This post provides access to a podcast based on the audio recording of the ‘Prostitution. Pleasure for men. Pain for women.’ event that Nordic Model Now! hosted in Nottingham on 25 June 2022.

This event looked at the inequality inherent to prostitution. What prostitution feels like and what it means are very different for the punters than for those who are directly involved. It also looked at how structural inequality and systemic poverty drive many vulnerable people – mainly but not only women and girls – into the sex trade and traps them there – while the sex trade simultaneously reinforces and strengthens that structural inequality.

For technical reasons, we are unable to publish the recording of the entire event.

Podcast

Duration: 1 hour, 3:51 minutes | File size: 68.5 MB | Play in new window (with option to download file).

Speakers

Fiona Broadfoot: When Fiona was 15 years old, her ‘boyfriend’ groomed and pimped her into prostitution on the streets and in brothels. She suffered violence and abuse from her pimps and punters and was frequently arrested by the police whilst they exchanged friendly greetings with her pimp. As a result of the police actions, by the age of 17, she had 39 convictions for soliciting and loitering. She eventually escaped prostitution after she heard about the death of her cousin, Maureen Stepan, who had also been exploited in prostitution and was murdered by a punter. Since the 1990s, Fiona has been actively and passionately involved in feminist activism against the sex trade. She is the founder of Build a Girl, a survivor-led social enterprise working with girls at risk of or experiencing sexual exploitation, and has spoken in the media and at numerous events.

Siân Louise – Siân is a working-class feminist and socialist organiser based in Nottingham. She’s a trade unionist, anti-racist and women’s liberationist. She came to feminist organising with the Nottingham Women’s Conference in 2013. She was the organiser of the Class Matters 2018 feminist conference. She’s a lover of books and women-only spaces, and hosts the monthly women-only book group, Radical Readers. She’s a sex trade abolitionist and a believer in a better world.

Kathleen Richardson – Kathleen has a long connection with Nottingham, having grown up on the council estates in Radford and the Meadows. She is now Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University, and Director of Women Ethics Robots AI and Data (WERAID). She is also the founder of the Campaign Against Porn (‘Sex’) Robots, which aims “to warn against the dangers of normalising relationships with machines and reinforcing female dehumanisation.”

Shabbana Kiyani – Shabbana has been involved in the campaign against the sex trade for several years. She has worked in education for 28 years in a number of roles from classroom to leadership. Shabbana chaired the event.