Thread by @shaunjlawson

The comments on this are just unbelievable.

Yes folks, what a BRILLIANT idea it would be to deny these students support, advice, help of any kind... and stigmatise them instead, because your ideology is more important than their lives and their bodies.

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1456524312903565314

Lots of students are in sex work of some sort. That's a reality. You can either deny that reality or deal with it in a supportive, compassionate way.

If you don't like it, bring back maintenance grants. But I bet most of those condemning have constantly voted for tuition fees.

Constantly voted for massive student debt. Then you wonder why stuff like this happens?

Prostitution is legal in Uruguay - which helps keep those who do it a lot safer. Those involved in it pay into the tax system and receive social security and healthcare. That's a good thing.

It's also a million miles better than the absolute nonsense in so-called First World countries which fail completely to keep sex workers safe... and instead, stigmatise them.

See also: drugs. The war on drugs is an absolute disaster. It kills untold numbers in Central America.

And South America. It is quite literally the reason why so many women and girls desperately flee for their lives from failed, wartorn states to the US... where they're demonised for doing so and face horrific, brutal treatment.

So what do we do to help them? Nothing.

We simultaneously maintain an idiotic, hypocritical, puritanical stance, criminalising all of it (yet not alcohol or tobacco) - while banks launder billions, and Western consumers keep consuming and keep the cartels in business.

Those cartels stop at NOTHING.

If the horrific levels of femicide in Central America appal you - as they'd appal anyone - you should be campaigning for all drugs to be legalised, regulated and taxed. That'd destroy the cartels instantly; it'd end the violent crime around drugs.

But I bet you're not.

I have lots and lots and lots of issues around prostitution. The suffering that goes on in that 'industry' is often horrific; and if you have sex with someone who'd been trafficked, that is rape. Period.

Traffickers should be locked up for life.

But I am not and have never been comfortable with saying 'there's no such thing as sex work' (there is: and you insult heaven only knows how many women by saying otherwise); or with saying 'no woman would ever choose to sell her body'.

Yet some do. Fact. And you stigmatise them.

No woman can somehow speak for every single woman on planet Earth. Nobody should impose their ideology on or judge others like this.

It is, to repeat, THEIR LIVES and THEIR BODIES.

By stigmatising them, you're only reinforcing what toxic men have done since time began.

The idea that not one single woman on any high class escort website anywhere in the world hasn't chosen to do it because it makes them lots of money is ridiculous.

(Read that bit above carefully before you judge me for it).

Ditto: OnlyFans.

I have no time at all for any culture which makes teaches so many young women that the way to get rich is to sell their bodies in one way or another.

But that culture exists. It's very much part of late stage capitalism. And I'm not about to judge anyone who's part of it.

(Anyone except pimps, that is. Who are just pure, unadulterated vermin).

First it was: 'Believe women, except if they're lesbians'. Appalling.

Now it's: "Women know what it is to be a woman, but let's judge any woman in sex work and not help them at all'. Also appalling.

Respecting the individual and individual choices just can't be that hard.

(And yes, I know many of those in prostitution haven't made such a choice. So help them and imprison the traffickers - but you won't do it if you don't legalise drugs too).