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 […]
Who cares about women’s work? Discussing care, Wages for Housework and valuing feminised labour, Ray is joined by Selma James, coordinator of the Global Women’s Strike and author of Sex, Race and Class, and Cari Mitchell, spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes.
Unpublished. 9 September 2016 Why should Keith Vaz resign as head of the Home Affairs Select Committee which is considering the prostitution laws just because he may have consorted with sex workers? (Vaz to leave committee after sex claims, Guardian 5 Sept 16) The laws that criminalised sex workers have almost always (with some exceptions) […]
Women at the top of the party are no guarantee of representation at the bottom, six female activists argue. Kate Green MP, former shadow minister for women and equalities, now heading Owen Smith’s campaign for leadership of the Labour Party, accuses Jeremy Corbyn of not “listening” before supporting the decriminalisation of prostitution, which in her […]
By Frankie Miren“Dirty whores.” “You should be put on fire.” So shouted the 100-strong mob as it surrounded the house of a group of women, thought to be sex workers, in Belfast on Friday 29th July. Vigilante attacks of this type aren’t new but this one was filmed and, if you have the stomach, you […]