academics versus liars

I have been reading two interesting books about prostitution. The first one is by an academic, Dr Ko-lin Chin. He is a Professor at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. The second one is by Sarah Forsyth and Tim Tate (who has a degree in Theology).

The book by the Professor is called Going Down to the Sea. He interviewed 149 sex workers in different countries, all from mainland China. The book recounts the interviews of 18 of these women. In the epilogue he sums up the information given to him by these 149 women.

The vast majority of them were not deceived, coerced or forced into the sex trade. Only 1% were, although 15% were not free to move around or quit sex work because their travel documents are kept by their employer or debtor. There are various definitions of 'sex trafficking victim'.

He says there are different problems in different countries. It is better for them in the USA than in Asian countries. In the USA none of them were underage, in debt to sex ring operators, financially exploited, or denied freedom of movement (or forced, coerced or deceived).

The women had no contact with organised crime except within the Geylang red light district of Singapore. What Ko-lin Chin has found is consistent with what Elizabeth Pisani and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas have found in South East Asia. They are also academics who have conducted research in the field.

The book by Sarah Forsyth and Tim Tate is Slave Girl. There are many reviews online, some people don't believe it is true. Below is part of one review.

"The fact that her description of the Red Light District in Amsterdam is actually highly inaccurate, and anyone who has been there should be able to verify the author has greatly distorted this for sensationalist purposes. I have been to the RLD as a tourist (naturally this book had me feeling ashamed at having done so, and while I question its accuracy I have no intention of going there again) and the girls in the windows appear perfectly healthy, fit, attractive and seemingly happy there. It is quite likely that the latter point is an act they have mastered in order to keep drawing punters in, but even so it is not an act that a hopeless junkie would be physically or mentally capable of pulling off convincingly. In short, there is no way that these women are simply 'living on a diet of drugs and m&ms' as Sarah claims; her description is more akin to the disease-ridden and drug-addicted prostitutes you are more likely to find walking the streets of any big city. Likewise Sarah is extremely demeaning of the punters who visit the girls and even the tourists who pass through the area, she basically says they are all evil and feelingless, knowingly raping the girls."

That's not the only inaccuracy. There are 3 RLDs in Amsterdam, not 2 as she states. The two she mentions don't adjoin each other and form 'one large drug-dealing flesh market'. In the afterword there is a lot of false information about Operation Pentameter and Gatwick Airport, similar to the sort of stuff Evangelical Christians tend to believe.

Tim Tate wrote a book called Children for the Devil: Ritual Abuse and Satanic Crime. This is how it is described: 'The ritualistic abuse of children in satanic ceremonies is increasingly coming to light as children in the UK, USA and Europe disclose identical experiences involving torture, cannibalism, animal sacrifice, live burial, murder and the use of drugs snakes and insects in sexual abuse'. Tate was sued in 1992, shortly after the book was published, for defamatory accusations against a police officer. Tate could not substantiate the accusations and agreed a settlement. It was pulled by its publishers and pulped.

No doubt the Evangelicals will think that the Devil has managed to stifle their free speech.

I don't usually come across books like this, libraries and bookshops tend not to stock them. I might have been looking in the wrong places though. It seems that there are many books in this genre. I was surprised when the book popped up on the Nordic Model Now! site. This is what Megan King ('survivor and abolitionist') wrote.

"Within the book she describes the reality of the sex trade there, including witnessing the murder of a fellow prostituted woman, as the brothel owners created a ‘snuff porn’ video, which for those of you who are unaware of this, means it is pornography depicting real homicide. She witnessed someone being murdered in the name of pornography in front of her eyes."

According to Forsyth (or Tate) she had a gun held to her head. Funny that, none of the women in South East Asia interviewed by Professor Chin had a gun held to their head, not even in Singapore. Yet we are supposed to believe that in North West Europe this happens.

On the same Nordic Model Now! page by Megan King there is a false statistic that I want to address. "In Sweden from 1999 to 2008, there was a 76% reduction in the number of prostituted women." There is a reference for this statistic which is Not a choice, Not a job: Exposing the myths about prostitution and the global sex trade by Janice Raymond (page 73).

I can't get access to this book so I'm not sure where this statistic comes from. I think it comes from here though.

"In 1995, a national government report published estimates that there were approximately 2500 to 3000 prostituted women in Sweden, of whom 650 were in street prostitution. In 1998, street prostitution was estimated even higher, at 726. By 2008, a study estimated that approximately 300 women were prostituted on Swedish streets, while 300 women and 50 men were identified in Swedish online prostitution advertisements. Prostitution increased in Denmark and Norway during the same period, gauged using similar measurements as in Sweden."

We have two different estimates, one from 1995 (not 1999) and one from 2008. Both flawed. Not all indoor prostitution relied on the Internet in 2008. The 300 figure for indoor prostitution is way too low.

2500 decreased by 76% is 600. However, according to surveys in 1996 0.3% of Swedish women stated that they had been paid for sex. In 2008 the figure was 1.1% and in 2017 it was 1.5%. So I would say that it is a myth that there was a reduction in the number of sex workers in Sweden between 1999 and 2008.

Below is an extract from the Skarhed report of 2010. It shows that the 650 figure for the number of sex workers in Sweden in 2008 is not to be trusted. I have emboldened what I think is the most important.

"In the research report ―Prostitution in the Nordic Countries, Charlotta Holmström’s article summarizes the available knowledge about the situation in Sweden in 2008. It shows that approximately 300 women were involved in street prostitution and that about 300 women and 50 men were involved in prostitution on the Internet. However, the article points out that this does not mean that we can estimate the number of people in prostitution in Sweden to be 650. As described above, people in prostitution may be active in several arenas at once, for example both on the Internet and on the street, which would mean that the same person was counted more than once. On the other hand, Holmström felt that the estimate could be rather low, as it was dependent on how social work was organized and what surveys were conducted. Thus, rather than providing a reliable picture of the actual situation, the estimates might in fact say more about the resources and priorities of the police and social services. In summary, she states that the number of women in street prostitution in the three major cities in Sweden appears to be relatively well-defined and that knowledge about women who offer sex over the Internet is somewhat more limited, but under development, while the knowledge of men who provide sexual services and people who offer sex in other arenas than on the street and the Internet, as well as our knowledge of the incidence of prostitution outside the big-city areas, is very limited. Holmström also states that ―at the same time, authorities believe that the majority of prostitution activities occur in less visible arenas."

Clearly she is saying that the 350 figure for men and women advertising on the Internet is not the total number of indoor workers.

Belgium grants labour rights to sex workers

I had heard that Belgium has decriminalised sex work a while ago but I couldn't find out much about it. Now there is a new law there that entitles sex workers to employment contracts, health insurance, maternity leave and sick days.

My first thought was that it's a good thing but one of the attractions of sex work for many women is that usually they don't have to work fixed hours. Most sex workers don't want to work 40 hours every week. They might want to work 20 hours one week and none the next.

Sex workers who choose to work in brothels don't have that flexibility and can benefit from these new laws. How many women will choose employment contracts is another matter. They say that in Germany women can have employment contracts but few have chosen to do this. Germany certainly isn't the way forward in these matters: I have read so many bad things about what happens in Germany.

A great benefit to brothel workers is that they will have the right to refuse clients, choose their practices and stop an act at any moment. This is something that independent sex workers have always been able to do and is very important. If a sex worker dislikes old men she should be able to refuse them. If a sex worker doesn't want to provide oral sex without a condom she should be able to say no.

I was listening to The Global Story on BBC World Service. One issue discussed was the issue of panic buttons. The new law states that employers must provide them. A critic said "In what other job would you need a panic button?". However, in many professions women especially need to be protected.

 There are many ways that estate agents protect themselves from attack. First on this list is Screen Clients Prior To Meeting  (it also says that half carry self-defense weapons). Third on this list is Have a “Panic Button” in Your Pocket.

In the programme someone from Canada called Andrea said that she used to be a sex worker. She decided to set up her own brothel and run it on ethical lines. Having tried this, she stopped doing it because she realised that it is impossible to avoid harm. She apologised to the women.

I wanted to find out more about Andrea from Canada. She is Andrea Heinz and she has numerous writings on the Nordic Model Now! site and the FeministCurrent site. They are too numerous for me to go through but I read one of them. In it she wrote that she sold her brothel to somebody else. So she was a pimp and she sold her brothel. Nothing about apologising to the women.

The example that Andrea gave in her writing of harm is 'I saw a girl come out of a room crying because her client was in his 70s and had been “touching her like an incestual grandpa.”' This is odd because if this 'girl' disliked old men why didn't she decide not to accept this client? Why did Andrea not tell the 'girl' that she didn't have to accept any client she disliked? If she was being so ethical.

Why did Andrea not understand that in Belgium women now have the right to refuse clients? Why is Andrea telling everyone that the new Belgian laws won't protect women? She's on YouTube too, being interviewed by Christian bigot Benjamin Nolot - who doesn't believe in abortion rights or gay marriage.

In the book Paid For by Rachel Moran she says that a 'madam' she worked for told her she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to. Rachel didn't have anal sex when she was a sex worker. So I'm not inclined to believe Andrea Heinz when she writes she was 'violently sodomised' with 'my genitals and anus were left torn and bleeding'. She also wrote that she has been raped numerous times without condoms.

It could be that prostitution in Canada is different from prostitution in Ireland (especially before 1993). Maybe Canada is like America in terms of violence whereas Ireland is like Europe. If that is the case why are we asking a Canadian ex pimp what she thinks of new laws in Belgium?

There is a contradiction in this piece. She wrote that she specialized in domination because she would not need to have intercourse as often. Yet later in the same piece she wrote "The day I received my first legitimate paycheck I broke down sobbing because it was the first bit of money I’d earned in the previous seven years where I didn’t have to lay on my back and spread my legs". Not only had she previously earned money as a dominatrix, she had also earned money as a pimp.

She wrote that she earned (in seven years) over $1.2 million. That's interesting, because the abolitionists are always keen to tell us that the women see very little of the money handed over. While she was a sex worker she 'pursued post-secondary education and was on owner of a comfortable starter home (as a single woman under 30)'.

'I now had a large mortgage, tuition costs, and vehicle replacements.' This is what 'trapped' her in prostitution. Apparently being violently sodomised on a regular basis isn't enough of an incentive to forgo the house, cars etc. Or maybe she had moved on by this point to letting other females be violently sodomised for her money. Or maybe this is just some kind of sick fantasy dreamed up by an Evangelical based on what they think happens in prostitution.

I think that the Evangelicals like Benjamin Nolot (founder of Exodus Cry) and Radical Feminists like Meghan Murphy (founder of Feminist Current) would have preferred it if she hadn't mentioned the $1.2 million, or the house, college and cars. Also, 'what I earned in two weeks could have been earned in four hours through prostitution'. I'm assuming she means being a sex worker and not being a pimp, but it can be difficult to work out what she really means.

The funny thing about the Andrea Heinz story is that it isn't going to discourage women from entering prostitution. They would quite like the $1.2 million, the house, the cars and the college fees. They know that under certain circumstances they won't be violently sodomised. They can turn away clients, choose what they want and don't want to do, and stop a sex act. They can have security.

Andrea Heinz doesn't want them to have labour rights. She might say that panic buttons and security guards won't stop them from being raped anally. Yet Rachel Moran never had anal sex once. If you don't want it you can not do it. Unless someone tries to stop you having rights. Maybe someone who doesn't want you to have the right to a same-sex marriage or an abortion.

I can understand that some people will say it would be better to eliminate prostitution. That's not going to happen. If anyone says that it has happened in Sweden, they are not telling you the truth.

Archbishops morality and abuse

The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned. He had the opportunity to protect children from abuse but he didn't take it. There may have been other abusers but John Smyth is the most prominent. He was the barrister for Mary Whitehouse (a morality campaigner in the 1970s and 1980s). They were both Christians and Smyth ran Christian summer camps for young boys and men.

In Victoria Smith's book 'Hags' she quotes Helen Joyce and Louise Perry. She believes that older women like Mary Whitehouse protected younger women and children from predators like Jimmy Savile.

Not only did Mary Whitehouse not protect young people from abusers like John Smyth and Jimmy Savile (she presented Savile with an award) her type of older woman did great harm to young women. In Ireland they were insisting that pregnant teenage girls were sent to mother and baby homes or Magdalene Laundries. Unmarried pregnant girls weren't welcome in the community because they set a bad example to the others.

It wasn't that bad in England but this type of older woman smothered the happiness of young women in many different ways. They took a dim view of sex education and contraception (although Mary Whitehouse herself taught sex education that she believed should be taught with strict moral guidelines). They were happy for young women to enter early marriage or work in a menial job as a factory worker, typist or servant.

They think that pornography must have harmful consequences and are always looking for evidence for them. They think that sex workers must be coerced, deceived, drug-addicted or dirt poor. Having sex with several different men each day seems so disgusting to them they cannot believe that any woman could choose it the way that people choose other jobs.

It's interesting that Victoria Smith doesn't think that pornography causes anal pain in young women. I can't find anything in her book that states young men are demanding anal sex from young women because of pornography. Instead she goes back to the older idea that young women are forced to shave their pubic hair because young men never see it in pornography.

She doesn't state this clearly though. On page 188 there is this: "our aversion to pubic hair". On page 160 there is this: "Female pubic hair was still legal". Anyone who has looked at pornography knows that there is lots of pubic hair there. Despite its supposed ubiquity it seems that so many people haven't even looked at porn. She might not want people to think of her alongside 'conservative housewives, moral majority pearl-clutchers and no-sex-before-marriage fundamentalists'  (page 161) but they are obviously the congregation that she is preaching to.

It was Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols who tried to expose Jimmy Savile. The Punk movement might have favoured promiscuity but they didn't accept abusers. Unlike the Archbishop, Mary Whitehouse and her supporters. Here, that's an idea. Why don't we get John Lydon to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury?

review of Eve Was Shamed by Helena Kennedy

I am reading 'Eve Was Shamed' by Helena Kennedy QC. She is one of Britain's most distinguished lawyers and public figures. In chapter 5 (The Whore) she has some interesting things to say about sex work.

page 162 "Off-street sex workers usually operate from massage parlours or saunas or in accommodation where there are other women, or a 'maid' who keeps an eye out for oddballs and acts as a doorkeeper. Many 'maids' are women who were themselves at one time 'toms', as the police call prostitutes. Off-street sex is much less risky but unfortunately the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 criminalised the role of maid, making life for sex workers far less safe; it is also increasingly the venue for paid sex because arrangements are made on the Internet."

"The jury is still out on whether it [criminalising the purchase of sex] works or whether it simply drives the sale of sex underground with consequent higher risks for women. Unless there is better evidence from the places where this change has operated for a number of years, I remain very sceptical about the criminalisation of the male purchasers."

This is interesting because so many people believe that prostitution cannot be driven underground. In a debate in parliament the former MP Gavin Shuker said that if a punter can find a sex worker then so can the police. That's like saying that if a drug addict can find a drug dealer then so can the police.

As for evidence that the 'Swedish experiment' actually works, I have a lot of information on this blog including here.

page 163 "The laws against brothel-keeping still prevent two or three women sharing a flat for their work, which would reduce the risks of assault and provide companionship."

page 165 "I come at it as a feminist lawyer and would want to see evidence from a reliable source about the Swedish experiment and those in other jurisdictions to see if criminalising the purchase of sex actually works.

We must always look carefully at how law can be misused. The government's antisocial behaviour orders are now being used to bar women from certain streets or from associating with each other, although the original public rationale for the orders was about protecting the public from gangs of boys or bad neighbours creating a nuisance. Breach of an order can attract a maximum sentence of five years which means the reintroduction of imprisonment for prostitutes which had been removed in the Criminal Justice Act 1982. So while the rhetoric is all about helping women, England and Wales are fast becoming the most punitive countries in Europe for prostitutes."

page 169 After writing briefly about sex workers expecting poor treatment in courts particularly concerning the welfare of their children and the fact that mothers can find prostitution a convenient way to make a living she goes on to write about how the law affects their family life.

"Charges of living off immoral earnings were introduced to reach the pimps who exploited women and forced them into sexual misery. However, many women complain that in fact they make their own choices about how they earn a living, and the law is frequently used against boyfriends and husbands or family members who exercise no control over them at all. The effect is to prevent these women having any semblance of a home life. Taxi drivers, particularly minicab drivers, are sometimes charged with living off immoral earnings if they provide a regular service for prostitutes and facilitate their work. The same is true for landlords and massage-parlour and sauna owners if the police take against them."

Later in the chapter she writes about the Sexual Offenses Act 2003, the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the Police and Crime Act 2009. She doesn't mention that the Police and Crime Act 2009 was intended  to amend the definition of a brothel so that two or three individuals may work together (whatever happened to that?). She also mentions the National Referral Mechanism.

She finds persuasive a book called Illegal and Illicit: Sex Regulation and Social Control by Joanna Phoenix and Sarah Oerton. They show that the law operates to the detriment of some women who choose prostitution voluntarily.

On page 163 she writes about the case of Margaret MacDonald who was sentenced to four years imprisonment. 'These are women who would rather be sex workers than cleaners or care workers, as they earn much more money doing it, and until women's work is better paid, they want to carry on without interference.'

On page 177 she looks favourably on reforms in the Australian state of Victoria and in Holland.

There are a couple of things I am unhappy about though with her book. On page 161 she writes 'Three-quarters of those involved in prostitution in Britain entered street prostitution before their 18th birthday'. She doesn't give a reference but it seems to come from a 1995 study 'Street prostitution: Ten facts in search of a policy' by Benson and Matthews. This is clearly about street prostitution and not prostitution in general but even so I don't believe it.

On page 162 she gives more statistics including '68% met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder' (whatever that means). Helena Kennedy should realise that the 'research' of Melissa Farley is flawed. Overall though, I think it is a good book. She makes a lot of sense.

On page 170 she writes about women getting deported after police raids and mentions other forms of trafficking such as trafficking for cheap labour or domestic servitude 'doing back-breaking agricultural jobs or cockle picking or poultry cleaning and packing, living in inhumane conditions and being paid well below the minimum wage'. This is important because these issues tend to be ignored by people who support police crackdowns on prostitution.

On page 178 she also writes 'Saving women from prostitution must also mean removing sexual and economic inequalities, providing job opportunities, training and equal pay - in other words by recognising the economic realities which drive most women to the streets'.

I wasn't aware of the cases of Vishal Chaudhary and Tatiana Shmyrova, two traffickers who exploited their victims terribly. It just goes to show that some trafficking is heinous. She doesn't seem to be aware though that some people are convicted of trafficking who have never coerced anyone. In the case of Mark Viner for example there is no suggestion that he coerced the women involved.

Instead the police say that women were raped or robbed, although it is not clear whether this happened in somewhere set up by Mark Viner: "That is the very dark world traffickers like Mark Viner are bringing women into and it's why it's so important we continue to break the cycle".  Also, the present law is part of the problem: "They do this because they know we will not call the police because they know we work in brothels which is not legal".

You might wonder why I am sticking up for a trafficker, but we need to create a system where women don't get raped or robbed. Women come to Britain on tourist visas to get money for things like university fees, get deported (not rescued), then try to get back to Britain to continue as sex workers. This is all in the television series about Viner.

The law has to be able to distinguish between someone who has not coerced anyone and who protects them from rape and robbery, and someone like Vishal Chaudhary. I'm not saying that Mark Viner should have been allowed to get away with what he did. The law needs to be able to distinguish between a pimp who makes money from sex workers, and two or three sex workers working together for safety. Trafficking and brothel keeping-keeping are not always what they seem to the public.

meet Asami

I have had a video for a couple of years, part of my collection. It shows a young Japanese woman acting as a tour guide on a coach. She has sex with several men on the coach. She is wearing the uniform of tour guides in Japan, with a yellow jacket and hat.

I found out that her name is Asami and if you buy the DVD there is another video of her having sex at a hot spring or spa. I found out that there are other DVDs, one where she is a nurse. This is not soft porn, you see her having full sex and seeming to enjoy it.

In none of these films is there any slapping or strangling. At least, in none of her pornographic films. I found out just recently though that in Japan she is a well recognised and well respected mainstream actress of horror and action movies. Many of them extremely violent.

I found out that her full name is Asami Sugiura, in Japanese 杉浦 亜紗美. She's not as pretty as some of the women in Japanese pornographic videos, such as Kotomi Asakura, Iori Mizuki and Aika in her early days. Kotomi has also made the move from hard core pornography into mainstream movies.

Perhaps Asami's most violent movie was The Machine Girl which 'is particularly famous for its over-the-top violence and gore, featuring scenes with extreme action and bloodshed'.

I was listening to a radio programme last night which said that teenage boys are watching pornographic videos featuring slapping and strangling. Teenage girls are suffering because they are getting slapped and strangled. Yet most pornographic videos do not have slapping or strangling. So how is it that teenage boys will see it as normal?

It reminds me of a forum where people were saying that pornography is causing a rise in popularity in anal sex leading to pain and bleeding for girls. They cited some research which they thought would back their claim. Yet if you looked at the research, the recent rise is said to be due to 'TV shows including Sex and the City and Fleabag'.

So do we need to ban Sex and the City and Fleabag? As well as horror and action movies? They're not going to want that. Even though it might save teenage girls from sore bottoms and other places.

I am showing you a picture below of Asami in the film 'The Machine Girl' and another from the film 'Gun Woman'. There is another picture from Gun Woman that shows her naked and covered in blood and shooting. I'm not showing that one because I don't like it. I won't be watching any of her horror or action movies. I don't like them.

What really annoys me is that when I tried to find out about Asami on Microsoft Bing Copilot (AI) it wouldn't let me. I could find out about her co-star in The Machine Girl, Minase Yashiro. So it doesn't have a problem with extreme violence. That must be a bit confusing for any horror or action fans who aren't aware of her coach excursions.

I have got more than one blog, all with Google Blogger. Most of them are not controversial. When I try to look at these blogs I can see them no problem. When I try to look at my sex blog it will not let me and often say something stupid about security certificates or something.

It annoys me because if you are going to censor you should at least have the decency to say that you are censoring and not tell a lie. It isn't moral to tell lies. It isn't moral to stop people from seeing information that could help them make an informed choice about social and moral issues.

Asami

review of The Wisdom of Whores

review of The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani

Elizabeth Pisani is an expert in AIDS and has advised governments. She has a lot of knowledge about prostitution in many countries.

The most interesting chapter for me was chapter 6. She was working in East Timor for the health ministry. She was on a flight to the capital Dili and she decided to talk to two Chinese women who she suspected were sex workers.

"I found out that a local businessman was offering girls three-month stints selling sex to the Chinese community in Dili. 'We were really lucky to get in,' said one girl. They got the nod from a friend who had done the run six months earlier. 'She bought a car when she got home.'"

She goes on to write that most women sell sex for the same reason they do other jobs, to make money. Sex work though can earn them sixteen times more. It varies from country to country. Slavery is 'relatively rare'.

"For many women, selling sex is a job with a fair degree of freedom and for some there's job satisfaction, too. Many clients want far more than just a quick orgasm. They want companionship, advice on how to cope with girl trouble, pampering to help them forget a lover's death or a business deal gone wrong. They want their confidence boosted or their scars healed, they want to learn new tricks in bed or they just want a massage or a cuddle. A skilful sex worker will read and fulfil her client's needs, and many will be well rewarded for doing so."

When she was talking to sex workers in China, even though she was talking to women from the Bai ethnic minority who are 'on the bottom rung of the prostitution ladder', she found that they turned away many clients because they didn't offer them enough money.

"The 'all sex workers are trafficked' ideologues may damn me for saying so, but these ethnic minority women, working at the bottom end of the sex trade in one of the poorer areas in China, did not seem to be driven by desperation.''

Conservative Christians in the United States find this impossible to accept. Brenda Zurita for example stated 'Prostitution and sexual trafficking are inextricably linked and abolition is the only answer to end the horrors of both.'

Brazil did well in its fight against AIDS, but they were refused funding by the US because they wouldn't sign the loyalty oath against prostitution.

"The loyalty oath is based on the belief, no, the absolute conviction, that anything that improves work conditions for prostitutes serves only to bind them to slavery. The High Priestess of this view is a US academic named Donna Hughes, who pontificates on the evil of commercial sex from every available pulpit. In an op-ed titled 'Aiding and Abetting the Slave Trade', she railed at a programme that taught Cambodian sex workers to negotiate condom use with their clients."

This programme helped reduce new HIV infections in Cambodia from 42,000 a year to 6,000 a year.

"'The Bush administration needs to ... shut down unethical "interventions" with women and girls in brothels. Those who lack the moral capacity to know that slaves need freedom should never get funding again,' preached Hughes."

Pisani goes on to write about the International Justice Mission. They are an Evangelical Christian NGO that raids brothels to free slaves (as they see it). The women who are 'rescued' end up deported or detained. They often try to escape. They don't want to make T-shirts for small change, which is the sort of alternative offered to them.

This book was published in 2008, and it seems that IJM has changed its methods since then.

In chapter 4 Pisani writes that some sex workers have 5 or 6 clients a night, but most have fewer than that. In Thailand, Cambodia and some Indian states they averaged 20 clients per week - although it is lower than that now. This is more than in East Timor (3 per week), the Philippines (2 per week) or China and Indonesia (5 or 6 in a good week).

There are people who will tell you that sex workers are raped 20 or 30 times a day. Some of these people are Christian Evangelicals, some of them are Radical Feminists. There are others who should know better but who have been told lies by the Christians and the Radical Feminists. I don't believe them, I believe the experts such as Elizabeth Pisani.

election results in central Bristol

It just goes to show how little the Nordic model is important to the British public. We've just had a general election and it wasn't an issue at all as far as I can see. Even though an active supporter of the Nordic model has been displaced by someone who (possibly) believes in decriminalization. So I'm not worried that the Nordic model might come to Britain as it has in Ireland.

Thangam Debbonaire is not only a supporter of the Nordic model she has called on Bristol City Council to stop issuing licences to strip clubs in the city. She was Labour MP for Bristol Central and has been replaced by Carla Denyer of the Green party. Carla Denyer opposed the strip club ban. I don't know what her views on the decriminalization of sex work. I do know that leading  members of the Green party believe in it eg Natalie Bennett, and Caroline Lucas too.

Thangam Debbonaire was vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group 'Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade'. They all believe in the Nordic model there.

Curiously, I have just been looking at some research in Inner-city Bristol. I read in one study that in the UK up to 46% of female sex workers report anxiety or depression. This study gives as reference another study, of sex workers in Inner-city Bristol. However, I can't find this 46% figure here, not about anxiety or depression. All I can find is 'When asked the reasons for going to a GP, the commonest reason was depression or anxiety, given by 34% (24/71)'. So the figure is 34%, not 46%. They were a small group (71) of drug-addicted street-based sex workers ('Those sex workers who work on the street, rather than in premises such as massage parlours, appear to be the most at risk.'). They are not representative of sex workers in Britain.

I can't understand how this mistake has happened. It might be because 46% had been screened for sexually transmitted infection in the previous year (somehow this number got used instead of the correct 34%). It might be because 46% is a figure used for the general population. "A Eurobarometer survey conducted in June 2023 revealed that almost 1 in 2 people (46% of the EU population) had experienced emotional or psychosocial problems, such as feeling depressed or anxious, in the previous 12 months."

So sex workers have less anxiety or depression as the general population? No, of course not. It just goes to show that there's a lot of misinformation out there.

That doesn't mean that the first of the two studies was rubbish. I shall quote the important conclusions below. It is saying that the Nordic model harms women.

"How effective are different international approaches at addressing any harms associated with buying and selling sex?

As mentioned above, studies highlighted that in Sweden and Canada, criminalisation of clients did not improve access to services nor reduce sex workers’ experiences of violence. Evidence included in our qualitative synthesis clearly shows that criminalisation of clients does not facilitate access to services, nor reduce violence against sex workers. This is supported by the epidemiological evidence from Vancouver that showed that the introduction of more severe laws against the purchase of sex alongside fewer sanctions for sex workers (modelled on the Swedish Law) did not result in reduced violence from clients.

Despite the fact the Swedish Law was motivated by a desire to end the demand for sex work, findings from our qualitative synthesis suggest that these enforcement strategies that seek to reduce the numbers of sex workers or clients are unlikely to achieve these effects, since the economic needs of sex workers remain unchanged, resulting in sex workers having to work longer hours, accept greater risks, and deprioritise health. There is no reliable evidence from Sweden that the numbers of sex workers have decreased since the law changed in 1999.

In New Zealand, following decriminalisation, sex workers reported being better able to refuse clients and insist on condom use, amid improved relationships with police and managers. However, migrants continue to be excluded from this system. Studies in Guatemala, Mexico, Turkey and Nevada, US showed how regulatory models exacerbate disparities within sex worker communities. They enabled access to safer conditions for some, but excluded the majority (including the most marginalised).  Under these models non-compliance with regulatory systems including working in tolerance zones, regulator venues and/or mandatory registration at a health care facility and mandatory HIV/STI testing results in criminalisation.  

In conclusion, the public health evidence supports decriminalisation, when coupled with inclusive policies to protect the safety and health of sex workers, including the funding and scale-up of specialist and sex-worker-led services that help address the multiple and diverse health and social care needs of people who sell sex."

I think I spoke too soon. Jess Phillips is now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Home Office. She is a supporter of the Nordic model and has been a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group 'Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade'. Diana Johnson is another one to look out for.

This Guardian article makes so many mistakes it is difficult to know where to start. It is about prostitution and the murder of women. Curiously, there is a link at the side of this page to a page about murdered women. I say curiously, because none of them seem to have been murdered by a pimp or a punter. Fifty women killed by men this year so far and not one was a sex worker. As far as I can tell, I haven't bothered to read it through.

Soho is a hotbed of prostitution yet no sex worker has been murdered there since the 1940s. That's probably because each sex worker has a 'maid' which means they are never alone in a flat with a man. So if you really want to reduce murder of women then change the law so that women can work together.

I've just been looking at the Jess Phillips new book. I looked in the index for 'prostitution', 'sex work' and 'Nordic model' and it seems there is nothing in there about any of them.