ninme

Telegraph - Ipswich victims drug addicts, not ’sex workers’, by Vicki Woods

I’m still enough of a feminist to feel disquiet about headlines saying “Slayer of prostitutes found guilty”. I did back in the Yorkshire Ripper’s heyday (”Now he’s targeting INNOCENT women”) and I still do. Innocents, prostitutes - they’re all women, I think crossly.

I was only watching Question Time this week with half an eye, so I don’t recall which panel member was using the Ipswich murders to ruminate about the death penalty. But when he said, “That man who killed five prostitutes”, I was stung by the language. Five desperate, wretched, drug-addicted girls, more like. But I feel a similar disquiet about the language employed by (for example) Woman’s Hour. The presenters are all very smoothly PC, and while I expect Jenni Murray and whichever Labour baroness they’ve got in to talk about “helping workers in the sex industry” (as though it were an industry, which it isn’t, and as though the workers are waged, which they aren’t) I get antsy. …

Pitiful street-walkers are not “sex workers”: they are strung-out, desperate women who need money now, in their hands, in order to rack up enough for their dealer. One thing that struck me about the Ipswich murderer Steve Wright was his disgusting parsimony: haggling desperate girls down to £20 or £40 a time. I haven’t bought any drugs recently, so don’t trust my headline figure of £120 for a bag of brown - but that’s a hard day’s night on the street. And Wright won’t have been the only man buying cheap.

Something must be done. It’s obvious to me, if not to others, that what must be done is not “reducing the demand” or tightening up the prostitution laws (thus making it harder for women to take responsibility for their own safety) or banging up punters or “ending the world’s sex industry” or any other highfalutin soundbite - but dealing with the drugs. …

This country is awash with drugs. Schools, prisons, television studios and Bafta galas are awash, leafy suburbs and charming duplexes in Notting Hill are awash. The girls killed in Ipswich were not working in the stupidly PC term “sex industry”, they were junkies. Amy Winehouse can afford rehab; Pete Doherty can afford rehab; City hedge-funders can afford rehab. Can we afford rehab for the girls in Ipswich - and everywhere else? Speaking as a taxpayer, I’d say: erm, well, um. Good question.

Those of you reading the Twitter will see that we watched Shoot ‘Em Up (with Owen Wilson and Monica Bellucci (she’s 43, that woman!)) tonight. Hookers seem to be a theme, this weekend. Honestly, it’s not something I usually dwell on. Anyway, the whole “sex worker” thing annoys me, too.