#146 The Pimping of Prostitution by Julie Bindel –

 Audio Book Launch

Julie: Hi, thank you so much, Lisa-Marie, thank you for FiLiA. And of course, to Rachel Moran, and you all taking time out of your day to, um, to do this with me and to launch this book.  Before we go any further, and Rachel and I are going to have a conversation together about the book and about the abolitionist movement and the issues surrounding it, we're going to play a five-minute clip from the audio book, and it's a very short clip, bearing in mind that the book is 13 ½ hours long, so that will take you on lots and lots of journeys. Okay. So Josie, if you would play the clip, please.

Audio reading: Virginity was taken from me before I knew it was something someone could take. Before I knew it was something I'm supposed to care about. You can't care about something before you ever had it. By the time, you know what it is to care about, you don't have it anymore. Hayley, sex trade survivor, Minnesota 2015. 

I got raped every week, every day, I was incontinent. I would do blow jobs and just the state I was in, they would see the state I was in, and come and get me and rape me. I couldn't remember who I was. I didn't know who this guy was, who raped me yesterday and would rape me again today. Lorraine, sex trade survivor, Montreal 2015. 

Introduction.  Who are the feminists and human rights activists who seek to abolish the global sex trade?  What motivates them? Why do they prioritise prostitution over other forms of male violence? Are they prudes and man-hating, as the pro prostitution activists claim, or progressives seeking to create a world free of exploitation and abuse?  During the course of almost two years, I spoke to more than 50 survivors, including two men, of the sex trade. To meet them, I travelled to 35 countries, states, cities, towns, and villages across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North America. These women had been prostituted under regulation, decriminalisation, and legalisation. All are committed to dispelling the myths that support the sex trade industry. The women are from a wide range of backgrounds.   Some were pimped by male relatives. Others began selling sex to feed their child. Two of the women I interviewed had ended their time in prostitution as pimps. Both were honest enough to tell me that they had turned to selling other women to avoid being sold themselves. I met mothers who sold sex to feed their children and protect themselves from domestic violence – only to have their children removed by social services because of their chaotic existences, shaped by pimps and drug dealers.

I met Hayley who had been sexually abused by men as a child, and had told me that she experienced prostitution as a continuation of that abuse. There were several women with similar experiences, and all of them said that at one stage of their involvement in the sex trade, they would have argued that sex work was a way to take back control of their bodies and or life.

I travelled with Rachel Moran to a number of countries to attend seminars, conferences, and training sessions on prostitution and the sex trade. I spent time with the survivors in those countries, hearing them speak publicly, interviewing them face-to-face, and learning about their individual stories and how they had come to feminist activism.

 I was introduced to middle-class women in Europe and North America who had been targeted by pimps when particularly vulnerable. In the United States, African-American women spoke of the inherent racism in the sex trade and in Canada and Australia, indigenous survivors spoke of the sex trade as part of their colonialist history and experience. All of the women I spoke to saw themselves as part of a global movement for change.

Some of the survivors now spend their lives supporting girls and women to leave prostitution, while others take to the very streets on which they were prostituted with placards and loud hailers, hoping to change complacent minds and build a stronger abolitionist movement. On occasion, I would meet a survivor in a sharp suit coming out of a meeting with politicians or delivering training sessions for police officers and social workers.

Sometimes, the survivors I met had been almost, but not quite, destroyed. These women were held together by the politics of feminism and the strength of hope. Unlike the pro-prostitution position of inevitability, best illustrated in the irritating mantra ‘prostitution has always been here and always will be’, the abolitionist movement provided a basis for revolution.

We are here for one reason, and one reason only, said Moran on receiving the Emma Humphreys Memorial prize in 2014 – to end the international sex trade 

Julie: Phew, and as I say in the book, in the introduction, it would have been a very different book had I not met Rachel Moran in person in 2014, having already read her book ‘Paid For’ the year before, when it came out because in meeting political campaigning abolitionists, who were also survivors and could speak truth to power, could speak about the direct experience of dealing with the punters, the police, the courts, the hell of prostitution. I realised that this book could go into the direction that celebrated the growth of a global abolitionist movement that Rachel Moran and, and, uh, our sisters, are definitely responsible for in no small part. And that's why I'm so delighted that Rachel's here with me now. 

Rachel Moran: Thanks everybody. And thanks so much to Lisa-Marie and everybody at FiLiA.  It's great to see the work still rolling long, even in the middle of all of this madness, where all of our activism is happening down there at a computer screen. Um, but there's so much that I've wanted to talk to you about Julie, and thanks so much for the invite to participate in this conversation. Um, I was laughing actually, when you first talked to me about this, cause I, I couldn't remember if I ever told you my audio book story.

We might get around to that later on. That's one of those up on a bar stool stories, like really scandalous, but, um, tell me about why it first evolved. You felt that an audio book was so important.

Julie: Mainly I think because there are so many voices in this book, it's the opposite of a dry academic tome. I mean, it's a journalistic investigation, but it's also a narrative that I was led through, I think over a period of 20 years, but intensively over those two, two and three years that I dived in to the research, in particular, and those voices, not just from the women, the 50 plus survivors that I interviewed at length, um, some more than once, but also the pimps, the brothel owners in legal regimes, the pro-prostitution lobbyists, the small number that would talk to me. The women in the brothels in Amsterdam, Australia, Germany, Cambodia, those voices just are so present in my head. I really wanted to bring it alive. And I want as many people to be able to listen to voices that they might have particular interest to hear, without having to sit down and hold what is effectively a big thick book in their hands, and plough through it.

And also Eunice Wong, who's the narrator. Eunice is an actor, she’s a stage actor in the States. Um, she also edited both you and I, Rachel, when she was at Truthdig, when she was looking after the violence against women series of investigations and of journalistic pieces and both you and I wrote for her.  And I wrote some long form pieces along the way in researching this book for Eunice. And it just felt that she was really close to the work that ended up in the book. She's got such a beautiful voice and delivery.  

Rachel Moran: I was about to say that, she has a lovely, gentle voice, the shenanigans with my own audio book. I didn't even know there was an audio book, I was not informed, nothing about an audio book. So I went on to Amazon and lo and behold, here's this audio book with a pair of shiny red patent [shoes], six, seven inch heels and matching fishnet stockings.

And I got on screaming to the publisher immediately. And so that image disappeared and I've never even, I didn't even click into it to listen. And to be honest with you, and it's funny, you know what you're saying about Eunice and that lovely soft delivery that she has. I couldn't bring myself to listen to the audio version of my book.  I couldn't bring myself to, because I know for a fact, Julie, and this is something that, you know, my hook into some of the questions I have for you later on, but I knew, and I hope this doesn't strike anyone's ear wrongly, anyone who's listening, but I knew they will have heard a middle-class woman to give that delivery. 

And I said to myself, you know, I can't, I don't need to hear it to know that that happened. This is our island. That's what happened to you. And I just felt that I actually couldn't bring myself to listen to her, which, and that was a far bigger issue for me, by the way, then the heels and the stockings, you know what I mean? Right now? I mean, there's so much of, you know, for us to, as British and Irish women, class comes into so many of the conversations that we have, about so many things, not just the sex trade, every bloody thing near enough. So I wonder what, what did you take away from the experience of the, the one-to-one research with the women in terms of social, how did that hit you, and in what ways and in what places? 

Julie: I think that the best illustration I can give, there are two illustrations I can give about class, which intersects with, with being a woman, being a girl, under patriarchy. And to me it highlights intersectionality in its true sense, not the blue fringes that go around talking about their own individual identity, but real lived experiences of impoverished and working class women.

One was when I went to, to South Africa, to Cape Town, to do some of my interviews there. And there's a very strong pro-sex trade lobby, very well-funded and the organisation that heads this lobby up is SWET. And I think it's sex workers, education and training something, but either way it pushes full decriminalisation of the entire sex trade. And anyone that's been to, or is from South Africa – and this, as I said, this was Cape Town – will know fine well that apartheid is not ended. It's ended in law, in the way that the slave trade has not ended. It's ended as a piece of legislation that allowed it to go on. So there's still apartheid in South Africa.

And the women that I met in prostitution were black and of colour. And those that were working at the SWET offices that I was invited in to speak to the then director; there were all the workers, were all black South Africans. And then there was the director sitting behind her desk in her very nice office, as white as I am. And as middle-class as I am, and as educated beyond that, that I am. And I just thought to myself, okay, so this to me is indicative of the wider pro-prostitution lobby that I have been encountering for decades, which is the ones with the privilege, the ones with the cut glass accents, the ones that have had every choice in life.

And this includes those women who are prostituted, because of course they're not typical. The Brooke Magnanti type happy hookers doing BDSM non-contact prostitution in hotels, et cetera, which is still prostitution. And I don't need to tell you or any other women that have been through it. It's still vile, but they do not represent the women who the vast majority are, of course impoverished and from a cultural working class background, not just middle-class on reduced circumstances, not just having lost their home because they developed a drinking or a heroin problem, but actually culturally working class. And then another version of this, um, was when I was in Cambodia speaking with some of the prostituted women who, who are abused and then live on the railway tracks in the capital and are spoken over by these really well-funded extremely middle-class Cambodian women, that are all funded by the usual suspects that fund, uh, pro-prostitution lobby and incidentally, a lot of the, the trans, um, ideology lobbying that takes place alongside it. These women were the most desperate that I have seen. They hadn't been to school, never mind had a poor education. The women that brought them along to meet me, because they were gate-kept by these women, were all speaking for them, speaking over them. And of course these two examples are from the global south, but the same happened when I was doing this research in the global north. And that's where class comes into this issue for me. 

Rachel Moran: Hmm, I think we could spend the hour just talking about the different manifestations of class and nothing else. It's such a huge issue. Something that I've noticed a lot is that the cultural conversation in recent years, maybe I'd say as far back as the last decade, we're talking a lot more about race and rightfully so, but I think that, and I'm not suggesting we should talk about race less, but I believe that we should talk about class more than we currently, because also the intersections and the entwinements between those two things are absolutely huge, particularly in places like United States and what I'm, what I'm hearing and seeing is a kind of, there, there's a neglect of the class issue. And particularly in prostitution, I mean our political opponents, they want that neglected. They absolutely want that all the way neglected. Absolutely every prominent voice and, uh, by prominent, I mean, women who have column inches in the mainstream press. Every one of them that I've ever seen in [unclear] Julie, has been white, upper middle class, I don't mean middle of the road, middle-class I mean, upper middle-class like a woman who's for example, one woman I can think of, her parents were, one of them was a veterinary surgeon and the other was a university lecturer. And she is to this day talking out in support of the full decriminalisation of pimping, you know, and I really struggled with that, Julie, in, in, in lots of ways, because I feel, I feel angry, and justifiably angry or people might be surprised to know that I actually, I also feel quite a deal of compassion because I know there's no damn way that a girl with every opportunity like that ended up in the sex trade for no reason. There's really isn't stuff that you know, that I don't know about for sure. But I would, if Paddy Power were taken bets just now, I'd be straight down to the bookies office, you know what I'm saying? 

Julie: Oh, I do. And actually one you've reminded me of one thing. One of our, um, African-American survivor sisters said, um, at a meeting you were at, and I think it might've been in Atlanta, but we were talking about this issue. And she said, look, of course not all prostituted women and girls are African-American even in the cities where, you know, there are huge problems, you know, Minnesota, et cetera, um, where, where that gap between black and white is at its most stark. She says not all of the women, of course are African-American, but all of the African-American women in prostitution are working class and she didn't use the term working class because as we know that isn't the lingo that’s used, but she meant impoverished and raised culturally working class and, and of course she's right. So when we look at issues relating to intersectionality, that the likes of Alison Phipps from Sussex University, the likes of these Melissa Gira Grant, Brooke Magnanti, you know, when we, when we, when we hear what they say about intersectionality, they refuse to engage with class because they know that they can use race often against women of colour, but they can't use class against working class women in the same effective way.  For example, women of colour who were abolitionists being told by that lot, the tourists as I call them, the ones that dip in and out of this stuff, these women are often told that they’re white feminists, even if they're not actually white, because what they say is that it's racist to be against sex work because of course you're denying the rights of black and brown women to make a living. And I, of course my favourite phrase of all, which I'm going to ask you to repeat, Rachel, it was a, it was a tweet, but it's the best. I think it's the best thing in my 1,300 words in my book, is your response to very white, very privileged, very high earning Kenneth Roth, who was spinning this tale. He's the head of Human Rights Watch or Human Man's Watch rather. And, and he, he said, didn't he, uh, why would you deny the possibility for black and brown women to earn money through sex work? And what did you say to him? 

Rachel Moran: I said that when, I’m paraphrasing now, I said that when, when a woman was hungry, the humane thing to put in her mouth was food, not your cock. And my biggest regret about that tweet is that for some reason, people keep on misquoting it as dick instead of cock. I don't know why that bothers me so badly, but it just does. These lovely girls in Paris put this thing up on the wall recently, it was like a big, uh, graffiti thing. They, they had it wrong. They had made it, and I hadn't got the heart to tell them it was cock. Of course he never responded to me, you know?

And I was, I mean, this should just be so straightforwardly obvious. I mean, look, I remember, and I'm sure we all remember those of us old enough to remember back in the eighties, when we saw those scenes of utter human carnage and devastation, heart-breaking. And I remember my mother crying about it at the time. Looking at the television, the famine in Ethiopia. Can you imagine if there had have been a public drive, instead of like ‘feed the world, save the world’, can you imagine if we had have said, oh, let’s offer sex work to these poor starving women to feed their poor babies who are half dead of starvation. I mean, we have to really look at this. I mean, Human Rights Watch for God's sake. 

And then Amnesty International. And I mean, they've been involved in four separate scandals I can think of now over the course of the last 20 years. Every one of them pertaining to women's rights, like with no exceptions. Yeah. So I can go on a real roll about this, but it, it, it brings us straight back to class again, because there's Ken Roth sitting there. just like Colm O’Gorman is sitting here in this country on his 125 grand a year, with his big mansion of a house down the countryside and expense accounts up the wazoo, you know, straightforwardly ignoring what it is that, that, uh, impoverished women and children need. And it really would, it makes me blazingly angry Julie, and I keep coming back to class because it's the great unmentionable, this is the thing we're not allowed to talk about in this country. I had it said to me years ago, when I locked onto the issue of class during, um, a conversation in university. And had one young man tells me that I had a chip on my shoulder, you know, and I remember his remark always stuck with me because the basic unfairness of it, you know, and it was a strange thing for him to say, because it was unfair of him to say, but it was also true.

And I, I teased that out in my mind for a long time before I realised, well, he was right and wrong at the same time because I had a whole bloody oak tree on my shoulder. And it was the social class that he'd come from, who bloody well put it there. You know? So, I mean, circling back to where I started with this, I went to university and I've had this flung into my face as a journalism student, as a mature student, three years after I got out of prostitution, after having put in a year in the kind of a bridging course, PLC courses they’re called here. And I went on and I got me degree. And there's a whole world of difference between a woman who's far away off a street corner and into university yet only because free fees have been passed as legislation here. Um, and a woman who has sailed straight on in, you know, on the back of her, her family's wealth.

And that brings me back around to Brooke Magnanti and Melissa Gira Grant. I don't know whether you or I are mispronouncing it. One of us obviously are, I always thought of her as Giro Grant, but you know, and on the subject of tweets, something that I had said to her, and she actually showcased it as her favourite tweet of the year in the closing days of December that year, I had wanted to know, um, something along the lines of how, basically how she could justify her stance given she'd never been penetrated by a penis in her life and that there was a whole world of difference between being penetrated by too many dicks to count and no dicks at all, you know, but this is what we're up against with these women. And she was educated in Smith University or Smith College or whatever, that’s one of the big time, heavy-hitting Ivy leagues, Ivy league schools.

And I guess my question to you, and this is a very long-winded question, but in all of the years that you've been involved in the activism, many years, predating the writing of ‘The Pimping of Prostitution’, you must have come up with some kind of a theory or an idea about why it is that apart from the obvious answer, which is the basic entitlement, but there's got to be some kind of something behind the fact that these women are so blinded that they think they can speak for the majority when they know they're the tiny minority.  And at the same time that the, to me, it goes beyond entitlement. There has to be something else going on there.

Julie: Yeah. And it's a good question. And the thing that I often ask myself, when I'm holding my head in my hands, just screwing my eyes up in frustration is why the fuck do they do it? Why are these women who know it's really bad for women, who know that they are a tiny minority of women who are vaguely involved in some of the softer aspects of prostitution – again, all bad, all exploitation, but less harmful, less direct – why do they throw the vast majority of women in prostitution to the wolves? And for some of them, it's just, for some it's very cynical, it's that they found a niche. They want to look really cool. And they want to say, ‘hey, I've got a really edgy position on this’.

Some of the academics, it's to get grant money, and again, to be non-contentious of course, for a lot of them – and I'm afraid to say this, but I think that we all know it – it’s to pander to men. It's to pander to the patriarchal norms, to the male sex-right. To avoid being called a prude, anti-sex, ugly, sexless.

This matters to women. Women are raised to seek male approval and to often live or die by that. And we know how dangerous it is to speak out against patriarchal norms and one of the most fixed and insidious patriarchal norms, as far as I can see, is the male entitlement, the male right to sex, whether it's paid sex, whether it's rape sex, whether it's both.

And for these women that will shout down survivors, often indigenous or survivors of colour, survivors that are speaking about their own experiences of rape, as well as talking about how we changed the law and what we advise countries to do, they will literally say to them that they're lying, that they're wrong, that they're mad, that they're delusional.

So they can't believe that. I know they can't believe that. So it has to be for personal and institutional gain, or it has to be that they are the most selfish individuals on the planet who have found that decriminalisation does work for them, that they haven't been raped and battered and left for dead by a punter, so far, that they are able to disassociate themselves from the prostitution experience to the point of where they can get on with their lives to make a lot of money. And they think that that would work for everyone else. So I suppose my long answer is, I don't know, but I can only guess at it. 

Rachel Moran: You see, I agree with every single thing you said love, except the last bit where you said, ‘and they think that that can work for everyone else’. I think what it is, is that they don't give a shit what works for anyone else. You know, I think that they're so myopic. I think they're so tunnel vision. I think there's so me, me, me, and although I don't know for certain, and I can't know for certain, I strongly believed that back in the day when, when I was on the game, that I would not have stood over this in public as something that society are to accept.

And I have a number of reasons for thinking that. And I think one of them is the fact that I told both my younger sisters at the time that I would violently beat the shit out of them and break every bone in their body if they went on the game. So they, they knew that I, you know what I mean? Not that I was about to hospitalise me little sisters, but I was very, very firm and clear. You are not going to be in a brothel. And, um, that was, that was important from the point of view that, you know, at 16, my 13-year-old sister came to live with me. And at 19, my other younger sister who was then 15, came to live with me. So I knew that the example that I was setting was a bad one and that there was a damn good chance that they could end up in prostitution. You know, if they were to follow my lead, that's exactly where they, where they would have gone. So I have to have those conversations. So I don't believe looking back on that, that I ever would have stood over prostitution in a public arena and the way that I see so many women doing this. But I do believe that I would have made impassioned or could have made impassioned behind the scenes arguments, defending my right to earn a living in the only way that was available to me.

So those are arguments. I can understand those, whether they're common from women, you know, trans women, boys, and prostitution, I get those arguments. What I don't get is the selfishness that allows a person to step forward and say, you know, that the trade itself is perfectly fine when they know damn well, it isn't, you know. 

So anyway, I want to move on to the subject of academics, our favourite subject of all. Oh, I have to tell you straight forward, I can't stand them, and those are soft words. I cannot stand them. I'll tell you one of the most sickening things that happened to me recently, Julie, was being on Twitter about six months ago and seeing a former lecturer of mine. She was a first year lecturer from my DCU days. Um, like I said earlier, I was only three years off the game. I was steady reeling from prostitution. I was drinking heavily. I was very bruised, very traumatised, and hadn't gone anywhere near a counsellor at that point in my life.  And it was years afterwards before I did. So had I known back then in, in the millennium year that in the future, the same lecturer was going to be up all over social media, talking about, you know, how she wanted to see the full decriminalisation of pimping in this country, I do believe it would have cost me me education.  I don't think I could have sat through her class, you know, it was, it was, it was the most, but it was the most bruising, wounding, experience. I've had, of that nature, I think ever. You know, so I wonder about what, what of your worst run-ins, what are your academic horror stories or can we possibly condense that into the next few minutes? 

Julie: I mean, it would probably take another 13 ½ hours of zoom, if by which time, everyone would be tired and hungry.  But I agree with you. I think that, you know, bearing in mind that we have to acknowledge that there is but a handful, although a growing handful, actually more than a handful in recent years of academics that are anti-prostitution from a human rights, feminist perspective, as opposed to anti-prostitution from any kind of religious knee-jerk position.

You know, the vast majority of academics in the global south and north are pro prostitution. They are ‘sex work is work’. They literally sit in their ivory tower thinking that women that are on the ground, thinking that women that are the scum of the earth, um, should, should be offered this because there's nothing better for them.  They don't mind that.  They wouldn't of course do it themselves, except for the tourists, except for the ones that do their PhDs and sit on the end of a phone sex line and say that they were sex workers when they were doing their doctoral studies. 

So I'd just also like to mention my late friend, Roger Matthews, who was one of the very, very, very few male academic, senior academics. He was one of the world's most eminent criminologists. Roger. He died of COVID during the first peak last year. And it's a terrible loss because he really stuck his neck out and at Kent University, one of the, one of the worst universities for this bullshit. You know, he, he had flak constantly. Roger, as a man, recognised, it was way worse for feminist academics that were anti-prostitution than it was him. But he would send in anonymous, brilliant papers that he'd written on something like the Nordic model or why decriminalisation is a disaster. And I mean, this man's work was, it was absolutely tiptop. And although he didn't have his name on, which is the, uh, how, how it gets passed to peer review in, in academia, they would know it was Roger and they would put a red line through whoever was reviewing it and say, we don't need this it's rubbish.

And even Roger couldn't get published, um, in certain articles.  But I'm just going to give you a little brief taste of what it's like to go to an academic conference, in one of the worst cities in the world for me, Vienna, where you are with 167 other delegates. Three others of whom are anti-prostitution, all the rest of them from various countries in the world, are madly supporting the ‘sex work is work’, legalise it, decriminalise it. I was honestly like a butcher at a vegan convention. I was just, the second that, you know, I showed my face – and it took me several tries to get registered for this because they kept telling me it was full – anyway, I pushed my way in eventually, and it was in 2015 and it was for this book research. And I write about it a lot in the book. The hostility was terrible.

All of these academics were thinking that prostitution was a great career choice. None of them had ever done it except for the handful that were claiming to be sex workers who were at the University of Nevada, or, interestingly, Amsterdam, because we know that in the Netherlands prostitution, brothel prostitution is, uh, has been legalised since the year 2000.  And it's an unmitigated disaster. There must be some money going into those universities, Nevada and, um, Amsterdam, because it really seems to fund quite a few PhD programs for people that then decide, in the case of Nevada, one of the women decided that she would do her PhD on, and I kid you not, the opportunities for women, for female sex workers, to orgasm during prostitution.

That was her PhD and she concluded by the way, everybody, viewers, that it's easier for women over 40 than it is for the younger women to orgasm during prostitution. Now, this is not a parody. What this woman did was that she decided to prostitute herself for three or four weeks. I can't remember how many days it was, it's in the book. And during that time, when she was selling sex, she was also interviewing some of the prostituted women in this particular Nevada brothel. She concluded it's all absolutely brilliant. The women have the best time ever. Worker's rights are exemplary. It's all just great fun. Okay. Clearly I'm paraphrasing, but have a look and she's written blogs about this.  So you can see that I'm not even needing to exaggerate. Now four years earlier, I had actually been in that brothel, interviewing women for a documentary I was making with the BBC. And strangely enough, what I found in talking to the women without drilling down into anything, without challenging any of the women, when they told me that they loved their work. I found a very different picture altogether. The women all were suffering from some very complex trauma and or depression, and there was lots of self-harm. It was one of the worst situations ever. So in that conference, listening to these doctoral students talk about how great it was, listening to senior academics talk about how they've hung around, being tourists in these brothels, and what great fun it is. Treating us to slideshow photographs of the inside of Thai brothels, for example, as one senior male academic from the UK did. I felt sick to my stomach. 

But there was one funny bit. When I was sitting, listening to one of the keynote presentations, I got a message from someone saying, I've just been having a look on Twitter and there's a woman saying, ‘oh my fucking God, Julie Bindel is at this conference’.  What the hell? And I looked at the name and I looked at her Twitter handle and I looked and right next to me was this woman, right next to me. 

But it was a horrible experience because of course the academics bring out research that gets into the tabloid press, as well as the broadsheet press. It gets in the Lancet.  It influences the Royal College of Nursing. It influences doctors, it influences policy makers and governments, and they are churning out this bullshit. And they're asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. And they literally are going into these brothels with a clipboard saying, how much do you love sex work?  And of course, I had a very different style of talking to the women and I got some very, very different answers and impressions. 

Rachel Moran: Oh, I'd say so. I'm just flowing backwards in my memory, Julie here, and trying to imagine what I would have said to any idiot who'd come up to me with a clipboard, wanting to know how much I loved sex work. I think I probably would have invited her to stand alongside me and get into the next car that came along and find out for herself, you know? And that's, it's very common response actually, that I see, you know, women, I mean, we often say, you know, try it out for yourself. I've seen a lot of that. And of course there's always a very good reason why they wouldn't need to do that, you know.

But anyway, we certainly can't wrap up this talk, without talking about the blue fringe monstrosities that are everywhere you look.  And before you say another word to me, I just wanted to know, what do you think is with the blue fringe? I mean, obviously it's a uniform, right? It's kind of like in the nineties, and Dublin in the early nineties, every, I was one of the very few girls who didn't perm her hair. I didn't have a problem with me stray hair. I just left it hanging there, I had no issue with it, but 95% of working class girls permed their hair.

And I kind of see the blue fringe as the modern day perm, except that there's a political significance attached to it. And it seems like it's, it's, it's kind of stupidity on your head, in a way that the perm never was, the perm was just about having fun and wanting to look like you were on the telly. Do you know what I mean? But the blue fringe seems to me to be, it's a very political thing or at least its intention is very political, but it's appearance to me is, I just burst out laughing when I see it.  

Julie: You know the blue fringe could also be pink or red, I suppose, it's just the blue fringe shorthand is upper middle-class kids, because the perm in where I'm from in the Northeast of England, it was always working class women that got the perm, working class white women that got the perm, um, and actually working class white men.  The blue fringes, which as I say, could be pink or orange as well is about, look at me, look how different I am. But unfortunately for them just about, everybody's got the same hairstyle. I was walking through the park the other day, going to meet a colleague for a walk, and I saw these three blue fringes. exactly the age that they always are. So first or second year university students looking haughty and entitled.  And they were looking towards me and I thought, oh God, here we go. And they actually approached me and said, they told me I was Julie Bindel, they didn't ask me, this is the arrogance. 

Rachel Moran: What did you say? I bet you said, oh, thank you for letting me know. That would be you, wouldn’t it? 

Julie: I just said, uh huh, can I help you? And they said, we want you to account for your transphobia and whore-phobia, bi-phobia, polyamory. And I just looked at them and I said, well, at the moment, I'm actually late to meet a colleague. Why don’t you get in touch with me via my website, but can I just suggest something first? Can I suggest you actually read something I've written? Because what strikes me is when I travel to these universities and get to speak and travel all over, talking with a lot of young women, a lot of young men, many of them who actually want to hear feminism as opposed to bullshit, they tell me, and it's very clear from the protestors, the blue fringes, that they've never read a word that we've actually written or said.

And their response to me was just beautiful. It was “read you? Read it, we don't want to be triggered”. So I thought this is really indicative of where universities are going now. Where on reading lists of certain academics that have the stranglehold on teaching sex work within gender studies or whatever, don't put books on the reading list that challenge the orthodoxy of sex work is work. And if I have to say one of the main reasons I wrote my book and although it's not an academic book, it was, it was published by an academic publisher, which means, and it gets into all the libraries. And unfortunately for the, for the ‘sex work is work’ academics, it has done extremely well in libraries and universities.

Yet they just don't put ours on the list so they don't get to hear from women like you, they don't get to hear from the experts who have got a very sharp, concise political analysis of the sex trade, who also have experienced it. This is all just looking in from outside and deciding that they have a right to disrupt our material reality, whether as a survivor of prostitution or as a woman who has been campaigning to end male violence, because we have all, I'm always really pleasantly surprised when I meet a woman in this movement, who hasn't suffered some kind of male violence or abuse. So we all speak from experience because if we don't experience it directly, we fear it and our life is at least in part shaped by it. So the blue fringes are missing out on a whole world of ideas, of debate, of approaches. They could still end up saying sex work is work. That's up to them, but please give them the opportunity to make a decision based on some proper empirical evidence and theories that go outside of this absolute nonsense that is, ‘this is just work’. This is just labour. Cause you know, you, and I know wherever we've been in the world, under legalisation and decriminalisation, such as New Zealand – that I really want us to talk about a little bit before we open this up for questions – we know that when you talk to the actual women in prostitution, the disconnect between what they're experiencing or what they had experienced under it, and the academics promoting prostitution as something really positive in order not to offend men is the biggest chasm that we, that we will ever experience. 

So that's my answer, the academics we need to support and nurture young women and men that wish to approach their studies in prostitution and in male violence against women in every way we can, because they're in an awful situation right now in universities where they can't even get a supervisor to take forward what they want to study, whether it's the Johns, whether it's the abuse in prostitution, whether it's the actual money behind the movement; they're being stopped from doing it.

Rachel Moran: Mmm oh, there's at least a half a dozen different directions like you take the conversation in now, on the back of everything you've said, um, I guess the one I'll pick, cause there's a bit of humour in this. Do you remember when you were having your London book launch for ‘The Pimping of Prostitution’ and it coincided directly with my Italian book launch for the, the Italian edition of ‘Paid For’, and I was in Rome at the time and you were in London. And we had both had, I think your clique was outside, your crew was outside, weren’t they? Mine actually infiltrated the building. They were all inside. It was about 18 of them. And this, you know, it was unbelievable. So what we came to call the tranosity, we had these, you know, it was a blue fringe brigade, was all sorts of crazy-making students screaming and roaring, and a couple of women up the very front, in my case, who were actually in prostitution. One of them ran up to me, shoved a sign in my face, the signs were mostly written in English for my benefit. You know what I mean? So as I could read them and there was a few Italian ones in there, and the one thing that the woman roared in me face was ‘don't judge me’.  She was, she was in prostitution and I was astounded that any woman would say that to me. And if she thought I was judging her, well, then she'd every bloody right to be protesting my book launch in actual fact. But, you know, obviously likely she hadn't read a bare word, you know, she had just assumed I was judging her. I said to her, I don't judge you. I judge the men, you know? And, uh, so back to your carry on in London give us a quick recap of that. Cause it was just funny.

Julie: Well, I was really, really upset that you couldn't be there, that you had the nerve to be launching your own book in Italy when I had my launch. Actually we had it at Conway Hall, which is a big venue in London and there were 400, we sold out, there were 400. And I think that I'd love to think it's because I'm a feminist rock star, but I actually think it's because we had some brilliant speakers that came from other countries, SPACE members, survivors, um, and we also had a great chair, Samira Ahmed, but also the women and a few men that came to this event were hungry to explore this issue from a fresh perspective. It's not a fresh perspective at all, but for many of them, they had never heard this perspective. There were loads of young people there. Anyway, as I walked in with a couple of, of, of our friends and colleagues, and one was, I think Sabrina Valise, who'd been prostituted in New Zealand and elsewhere, um, and Evanita Carter an African-American survivor. 

Well, we're walking in, and these, I think it was a gaggle of English Collective of Prostitute group members, you know, who, who just follow us around the world, wherever we go, shouting and screaming. With, linked up together with some trans-activists, shouting about trans sex workers of colour, you're being transphobic blah. And then the requisite signs saying blow jobs are real jobs. And I think you have blow jobs are real jobs in Italy. And what really made me laugh was looking at your WhatsApp messages of your protest and me sending you photographs of my protest, and us deciding which one was the best. And I think you won because yours was inside kicking off!

And actually, joking apart, your protesters actually knocked over an elderly woman participant. And, unfortunately for them, knocked into one of Italy's most revered, um, investigative journalists. So it didn't do them any good, but I just thought it was ridiculous. And I said to the, to the protesters outside, come inside, come inside and listen.  They said ‘you should listen to sex workers’ and Sabrina Valise, one of the survivor speakers that was with us, said “she has. She does. Are we not the right ones?” 

Rachel Moran: Julie, like you're talking about the launch of a book with, at the heart and soul of it is 50 separate testimonies. I mean, I've never seen an author listened to women in prostitution at that level, traveling that far, 160,000 plus air miles.  I mean, that was a study in listening to prostituted women. Crazy. But I know you said you wanted us to touch on decrim and legalisation before we move into the Q and A, so what's the first things come to your mind you'd like to say about that. 

Julie: You know, Rachel, I know that we all, all of us that do this work, carry women in our hearts. We carry scenarios and like a massive filing cabinet in our heads, women we meet, women who don't survive, women who do and just go on to thrive, but there's always stories that keep coming back every now and again. And I will never forget the woman that we met on the streets in New Zealand. When we were out with the outreach plan, now, for anyone that doesn't know, New Zealand, decriminalised its entire sex trade in 2003 by one vote in parliament.

Again, it's been a disaster. It is the same as, as, as legalisation. Pretty much, if anything, it's almost a bit worse for the women, it's been described as, uh, as the wild west of prostitution, we discovered didn't we, that, um, the form that you have to fill in to open a brothel in New Zealand, so the form that gets you, the licence, you know, like if you were opening a bar in London, is exactly half the length of the form that you have to fit in here in my country to adopt a dog or a cat from Battersea Dogs’ Home. So you and I had travelled together to Australia, which is a whole other story that we definitely aren't going to go into now. And during this trip, we decided that we would take 24 hours, because we're crazy, fly to New Zealand and actually see what was going on in the street zones. Uh, because they, they of course have also decriminalised all the street areas. So the women are in these kinds of little rape enclosures. And I know that there's the woman that we met, Rachel, you'll never forget either. Um, we, we, we approached her didn't we think, and she was a much older woman thinking that how unusual that was, that she was in prostitution.  I don't know if you want to say anything about your impression of when we spoke to her. 

Rachel Moran: Oh, just that, you know, I can't remember who said it to who, but I know we discussed before we approached her, oh, my God, this woman must be well into her seventies, you know, turned out she was either 52 or 3, I can’t remember which, but she had been forty years on that street, actually prostituting from a Zimmer frame, couldn't believe that.  And within 10 minutes, her young friend, 28 year old young woman, ran up to her crying, having just been battered, raped and robbed in a car. And that was within 10 minutes of us landing on [unclear]. So, you know, this is, uh, this is the wonderful prostitution, Nevada, that people are trying to roll out across the globe.

I just wish I, so sincerely wish that people would look at what it is that that they're trying to do here, because I do know, and I've said over and over again, that our biggest problem, Julie, isn’t an idea of the pimps, nor the academics, not even the it's, not even the punters. It's the well-intentioned army of idiots who are standing behind them. 

Julie: Absolutely. And in fact, what I remember from your conversation, because we both had separate conversations with the woman who we thought was much older and who could not walk, except for leaning into this Zimmer frame and punters would come and pick her up with the Zimmer frame. But you said to her, Rachel has anything improved since decriminalisation, because of course we wanted the women to tell us if things were better. And she said to you, yeah, the one thing that's improved is that the women aren't arrested and we both cursed and swore all the way back to our digs because that's what the abolitionists’ model does. It decriminalises the person selling sex. It helps the women get out, anyone get out of prostitution, but it criminalises the Johns and it creates a sea change of attitude, as we've seen comparing boys that grew up in Sweden since 99, the first country to introduce the so-called abolitionist model, where the Johns, are criminalised and the women are not, compare those young men that have grown up since 99 with that law and that policy nationwide, to the boys in the Netherlands. Those boys I interviewed in Amsterdam, one of whom told me his dad took him to a brothel when he was 12 years old because “it's legal here”, he said, you know. So you're right about the well-intentioned liberals. They think it's easier for the women. They think it's safer for the women. They think it brings out from underground.  It does nothing of the sort, the opposite is true. 

I mean, we're going to get to Q and A in a second, but I just want us to say a couple of things, Rachel, if you would. Because it's pretty grim this topic, isn't it. But about the good news about the countries that are taking on the abolitionists model, about the work of SPACE and about the, how the abolitionist movement despite Covid and the awful 18 months we've had, however long it’s been, what, what hope is there, uh, coming out of the abolitionist movement, do you think? 

Rachel Moran: Well, I think that we have seen, um, what a friend of mine here describes as green shoots in the about three and a half years since we've had the legislation here. Very, very early days, you are not going to overturn the system in three years, uh, nor fully or completely in three decades.

But we have seen positive changes here. We have our review coming up relatively soon we're told, I mean, that's been put on hold, like everything else with Covid. Um, what I'm really looking forward to seeing is in, in the years to come, how did the forward progress we're making here, for example, um, we've just had a wiping of the, you remember that the fight that Fiona Broadfoot and the other women had in England, that was so long and arduous and ultimately successful, that's just been passed here with no need for the women to get, we didn't need to get together and do that. The government just passed a piece of legislation under their own steam to wipe out the criminal records of the women. So we are seeing these now. That never, ever would have nor could have happened ahead of the section, the passing of the, of section four, the Sexual Offences Act.

But I want to jump back, Julie, because we only have a couple of minutes left before we have to go to Q and A, and just ask you what I would regard to be a very personal question. I know that over the years, you must have, and coming back to the issue with class, as a working-class woman, from a dog-rough housing estate like myself, you know, lousy education up to a point in your life, really not much at all in the way of, of hopeful opportunities in the future. And of course you are very fortunate and very blessed and worked very hard to get yourself out of those circumstances. But you must have over these years, with all the women you've met and everything you've seen, had many a moment where you thought to yourself, there but for the grace of God go I, so I just kinda would like to ask you, like, what have those moments been like on a personal level? How has that impacted on you emotionally?

Julie: I’m actually grateful to your question because you don't even realise how often you think that, and even as you move further and further away, you know, I've had decades now of living a much more privileged life. I live a middle-class life. I've got a middle-class profession.  I don't have to, um, you know, not have food on the table and the like, far from it. And yet I have a – it’s a bit like a guilt. It's almost like a guilt. When I go back home to where the vast majority of my family are and a very close family, lovely family, and look around and you look at the women who, because there's always a hierarchy in class, isn't there Rachel, I mean especially on council estates, where you look at the even rough, you look at the rough ones. It’s oh my God, you know, they've got social services around every five minutes and you know, that wasn't my family's experience. And I did see girls end up in, in terrible situations and their own kids being taken into care.

And so I see myself in those women when I go home and I feel guilty, but I also feel really, really, really glad and lucky that I met feminists when I was 17 years old, when I left home, and they were middle-class and educated, not all of them because there are many working class women in the movement. But the ones, the women I met were the ones that had been through a bit of an easier ride, but the connection that we made and I suppose the sense that girlhood and womanhood made to me at that stage was my God, even though they've led privileged lifestyles, lifestyles I could have only imagined having for myself, X was raped, Y was abducted at knife point, W had survived a terrible marriage. And so-and-so had her child taken away by a violent husband because she came out as a lesbian. And they're all middle-class. So the one thing that the women's movement does is shows us not what divides us, but we pay attention to that because we should. But what unites is, and when Lisa Marie mentioned at the beginning of this, this webinar, solidarity, that is what the pro-prostitution extreme trans activists are trying to do. They're trying to remove any possibility of solidarity between women based on growing up as girls and facing sexualised violence and trying to cling on to our sex-based rights that we fought so hard for.

So, yes, my class is significant and yes, that could have been me, but so have so many women that didn't go through the childhoods that we did with the lack of opportunity, have ended up in such a horrendous situation. Because they're women. 

Rachel Moran: Yeah. Well, that's the absolute truth that it, it absolutely is what unites us and I remember briefly, um, a remark that you made earlier on talking about it being a very rare woman that you've met, who didn't have anything whatsoever at all. Well, I always drill down a bit deeper with those women and I'm sure you do too, because I find that at the other end of them conversations, 99 times out of a 100, you'll find that the woman has in fact been abused, assaulted, and so forth, but she just didn't categorise getting her arse mauled in a bar as being abusive.

And I, it's such an interesting thing because of what, what it means is it's like the, it's like the water we swim in. We don't notice it. And when I, when I meet a woman who tells me she's never had any form of male violence whatsoever, I always interrogate what her understanding of male violence is. Um, but anyway, we've done it, it's over.  So we better open up the Q and A. Thanks so much, Julie. 

Julie: Thank you, Rachel. Really, really appreciate it. Always, always love talking to you anytime. 

Lisa-Marie: Thank you so so much. And thank you to all the attendees. We've got people from Canada and New York, Germany, Cyprus, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy in the UK, if I've missed any them in the chat, but welcome, and thanks for your interesting questions.

So I'm going to combine a couple first that are related. So who are the main funders of the pro-prostitution lobbyists and given the money involved and capture of academia, how can we most effectively challenge them? 

Julie: You know, handily, there is a whole chapter in my book about the money and we have no need to be conspiracy theorists, right?  There is no conspiracy here. It's ideological. The same big trusts and grant-makers and organisations that give money away are driven by a male sexual libertarianism, which is exactly why those that fund the, um, the pro-prostitution lobbyists tend to also be funding the pro trans lobbyists. So I'm making a distinction here between those that provide necessary resources for trans people who are marginalised and discriminated against with the lobbyists that push the ideology [something missing here], you know immediately what happens because that is the biggest funder worldwide.

And this is, this is a fact. It is the biggest funder worldwide of pro-prostitution lobby groups. When you actually explain to people, this is because the Open Society Foundation began by funding organisations in the 1980s to prevent HIV, then you can make the leap in looking at who was running those very necessary organisations at the time; gay, libertarian men, who in the main looked at harm reduction supporting would be abused in prostitution, but they rewrote this as rent boys or even part of their sexuality. Rachel and I would just describe it as prostitution and abuse, like any other. And they then of course, moved on to campaign for decriminalisation, with the argument that if you decriminalise the sex trade, then you will, as the Lancet claimed, um, on the back of a load of absolutely rubbish research, you would reduce HIV, new HIV infections by almost a hundred percent in 10 years.  So they make these wild claims. 

So the Open Society Foundation is the biggest funder, but there are many others as well, but have a look through, if you do have the book, um, or you can just download individual chapters or buy the audio book, whatever, it will explain that. But there's also in the Dignity, uh, journal, which was started by professor Donna Hughes, who is a fantastic academic and a brilliant advocate, uh, within the abolitionist movement. 

Within the Dignity, uh, I can't remember which, um, edition it is, a peer reviewed journal, there are extremely good organisations. There is a bit more current than mine. 

Lisa-Marie: Thank you very much. And again, we've had a number of women come in with similar questions. So I'm going to sort of summarise, um, taking Lynn’s, and hello, hello, we've got someone from India as well. I missed India [unclear] so without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it strikes me that trans pro prostitution and surrogacy are all linked in the attempt to destroy women's autonomy and feminism, and to commodify women's bodies. I find this terrifying. Have you got any comments on this as a big picture?

Julie: Rachel, do you want to say anything about this? Or do you want me to answer? 

Rachel Moran: I'll let you answer and I’ll follow-up Julie

Julie: You know, I don't think that this is a concerted effort to destroy women's autonomy necessarily. I think it's just men doing what they want to do and disregarding the rights of women and not giving a damn about us. Yes, of course, there are some concerted efforts to, for example, replace sex-based legislation with gender identity, which is a concerted effort to remove our rights as women that we fought for, that we need under patriarchy, but surrogacy and prostitution and all the other issues, and to an extent, of course, trans ideology has got traction because no one gives a damn about women, and because violence against women is absolutely, everywhere, normalised, and often not even legislated against, but there is always a connection between those three, because of course, it's seeing the inside of a woman's body as a workplace in terms of surrogacy and prostitution and for the convenience and benefit of men, not just men, but also, um, this is where class comes in again, uh, wealthy white Westerners.

Um, but with the transgender issue, it's just riding roughshod over women's experiences of male violence. And that's what it's about. And the reason that I started writing about the transgender issue was about male violence. It was about the risk to women-only services. So yeah, there is a connection. Of course. 

Rachel Moran: I think there's multiple connections and I'm sure Julie would agree that it's far too broad to, to condense that answer.  Well, what strikes me is that when we're talking about surrogacy in particular, I have never heard anybody shouting about the rights of impoverished infertile women to have babies, it's never happened here in Ireland or anywhere that I'm aware of. When we talk about surrogacy, we hear about surrogacy, we're always talking about two gay men and their right to have a family, or we're talking about wealthy infertile couples and their right to have a family. And so it's amazing the way we take something that actually commodifies a woman's womb in a very, very similar way to a prostitution commodified my vagina. And it's always the people who have more resources, who, who get to utilise and exploit that part of a woman's body. 

Lisa-Marie: Thank you both very much. So I've got a question here from Amber. Welcome, Amber. Um, I'm a current sex worker since 2015, um, got into it to pay for my studies. I don't think there's a right answer be it full decriminalisation or full abolition. I'm yet to read both books, I'm just getting into the politics surrounding sex work. And my question is, can you see a world where the two sides can work together in coming to a suitable resolution? Personally, I feel like neither of the camps are going to get anywhere when we operate against each other. I am really excited to read both books. 

Rachel Moran: I don't think so, Amber. I really don't, because straightforwardly and I've said this before, there is no middle ground between the truth and a lie. There just isn't. I mean, women's bodies are either our own, or they're not. We either are people who move through this world who ought to have the same rights as any man, who ought to be able to pay our bills and feed our kids without being used, like some kind of a masturbation device, a utensil to just get off, jack off.

If you're on the game right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about and no amount of sex work talk is going to erase that. And these are hard things for me to say, because I know that they would have been hard things for me to hear, but I know that I would not have been served by being told lies about what was happening to me when it was happening, that would not have done me any good at all. Um, but I will say to you, Amber, that I, um, I wish better for you and, uh, I hold out that hope for you and you seem as somebody who's prepared to come here and put forward a reasonable question, in a manner that's not insulting or offensive or abusive. You seem like a woman, a balanced woman with her head together.

And I just hope for your own sake that you move to a better place in your life and a future. I hope to God, it doesn't sound condescending because it's certainly not intended that way, but no, we're not going to find a middle ground between the positions of men's right to use women and women's right to not be used, that that middle ground does not exist.

Julie: I agree with Rachel, but I also think it's really important to recognise that abolitionists have tried to work with the pro prostitution lobby on a number of occasions. For example, at the police vice conference that a few civilians would be invited to, that were involved in, in, in looking at sexual exploitation in 2009. And I approached some of the pro prostitution, what I would call trafficking, deniers, the ones that say it's not trafficking for prostitution, it's migration for sex work, and asked if we could form a campaign in order to take forward the legal case that Rachel mentioned earlier, where women such as Fiona Broadfoot and others that have joined the legal case, we eventually got going in 2017 to, um, remove the criminal records from women who had been prostituted under age and to stop, um, employers demanding that they disclose such criminal convictions relating to prostitution. And so all that time before the case, I asked these pro-prostitution academics, if we could join forces, if they could talk to the harm minimisation organisations that they were friendly with, if we could just agree to disagree on what we do with the johns (and by the way, I know what I'd like to do with the johns), um, and just fight for the decriminalisation of the women, because I think that's so crucial, so crucial to the women's future. And they refused and they've refused ever since. And it's a shame because I think that there are some ways in which the genuine ones that are doing this harm minimisation routine, saying that you shouldn't criminalise the men because the women have to earn money somehow. I mean, I find that deeply, deeply offensive, and I would never, I would never apologise for that, but I, I think some of the genuine groups you know really should have said to us, let's work together on this. The women matter, we all care about the women and it's never happened. And I'd also like to echo what, what, um, what Rachel said, um, Amber, I think I really am grateful to you for asking the question and I'm really grateful to you to even suggest reading the books. Thank you. 

Lisa-Marie: Yeah, thanks very much. And I'd like to echo that and Amber has responded in the chat saying, thank you, Rachel. That's something I'm struggling with, because part of me is like, no, if I want to do this, then I should have the right to, but I agree about that ultimately it boils down to male violence.  Again, I would echo what Julie and Rachel said. Um, thank you very much for your contribution.

Rachel Moran: I just interject Lisa-Marie, just to ask that, um, if Amber, if there's any way that she could contact you privately, I'd love to send her a signed copy of my book with a little note and just, you know, to reach out in that way, if that would be okay with you.

Lisa-Marie: So thank you. Moving on. Patricia asks. Oh, and I've got to say hello to Brazil and Denmark as well. Missed those out. Sorry. Patricia says, how are women fighting against prostitution in those places where it is legal? 

Rachel Moran: Oh, they have the hardest fight on earth, uh, in the places where it's legal. And this is one of the things that, that we constantly say, um, like you know, in the nations of the earth, where it's all to play for, where you don't have one or the other. Um, this is the one thing that the, the point that I always make, that if you go in the wrong direction with this legislation, it's monstrously difficult to overturn.  that looking at Germany, for example, you've got an estimated, it depends on who you listen to. It's anywhere between a quarter million, 450,000 women, um, Berlin in particular is absolutely saturated with prostitution. It's everywhere. How are you going to overturn that? Do you know what I mean? It's, it's almost impossible to do that. So that those women it's so heart-breaking. I work with women in Germany, who've been years and years and years trying to, um, trying to bring about the sort of underground change that only just begins, with outreach services, which are, who takes outreach seriously in a nation where there's nothing to see here, there's nothing wrong here. You know, the moment that you enculture that as actual work, it's so much more difficult to, to offer. I mean, it would be like, offering um, exit services for hairdressers or florists. It's, it's that hard. 

 Julie: if I may add, um, I agree with Rachel of course, on this, but I also think it gives us a really good opportunity to highlight the disasters of legalisation in a way that certain high profile murder cases of women, even though we know that these are daily, regular occurrences, um, seek to kind of, you know, really push the spotlight onto male violence.

I think countries like Germany and the Netherlands, where, especially when the, the feminists, the abolitionists are speaking out and politicians side with them, knowing that this has been a disaster, there's nothing more powerful than hearing about the very regime that some countries are considering imposing for the good of sex workers or even the wider society when it's been an unmitigated disaster.

Um, and the reason, I mean, you know, forgive me if I'm wrong, Rachel, but one of the reasons why you set up SPACE was in order for women to work together through the worst possible circumstances, to bring about the abolitionists model, to, to give strength and solidarity to women in even more difficult situations, isn't it? 

Rachel Moran: Well, absolutely. I mean, there was a few different reasons for setting up SPACE. Um, a lot of people don't know that SPACE International was initially conceived as SPACE Ireland because at the point where it was in September of 2011, that I first sent out the flyers asking women, could they, or would they want to, it obviously only went out to women who experience prostitution and I did that through the local service providers here. And I asked women, could they, um, would they want to organise with me politically to press for legal change? So those flyers went out in September that year and they went out again and they went out again. And in the late spring of the following year, just when I was finally beginning to give up hope, all of a sudden women started ringing me for what reason, I don't know, after the third flyer distribution. I mean, I guess women had had enough time to, to think. And so we spent all of that year squirreling away and, and working together here behind the scenes. Um, I started traveling internationally in August of 2012 on the back of the blog I've been writing for a few months at that stage and started meeting women internationally.

So it kind of did two things merged together. We didn't publicly launch until the spring of 2013, by which time we'd spent about a year working together and broadening out internationally. So that when we did actually launch, we launched a SPACE International, but we had originally been SPACE Ireland.

And the whole idea behind that was because I always knew when I was very firm and clear, I knew my, my, my memoir was on the way obviously, but I knew there was no such thing as a one-woman movement and that we absolutely had got to work together. And I was very firm on that point in the Irish context.

But when I started traveling internationally and I started to meet all these fabulous, fantastic women, and the thing that struck me like a thunderbolt at one particular meeting where we had women from all over the world, was that it just simply did not matter whether you were a black American woman or an indigenous Canadian woman or a white European woman, or who you were, we were all saying the same things. We were all talking about the trauma, the grief, the drug abuse, the dysfunctional backgrounds, the poverty, those threads ran through absolutely everything. And while there may, while there may have been variances on some issues, the bedrock of this was the same, absolutely everywhere.

And I've seen that through my international travel and at this stage more and more countries than I could count, it must be upper end 25 or 40 countries. Now it's always been the same everywhere as you well know, Julie, and you cannot get away from that. And, and if we do not come together as women and raise our unified voice, we're never going to beat this thing.

Lisa-Marie: Thank you very much. So we're running out of time. We will try and fit in another question or two. So this one's a strategy-based question. What, from anonymous, what advice would you give to organisations that support women in prostitution who essentially know and believe the women are being harmed, but don't explicitly state this for fear of alienating women who do view themselves as sex workers and for fear of taking away the women's agency or choice.

 Julie: That is such an excellent question. Rachel, are you going to answer that? 

Rachel Moran: I'd like to let that percolate in my head for, for a minute. So you go on ahead love. 

Julie: Really that is so pivotal. And when, when I did, um, alongside, as I mentioned before, Roger Matthews and a couple of other really good feminist academics, some research, the first piece of research in the UK on exiting prostitution. And it remains the first piece of such research, which is a disgrace in and of itself. We found that the harm minimisation organisations, some of them were very well-meaning, some were not, some were just literally taking the money to give the women a pat on the back and keep them in prostitution and not give a damn, some of them genuinely cared and they would find themselves excusing prostitution on behalf of the women, they would, for example, say, “how's your boyfriend today?”, knowing he was her pimp knowing he was her crack dealer. Or they talk about sex work and joke about the condoms they were handing out when the women never referred to themselves like this. And some of the women said to us, we never were asked, do you want to get out? And when one of them said to the women, and we've heard this in other countries, haven’t we Rachel, when, when one of the women said to the service providers, do you ever help women get out? They were told, well that isn't, you know, we're fighting to stop the police arresting you and to get you better working conditions, so you don't have to stop earning money or doing what you want to earn money. Terrible, terrible situation. They could be throwing the kitchen sink at helping women get out.  And those mythical women who want to stay in aren't ever going to be forced to exit. 

Rachel Moran: No, that was just a really, really good question. And, and it's one of those questions you could spend a good 20 minutes or more answering. It really brings me back in my mind to the time when I was accessing the [unclear] services every Tuesday in the women's health clinic.

And it makes me think about very often when I hear questions like that, I kind of imagine how I would have answered them in my teens or early twenties when they were, you know, personal to me in that immediate moment. And I often think, what did I need back then? You know, I think what I needed was a couple of different affirmations.

 I didn't need to be told or preached up that's for sure, because straightforwardly, and I've said this publicly before, if anybody had have come down to the street corner where I was standing with placards and bullhorns, I'm telling you, we just simply would have attacked them physically. We would have, and I would have been first in line and it's not that I'm a particularly violent person, but believe me, I would've gone bold-headed for anybody who come down to my corner with their gob, you know, um, especially if there was a middle-class accent coming out of it.

[Laughing] I mean, every middle class woman, I know, must think I hate her guts at this stage, but no, what I'm really saying is we had so little, we've been given so little on that corner. I mean, it was wall to wall, you know, all sorts of addiction and some of those women are dead and some are missing. When you think back to that and you think, what did I need? You know, back to this, this question, I think I needed a couple of affirmations, one of them being there is a way forward for you and we're going to show you, help you, offer you. You don't say to a woman in prostitution, you're worth more. That's just an insult. I mean, do people think you can actually stand on the street corner or sit in a brothel or wherever you may be, being used bodily for years of your life and not figure out for yourself that you might be worth more.

The women know that already. Don't tell them that, show them what you can do to help them access that something more. And I think that there's, it is a high wire act like that. That was just a really good question because it's a high wire act because you're dealing with different personalities, different temperaments, different circumstances.

You need to find a way to offer women something better while at the same time, not give them the judgmental sense of an idea that they have chosen something lesser for themselves. It's a difficult one, and, it certainly is. But I think that services, that it all comes back to services, if there's only one single thing any of us could do in this area, it's to push and push for services. Because as soon as you give a woman a way, out… I’ll just wrap up by saying this, there was a little van that used to come down the street and they would offer a cup of coffee or tea and a conversation. I never sat into that van the whole years I was on the street, because I had no interest in a cup of coffee or conversation.

I got me coffee down at the local Spar, and I walked straight back to the corner cause I was out there to earn money, but if anybody had to said to me that there's conversations going on in that van about a course that you might do, or you might learn to type, how you might learn, you know, to operate a computer.  If there had been opportunities beyond a cup of coffee and a conversation, I would have been in like [unclear]. So I think that that's the way to go, it’s to open up those opportunities as best you can. That's what women really need, it’s a route out. Believe me, the majority of women offered that route, they will take it.

Lisa-Marie: Thank you. We'll wrap up. I just want to say a huge thank you to Julie and Rachel. I'm not so sure about the comments on red hair, personally, maybe the blue and the pink, but I think red's all right myself [Laughter]. I want to thank you for your important contributions to the global discussions on prostitution. I changed my mind on this topic by listening to women like yourselves and women of colour against the sex trade events was one of the most powerful I've ever been to.

So thank you. But I do want to give the last two minutes before we close, um, and huge, thanks to everybody. Um, but the last two minutes over to Julie and thank you ever so, ever so much. 

Julie: Thank you. And thank you everybody who’s attended for your questions, just for being here for your input, and also thank you for your wider work on male violence because you know, as both Rachel and I have always agreed, and every single survivor, activist and abolitionist we work with this, we must never see prostitution and the sex trade, the abuse within the sex trade, and that includes pornography of course, as separated out from male violence towards women. It is part of the global struggle that we proudly, uh, are involved in, and some of us prioritise this issue over prioritising rape or domestic abuse. Some of us manage to do all of it, but I think we all have a priority. And for me, prostitution is the worst thing that can happen to a woman, to a woman or girl, um, and, and it will remain my priority. And I just want to particularly thank Rachel Moran because she really is such an inspiration for this movement.

And my life changed when I met her and my book came about partly because of her and the work that she started off. And thank you Rachel for that. And yeah, thank you to everybody for your work. And I hope we see each other at the FiLiA event for those of you that can make it, um, in October. So thank you very, very much to FiLiA.

Rachel Moran: Thank you, FiLiA. And everybody. Thanks Julie.