The residents, sex workers and activists I spoke to told me it’s only going to force everything into a new area. Last week, Hull City Council won a landmark ruling to create Britain’s first “prostitution-free zone”. The new orders mean that any sex workers or curb crawlers caught around the impoverished Hessle Road area – where […]
The Scottish Nationalists’ conference in Aberdeen backs a motion condemning the sale of sex as ‘a form of violence against women’The Scottish National Party has backed changes to prostitution laws to criminalise those paying for sex, but not those who sell it.Delegates at the party’s conference in Aberdeen voted in favour of a motion proposing a “Scottish model” […]
Frankie Mullin “Pop-up brothels” full of trafficked women are sweeping the country, according to a spate of recent reports. In Newquay, police say they’ve located 14 since July (reported by the Guardian, BBC, Daily Mail, Mirror); in Swindon there are said to be 30 opening a week (Telegraph, BBC, Metro). The Sun recapped the stories […]
Women’s Right to Refuse Why women in the United States will strike on March 8th. By Melissa Gira Grant The call went out just weeks ago for a women’s strike in the United States. March 8th, International Women’s Day, would be marked by “striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex […]
A significant number of sex workers in the UK are also mothers, research suggests. So what is it like to sell sex while bringing up a child? “I’m certainly not ashamed of what I’ve done,” Sherri, 42, from Essex says. “And I’m quietly furious about the lack of recognition that myself and other women I […]
November 2016.Dear Editor,We write to support the concerns raised by SCOT-PEP that police “SHAW (Support, Health and Wellbeing) visits” to sex workers’ homes or places of work may be used to gather intelligence to bring prosecutions for criminal offences.We share SCOT-PEP’s concern because that is exactly what happened here. In 2013 250 police raided 20 […]
Tabi Jackson Gee “I was a full time mum, and a part-time prostitute. But I was never a regular working girl. I went out one or two nights a month to get money to pay a bill, or for something that needed replacing in the house.” Jenny* is in her mid-forties. She lives in the North of England, where […]
Austerity measures like benefit sanctions are pushing women in Sheffield to sell their bodies on the city’s streets, claims experts. That is the view of staff at the Sheffield Working Women’s Opportunities Project (SWWOP), who report that between June and August this year 51 ‘new’ women became involved with sex work in Sheffield. Manager at […]
Last week, six massage parlours were stormed by police looking for “victims” so they could “take them to safety”. Often, this meant arresting women and putting them in detention centres. Frankie Mullin On Thursday the 20th of October, around midnight, police stormed six massage parlours in Soho and Chinatown, making arrests, padlocking doors and nailing […]
No bad women, just bad lawsWomen from the English Collective of Prostitutes and the Sex Workers Open University protest police attitudes to migrants sex workers. Sex workers don’t need a hero, they say, but to be treated like humans.Prostitution is a tricky subject. Most of us don’t talk about it, and if we do, it’s […]