Meanwhile a HUGE thank you to everyone who sponsored me for the Race for Life, it was tremendous as always and I know SCOT-PEP are very grateful to every one of you for your generosity, as I am. Since then I've not really been in circulation, quite simply I've been up to my ears in it. I had to do an academic sprint which involved a lot of coffee, swearing and anti-social behaviours but I got there in the end and ultimately I am now study free until mid-August, splendid.
Speaking of splendid, huge congratulations must also go to Dollymopp who has recently been awarded "Sex Worker of the Year 2012" at The Erotic Awards in London, well done that woman ! She is one of the loveliest women in this industry, a nicer person you would struggle to meet so I am thrilled. I am also thrilled that having had the glorious news that Dr. Brooke Magnanti is to become a patron for SCOT-PEP, I am finally going to meet the lady herself in August. Waxing and nail buffing will be in abundance prior to that evening, and not an item of Primark underwear will be found anywhere near my corpus, nae chance.
Next week I am off to Edinburgh on Tuesday and Wednesday and I will be around Edinburgh for most of the working week after that, because Catherine Stephens will be there and we have many exciting meetings lined up, not to mention the later commitments I have with SCOT-PEP too. That's all you need to know for now, otherwise I might as well print up an itinerary for the anti's and abolitionists and we can't have that. I can exclusively reveal though, that we are taking time out to visit the pandas. I'm told that they are actually quite somnolent which is a blow, I mean I don't expect them to fire walk or juggle but even so. You'd think, wouldn't you, that when they get one chance a year to copulate they'd seize the opportunity but no, apparently chewing leaves and sleeping hold more appeal, rather like moi after a hard day's touring I suppose.
The reason there is going to be an upsurge in political activity is because the submission from Rhoda Grant is going before the Justice Committee at Holyrood on the 19th of June. Ms. Grant is seeking to have the submission approved on the basis that all of the relevant and required evidence was collated during the Godman consultation. Any right thinking individual can see how inherently flawed the Godman consultation was and it is my fervent hope that common sense will prevail. In the meantime, over the weekend I plan on writing to the Justice Committee although I am off to Liverpool in the morning with Mr. F and won't be back until Sunday night so it will be another ferocious burning of midnight oil session with a heavy reliance on spellcheck and vast amounts of taurine. Yay.
The upside to stress and being busy is that I have lost a hell of a lot of weight, so I have decided to get some new saucy pictures done and re-vamp my site, which I am looking forward to immensely. The site itself is out of date in that it's not compatible with iPads or iPhones both of which are popular browsing devices now for prospective clients trying to steal a surreptitious glance whilst on a boring train journey with colleagues, I have had those whispered calls from inside a hideously noisy Virgin train toilet cubicle.
Before I head to the land of nod I fancy a brief word on lobbying against the forthcoming proposed changes. I would never ask anyone to become an activist, aside from anything else I know the grief that goes with that. Once you stick your head above the parapet you become a target for all kinds of people, from those who pray for your soul right through to the false reviews, threatening phone calls, bandying your real name about, rumour mongering and basically any and every attempt being made to discredit you, both as a person and as a sex worker. Balls of steel are required and a willingness to bite back as and when required, with the correct amount of restraint being shown regardless of how despicably the other side have behaved. The underhand tactics of some of the abolitionists would take your breath away. It's water off a duck's back to me now, I really couldn't care less what they hurl at me any more provided they leave my family and privacy alone, which reminds me, if you're going to send me prayers in French, at least make a decent feckin' stab at it and don't just run it through google translate. (sigh)
If the submission gets through the consultation stage though, what I will be asking YOU to do is use your voice which is as powerful a tool as can be, because you see what the anti's rely on is that we will be too frightened as sex workers to speak up. You can use your work name and email address or a completely new email address for privacy, it's up to you. There are an estimated 80,000 sex workers in the UK and this legislation could completely change YOUR job and YOUR earnings. Please don't leave it to a select few motor mouths and hope that it goes away, how I wish that were the case.
LL xx
I've had a look at some of the responses on Rhoda Grant's website, and it's utterly depressing. There are some correspondents whose name I recognise from the industry, and their responses are measured, informed and informative. But then you read the ones who are in favour of the bill, and there's such a saddening level of exaggeration, misinformation and just downright lying.
ReplyDeleteA case in point is a line in one of the anonymous submissions, from someone who claims to have been a police officer in Dundee for 30 years. They state - absolutely categorically - that "the majority of these women are substance abusers". Needless to say, the same submission also rams home the line that "prostitution is violence against women".
This kind of thinking is dangerous, and I truly hope it does not inform the result of this bill. I've been with over 40 sex workers in my time, and it's simply untrue to suggest that the majority of them could have been substance abusers. Indeed, apart from the two who were clearly fans of Columbian marching powder (and I suspect another one was too), the women I've seen have generally been vocally anti-drugs. I suspect the percentage of people in the general population who take drugs regularly is far higher than 8% or so of sex workers I have been with.
(Obviously I steer clear of ones who look likely to be substance abusers in the first place, but that merely compounds the fact that sex workers are not one homogeneous group that can be stereotyped so savagely.)
On top of that, I find it incredibly insulting to suggest that what I have done with these women can be classed as violence. From my first encounter as a man of 26 who suffered from what Morrissey called "a shyness which is cripplingly vulgar", and through to today as a far more confident man who is now very adept at giving a woman pleasure, I have never once forced a woman to do anything I didn't want them to do, and I have certainly not caused them harm. In fact, the only person who has ever had cause to claim violation from any of my encounters is me! I have treated every single woman with the utmost respect, far more respect than that shown by those who expound these narrow-minded views. The only way what I have done can be classed as violence is if you regard ALL sex to be violence.
I have made friends from this hobby, and made such a connection with one girl recently that on our second meeting she said she felt bad taking money from me and wants to meet up on a non-transactional basis. Are those the actions of someone who has been the victim of violence? I think not!
I wish we could have a more liberal attitude towards sex in this country, and I'm constantly dismayed by how utterly conservative many feminists are in regards to this issue.