recently. What got me started was I realized that there is a chapter in Shon Faye's book about prostitution. She is a trans woman and her book is The Transgender Issue. She is in favour of the decriminalization of prostitution, as am I.

This blog is about sex work so I'm not going to write much about the trans issue, except in how it relates to prostitution. I can see both sides of the debate. I have also read Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier and Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce. Both of these are authors oppose trans 'ideology'. The second of them is a Radical Feminist.

What annoys me about the Radical Feminists is how they want to reinvent themselves as the guardians of free speech. On the final page of her book Joyce writes "It will take a renewed commitment to two interests shared by everyone in a secular, liberal democracy: freedom of belief and freedom of speech".

They're only saying this now because they have been on the receiving end of treatment that they have been handing out for decades. Consider this, from Amia Srinivasan's book The Right to Sex.

"In 1993 a group of anti-porn feminists wrote a letter to the vice chancellor of the Australian National University demanding that an invitation to US pro-sex feminists, including Gayle Rubin and Carol Vance, be rescinded. One of the signatories was Sheila Jeffreys, a central figure on the 'revolutionary feminist' wing of the British women's liberation movement, which insisted - contrary to the then dominant socialist feminist position - that male sexual violence, rather than capitalism, was the foundation of women's oppression. In recent years Jeffreys has decried the 'vilification' and 'censoring' of feminists who, like her, are trans-exclusionary. Jeffreys apparently does not recognise the irony in objecting to the same tactics that she and other anti-porn feminists pioneered forty years ago." 

What goes around comes around. I suspect that in the future this will happen to them again. They might think that their scheming with the religious right has paid them dividends, but the mums who don't want a trans girl in their daughters' school toilets can just as easily say they don't want a lesbian girl there. Someone who says that a man can't become a woman, it's only politeness that has stopped us from saying it before, can just as easily say that homosexuality is a perversion and a mental illness.

Sheila Jeffreys is a lesbian, she thinks women should be lesbians. Do think that ordinary people can distinguish between a trans person and the sort of radical feminist lesbian who has short hair, no makeup and wears men's clothes? If the transgender movement is an ideology then Radical Feminism is one too: two rival ideologies fighting it out for the hearts and minds of people - and especially teenage girls.

In Chapter 7 of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Joyce writes this:

"But from the 1990s or so, liberal or 'third wave' feminism de-emphasised such structural and communal issues, instead centering choice and agency - for example arguing that some women might want to work in pornography or prostitution, and that this could be empowering. Second-wave feminists, who mostly regarded these as harmful for all women and almost always coerced, were dismissed as 'sex-negative' - or simply prudes."

I think someone who chooses to believe that women who work in pornography or prostitution are 'almost always coerced' without any evidence for that are indeed prudes. They don't like it, so they think up a reason why they should oppose it, harming women in the process. They don't like it for the same reason their religious right allies don't like it - a fear and disgust of basic human sexuality. If you choose to believe something without evidence, that is not reality it is ideology.

If you believe that prostitutes are almost always coerced then you want them to be rescued. But 'rescue' means women abducted by police and kept against their will. That is harming women.

Third wave or pro-sex feminists are termed liberal, and it is said they have no interest in 'structural and communal issues'. It was Jeffreys though who was the first to take feminism in a direction away from its socialist and anti-capitalist roots. As Amia Srinivasan wrote in her book:

"At the ninth Women's Liberation Movement Conference, this time held in London, Sheila Jeffreys gave a paper titled 'The Need for Revolutionary Feminism', in which she took socialist feminists to task for not recognising that male violence rather than capitalist exploitation lay at the foundation of women's oppression, and for making 'reformist' demands like socialised childcare."

Amia is anti-capitalist. Sheila Jeffreys doesn't represent the original feminism, from which third wave feminism departed. Feminism didn't originally have the obsession with pornography and prostitution that people like Jeffreys, MacKinnon and Dworkin introduced.

Third wave feminists have not argued that 'some women might want to work in pornography or prostitution'. They argue that large numbers of women do. How can we help them? As far as I know they have never used the word 'empowering'. Money is empowering. Sex work is well paid. So from that point of view it is empowering, although maybe the Radical Feminists mean something different by that word. Being a politician or a CEO is empowering in a different way. Sex work doesn't give you that but then neither does most work.

Harmful for all women? Joyce doesn't say why she thinks that, but it brings us back to the false research that I wrote about a couple of posts ago. They think that there is more rape when there is more pornography and prostitution. Which brings us back to Sara Pascoe's book that I reviewed even more posts ago. Pascoe states that the evidence that she has looked at does not show that pornography increases rape (page 198) or sexism (page 200); or that most porn is violent (pages 204, 224 and 226). She also says it isn't true that women in porn don't have pubic hair (ignore what Jenni Murray says). Pascoe is very fair on the subject of pornography. Not so much on the subject of prostitution.

I've just listened to Jon Ronson's radio programme about trans issues, part of a series called Things Fell Apart about the culture wars. He talked about the Michfest music festival in America for women that started in the 1970s. What he said about it is completely different from what Helen Joyce has written about it in Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (chapter 8). Joyce makes no attempt to show both sides of the debate, for example not saying that transwomen were eventually welcomed into the festival by the other women: Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality seems to me a work of propaganda.

review of Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts by Kate Lister

This is a large book full of illustrations. It is a history of sex for sale. The first chapter is Sex in the Ancient World. There is much about ancient Babylon. I learned much from chapter four, The Honest Courtesans - Selling Sex in Renaissance Europe.

Both St Augustine of Hippo and St Thomas Aquinas taught that although prostitution is immoral, it is the lesser of two evils. Without it much worse things would happen - adultery and sodomy. It doesn't seem that they thought masturbation was much of a problem.

In Renaissance Italy sex workers were called 'meretrice' or 'cortigiane'.

"Cities, like Venice, forbade men from managing the brothels, instead installing older women known as matrons to do the job. A good matron not only looked after her girls, but knew how to keep the customers happy as well. In fact, the iconic Italian dish tiramisu is said to have been invented in the brothels to revive flagging energy levels. Whereas puttanesca, a flavourful sauce served with pasta, literally translates to 'cooked in the whorish fashion' and is said to have been eaten in the brothels when women were between clients. For all the moralizing around sex work, it did allow women to earn their own money, run their own business, and in a few cases, become internationally celebrated celebrities."

Kate goes on to write about Imperia Cognati, known as Queen of Courtesans. I was aware that the puttanesca pasta sauce is associated with Italian brothels, but I didn't know that the dessert tiramisu is too. Kate isn't saying that they were invented during the Renaissance though: they are of much more recent origin. I can imagine Italian sex workers having a hearty appetite, I can only speculate on which pasta shape they prefer. Perhaps farfalle, which means butterfly but is also a slang name in some parts of Italy for vulva: the labia minora resemble the wings of a butterfly.

The attitude of Christians is revealed in this chapter. The real problem came with the Protestants.

"Attitudes to sex work began to change dramatically across Europe following the rise of Protestantism. Protestants utterly rejected Augustinian notions that prostitution could curtail far worse sexual sins. Martin Luther called sex workers 'murderers' and suggested they be 'broken on the wheel'. Protestant preachers utterly condemned any toleration and called for state-run brothels to be closed and for prostitution to be abolished. Catholic attitudes to prostitution were soon viewed as evidence of wider moral corruption. The Vatican responded by ushering in a new era of sexual repression."

Pope Pius ordered them out of Rome and the Papal States, but the citizens of Rome petitioned him, and he repealed his edict.

So it seems that it is the Protestants and especially the Puritans, who came later, who despised sex work. Catholicism in Ireland seems to be heavily influenced by English (and Scottish) Puritanism. Southern European Catholics aren't quite so uptight about sexual matters.

In chapter 11 there are photographs named 'Interior of a brothel in Naples, c.1945'. One American surgeon reported that 'prostitutes from Naples descended upon our encampment by the hundreds, outflanking guards'. Let's hope they brought some tiramisu with them.

more student sex workers

There's something very odd about the Melissa Farley study that I wrote about in my previous post. It stated that men who pay for sex are 8 times more likely to report that they would rape a woman if they could get away with it and if no one knew about it. Also they are 3 times more likely to report that they have engaged in 'sexually aggressive behavior'.

You wonder why they didn't just ask outright in the survey 'Have you ever raped a woman?'. Well, the answer to that question is it looks as if they were asked that. So why aren't we told what these men reported? It can only be because they did not report that they had raped a women more than the non sex buyer group of men.

In the Melissa Farley study (Comparing Sex Buyers With Men Who Do Not Buy Sex: New Data on Prostitution and Trafficking) men were asked a number of sets of questions. One set of questions was the Sexual Experiences Survey (Perpetration Version). In this survey they were asked ten questions. The last three I have shown below.

8. Have you engaged in sexual intercourse when she didn’t want to because you gave her alcohol or drugs?
9. Have you engaged in sexual intercourse when she didn’t want to because you threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting her arm‚ holding her down‚ etc.) to make her?
10. Did you answer “Yes” to any of the questions 1-10?

It goes on to say that 'Men are classified as perpetrators of rape if they answered “yes” to items 8‚ 9‚ or 10.' This is a bit strange because questions 1 to 7 are not rape. Question 1 is 'Have you engaged in sex play (fondling‚ kissing‚ or petting‚ but not intercourse) when she didn’t want to because you overwhelmed her with continual arguments and pressure?'

Anyway, men were asked if they had used alcohol, drugs or physical force to get sex in questions 8 and 9. So it would be a simple matter to work out how many men in each group have raped a woman. Yet we are not told this, instead we are told about what men say they would do under specific circumstances, and a calculation of sexual aggressive behaviour in general. The sex buyer group had 'a mean of 1.59 types of sexually aggressive behavior'. Never mind about the mean, what answers did they give to questions 8 and 9?

The Nordic Model Now! site use the Farley study to show that 'buying sex makes men more prone to violence against women'. Punters are 'nearly 8 times more likely to rape than other men'. Then people like Libby Purves try to say that the existence of sex work affects society in general and women in particular in negative ways.

Telling young people to just say no doesn't work. Whether it is about drugs or sex work. You can invite them to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each, to themselves and society, but don't try to feed them false statistics because they are too intelligent to be taken in by that. Some will want to continue after consideration and some won't. Then if they proceed you should do what you can to help them avoid the dangers.

I don't want young people to die of drug overdose and I don't want young people to die because they were forced to work alone. Let them have drugs of consistent strength and purity, and let them work together for safety. I would send my daughter to a university that helps them to stay alive. Except that she would make up her own mind which university she wants to go to and how she wants to fund herself.

student sex workers

Some of you may have read the article by Libby Purves in The Times on Monday (15/11/21) called 'Shame on universities that legitimise 'sex work''. Durham University's Student Union (DSU) is providing a course for students and staff to 'explore the challenges that student sex workers can face'.

This is what Libby Purves wrote in her article:-

"Men who buy it, whether online or physically are significantly more likely than other men to rape or commit other violence against women."

She does not give a reference for this statement. Looking around on the internet to try to find research that says that the presence of prostitution causes increased levels of rape I came to the Nordic Model Now! site. They have a page 'FACT: Buying sex makes men more prone to violence against women'.

"Studies of men who buy sex (punters) show that they are significantly more likely than other men to rape and engage in all forms of violence against women. A US study found that punters were nearly eight times more likely to rape than other men."

The US study is 'Comparing Sex Buyers With Men Who Do Not Buy Sex: New Data on Prostitution and Trafficking' by Melissa Farley and four other people that I have never heard of. Melissa Farley is known to be biased. See her Wikipedia page. Or go here.

It is illegal in America to buy sex. So the men that do are criminals. They cannot be compared to men in Britain. America is a violent society, with extremes of wealth and poverty. It has an enormous prison population where people are treated inhumanely. Mental illness is not given the attention it is in European countries. Religious fundamentalism and other reactionary attitudes are common.

Even so, the study did not show that American men who buy sex committed eight times as many rapes. Instead it says, under the heading 'Self-Reported Likelihood to Rape', that 15% of sex buyers reported 'that they would force a woman to have sex or rape a woman if they could get away with it and if no one knew about it' compared to 2% of non sex buyers.

To be a non sex buyer in this study a man had to have 'not been to a strip club more than once in the past year; had not exchanged something of value for a sex act; and had not used pornography more than once in the past week' as well as to have not bought sex. No phone sex or lap dancing either. Buying sex includes hand relief. I don't think this is most people's definition of a non sex buyer.

What the headline should have been is 'American men who don't use pornography regularly or pay for anything sexual - not even erotic dancing - are 7.5% times less likely to say that they would rape a woman under particular circumstances. Not 7.5% times less likely to rape, 7.5% less likely to say they would'.

Maybe they should have checked their testosterone levels while they were at it. Then the headline might have been 'Men with low testosterone levels less likely to use pornography, pay for sex or rape'. What they should have done is to have three groups: men who pay for sex, men who don't but like erotic dancing and pornography, and men who don't do any of these things. Otherwise how can you tell what corelates with rape? Pornography or prostitution?

None of this gives us any indication that eliminating prostitution would change men's attitudes and/or make them less likely to rape. It isn't possible to eliminate it or even reduce it anyway. You can try to eliminate it but that's not going to help.

It isn't the existence of prostitution that causes certain men's attitudes. There isn't a correlation between prostitution and rape. And even if there was a correlation, correlation is not the same as causation. Prostitution does not cause rape, not even some rape.

The second research study used on the Nordic Model Now! page is a UN study, 'Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women And How Can We Prevent It?' It was done in Asian and Pacific countries so isn't relevant to Britain. It says that the strongest association with rape is 'having more sexual partners'. That seems to mean more than 2 'lifetime sexual partners'. Whatever that means. Are you a man, and have you had more than 2 lifetime sexual partners? Then you are more likely to be a rapist than a man who has 'had transactional sex or sex with a sex worker'.

Consider these two statements. 1 Men who have more sexual partners are more likely to rape. 2 Men who have sex with sex workers are more likely to rape. The first invalidates the second. When a man visits a sex worker he increases the number of his lifetime sexual partners by one. It seems that it is the increasing of the number of partners that is the thing: the fact that the additional partner is a sex worker is of no importance. It could even be that the fact it's a sex worker and not a woman he met in the office or at a bar is a good thing.

The third research study used on the Nordic Model Now! page is 'Factors Influencing Attitudes to Violence Against Women'. It says nothing about prostitution. It does have something to say about pornography though: "Correlational studies of pornography use in everyday life find that men who use hardcore, violent, or rape pornography, and men who are high-frequency users of pornography, are significantly more likely than others to report that they would rape or sexually harass a woman if they knew they could get away with it." So the author has a different agenda than Nordic Model Now!. He wants to put the blame on pornography not prostitution.

Would it be surprising if a rapist is more likely to sometimes pay for sex? Or use pornography? I don't think so. That would be your correlation, but they have failed to establish a correlation, let alone causation. If you interviewed rapists I'm sure you could find lots of things that they do more frequently. Going to betting shops, for example. That doesn't mean that betting causes rapes.

Young women at university will make up their own minds about sex work. They will not be scared off by people like Libby Purves. They can see through their propaganda. I hope that on the course for students and staff, the one that Libby Purves wants to stop, they can examine the evidence. The existence of sex work does not cause problems for women. Also they can consider why sex workers get assaulted: top of my list of reasons is people in the older generation (like Libby Purves) stopping grants and not allowing them to work together for safety.

review of Paying For It by Scarlett O'Kelly

This book was written by an Irish woman who became an escort as a result of the recession. She is one of the women who some feminists dismiss as being unrepresentative of prostitutes. The same was said of Brooke Magnanti but this is some women's reality. What proportion of sex workers are like O'Kelly and Magnanti is difficult to know, especially as things will have changed over the decades.

In Chapter 11 and 25 she writes about 'wifey sex', where a man feels he should only make love to his wife slowly and gently, not go faster and harder as he would wish. Lots of men go to an escort for this reason. Her advice is for him to talk to his wife - she might want rampant sex sometimes. In Chapter 25 she also writes about premature ejaculation and how to solve it. The answer is the start/stop squeeze technique and pelvic floor exercises.

In Chapter 27 Scarlett tells us how she divided up the men who came to see her into different categories. They are Unhappily Married, Fearful Catholics, Students, Middle-class Liberals, Young Family Man, Mr Self Employed and Manual Labour Man.

In Chapter 28 Scarlett goes into great detail about anal sex. On page 203 there is one paragraph that explains how to do it without pain. Later she goes into great detail about prostate massage. She writes that all of her customers have asked for anal sex. That surprised me, because I thought that most sex workers don't do it.

In Chapter 32 Scarlett recounts how she realized that other sex workers charged less money than she did. This is one of the reasons that she eventually gave it up. I don't think she realized though that most of these women would be charging extra for anal sex, and many of them would not be providing that service at all. That's what I think anyway, I could be wrong. Also, they will be spending less time with their clients than she did.

Several times in the book she says that she had no alternative to what she did, it was an economic necessity. During the recession the only way she could maintain her standard of living was to do sex work. There must have been hundreds of thousands of women in exactly the same situation as her. One wonders what they all did. Presumably they lived much poorer and many of them lost their homes.

If you have a hundred people, all of them in exactly the same circumstances, and 99 of them choose to do one thing, does it make any sense to say that the one person who did differently was forced to do so? That she had no alternative? You could say she had no alternative if she wanted to avoid being poor, in the particular circumstances of a recession. You can't say though that all sex workers at all times don't have a meaningful choice.

She writes that she has no regrets about being a sex worker, and that she enjoyed the sex sometimes. So it's not true that although women in sex work can be positive about it, once they have left they cease to be so.