Five years ago, when I moved in, I inherited what I thought was an overgrown tip at the bottom of my garden, bordered by a muddy ditch of fetid water. Two years ago, during lockdown, I sawed the rusted lock off the gate & discovered that it was actually part of a chalk stream. Like most chalk streams around these parts, it's in trouble. It rises just a few 100 metres away, at a spring called Giant's Grave, where village women would do the laundry of the Cambridge colleges. Much of the water from the channel behind my house was diverted c. 1800 when...

This tweet has inspired me to write a short thread on attitudes to prostitution in the 1950s. The 1950s was a time marked by conservative attitudes toward prostitution: the Wolfenden Committee sat, pathologized women who sold sex, and recommended increasing criminalization. BUT

https://twitter.com/neiemer/status/1463454476094914561

There were dozens of prominent women's orgs, legal orgs, & even prominent police spokespersons who vehemently opposed this criminalization. They campaigned tirelessly in the name of prostitute's rights, and to prevent the harmful effects of pushing prostitution underground.

Anti-sex work feminism, a history thread: For about 2 centuries, middle-class etc women have been involved in campaigns about prostitution. Many had heart-felt reasons, & there were even campaigns to decriminalize prostitution & ensure better rights for women who sold sex. BUT... For the most part, these campaigns were about public morality, social control, and the maintenance of a system of cheap, feminised labour that served the interests of the wealthy. They denigrated and criminalized women’s attempts to make a living wage by selling sex...

The UK’s proposed #EndDemand bill; a #DecrimNow history thread:

‘Prostitution is a grievous vice’, wrote feminist Alison Neilans in 1919. To her, prostitution was morally wrong & harmful to women. Then, she continued: ‘but it cannot be made a crime without grave injustice.’ Yesterday, an amendment criminalizing the purchase of sex was added to the already controversial Policing and Crimes Bill. As much as Alison Neilans, the leading anti-prostitution campaigner of her day, hated prostitution, I know she would have opposed this. Why?