Siobhain ButterworthReaders EditorThe Guardian10 November 2009 Dear Siobhain Butterworth We wish to submit a complaint about misinformation reported in the Guardian following Nick Davies’s excellent investigation on figures of women trafficked into the sex industry. 1. Denis MacShane MP claims that the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) “grew out of the Wages for Housework campaign started by […]
We who insist that a distinction be made between trafficking (coercion and rape) and prostitution (consenting sexual services) are charged with siding with pimps and clients against women. How about that for “nasty personal tone”?Yet no one is more concerned with women’s safety than we are. We campaign for decriminalisation so women don’t have to […]
Unpublished letterDear Sir or Madam,Nick Davies parallels the lies on trafficking to those on weapons of mass destruction — the same disregard for the truth and for people’s lives to impose a reckless political agenda (“Sex, lies and trafficking — the anatomy of a moral panic” Guardian, 20 October 2009).Yes, the “speculative” claims of academics Kelly and […]
Letters in The GuardianIf the Poppy Project is concerned about prostitutes being criminalised, where is it when the law raids, detains and deports women (Letters, 26 May); when mothers working collectively face closure, brothel-keeping charges, imprisonment and separation from their children; or when women driven out of premises risk rape or murder on the street?While […]
The government is criticised for not criminalising prostitutes’ clients enough (New law on forced prostitution weakened, say women’s groups, 20 May). But what about their increasing criminalisation of women? Not accidentally, the crime bill and the welfare reform bill are going through parliament together. If passed, mothers, especially single mothers, will lose income support and must […]
Letters The Guardian, Monday November 17 2008Feminist contempt for prostitutesWhat is most striking about feminist reporters who single out prostitution as worse than any other industry is their contempt for prostitute women. Zoe Williams describes sex workers as either “better at sex than they are at anything else” or “so disadvantaged that they may as well have […]
Sent to the Guardian letters, 16 May 08Dear Madam/SirFrances Crook’s comment that Pauline Campbell, who died tragically on 15 May, had been the “single most effective and inspiring campaigner” against women’s imprisonment, is closest to the truth (“Prison campaigner, 60, found dead by daughter’s graveside”, Guardian, 16 May).Like the mothers of the disappeared in Latin America […]
Government feminists and Christian fundamentalists have joined forces claiming that prostitution is violence. They rightly say that attacks against prostitute women are common and that it’s only when five are murdered in one place that it starts to provoke debate.They want to criminalise men who buy sex, as Sweden has done. But prosecuting clients is […]
Joan Smith acknowledges that “women are driven into prostitution by poverty”, but doesn’t address benefit cuts, low wages, debt, lack of affordable housing, and addiction to expensive drugs. Instead, she targets clients (“Prostitutes are victims not criminals”, 13 April). She claims that police can’t deal with sex workers being beaten or raped because they are […]
Julie Bindel’s obsession with male sexuality hides that it is women’s poverty and lack of viable economic alternatives that keep prostitution alive (Not a service like any other, January 16). Most sex workers are mothers and young people struggling to survive. Even government research found that “74% of women working indoors cited the need to […]