International Sex Workers’ Rights Day, and Confide.

We’re holding a film night at the Centre For Contemporary Arts on Sauchiehall Street to celebrate/mark International Sex Workers’ Rights Day. Which is on the 2nd of June, and yes, our event is on the 7th because reasons. ANYWAY.

Suggested donation for a ticket is £5; doors at 7pm; films start at 7.30pm. We’re showing ‘We Are Foot Soliders’, about the children of sex workers in Sonagachi, and their self-organising; ‘A Kiss For Gabriela’, about the election campaign of Gabriela Leite, a former sex worker and sex worker rights activist, as she tries to get into the Brazilian parliament, and ‘live eXXXpressions’, a short and inspiring documentary about the 2005 ‘Forum Triple X’ gathering of sex workers in Montreal, Canada.

We’re also unveiling CONFIDE, a new sex worker-led community support project. You can read more about Confide on our website, which is HERE, but suffice to say this is very very exciting to be part of. We’d love your support, whether that’s telling us we’re doing okay (or suggestions as to how to do better), spreading the word about us, offering to help in some concrete way, or turning up at the fundraiser on the 7th of June at the CCA and having a lovely time with us. Or ALL OF THE ABOVE.

The venue is accessible.

Gender inequality and sex work.

I very much liked this piece by Sarah Woolley (killer aside: “I find that garden-variety ‘objectification’ is a herd word used by women who can rarely recall the name of their last waitress”) on objectification and Cambridge jelly wrestling.

She makes a point – “If a person sees a woman arse-deep in jelly and regards her as subhuman because of it, then that shit is on them” - which is similar to something that I’ve been chewing over for a while, and I’m going to expand on what she’s said, because I think we need to hammer this point fully fucking home.

Something I hear ridiculously often is that sex work is problematic because it entrenches gender inequality, specifically because if men live in a society where women sell sex, that means they can’t possibly respect women.

If a lady is wearing a translucent maxi-skirt that’s split to the thigh (always think the ‘short skirt’ shorthand here is so unconvincing and outdated, like one of those crappy line-drawing illustrations in French GCSE textbooks. Who just wears a “short skirt”? Surely you have more to say about it than that?), and some man looks at her, and in his head is like, oh yeah, stupid woman, stupid visible body giving me weird feelings, bleurgh I am a raging inadequate and I hate this stupid woman-shape in front of me for making have those weird feelings and I hate all the stupid woman-shapes, ugh, then, um, the problem here is maybe not the lady, who is just wearing whatever the fuck she wanted because it was a sunny day and there was an ASOS sale last week.

If you’ve ever made the mistake of googling “abortion, objectification” (what I can I say, I’m here to lead you to mistakes. Mistake better, if you will), you’ll find a large number of raging inadequates arguing that “abortion culture leads to a culture of expediency that urges an objectification of women” (not all people who have or need abortions are women, of course. But that is the frame of this whole bullshit discourse), and asking “how do pro-abortion women not see that abortion objectifies them?” (how indeed?). Oh noes! How can the men possibly respect a woman who has had an abortion, or, in fact, women in general, since women can have abortionz!!! Also objectification!! Is a thing!11!

All of these people should be thrown in a river. Let’s move on.

I think we’ve discovered that men who hate women or female-bodied female-assigned at at birth (edited, see comments) people will tend to use any premise to engage in their hating-of-women activities. This may not be news to you. And that if some guy looks at a girl in a mega translucent maxi-dress, or at a person who has had an abortion, and either a) does not respect that specific female-bodied human, because he thinks that that behaviour is not respectable, or, b) does not respect women in general, because women in general might engage in those un-respectable activities, then the answer to this is not that women (or anyone) should stop wearing fashion-forward summer styles, nor that they should stop availing themselves of the necessary medical care appropriate to their needs. The answer is that this guy should stop being a fucking misogynist. Duh.

So when you’re like, “in a society where sex work happens, men can’t respect women, and sex work thus entrenches gender inequality, and therefore we should strive for a society with no sex work” (ha ha I’ve just noticed how this line of thought perfectly encapsulates the adage ‘be the change you want to see in the world’: *wants no more sex work* *ignores all the sex workers*), you are saying that this one form of misogyny (not respecting sex workers because we sell sex; not respecting women in general because some women are sex workers), is inevitable, understandable, and unavoidable, and thus the way we should tackle this form of misogyny is by changing womens’ behaviour (both individually, and as a society), in order to ‘avoid‘ it.

That’s super fucked up.

Women shouldn’t have to “avoid” misogyny, because that is impossible; the way to eradicate misogyny is to kill educate kill misogynists. Don’t come at me with “pragmatism” unless you’re also willing to argue that “ideally, yes, men should respect women who have had abortions. But pragmatically, we don’t live in an ideal world, so maybe we should tackle misogyny right now, as it is, by heavily restricting abortion access”. Maybe you’ve never seen a man know that a woman is a sex worker and nonetheless respect both her, and women in general, in which case you need to consider getting different friends. I’m pretty sure that this can be done (the respecting thing I mean. Got no opinion on your capacity to find new pals), because generally my male friends say things to me like, “hey, I’m making a fucktonne of dhal, would you like to come over and help me eat it?” or “can I borrow that book when you’ve finished it?” or “Christ, ‘the left’ has such a problem with misogyny. How d’you think we can fight that? Maybe by setting fire to the whole idea of ‘the left’?”.

They do not say to me, “hey girl, I thought I was alright at feminism, but now I’ve fully grasped that you sell everything that truly defines your value, and what makes you who you are, I guess I’ve returned to the idea that women are rubbish”.

I agree that sex work, and sex workers, provoke expressions of misogyny that might otherwise be hidden. Well done, people who make this argument! You’ve correctly identified a definitely-existing strand of visible misogyny. As we’ve established, many things ‘provoke’ (read: provide a premise for) misogyny, because we live in a misogynist culture, constantly swarming with dickheads. If you think sex work is unique in that we should “tackle misogyny” by getting rid of the behaviour that ‘provokes’ it, rather than say by getting rid of misogyny itself, you are endorsing and firming up the worldview of people who hate sex working women – and by extension, women in general. You’re saying that misogyny against sex workers is unavoidable, and by implication therefore a little bit understandable.

Once again: that’s super fucked up.

Guest post: a sauna-based sex working woman hits back.

This guest post discusses the politicking and media chat around Edinburgh’s sauna debate – I’ve provided context in the next paragraph, non-Scottish readers! – and I was so hyped that the author of this post contacted me, because she makes such a compelling and foundational point that the voices of women who work in the saunas are entirely absent from this debate, and that that’s not an accident or a coincidence. 

Context for my non-Scottish readers: Edinburgh currently has an informal policy of licensing saunas as ‘entertainment venues’, which self-evidently constitutes a licensed brothel system. This policy was originally put in place as part of the city’s HIV strategy, and has been so successful that sex workers were recently taken off the list of risk groups for HIV transmission. A legal case is due to be launched against the saunas next month, which is obviously putting them under threat of closure. This has led to a debate in the Scottish press.

Over to my guest … 

Yet another article was punished today about a proposed challenge to sauna licensing in Edinburgh. Yet again, there are no workers quoted in the article and no hint of recognition that their views might be under-represented in the debate. The same paper has run another article  today about the saunas, which despite the female journalist having tried to visit the sauna, still includes no direct quotes from sauna workers: only second-hand (better than nothing) information from escorts, who have managed to access the sauna workers through less devious means. I say female journalist, because I think female journalists tend more often to at least give lip service to the idea that major stake holders in news stories (in cases of labour and legislative oppression, the workers) should ideally be involved in reporting, at least as context, probably because women have more experience of not being listened to at all.

I have worked in a sauna, been an independent escort and worked at an escort agency. Whilst I didn’t particularly enjoy working at the sauna, I absolutely oppose challenges to the existence of the saunas and I’d appreciate you listening to why.

The challenges to the licensing of the saunas oppose them on the basis that the saunas are brothels and that violence and exploitation are inherent in prostitution. The first point, I think is moot: they are brothels, and that is a good thing. Let’s not forget: Edinburgh saunas: 11, Edinburgh street workers: approximately 80. Glasgow saunas: 0, Glasgow street workers approximately 400. These numbers suggest that women prefer to work in saunas, when they have that option.

I have never worked on the street, but it is criminalised, so I would prefer not to. I didn’t say that Glasgow sex workers face more violence because they are street workers, but they face more police intervention into the way they work, which makes it more likely. Truth is, there is no good research comparing street work to sauna work anyway.

However, violence and exploitation are not inherent in prostitution. Do a wide scale survey of a wide range of styles of sex workers, in varying conditions and then compare it with nurses, bus drivers or any other service profession. The only thing perpetuating violence within the sex industry is state intervention in our rights.

Decriminalise pimping. First and foremost. If you are a model, singer, secretary temp or celebrity, you don’t call the people who get you gigs a pimp. Recruitment agents or headhunters are not pimps: they fulfill a need in the labour market and they are paid and recognised accordingly. Stop calling the people who organise safe places to work and find clients for sex workers pimps. The only reason that they are sometimes exploitative and engage in illegal stuff is because they are all by default criminals. Decriminalise, and the workers will be able to have the choice between good and bad management.

At the moment, independent escorting is not illegal, although your landlord can still ask you to leave if you are found escorting from the property. Firstly, some workers lack the business acumen or other organisational skills to make it as a self-employed entrepreneur. Some people don’t want the stress and hassle of finding their own clients or organising a place to work. Some people can’t work independently. Some people don’t want to, for safely. Some people want to turn up, work and go home. There is nothing wrong with that. Decriminalise brothel-keeping so that we can have good workplaces.

I would personally have liked to be able to set my own prices in the sauna. I have heard in Nevada in the brothels, there are negotiation rooms, where you go to discuss with your customer before you get to the bedroom.

I would have liked specified break times. I would have liked to choose what sex acts to offer and what safer sex precautions to use. I would have liked a rape alarm in the room. I would have liked holiday and sick pay, and other employee protections. I would have liked to be able to keep whatever I wanted in my room, and wear whatever I liked.

However, the fact that I didn’t enjoy the working conditions does not, under any circumstances negate the fact that I absolutely support the existence of the saunas. I am also not representative: WHY DO THESE DEBATES NEVER INCLUDE VIEWS OF THE WORKERS? No-one has seemingly ever asked the women about whether the saunas should continue to be licensed, or how they could be improved.

Maybe other women didn’t mind the working conditions I disliked: some women had been working there for over a decade. Probably some people don’t like the working conditions at McDonald’s or JPMorgan, they still choose to work there. Don’t even get me started on interning or workfare. I cannot believe that a single woman I met there would want the licenses revoked. Mostly because I chose to work in the sauna, and so did all the women I met there, even the ones who had paid men to help them cross borders.

The article that I read this morning mentions a misguided councillor considering regulation as a possible solution: this would be legalisation and not decriminalisation. To my mind, this would just create the same dichotomy: licensed and un-licensed, above board and under the radar. I have already said it a hundred times but please decriminalise, and bring the sex industry into plain view of human and labour rights like every other business and workplace.

Also, requiring workers to be health tested would be like making a law that workers in coffee shops have to pass a special coffee-making exam. There is no evidence to suggest that workers do not voluntarily test, or that the population are at any more risk from catching STIs from sex workers: in fact, the opposite is true. Ask any sexual health professional: sex workers rarely catch STIs at work. The other suggestion is that legalisation would help stop trafficking: the saunas are already regularly inspected to look for women who are working in the UK illegally, which forces those who aren’t to work in even less safe conditions. Trafficking, rape and coercion are all already illegal – therefore legalisation on those terms is pointless.

If you are a politician or policy-maker, please could you read about the issues and talk to people in the industry before you give your views?

Please decriminalise the entire sex industry, so that I and all my co-workers can choose our working conditions. By keeping the sex industry licensed and criminalised, you make it so that the sex industry is not just subject to normal labour and human rights. Here, the state is doing the exploitation.

Most of all, please go and speak to the women involved. It is desperately patronising when you are having debates about our livelihoods over our heads. Your complete lack of recognition of our agency or voice is complicit in keeping working conditions less good than they could be.

Dear Kate Nash – NOW UPDATED with Kate’s response

Oh hi!

I was at your gig last night in Glasgow, and it was super awesome; thank you. I went to a gig of yours down south in 2007ish, back when I was wee, so it felt really nostalgic and strange – in a good way – to see you play again.

One thing, though! You played a song called I’m A Feminist, and You’re Still A Whore, and, well. I really liked what you were saying throughout the gig about not slagging off other women, and supporting each other, and all that stuff, but that song really made what you were saying ring a little hollow for me, as if I had a paper cut and you know when you temporarily forget and move as if you don’t, and then it hurts? That.

Coz like, I am a whore. And a feminist. I actually prefer the term sex worker, and I also would prefer it if people didn’t use the term whore as an insult. What’s so insulting about being compared to me? I helped set up and run Glasgow Ladyfest. I have the best friends in the world, and I have two lovely cats, and basically what I’m getting at is that I don’t think it’s okay to insult people by saying they’re like me, because I’m pretty sure I’m not a bad person. I’m a sex worker and I’m an alright person. (Even if I was a bad person, it wouldn’t be okay to use ‘whore’ as an insult, because being a sex worker isn’t an insult – it’s a job. If I was a bad person and a bus conductor, it wouldn’t make sense to use the phrase ‘bus conductor’ as an insult. Sex work is work. We’re just people with jobs.)

I know a fucktonne of other sex workers, and they’re pretty much all amazing – cool and smart and strong, and feminist, and supportive of other women. And yeah, they have sex for money – which might be an identity that they want to organise around, but which I don’t think it’s okay for a non-sex worker to diminish them to. The word ‘whore’ excludes all the other things they (we) are; it reduces us to just that one part of our selves, while amplifying the stigma that’s attached to that one facet of our identities. That’s why I’ve included some personal details – cats, and gig-going, and Ladyfest – in this thing, because I wanted to underline the fact that sex workers aren’t a scary Other – we come to your gigs, we live normal lives, doing things you’d probably approve of, like running feminist music festivals. (Again, though: even if we lived totally weird lives, doing exclusively things you disapproved  of, using that word would still not be okay.)

I know you said it wasn’t gender specific, but to be honest that doesn’t really help. Some of the people I love most in the world are gender non-conforming, or male sex workers, and they’re all pretty ace too. Recently I laughed so hard I thought I might die of choking because I was out for tea and cake with two sex working male friends, and y’know, those two are hilarious. So I don’t think being called or compared to them works as an insult either?

I feel like you probably weren’t literally saying, “I’m a feminist and you’re still a (yuck) sex worker” (although that is the primary meaning of the word ‘whore’); I assume that the person you’re hypothetically addressing in the song is (in your view) ‘unethically promiscuous’ rather than than a person who consensually exchanges their own sexual labour or performance for financial compensation. (Why yes, I did just type that definition out from memory. I will now pause to high-five myself.) That doesn’t really make me feel better. It is totally weird to feel that you’re in a feminist-kinda space, and suddenly have the whole room gleefully singing along to ‘I’m a feminist but you’re still a whore’. Surely you must be aware that – as Gail Pheterson puts it – ‘the whore stigma is the primary mechanism for the social control of all women’.

When you said “this is gender neutral”, you were acknowledging that actually the word ‘whore’ is mostly used to shame and silence women. Regardless of whether someone’s alleged ‘promiscuity’ is unethical or not, it isn’t okay to stigmatise sex workers as a way of expressing your anger or hurt; nor it is okay to use misogynist language, even with a kind of tee-hee I-know-I-shouldn’t-really-be-saying-this (‘I’m a feminist, and …”) qualification. It isn’t edgy to be horrible to sex workers, or to slut-shame women! That’s really boring – in fact, one of the reasons it felt so weird to be in the room when you sang that song is that actually, I get a fucktonne of whorephobia and slut-shaming in feminist spaces – just never before, um, put to music.

I really hope you’ll see that this isn’t an attack; I really liked a bunch of what you said about how women should feel empowered to be angry and to express themselves and express that anger, and hopefully you’ll take this feedback as part of that project of women speaking up.

x

And here’s what I got in reply. (Note: writing these captions I am clearly a little vexed. Please feel free to re-read what I wrote above, and consider again whether I was too rude or too pushy to deserve a better response than this.)

Apparently I just don’t understand music. My poor confused head!

Furthermore, Kate can unilaterally re-define the meaning of words – words which pertain to a stigmatised group to which she does not belong – so that – ta-da! those words are no longer offensive. Because Kate says so.

Finally and most shockingly, Kate’s like “oh my use of the word ‘whore’ isn’t misogynist/whorephobic …. because this white artist used the n-word, and that’s totally fine and great and not problematic either!”. Um.

Gotta say, with all the recent debates about ‘call out culture’ and how marginalised people can be nicer to those with more power to be polite to each other while disagreeing, this kind of strikes me as an example of how you can be really really nice, and careful, and write in good faith, and still get a shitty response. It isn’t as if being nice gets you listened to, so – you might as well be angry? I mean, that’s obviously not news.

The Sex Worker Open University comes to Glasgow.

Unveiling the SWOU programme! (pdf) We’ve worked ridiculously hard on this and I’m super proud. Try not to notice any, er, spelling mistakes …

I’ll try to blog more on this soon. And blog more in general, etc.

The Women’s Support Project, mean words, and the Rescue Industry gravy train.

I see the Women’s Support Project/SCASE are currently re-circluating that “sex worker rights activists are secret pimps” text. What fun! (Old news, though surely, ladies? Get with the programme. I’m sure Stella Marr has written something fresher – maybe she’s tried to out another sex working blogger? Nice company you keep How exciting.)

As it happens, the Women’s Support Project recently turned up in my inbox, wanting to know my views on service provision in Glasgow. (“I understand that your political viewpoint differs substantially from that of the Women’s Support Project, however, I am hoping that you will still be willing to give me your input as this report  … [as] … we both hold the safety and wellbeing of women in prostitution paramount.” Hee, isn’t this just the cutest leverage you’ve seen in a while? ‘Plz send info to help us screw you over better, because WOMEN and their SAFETY!’)

So I wrote back, noting:

• I have no indication of whether this information will be used purely to tailor service provision, or whether it’ll crop up in some press release or on SCASE with the headline, “survey says [high number]% of women in prostitution have experienced [whatever]“. I don’t necessarily want to ‘give’ my experiences to an organisation that might subsequently use them to silence me. ( … And, what, have a bunch of commenters on SCASE go “these results just show the bullshit of the pro-pimp lobby”, as if they might not simultaneously be talking about *my* experiences of rape, *and* calling me a pimp. Wow, thanks!)

• If we were in a Rape Crisis Centre, talking about responses to survivors of rape, you’d recognise disbelief and name-calling as a form of violence, and yet again and again sex workers who have the temerity to disagree with the WSP are called the ‘pro-pimp lobby’ or similar – by the WSP, by SCASE. [ ... ] Hmm! And now you want to talk to me about violence and service provision? Can we start with the structural violence that is perpetuated by feminist organisations?

Calling sex workers ‘pimps’ (oh god oh god could the casual use of this word by white people be any more problematic no it couldn’t) demonstrates an understanding of the sex industry that makes Lord of The Rings look morally complex. Guess what, geniuses: some of us work in criminalised conditions, for instance, because we live with other sex workers. This is called “hella fucking safer”; it’s also called “brothel-keeping”. You know who campaigns to keep us in criminalised conditions? ‘Feminist’ organisations such as the Women’s Support Project. The effects of these laws are that we get to choose between (i) keeping ourselves safer, and (ii) calling the police if we do get attacked. You may pick only one! If you see any problems with this state of affairs, allow me to refer you to the WSP. They wish to call you a pimp.

The final point I made in my email was that:

• … the WSP strikes me as a wholly inappropriate vehicle for service provision to sex workers. [You] have seemingly no accountability to the sex working population you purports to serve, you have no room for nuance in your approach, and there’s a huge conflict between your campaigning work and your putative service provision. (Campaigning in the WSP context seems to mean, ‘educating’ non-sex workers about the ‘reality’ of the sex industry, which translates to sex working-ears as ‘shouting over you, if your reality is different’. That’s not a safer space for us, is it? Would you get STI testing in a place that shouted over you?)

So, just to clarify, I was totally right. I cannot think of a more inappropriate conflict of interest than on the one hand, posting articles all like, “oh well, I’m not saying all (so-called) ‘sex workers’ are definitely pimps, but here’s an article about how loads of sex workers are pimps, just fyi”, and on the other, being a service provider to Glasgow’s sex working population. Imagine trying to access those services! “Hello, I’m a sex worker and I was raped last night, could I speak to someone? … Uh, ideally someone who hasn’t joined in with insinuating that all sex workers are pimps? Thanks”.

(Just as a point of interest: lol forever at the idea that ‘pimps’ get into the sex worker rights movement … because, what, we’re rolling in cash? Its the most lucrative of all the mostly-invisible and stigmatised human rights campaigns? Mate, I can’t move for red umbrellas made out of rubies. For what it’s worth, when we spend money on activism – hiring rooms, paying each other’s childcare – that’s money that we’ve earnt ourselves – y’know, on our backs. The Women’s Support Project get over a quarter of a million pounds a year, to run ‘services’ that are genuinely … nebulous. (“We are not able to offer a drop-in service …. At the moment we are unable to advertise set opening hours for our telephone line“.) Er. If you were looking for someone making a fairly good living off being mean to sex workers, ladies, you might want to look a bit closer to home.)

Educating Rhoda, consultation edition.

I’ve cut my introductory paragraph because it was a necessary yawn-fest. Re-reading this now, in the cold light of having had several proper nights sleep and a sensible break, I can think of approximately seven thousand things I should have said, and seven thousand more that I should have said better. This response is quite personal and idiosyncratic – I contributed to an official response in a different context, and witnessed the creation of several further badass official responses, and all of those were necessarily more measured, so I felt that those bases had been covered by people with exponentially more knowledge than me, and that the best thing I could do would be to take a different approach. Which is what this is.

Your consultation document has a section on terminology that could perhaps be generously described as postmodern, in the sense that it appears to be structured mainly by absences. For instance, ‘terminology’ fails to define either of the two words that are used incessantly throughout your text – namely, ‘exploitation’, and ‘demand’. (More on both of those later; I’m merely pointing out a rather striking gap at this stage.) One word you do discuss (thanks for that) is ‘prostitute’. Here’s a reminder of what you said:

“… Many words can be derogatory, some describe what is believed to be a chosen profession, and others promote stereotypical ideas. Throughout this consultation the word prostitute will be used to designate a person who is exploited sexually while recognising that a minority of individuals state that they have chosen to be a prostitute.”

There are a couple of items I’d like to unpick in this paragraph. “Many words can be derogatory”. Yes – ‘prostitute’ is widely considered to be one such word, but do go on[1]. “ … and others promote stereotypical ideas”. Goodness, well, I’m a little surprised you’re opposed to that, given that you’re pushing forward a piece of legislation that has been described by one academic as “based on […] sexist and paternalistic notions”, but that’s not yet my main point either. I’m very interested in your phrase, “describe what is believed to be a chosen profession”. This is written in the passive, rather than active voice, so we’re left in the dark about who is doing this ‘describing’. Could it, perhaps, be sex workers? Naming our own experiences? Did you consider that detail unimportant?

Your use of the passive voice here allows you to avoid the question of who is doing the describing – in such a way as to erase sex workers voices (we’re not describing ourselves thusly, oh no – an anonymous third party is doing so) – which rather neatly encapsulates your view of sex workers as objects to be acted upon (“saved”, maybe), instead of agents acting in our own lives, does it not? Apparently other people describe us. We might wonder where we were when this was occurring. Additionally, the passive voice here (plenty of active first person elsewhere, I notice – “I believe”, you firmly tell us at the start of paragraph 11) enables you to cast doubt on our ability to name our own experiences – without having to acknowledge this rather … impolite – disbelief as your own.

Let’s look more closely at what I mean by impolite disbelief. “What is believed to be”. I’ve already explained why the question of who believes so is quite important, at least for those of us who like to be seen as agents not objects (that would be: all of us). But why not “some describe what is a chosen profession”? After all, you quickly go on to describe these most brazen hussies as “a minority” (as ever, more on this to come), so you do seem to believe we exist (very kind). Are we not the experts on our own lives because of … false consciousness? Some kind of weird cosmic error? Are other women who live in compromise under “gender inequality” (so much more 21st century than ‘patriarchy’, I agree) – for instance, my married or make-up wearing sisters – are they also to be patronised in this manner? “…‘Happy marriage’ describes what some believe to be a chosen state”. Hm.

You do it again, of course, in the same paragraph. “… a minority of individuals state that they have chosen to be a prostitute.” Let’s try some other examples. ‘A minority of men state that they have experienced sexual harassment.’ ‘A minority of men have experienced sexual harassment’. Do you see the difference? Maybe when discussing a choice between the steak and the risotto, these nuances could pass unnoticed into the abyss. When discussing something as delicate as other people’s capacity to speak meaningfully of their own marginalised experiences, it might behove you to at least pretend to try to be polite, or risk looking needlessly inflammatory. Not the best bedrock for policy, eh?

The choice between the steak and the risotto brings me onto a further, er, quibble with your language. “A chosen profession”. Let me tell you about ‘choice’. I graduated into a recession; most of my cohort were either unemployed (a fairly horrible state these days; endless stupid hoops to jump through to prove you’re ‘looking’ for jobs which don’t exist), or being ground down in bars and cafes and pubs, being tired and – ooh, your favourite word – kind of exploited, actually. I’ve waitressed; I’ve worked in bars, and I’ve made coffee in fancypants supposedly-ethical artisan stores (living wage? Yeah right). Bar work was the only one which made me even nearly enough money to live on, but I got pretty sick of it because of that one time I was sexually assaulted by my manager. So when I graduated, and was faced with a ‘choice’ between two different jobs in the service industry, both of which were not prestigious, both of which came with a medium-high risk of sexual assault, neither of which were presented in a parcel labelled ‘Dream Job’ – when presented with that ‘choice’, I ‘choose’ the option with the higher hourly wage, which is how I ended up being a sex worker instead of doing bar work.

When you say “choice”, you’re either ignorant of the fact that people make the best ‘choice’ they can with the options they have, or you imagine that we all had a ‘choice’ to be, oooh, President of Harvard Law School, but we turned it down just so we could ruin your statistics by turning up in the hooker census, all mouthy with opinions you don’t like or want to hear. There’s not the clear bright line that you seem to imagine between those who ‘chose’ this and those who ‘didn’t’, because beyond the most appalling cases of coercion (c.f, the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers), ‘choice’ only ever means “these are all non-ideal, but what’s my best option?” Some people have fewer options. Migrants whose immigration status is in limbo are denied the right to either work, or to receive benefits. Where do you think this policy of forced destitution leaves people? Since you profess to be so concerned about those who are denied a ‘choice’, why not legislate in such a way as to offer migrants in limbo another choice to add to their current options of a) homelessness or b) working illegally? I shouldn’t need to spell out to you, of course, what working illegally does to one’s chances of being – that word again – exploited.