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.

hatred of clients

One thing that surprised me when I read Sara Pascoe's book is her hatred of men like me. She thinks that we are psychopaths, antisocial and unsympathetic.

I have read a new book that sheds some light on this attitude. The book is The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, a professor at Oxford.

There are six chapters in the book, each on a different aspect of sex. The two chapters that were of interest to me were the last one (Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism - about prostitution) and the second one (Talking to My Students About Porn - about pornography).

In some ways this mirrors two of the three sections in Sara's book. The third section is about prostitution and the second is about pornography. Sara and Amia's approaches to these subjects are very different though.

This is what Amia writes (on page 151)

"At the level of the symbol, prostitution is seen as a distillation of women's condition under patriarchy. The prostitute is the perfected figure of women's subordinate status, just as the john is the perfected figure of male domination. Their sexual transaction, defined by inequality and often accompanied by violence, stands in for the state of sexual relations between women and men more generally. Seen in this way, the prostitute calls out to be saved, the john to be punished, and their transactional sex to be stopped - for the good of all women."

She is using the word 'john' to mean the clients of sex workers. It's a common term in America. Amia writes that the criminalisation of men doesn't help sex workers. So why do some feminists want it? They want to punish men. That is more important to them than helping women.

There are two points I can make about that. First, these feminists believe that prostitution can be reduced even if it can't be eliminated. They have a statistic which says that the proportion of Swedish men who bought sex decreased after the law was introduced that criminalises men. That is a false statistic, as I have explained in detail here. Second, the law doesn't harm men. In most Nordic model countries very few men are convicted: it seems easy to avoid prosecution for an intelligent sane sober man.

Amia quotes from the book Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith and Juno Mac. "The client thus becomes the symbol of all violent men: he is the avatar of unadulterated violence against women, the archetypal predator." This all seems very odd to me. I can understand antipathy towards drug dealers and pimps (if the person accused is really a pimp: lots of people are convicted of pimping offences who aren't pimps).

Amia, Molly and Juno aren't saying that they believe the clients of sex workers are predators, they are saying some feminists believe that. Some sex workers work alone and never have a violent client. There may be gangs who want to take her money. There may be vigilantes who want to harm her.

Some women would like to work with other women to avoid potential violence but that's not allowed. Some brothels were well run and never had any violence but the police have closed them down. If sex workers were allowed to keep themselves safe they would probably be just as safe as estate agents, nurses and social workers.

Perhaps they think that men like me exploit the supposed power imbalance. In the quotation from Revolting Prostitutes there is this: "prostitution as a deeply unequal transaction - one scarred by patriarchy as well as white supremacy, poverty and colonialism. It seems intuitively right to criminalise men who are, in many ways, the living embodiments of these huge power differentials".

Today both sex workers and their clients come from many different backgrounds. The idea that clients are affluent white men and sex workers are poor black women is rarely true. It is more often true of employers and their servants or even employers and their cleaners, but nobody seems to be bothered by that. I do not consider women or non-Europeans to be inferior to me or only there to serve me. I pay women and not men for sex because I am heterosexual. Mostly English women because that is my preference. They have probably got more money than me. Lots of sex workers today are highly educated. Lots of clients are working class.

A clue to one possible reason for the hatred of clients comes from Sara's book. She writes about a gig where a man called Stefan came over to talk to her. On the subject of early internet pornography, he said that the pictures took so long to download that he wished they would do so upside down. He was trying to make a joke, the idea being that he was impatient to see the woman's genitals (the 'good bits') and not so much her face.

Sara took great offense at this. Two pages later there's a note about Alexa, the cloud-based voice service. Sara writes "Stefan wouldn't like her, she's all brain and no good bits." This is very unfair on Stefan. She is assuming that any man who has a strong sexual attraction to a woman's body is incapable of appreciating her personality or her mind. That he thinks women are only good for one thing.

That's a common prejudice, and it's wrong. Where does it come from? Sara writes about millions of years of evolution that reinforce certain attitudes. I think it comes from cultural conditioning and in our culture that comes from thousands of years of Christianity with its disgust and fear of basic human sexuality. Lust reduces us to the level of beasts, so they say.

So some people hate men like me because we are supposedly violent, we've got more money than most and we are incapable of appreciating women's personalities or minds. There is no evidence for any of this. It seems to come from a lurid imagination or an outdated ideology. Or the female equivalent of misogyny. Perhaps I should feel guilty: after all, I am a Living Embodiment. Another word for that could be scapegoat.

You would think that the Radical Feminists would hate men like Jim Wells. Or Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers. But they like Jim Wells. Julie Bindel and Kat Banyard have quoted him (as 'Mr Wells') in recent books despite the fact that he is an Evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in abortion or gay rights. They like him because he wants to stamp out pornography and prostitution.

Amia Srinivasan in her book The Right to Sex comes out unequivocally in favour of decriminalisation. As do Molly Smith, Juno Mac and Emily Kenway in their books. I wish that Sara Pascoe had done the same in her book (see previous post). Even so there seems to be more and more support for decriminalisation and less for the Nordic model. I know which side I'm on, and it's not with Jim Wells.

In 1991, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), an abolitionist group that [Kathleen] Barry founded, took its case of 'prostitution as slavery' to the United Nations. 'To be a prostitute was to be unconditionally sexually available to any male who bought the right to use a woman's body in whatever manner he chose,' CATW told the working group on contemporary forms of slavery. This unconditional availability and the man's right to do whatever he wanted was tantamount to ownership and slavery.

The paragraph above is from Nine Degrees of Justice by Bishakha Datta.

They didn't get anywhere. Sex workers choose their clients. They can and do deny their services to any man they choose. They tell the man what they will accept and what they won't. If a man wants anal sex without a condom he won't get it. There are no 'survivors' who say that he will. In Rachel Moran's book, for example, she states that she didn't have anal sex once.

So the whole basis of Barry's argument is false. The whole basis of the Radical Feminist argument is false. They don't know what they are talking about. Their hatred of men like me is based more on victim porn than reality.

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.

review of Sex Power Money by Sara Pascoe

The popular comedian has a lot to say about pornography and prostitution. There is no index for this book, I would have liked to look up 'Nordic model' and 'decriminalisation' to see what her position is. You have to read the whole book but even then you're not sure what she believes.

She doesn't mention the Nordic model, where men are criminalised for paying for sex. She mentions decriminalisation once, on page 310 of the hardback edition.

"I am listening to the people who want to sell sex - I think the law should respect their wishes and they should be decriminalised and supported. I think all human beings should be free to use their body how they want ... unless that involves buying access to another person. Then I think they should have a wank and shut up."

That sounds as if she believes in decriminalisation as in New Zealand instead of the Nordic model as in Sweden. However, people who believe in the Nordic model usually think that it is about decrimalising sex workers as well as criminalising their clients. That is not the reality though, as I have detailed elsewhere on this blog.

Her position is unclear. That could be because she doesn't understand what she is talking about. Or it could be deliberate. By coming down on one side or the other she risks alienating a lot of people.

On page 2 she wrote this.

"I went on PunterNet when I got home. It was mostly men discussing the parking restrictions around sex workers' houses. These men are breaking the law by paying for sex, but they're only worried about traffic wardens."

That is false. Men who pay for sex are not breaking the law in Britain. How could she make such a basic error? When I read that I felt that she doesn't know what she is talking about, but I persevered. What she is writing other people will be thinking. Whatever she writes will influence many young people.

Is it possible that she is not calling for men who pay for sex to be criminalised because she thinks they already are?

You might think that she is the sort of person who tells it like it is. However, finding out what she believes and why can take a long time. The most irritating example of this is where at the end of a chapter and section she writes.

"I also can't simply sign off on 'sex work is work', even if for some people it is. It is not so simple as sex for money, because of the imbalance of power."

I have heard this phrase many times before, 'imbalance of power' or 'power imbalance'. I have never heard it explained. Sara does explain it, but you have to wait till the end of the next three chapters. She takes three whole chapters to make a convoluted argument that no prostitute has a choice to do what they do. They hate it but they have no other option to get money to live or to eat.

Punters are delusional, thinking that sex workers have a choice, or that they enjoy it.

"And it's the 'choice' that means real-life Stewart and all the other real-life Johns can defend their behaviour because the people they pay for sex are doing so of their own volition. 'If they didn't want to do it they wouldn't,' they rationalise. 'No one is making them.'"

This suggests that prostitutes are poor, uneducated and have limited employment opportunities. Considering that in the rest of the book she quotes academic studies frequently to support her arguments, it is interesting that she offers no evidence for what she says.

Has she looked for academic studies that throw light on this belief? She wouldn't have to go far to find one. In the further reading section at the end of the book she suggests Brooke Magnanti's book Sex, Lies and Statistics. Her other non-fiction book is The Sex Myth, which covers a lot of the same ground.

In The Sex Myth Dr Magnanti quotes a 2009 study called Beyond Gender: An examination of exploitation in sex work by Suzanne Jenkins of Keele University. It comes from detailed interviews with 440 sex workers of many different types. This is what Dr Magnanti writes.

"Sex work is frequently assumed to be a choice suitable only for the uneducated. But 35.3 per cent of the men and 32.9 per cent of the women had degrees, and over 18 per cent of the total held post-graduate qualifications. Only 6.5 per cent had no formal educational qualifications."

Even the examples that Sara uses in the three chapters don't back up what she writes. In the film Indecent Proposal the alternative to being paid for sex is driving a cab and waiting tables. That's what millions of people in America do. Not the worse thing that can happen to anyone. Not something that must be avoided at all costs. She speculates that the men who are paid for sex by her friend Stewart might be facing eviction, but she doesn't know that.

In the three boring chapters she gives a number of scenarios. Someone eats in a restaurant but can't pay. The manager could force her to wash dishes or he could force her to have sex.

"I think it is reasonable to consider a forced sex act as something that will hurt and harm someone, while washing dishes or stacking shelves for a few hours will not. Is that fair?"

There is another scenario, one that she doesn't present us with. One that is more in accordance with reality. Imagine a group of women who eat in a restaurant but can't pay. They are all told by the manager that they have to wash dishes or stack shelves. One of the women says "Can't I just give you a blow job instead?". She is the one who knows she will not be hurt or harmed by it because her attitude to sex is different from the others. Nobody is telling any of them they have to have sex.

Some women don't want to work for a minimum wage and just get by. They could do that, or they could train to be a professional, which brings its own problems, like burnout. Or she could do sex work. Or she could do the kind of work she likes even though it doesn't pay much and top up her income through sex work. That way she could get her National Insurance contributions paid which is always a good idea for the future. Or she could do sex work while she trains to be a professional, instead of something like waitressing or bar work. More time for study and more time for fun. Or maybe she just responds to having clients which is always more demanding and to some people more rewarding than working in a factory.

That's for her to decide. She can decide if she will be hurt or harmed by it. Don't say they don't have options when it is you who is taking away their options.

So Sara says that they have no choice, but then she contradicts herself. On page 318 she writes about a disabled sex worker called Jane.

"She performs as a dominatrix, which gives her the power to refuse things she doesn't want to do, and is adamant that she enjoys her job sometimes."

All sex workers have the power to refuse things they don't want to do. They don't have to do anal sex, for example. Yes, some of them do enjoy it some of the time. Sara told Jane about a exit strategy scheme.

"When I excitedly told her about an exit strategy scheme I've heard of, where sex workers in northern Europe are given jobs in old people's homes and they're 'really good at it because they are not grossed out by the human body', Jane replies, 'I find that very patronising.' She says, 'I can earn £200 an hour - I don't want to earn minimum wage in an old people's home.'

When I started writing this book I assumed that anyone in sex work or prostitution would want to get out of it at any cost. And that is not true. There are people who have options and choices, who opt and choose to sell sex. It is possible to be well-meaning and wrong. This is where feminism has not supported sex workers properly. When some of them have told us, 'This is my choice - please help me to earn my money safely,' our own feelings get in the way - 'I don't want you to do that'; 'you will always be a victim to me.' Kind feelings can create more problems."

Very sensible, but it won't earn you many brownie points with the Julie Bindels of the world. It's as if this book is written by two different people. Perhaps her reason and emotions are saying different things. She needs to realise that not everyone has the same emotions as she does, especially the hate.

So does she still believe that punters are 'psychopaths'? This is what she writes at the beginning of the book. They are delusional, thinking that sex workers enjoy having sex with them. Or the opposite. 'Pain, discomfort or unwillingness turns them on. It makes them feel more powerful.'

Perhaps there are a few punters who are delusional and a few who want to inflict discomfort. Most punters though will realise that sex work is like other jobs. Sometimes good, sometimes bad but mostly neutral. A cab driver loves the occasional trip out into the country and hates being stuck in traffic. When bored he or she may think about what they are going to have for dinner tonight, but it doesn't make sense to call that dissociation.

Some people would refuse to drive a cab even if it meant having to live on benefits. The ones who do it and stick at it are glad that option is available to them. Legally and safely. You can say that they don't want to drive you somewhere, the fact that you have to pay them means they don't want to do it. But of course they do want it - they want your custom. And they don't have to take you south of the river if they really don't want to.

I have put more about her book on this page.

Julie Bindel's new book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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