The women talk about the height of their foreheads, shadows, lines, protruding chin and rounded cheeks. Then the strangers say things like “nice, thin chin”, “short, cute nose”, and “very nice blue eyes” which, somehow, the forensic artist turns into an image that looks less like Barbie than it should.

The result is two drawings depicting average-looking women that both bear some resemblance to the one on camera. The women tear up, one saying, “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty…It impacts everything. It couldn’t be more critical to your happiness”. I can think of several things I’d consider more critical to happiness, but none of them has anything to do with obsessing over appearance. Nor do they have anything to do with needing instructions from a corporate brand on how to think and feel. Basing its claim on some unreferenced data (“Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful.”), Dove seems to have assumed that women are in need of this sort of instruction, as though we’re incapable of forming our own opinions about our appearance and just how much importance we give it.

There’s a fatal flaw in the experiment: any woman who has a face or features like those in the self-described drawings is deemed unattractive or, to attempt Dove parlance, less beautiful. I happen to have a friend who looks very like one of them and she’s happy with her appearance, as well she should be. The woman it depicted wasn’t, saying it looked “closed off and fatter” than the drawing done from the stranger’s description. Not intended as a compliment, but then maybe women being nicer to each other isn’t part of Dove’s plan. For all its talk of democratic notions of beauty, Dove Real Beauty Sketches pits women against each other as much as any pageant by giving the women a choice of which drawing they’d rather resemble.

I appreciate that there’s a company in the beauty industry making an effort to offer consumers a change from the usual pristine faces and bodies, but really, it’s all just so much marketing. If Dove’s professed attitude of care towards women were based on anything other than corporate profit, they’d stop using known carcinogens in their products. They’d also stop testing them on animals, in line with the wishes of the majority of consumers. Instead of films about women fixating on their flaws until some stranger tells them they’re not all bad and they tear up in gratitude, Dove could show happy rabbits frolicking in meadows and not being kept in labs having chemicals tested on them. I reckon the feel-good factor of that would outweigh any negative feelings a woman might have about her appearance. I suppose they’d have to work out how to tie the rabbits to the products and the campaign. Maybe women of all sizes having a super time playing with the rabbits and not giving a thought to their bulges and creases? Sounds like marketing gold to me. I may have missed my calling.

Then, at Christmas, he started to feel ill again.  Investigations showed that the cancer had come back in his spine and abdomen.  My mum kept all this to herself, only telling us when it became clear that he might not be long for this world.  The fucking bastard disease, as my mum called it, had come back.  Unwilling to go through treatment again, he decided not to have it.  His time here was drawing to a close, but he didn’t mind – it was just the next stage, he said, and he’d see us all again soon.  He was only going to go sit on the hill with his dog, Archie, and have a dram and a cigar while he watched the sun set.  He would never be far away.

I moved back to my parents’ and two of my mum’s sisters and her mum came to stay so they could keep the house running while my mum and I spent all our time with dad.  I sat in bed beside him and read to him.  “If I don’t say much, it’s because I don’t have much breath, but I am listening,” he said.   I brought my first rats, Texas and Carolina, in to see him and, always a rat-lover, he scratched their heads and smiled at their big eyes and out-stretched whiskers, sniffing all over him.  He’d always felt an affinity with all things Greek, travelling to Mount Athos to meet the monks, so my mum and brother arranged for a priest to visit and receive him into the Greek Orthodox Church.  One night his breathing grew so slow we thought he was going and gathered round him.  He kept us waiting until my brother came in to measure the windowsill to see if the coffin he’d built would fit on it.  At the sound of a tape measure, he opened his eyes.  “What are you doing?” he said.  My brother tried to appear nonchalant.  “Oh nothing,” he said.  We’d talked amongst ourselves about funeral and burial plans, but weren’t sure whether we should tell him.  My mum decided she would – she told him Alex was going to dig the grave in the garden, line it, and build a sarcophagus we would all help to shift into it to support the coffin.  The Greeks were going to perform the funeral.  “What do you think?” she asked him.  “A deep sense of joy,” he said and managed a bite of cauliflower cheese and a sip of red wine to celebrate.

A few days later, he died.  My brother’s last conversation with him had been about preparing the grave.  “Make sure you put a damp course in,” dad told him.  Then my mum, granny and I sat by him until, with my arm around him, he took his last breath.  We made a circle around him – my aunts, granny, mum and I – and sent him off, telling the heavens that here was a good man.  He lay in his coffin in my parents’ bedroom with oil burning beside him until the Greek Orthodox funeral a few days later.  The priest said he had lived his life in a state of grace and he had.  We kissed him – “god speed, dad,” I whispered – and my brothers and uncle carried his coffin up the garden to lay him in the grave Alex had refused to dig until he died.  It overlooks trees and a field with the path up the hill where he walked his dog behind it.  My aunts had made posies which we placed on him and my brother filled in his grave.

That night we toasted him, ate chocolate cake, and sang songs, most of which we had to look up online because – a few glasses of wine too many – we couldn’t remember the words.

It was a graceful and close passing.  Death – in a Western culture, at least – is taken from us and made clinical and clean.  People die under fluorescent light, with tubes, wires, and beeping monitors around them.  We can hardly touch them and only see them when visiting hours allow.  Bodies are taken from the hospital bed by the undertakers to the funeral director. The only say we might have is the material with which the coffin is constructed.

It was a privilege to care for my dad until his dying breath and to know that his body lies close while he sits on the hill. That is how death should be – it is a privilege to be beside someone and to care for them til they take their last breath and we should be allowed to regard it as such and be given the help to make it so.  There is little in life that is more personal than death.

Now my nephew sits by his grave and chats to him when he visits.  He says hello to Archie as he walks past his grave.  It’s as natural to him as chatting to his mum and dad.  He tells his grandad about the naughty boys at school, his troublesome sister, his thoughts about the world – anything he thinks might interest him, nattering like they used to with cups of tea in hand and matching dressing gowns.  “I’m sad in my heart for grandad,” he said at first.  Then he called his granny to tell her “I was sitting at home feeling worried and sad about grandad and Archie then I thought about Winnie the Pooh getting stuck in the hole by his bum and I laughed.”  Suddenly he realised “my daddy doesn’t have a daddy” and set about trying to find him a new one.  He asked his granny how she was without grandad and told her it was alright – it was just the world and grandad was happy sitting on the hill with Archie and he’d see them all again so not to worry.

We let off sky lanterns at New Year to float above him. Rather than attend the Greek Orthodox service held to mark a year since his passing, I made up my own remembrance day.  I lit a yellow candle (his favourite colour) and sat it on the windowsill, then sat outside on the bench he made, eating chocolate chip cookies and knitting a bit more of the angora hammock for Texas and Carolina that they refused to sit in but were delighted to unravel.  I went to the seaside with my mum and had fish and chips.  She went to the service while I watched something funny on tv.  It was a day he would have enjoyed.

I don’t have any plans for today other than to light a candle at half two to mark the time he died.  I just had to wrest it off a rat who’s now climbing up the inside of my jumper and have another giving herself a wash in my tea.  My dad had pet rats rescued from laboratories when he was a kid.  When I first got mine, he answered my barrage of questions (roughly 20 a day).  He found me a rat health site online (rathealth.co.uk) when I’d exhausted his veterinary knowledge.  It didn’t answer the more existential questions (‘do you think my rats like me or am I just a food source’, ‘do you think they’re happy’, ‘are you sure they’re not capable of abstract thought – I mean, look at this picture of Texas, you can’t say she doesn’t look contemplative’) so he still got those and, though it’s four years on, I still go to text him whenever I have a question.  It’s a cliche, I know, but it’s true – the little things are what you miss the most.  No one can answer the existential fancy rat questions quite like your dad.

Set up in 2009, the Dutch television channel provides over 1.5 million viewers with 24/7 female porn (or fem porn), selected by a panel of over 2000 women.

Any woman can apply to join the panel and, if accepted, will begin viewing clips and rating them according to how “spicy” they are: one pepper for “it turned me on a bit”, two peppers for “spicy enough”, and three peppers for “super hot”. Panel members then give their opinions about what they did and didn’t like about the clips and whether or not it was porna or just ordinary porn. The film has to have been viewed and rated 100 times before a decision is made on whether or not to show it on Dusk.

It’s a simple process: ask women what they do (and don’t) want to watch. However, in an industry dominated by misogyny and driven by the concept that women are nothing more than three orifices, breasts distended with implants, a face to come on, and a mouth to fake it, it’s revolutionary.

By showcasing pornography made by and for women, Dusk has become part of a growing sea change in the porn industry. And it isn’t all about soft lighting, Knights In Shining Armour, or pleasant love-making. Pioneered in the 80s by Candida Royalle, fem porn is a renegade movement. It is the luscious surrealism of Maria Beatty’s The Black Glove; the sensuality and humour of Petra Joy’s Pleasure Slaves; the so-coolness and artistry of Erika Lust’s 33 Rooms; the irreverence and zaniness of Emilie Jouvet’s The Apple; the anarchy of Dirty Diaries, a collection of Swedish feminist porn shorts; Asa Sandzen’s dreamlike animated short, Dildoman; beauty redefined by the Suicide Girls; Tristan Taormino’s guides to many things sexual that are both erotic and education; and the playfulness of Anna Span’s Diary. (There are, of course, many more – these just happen to be my personal favourites.)

These films take sex and make it the lustful, creative, fun, intimate, and adventurous thing it should be. They’re provocative because they explore turn-ons, fantasy, and desire. Unlike straight male porn, they don’t assume that all anyone, male or female, wants to do is insert as many penises as possible into as many orifices as possible. Of course there’s vaginal intercourse, but it’s only one of the myriad ways to get off. Fem porn has a joie de vivre lacking from mainstream male porn. It’s playful and consensual: gonzo doesn’t mean a woman having her face shoved in the toilet while being gang-raped; BDSM is about domination, not degradation; queer porn is women exploring each other’s bodies, not faking it for the boys; an orgy is an adventure, not a gang-rape.

It’s fetish, sex toys, feminism, love, reality, and role play, all seen from a female perspective. Most of all, it’s about lust and where it takes us. Sex is supposed to be fun, right? Part of that is both men and women learning about our desires and telling them to our partners. Fem porn has the power to revolutionise attitudes towards sex by presenting it as something creative, consensual, and joyful. And all while turning us on.

My New Year’s resolutions are going pretty well so far. I’ve resolved to do the following:

Deal with things as soon as they arise instead of putting them on my deal-with-at-some-point pile. The first to-do that I must do is bury my pet rat, Georgia, in the garden. I had to have her put to sleep yesterday at the grand old age of 2 years and 9 months which translates into something like 87 in human years. She can’t really go on my some-point pile because she’ll start decomposing soon.

Get rid of all the clothes for a narrower person in my wardrobe. I could keep them and pretend I’m going to get back in them at some point, but I think I’m too far down the “loving my body” and “being proud to occupy more space than I did when I didn’t take up quite as much” road to turn back now. That and dieting makes me want to eat just to feel a bit naughty, and last time I went to the gym, I fell off the treadmill trying to answer my phone, hit my head, closed my eyes to pretend I’d passed out to hide the embarrassment, and opened them to find every gym employee looking down at me. I thought I’d try something lower-impact and dislocated my shoulder doing aqua aerobics.

Unsubscribe from the crap I get in my inbox every day and find a way to block the invitations to Jewish singles near me, mature Christian mingles, web chat with lonely hot gal Janine, law degrees from Arizona university, berries to melt away fat, genuine Canadian cialis, and credit cards with a 97% APR but no approval procedure.

Stop scratching my face when I’m trying to work something out. I will, instead, buy a stress ball, squeeze it and throw it against the wall, thereby both getting an upper body workout and channeling my irritation without risking disfigurement.

Go outside more. Much as watching 30 Rock episodes with my SAD lamp on is good for my well-being, it’s not the same as actual sunlight, even if I do prefer it and can do it in my pyjamas.

Use all the pans on my kitchen shelves to cook with instead of as plant pots, even the enormous ones my mum told me to get in ikea for when I was cooking for more than one person. It won’t last till dinnertime, but we all have to come up with one unachievable resolution.

Make more (or any) effort to meet men. I’d quite like a boyfriend and, hopefully, it’ll stop my mum going on at me about not making any effort. I’m already saying I’m signed up on various online dating sites, but apparently that’s not enough. Seems she wants to see evidence of me looking for a man and my piss-takes of some of the ones I’ve seen online don’t count. Dating’s a different animal to the one it was last time I actually went on a date, not far off half my life ago. (There have been chaps between then and now – a woman has needs – but nothing I’d describe as a date, exactly.) There’s an emphasis on the dangers of dating – of men, in general, actually – that I don’t remember being so prevalent way back when. Date rape, rohypnol, feature articles on how to date safely and horror stories from women who didn’t heed the warnings or did but were still assaulted, and instructions for safety on dating sites. These are the comedown from the Sex and the City buzz women were told was dating. Not that the dangers haven’t always been there. I think they just got less coverage so were lower-profile. Now we’re all fluent in the language of dating dangers which, though necessary, treads very close to the line between being realistic and being taught to be afraid.

Perhaps I should add another resolution: to stop analysing everything until it makes less sense than it did to begin with. Bigjock69u just winked at me on Zoosk. Maybe he could help simplify the world for me. That said, his profile says he likes hunting and wants to meet “that speshil sum 1″. I’m a vegetarian editor who loves animals so maybe not. Onwards!

Q1: Do you support the general aim of the proposed Bill? Please indicate “yes/no/undecided” and explain the reasons for your response.

No.  The general aim of the proposed Bill appears to be to end all forms of sex work by cutting off demand.  Criminalising the purchase of sex will not end demand: it will force the industry underground. (See response to Question 2 for further evidence.)

Grant’s purpose appears to be the imposition of her own personal opinion and morals onto an industry about which she is woefully uninformed.  As a result, the proposed bill is based on presumption, prejudice, and stereotype: not on fact.

For example, it is not a fact that “Prostitution is harmful to those who are exploited and impacts negatively on society”, “Prostitution is inherently harmful and dehumanising” or that “Prostitution acts as a serious barrier to equality and dignity by reducing sexual activity and individuals to a commodity that can be exchanged for money or goods. The buying of individuals for sexual purposes creates a form of sexual servitude”.

Grant presents these statements of personal opinion as fact and goes on to make claims for which she provides either no evidence or, at most, fudged statistics.

For example, she gives no evidence for the statement “The majority of those who are involved in prostitution are unwilling participants”. And the study from which she has taken the statistic “75% of women in prostitution in the UK became involved when they were children” was on a small group of sex workers, all of whom had been involved in sex work before the age of 18.  As a side note, given that this is the study on which Grant bases her 75% statistic, this begs the question of why she didn’t conclude that 100% of sex workers had been involved in the industry when they were children.

The proposed bill shows no consideration for the human rights of those whom it will affect.  Commenting on the attempts by former MSP Trish Godman to pass a similar bill, The Law Society of Scotland published their response which raised doubts as to the proposal’s compatibility with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which states that everyone ‘has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence and that there shall be no interference by a public authority’. They stated:

• “the proposal seeks to criminalise an activity which is not illegal i.e. sexual intercourse between consenting parties, albeit against the background of a financial transaction”

• “the proposal has of course to be set against Article 8 and considered as to whether it can be construed as an encroach upon one’s personal liberties”

 From: http://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/245847/crim_purchase_and_sale_of_sex%20_scotland_%20bill.pdf

 Q2: What do you believe would be the effects of legislating to criminalise the purchase of sex (as outlined above)? Please provide evidence to support your answer.

Criminalising the purchase of sex will not end demand: it will force the industry underground where, contrary to what Grant may believe (“If you drive it underground so no one can find it, it wouldn’t survive.”, quoted in the Daily Record, November 12th 2012), it will continue in conditions that are made more dangerous for sex workers.

The illegality of sex work in the US drives the industry underground and leads to a strong distrust of both police and public health authorities among sex workers. To avoid arrest, street-based sex workers are often forced to change how they work to avoid police. For example, sex workers may take less time to negotiate sexual transactions prior to getting into a client’s car, and may even agree to engage in riskier sexual activities. Conducting HIV prevention outreach or education in this environment can be difficult.

From: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies: What are sex workers’ HIV prevention needs? http://caps.ucsf.edu/factsheets/sex-workers/

Legislation that criminalises the purchase and sale of sex and targets the sex industry as a whole, results in harmful outcomes for sex workers, including increasing their HIV risk, vulnerability to abuse and exploitation and limiting their access to effective healthcare and support services. This has been well documented around the world, as recently highlighted at a recent UNFPA/UNAIDS conference:

“As a result of the criminalization of sex work, the locales where sex work takes place are surrounded by other forms of criminality such as criminal gangs, gambling, large scale corruption and extortion. This negatively impacts the health, safety, and human rights of sex workers.”

From: ‘Creating an Enabling Legal and Policy Environment for Increased Access to HIV & AIDS Services for Sex Workers’, Thematic Task Team on Creating an Enabling Legal and Policy Environment in preparation for the 1st Asia and the Pacific Regional Consultation on HIV and Sex Work, 12 – 15 October 2010 in Pattaya, Thailand.

http://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/EnablingEnv_discussion_paper_FINAL_Sep2010[1].pdf

The proposed bill references the ‘Swedish Sex Purchase Act’, under which it is illegal to purchase sex but not to sell sex. Commenting on the Act, the Law Society of Scotland noted that:

“there has been some criticism of the law in Sweden in that women are less visible and accordingly more difficult to reach by the support system and that the sex trade in Sweden has gone underground and online, putting sex workers in a greater danger”.

 From: The Law Society of Scotland’s Response, February 2011 http://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/245847/crim_purchase_and_sale_of_sex%20_scotland_%20bill.pdf

 Q3: Are you aware of any unintended consequences or loopholes caused by the offence? Please provide evidence to support your answer.

Contrary to the beliefs expressed in the draft, criminalising the purchase of sex will worsen problems caused by trafficking.

The proposed bill references the Swedish Sex Purchase Act, under which it is illegal to purchase sex but not to sell sex. Recent independent research has begun to expose the chasm between the stated success of the ban and the lack of evidence and data supporting this. Dodillet and Östergren found:

“when reviewing the research and reports available, it becomes clear that the Sex Purchase Act cannot be said to have decreased prostitution, trafficking for sexual purposes, or had a deterrent effect on clients to the extent claimed”

From: Dodillet S., and Östergren P., ‘The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Claimed Success and Documented Effects’. Presented at the International Workshop: Decriminalizing Prostitution: Experiences and Challenges. The Hague, March 3-4, 2011.   http://www.plri.org/resource/swedish-sex-purchase-act-claimed-success-and-documented-effects

According to international treaties, trafficking in persons is defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation”.

By definition, sex work means that adult female, male and transgender sex workers who are engaging in commercial sex have consented to do so (that is, are choosing voluntarily to do so), making it distinct from trafficking. Trafficking, on the other hand, involves coercion and deceit, resulting in loss of agency and lack of consent on the part of the trafficked person.

From: United Nations. ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children’, supplementing the ‘United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’ (Palermo Protocol), 2000. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/protocoltraffic.htm

Initiatives which confuse sex work with trafficking (as this proposal does), impact negatively on sex workers and expose them to greater levels of risk and insecurity. Sex workers are best placed to spot a trafficked person – and have no interest in supporting human trafficking – and criminalising sex workers means the people best placed to spot a trafficked person will then be prevented from helping them.

Raiding sex work venues and forcibly “rescuing” or “rehabilitating” sex workers results in increased displacement of sex workers, mobility of sex work venues and migration among sex workers; it also has a direct impact on HIV risk. Forced rescue and rehabilitation practices lower sex workers’ control over where and under what conditions they sell sexual services and to whom, exposing them to greater violence and exploitation. In turn, this leads to loss of solidarity and social cohesion (social capital) among sex workers, including reducing their ability to access health care, legal and social services. Low social capital is known to increase vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections among sex workers.

From: Kerrigan D, Telles P, Torres H, Overs C, Castle C. ‘Community development and HIV/STI-related vulnerability among female sex workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’. Health Education Research, 23:1, 137-145, 2008.

http://her.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/137.full

In relation to street-based sex work, increased criminalisation will only serve to drive it further underground, leading to an increase in attacks on women, making them more vulnerable.

SCOT-PEP spent approximately 15 years as a service provider, including working with sex workers working on the streets in Edinburgh. The ‘Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act 2007’ has already directly led to sex workers taking more risks, engaging with clients more likely to pose a risk or clients who refused to wear condoms, dropping prices, spending less time ‘assessing’ and negotiating a contract with potential clients – due to fear of arrest. The Act also had the effect of making people work in more isolated ways and places, led to an increase in ‘solo’ working and meant that less ‘intelligence’ was being shared between sex workers. Criminalising clients makes sex workers more apprehensive about seeking help from the police when they have problems with an abusive client.

 Q4: What are the advantages or disadvantages in using the definitions outlined above?

The fact that this question is asked is further evidence of Rhoda Grant’s ignorance of the sex industry.  Had she made any effort to consult with sex workers about her proposed bill, she would not need to ask it. She would also know that her attempts to be politically correct are of little interest or compensation to sex workers when the outcome of her proposed bill would be to remove livelihood and violate the right to earn a living.

Q5: What do you think the appropriate penalty should be for the offence? Please provide reasons for your answer.

I’m opposed to the legislation.

Q6: How should a new offence provision be enforced? Are there any techniques which might be used or obstacles which might need to be overcome?

I don’t believe there is a workable way in which to enforce the offence.  It would be dependent on widespread, constant, and hugely expensive police surveillance and invasive physical examinations of sex workers to ascertain if sex had taken place.

Commenting on the attempt by former MSP, Trish Godman, to pass a similar Bill, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) stated that they could not support either option tendered in the Bill, and had significant concerns as to how the proposed offence would apply practically. ACPOS made the following statements in their response:

• “ACPOS has concerns as to how sufficient evidence of such activity could be secured when balanced against the proportionality and necessity i.e. would it be justifiable and proportionate to carry out an intimate forensic medical examination of the purchaser and / or seller in such a situation in order to prove sexual contact?”

• “ACPOS is of the opinion that officers may not be able to gather sufficient evidence to report to the Procurator Fiscal, which in turn would mean there would be too few convictions for the proposed new offence to deter others”

The Law Society of Scotland also raised points about the practicality of policing and enforcement in the following statements:

• Prohibiting the advertising of brothels and prostitution “may well be very difficult to enforce given the use of the internet and that services advertised online may of course be advertised as escort services”

• “From an enforcement point of view this may of course involve procedures such as police surveillance. Against that background, a balance clearly has to be struck between the level of criminality and the cost of enforcement”

Q7: What is your assessment of the likely financial implications of the proposed Bill to you or your organisation; if possible please provide evidence to support your view? What (if any) other significant financial implications are likely to arise?

The financial costs will be immense, covering widespread and constant police surveillance, legal proceedings, jobseekers’ allowance and financial support for sex workers whose jobs have been taken from them.

In considering the financial implications of the bill proposed by former MSP, Trish Godman, The Law Society of Scotland stated that:

The Committee highlights the practical issues involved in criminalising those who facilitate activities linked to prostitution beyond advertising such as organising hotel accommodation etc.

 From an enforcement point of view this may of course involve procedures such as police surveillance.

Against that background, a balance clearly has to be struck between the level of criminality and cost of enforcement.

From: http://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/245847/crim_purchase_and_sale_of_sex%20_scotland_%20bill.pdf

Q8: Is the proposed Bill likely to have any substantial positive or negative implications for equality? If it is likely to have a substantial negative implication, how might this be minimised or avoided?

Yes, it is likely to have a very significant implication for equality: it will result in the loss of livelihood to sex workers. The right to earn a living is a basic human right and one which is defended by the GMB trade union, by whom sex workers are represented. Contrary to what Grant believes, the purchase and sale of sex do not “[reduce] sexual activity and individuals to a commodity”.  The sex industry is a service industry: sex workers provide a service for which clients pay. It is the services and not the individual that are the commodity.

Rhoda Grant has recently launched the TOBIE campaign (Tackling Oppressive Behaviour In Employment), the primary focus of which is the reduction and eradication of bullying and harassment in the workplace. Removing the right of an individual to work in his or her chosen profession is, surely, both bullying and harassment. It is certainly oppressive behaviour in employment. Both her attitudes towards sex workers and sex work, and the likely consequences of the bill constitute bullying, harassment, and oppressive behaviour under the definitions given by the ACAS, quoted by TOBIE:

Harassment, is unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.

Bullying may be characterised as offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, an abuse or misuse of power through means that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.

From: http://www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=304&p=0

I don’t believe the substantial negative effects can be avoided, under the bill in its current state, but if legislators genuinely wish to protect the welfare of those working in the sex industry, the following pointers may be of use.

Researchers, public health and law enforcement officials need to hear from sex workers what they need to keep themselves safe, and work together to achieve those goals. Laws and police attitudes towards carrying condoms must be eased to allow sex workers to protect themselves. Violence against sex workers by clients, police, and other neighbourhood community members must be criminalized, while sex workers should be encouraged and supported to report violent incidents.

Street-based sex workers face a multitude of needs, from immediate concerns of housing, food and medical attention, to longer-range concerns such as mental health services, substance abuse treatment, violence prevention, job training and employment, HIV/STD prevention, quality health care, improved relationships with law enforcement and help leaving sex work. Increased funding and awareness is needed for public health programs that address this full range of issues sex workers face.

From: Center for AIDS Prevention Studies: What are sex workers’ HIV prevention needs? http://caps.ucsf.edu/factsheets/sex-workers/

In her proposed bill to criminalise the purchase of sex in Scotland (open to public consultation until the 14th of December), she’s gone for a paternalistic tone, suggesting authority with her (unfounded and patently untrue) statements about the sex industry while offering protection to the poor souls forced to work in it with promises to keep them safe from the big bad men who exploit them by paying to have sex with them. She’s very noble in her presentation: she’s also woefully uninformed. As a result, the proposed bill is based on presumption, prejudice, and stereotype, not on fact. But then, who needs facts when emotive statements, hyperbole, and fudged statistics will do the job just as well? It’s not as if the outcome of the bill will affect the lives of thousands or anything.

Grant’s theory is that criminalising the purchase of sex will end demand for the services of sex workers. Her initial claim, sort of said in the draft bill, was that the sex industry would simply vanish into thin air when all sex workers were given nice jobs that didn’t offend her moral sensibilities. Then, talking in the Daily Record in November, she declared “If you drive it underground so no one can find it, it wouldn’t survive”. Speaking on Sunday Politics Scotland last weekend, she then decided that it needed to stay visible so those wishing to purchase sex could find it. Seems she’s more than a little confused. Criminalising sex will drive the industry underground, but it’s not going to die there.

It’s going to have to exist surrounded by other forms of criminality, undermining or ending the relationship maintained between the police and sex workers. To avoid arrest, street-based sex workers are often forced to change how they work. For example, they may take less time to negotiate sexual transactions prior to getting into a client’s car, drop prices, and may agree to engage in riskier sexual activities such as sex without a condom. Conducting HIV prevention outreach or education in this environment can be difficult and sex workers’ access to effective healthcare and support services limited.

Then there is the matter of enforcing the legislation. In order to bring charges against an individual for the purchase of sex, there has to be proof that sexual intercourse has taken place which would require an invasive forensic medical examination of the purchaser and/or seller. There is nothing in the draft bill to suggest that the purchaser and/or seller would be asked for their consent before such a procedure was carried out. Not that this is exactly surprising: neither is there anything in the draft bill to suggest that any sex workers have been consulted about it and the effect it will have on their lives and livelihood. In fact, the only nod Grant gives to sex workers being people is asking in her consultation document what the advantages and disadvantages are in using the terms she’s applied to them.

The lives of sex workers aren’t of any interest to Rhoda Grant, though. As far as she sees it, taking away their livelihood and freedom of choice to choose their profession is what’s best for sex workers because they couldn’t possibly want to be there and, if they say they do, they must be doing so with a pimp’s knife at their back. She’s quick to point out the circumstances that may drive people into the sex industry – poverty and drug addiction, for example – but gives no suggestions for alleviating these aside from taking away their job.

The right to earn a living is a basic human right and one which is defended by the GMB trade union, by whom sex workers are represented. Grant dismisses this on the grounds that the purchase and sale of sex “reduce sexual activity and individuals to a commodity”. The subtext to this statement being that sex workers are reduced, by their profession, to objects and, therefore, have no need for rights. The sex industry is a service industry: sex workers provide a service for which clients pay. It is the services and not the individual that are the commodity.

As well as saving all those working in the sex industry, whether they want to be saved or not, Grant believes her bill will stop all trafficking. If this were true, then I would applaud her efforts and hope that she received the support necessary. However, she’s confusing sex work with trafficking and assuming – in fact, stating – that all those working in the sex industry are there against their will and under coercion. Initiatives which confuse sex work with trafficking impact negatively on sex workers and expose them to greater levels of risk and insecurity. Sex workers are best placed to spot a trafficked person – and have no interest in supporting human trafficking – and criminalising sex workers means the people best placed to spot a trafficked person will then be prevented from helping them.

By definition, sex work means that adult sex workers who are engaging in commercial sex have consented to do so, making it distinct from trafficking. Trafficking, on the other hand, involves coercion and deceit, resulting in loss of agency and lack of consent on the part of the trafficked person.

There is much to condemn in the sex industry and I’m not about to argue that all those who say so are lying, because they’re not. But what they’re doing is showing only part of the picture. Sex work is a job done by people and, though an obvious fact, this is what abolitionists and those who want to criminalise the purchase and/or sale of sex seem to forget. It isn’t done by drones to be pitied, rescued, and denied the right to freedom of thought and choice because they’re either deluded or incapable of forming, let alone voicing, an opinion, yet that is how those working in the industry are, frequently, assumed to be. Criminalising the purchase of sex doesn’t magically give sex workers a super life; it takes away their livelihood, forcing them out of their profession, and providing them with no alternative employment. Though this may be welcomed by those who wish to leave it, for those who don’t, their choice of profession will be dictated by bureaucrats blinded by visions of themselves as saviours.

(If you want to read more about the draft bill and campaign against it, you can do so at http://www.scot-pep.org.uk)

You see, fun was what foreplay was all about.

Then along came Big Pharma declaring that, no no no no no, what people really wanted wasn’t fun; it was a failsafe ticket to instant gratification. Foreplay was pointless and sexual desire was nothing more than a physiological process, ripe for medicalization. Most enticing of all, for Big Pharma, it seemed things didn’t always go smoothly; in fact, things went wrong. People had problems: vaginas wouldn’t lubricate on command, penises wouldn’t get hard, sex drives didn’t render people horny 24 hours a day. But never fear: Big Pharma was on hand to help.

The first step in all this was to come up with a vernacular – some acronyms and terms that sounded like they came from the mouths of experts. Trouble was, sexuality was all a bit messy and the problems complex. What the whole thing needed was some disorders, a few umbrella terms, to neaten it all up a bit. So was born Female Sexual Dysfunction, Male Erectile Dysfunction and, later, Female Orgasmic Dysfunction. Being able to attribute their problems to a disorder, a medical term no less, was comforting for people, right? And if it was a disorder, that meant it was a medical problem which, in turn, meant it required treatment.

With dollar signs in their eyes and patient well-being in their hearts (honest), pharmaceutical companies set about transforming sex from something of the body and mind into a scientific phenomenon. Money poured in and clinical studies, pills, ointments, potions, devices, and patches poured out.

Men’s sexuality wasn’t of particular interest because there was only one process involved in arousal – penile erection – and it was just a question of mechanics so research pretty much stopped with Viagra. If you’re bringing in over $2billion a year in sales with apparently few complaints from consumers, why bother investing any more time or money?

Female sexuality was something different altogether. For a start, a lot of it went on down there where, unless you happened to have your head in the right place, you couldn’t see it. Thinking it might be a simple case of mechanics, a few scientists gave devices a shot: the Orgasmatron involved the insertion of an electrode into the spine attached to a control button pressed to stimulate nerves in the clitoris but which was more likely to make your legs jerk than send you into mind-melting heights of orgasmic ecstasy, and the clitoral vaginal vacuum suction pump was equally ineffective and as unsexy as it sounds. No, it seemed that there was more to it than could be sorted through mechanics. It called for something subtler than suction and electrodes. It called for pharmaceuticals. Inspired by the phenomenal success of Viagra, companies raced to find a female equivalent – a pill that could be popped and all bedroom troubles forgotten.

The race has gone on for a few years now but is yet to come up with anything to cure the “secret epidemic” (as it’s been termed) of FSD, despite the fact that it’s said to affect around 40% of women. Oprah said it, so it must be true. The latest cure-all to arrive is Tefina, a nasal testosterone spray, created by Trimel and currently entering clinical trials with an estimated release sometime in the next 3-5 years. It’s being marketed as a treatment for Female Orgasmic Dysfunction, a condition apparently unheard of until Trimel came up with the name and decided it needed a treatment. In case you’re worried you might have it, according to Trimel, “FOD is defined as the persistent or recurrent delay in, or absence of, orgasm following normal sexual excitement phase that causes marked personal distress or interpersonal difficulties”. What constitutes “normal” sexual anything no one knows, but let’s not let specifics get in the way of vast generalisations. You might be concerned about the potential side effects of the absorption of testosterone, but Trimel is quick to reassure people that Tefina is “expected to present an attractive safety profile, with virtually no androgen-related side effects such as acne, facial and body hair growth or deepening of the voice”. Probably just as well, given the adverse effect on your sex life of waking up with a hairy chest and baritone growl.

There are many cooked-up statistics to support the existence of and, therefore, need for treatment of FOD of the unspecified “studies have shown” variety. For example, 1 in 5 women has FOD, 30% can’t climax during sex, not 1 in 5 but 43% of women have FOD and “many women” have sex up to five times a month, despite not wanting to, because they think it is what their partners want and is, therefore, good for their relationship. I find this last factoid disturbing because, technically, this is sex against the woman’s will so raises the issue of consent which is far greater cause for concern than the potential efficacy of a nasal spray. Not that relationships have anything to do with sexuality – no, it’s all about the chemicals.

Despite being billed as an “on-demand” treatment, the spray takes up to two hours to have any effect which doesn’t sound very on-demand to me. I suppose I could fill those hours on something fun like, I don’t know, foreplay, maybe. Once you’re fired-up, the effect is reckoned to last around six hours. Yet to be released is any literature on what this effect is likely to be and, crucially I think, what happens if you have a squirt but don’t have sex. Say you take it before you go out, but don’t meet anyone you’d want to have sex with, are you left, squirming on a bar stool, horny as hell, with an engorged clit and wet pussy? If that’s likely to be the case, Trimel should be providing pocket rocket vibrators with every prescription.

Numerous biographies back this up, attributing to Scott her rise and fall, her ascent into the literati and her descent into alcoholism and madness.  Like a one-man chauvinist show, he paraded his wife as his glamorous assistant before boxing her up and sawing her into tiny pieces.  He drunkenly abused her, ridiculed and plagiarised her work, and imprisoned her in a series of mental institutions.

All of which begs the question: why did she stay with him?

Scott courted her with letters and extravagant declarations of adoration.  Zelda’s replies, though often equally gushing, reveal a degree of pragmatism one would have thought preceded a fairly rational assessment of Scott’s intentions as regards the treatment of his future wife.  Though intended to charm Zelda, his disappointingly unoriginal pronouncement, “I used to wonder why they kept princesses in towers” speaks more of acquisition than love.  Her reply, “Scott, you’ve been so sweet about writing, but I get so damned tired of being told that – you’ve written that verbatim, in your last six letters!” is reflective more of a woman all too aware of the fate of fairytale princesses destined for towers than one blindly in love.  It’s a small – though hardly subtle – step from a princess fêted for her beauty and talent to the towers of a more gothic scenario.  There was only so far the accoutrements of romance could take them before the champagne went flat, the roses wilted, and the old staple, Prince Charming, turned jailor and tormentor.

Aside from the occasional pastiche, the literary appeal of the gothic had all but faded from view by the 20’s, but I’m too tempted by the parallels between the Fitzgeralds and the genre to suggest it had faded from personal experience.  Scott appeared to slip too easily into the role of jailor – if, indeed, he ever played any other part – holding Zelda captive in the institutions of psychiatry and marriage.

In 1932 she wrote her autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, drawing on the material with which Scott was struggling for Tender is the Night.  Both books detailed the decline and disintegration of the Jazz Age and of their marriage, but while Scott’s entered the canon of 20’s writing, he demanded Zelda’s be subjected to cuts and published only under his supervision.  In a journal entry outlining his divorce strategy if Zelda continued to write, Scott noted: “Attack on all grounds.  Play (suppress), novel (delay), pictures (suppress), character (showers), child (detach), schedule (disorient to cause trouble), no typing.  Probable result – new breakdown.”  It didn’t stop her writing, but faced with the prospect of estrangement from her child (daughter, Scottie, was born in 1921) and the suppression of her work, Zelda capitulated and an abridged version of her novel was published.

It’s possible the analogy of the gothic extended to the way in which they talked-up and used their infidelities as a means with which to taunt each other, suggesting they were meted out as a means of pleasurable punishment.  The infidelities, her homosexual crushes (it’s questionable how appropriate “crush” is as a label – it may have been merely a convenient inclusion on a psychiatric admission form), and his fear of or fascination with homosexuality tended to precipitate the numerous crises within the marriage.

Although Save Me the Waltz, even in its tempered form, is considered Zelda’s testimony of her marriage and creative ventures, it is the short stories of Bits of Paradise that offer a more interesting and frank disclosure of her life.  Though written by Zelda, they are attributed to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – occasionally only to F. Scott Fitzgerald, prompting Zelda’s remark, “Mr Fitzgerald – I believe that is how he spells his name – seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home”.  By attributing them to both himself and Zelda, Scott presumably endorsed their content and could argue that the perceptions they detailed were at least in part his own.  In a curious way this may have given Zelda greater freedom to divulge views and information missing from her novel, not least because recourse to the excuse that they were merely fictional characters remained.

It’s not exactly a robust excuse.  Her characters buy underwear in which to find themselves dead, attempt suicide rather than be jilted by lovers, and find themselves disappearing into solitude, drudgery, and begrudging domesticity in place of the careers of which they dreamt.

The possibility that the awe expressed by the heroine of The Girl the Prince Liked is a reflection of that felt by Zelda at least in her initial dealings with Scott is too persuasive to resist.  “There is something infinitely disturbing in the phosphorescent rosiness that surrounds the successful and the great, a mystic magnetism that promises the same freedom from doubt and trouble that is part of themselves to all who surround them.”

I could retrace my steps at this point and qualify Scott’s actions with the assertion that Zelda was no saint.  She was accused by Hemingway of draining Scott emotionally and economically, and of undermining his artistic and sexual self-confidence.  The declaration by Ring Lardner that, “Mr Fitzgerald is a novelist and Mrs Fitzgerald is a novelty”, suggests there was something of the hanger-on about Zelda.  If so, then it was a tendency about which she wrote in a letter to Scott, describing herself as “that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal”.  It brings to mind Dorothy Parker’s take on the Flappers with which Zelda was allied: “Her golden rule is plain enough – Just get them young and treat them tough”.  Perhaps that was how Zelda saw Scott.  If she did then his regard for her was no more charitable.

There is also the line most commonly taken by biographers of the couple and the period that both parties were victims of societal expectation and psychological practice that sought to punish and suppress creative women.  Aside from the fact that it sounds a rather trite argument, it seems highly unlikely that either would allow such apparently proscriptive doctrine to become so entrenched as to govern the dynamics of their relationship.  “Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant” are, at the very least, the words of a woman sufficiently aware of the short-comings of those around her and not someone intending to follow the pattern.

Nancy Milford’s 1970 biography of Zelda may have delivered a more frank and personal account, but the manuscript so upset Scottie that she threatened suicide unless it was substantially cut.  This does, however, dangle the possibility of a sequel.