Sex work and the abolition of capitalism
Huge thanks to Read and Resist for allowing me to present this paper in September 2022. This piece, which is more suggestive than conclusive, is going to use the example of sex work and its various frames of criminalisation, to argue that we cannot think about prison abolition as a strategy for the end of…
VAWG strategy: how it upholds violence against women
. This post is based on my conference paper presented at SLSA 2022 as part of their Feminism + Abolition Stream. Some minor edits have been done for the purposes of formatting, and corresponding slides are not included (but are available). Huge thanks to Molly and Nic for organising the stream, and to everyone else…
A 10,000 word takedown of Bindel’s new ‘book’, or, “I read this so you don’t have to”
I wanted to tweet the most egregious parts of Julie Bindel’s new book Feminism for Women (2021), but there were too many to list, and my responses too expansive, so I compiled them into a blog post to peruse. Overall, the main take away I had from Feminism for Women is confusion. The list of…
Sex Workers As Collateral Damage, Once Again: A Critique Of The New ‘Sex Trafficking Identification Matrix’ Tool
This article is a guest post by Victoria Holt, Emily Kenway and Addy Berry, with thanks to Lydia Caradonna Context and background Evidence-based research is necessary to help improve the lives and working conditions of sex workers and this is especially the case where research lies at the intersection of anti-trafficking and the sex sector.…
“she is incapable of leaving” – perceiving vulnerability and strategy in ‘battered’ and ‘prostituted’ women.
Was it once so difficult to understand why women stayed in abusive relationships that we had to appeal to their passivity and helplessness by identifying them battered women? Is it so unthinkable that a woman might consider sex work a feasible option, that we must consider them driven and forced into the industry by other…
Vital Statistics
There has been so much work done to debunk the dodgy statistics in trafficking claims, but it’s not just abolitionists whose research is characterised by not actually talking to sex workers. With the claim that 27.1% of the sex workers on AW are men or the strange deduction that indoor sex workers earn a cool…
What Covid-19 has taught us about the Nordic Model.
As the UK creaks forward to its new normality, sex workers have been amongst those who will assess the risks of close contact working. Across the world sex workers were excluded from many of the support packages put together by governments in response to the coronavirus. Even the funds which sex workers were able to…
Epistemic exploitation of sex workers, or why debates about sex work are never a good idea
The other day an email landed in my inbox from someone who was putting together a panel for a debate. The motion was “‘This House Believes That Sex Work Is Real Work’ and I was asked to propose the motion “speaking about why you believe that sex work, notably prostitution, is moral and legitimate work,…
Boyfriend, manager, or pimp?
This piece will argue why it is important to have a clear working definition of pimp – a definition which is distinct from boyfriend or manager, both of which are often conflated with pimping . I will outline the current discourses on pimping, then explain why these are confusing. I will use Holly Davis’ argument…
The Lancet: ‘Sex workers must not be forgotten in the COVID-19 response’
Lucy Platt of The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Jocelyn Elms of the East London Project, Luca Stevenson of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, Steve Rolles of Transform Drug Policy, Rachel Stewart of the University of Kent and myself co-authored a paper for The Lancet. Available to…
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