Photograph: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images
Is it really such a surprise that “survival sex” has become normalised by years of Tory austerity?
Last week, a group of women told the work and pensions committee how they sold sex to survive. Everything from being coerced into giving oral sex after being caught shoplifting food for the kids to turning to sex work full time. While the cliched image of sex work – women on drugs – remains sadly true, there are also “welfare” sex workers, supplementing their benefits to buy not heroin but groceries or clothes for their kids.
While such horror stories have always been around, they’re now directly linked to the inadequacies of universal credit, including five- to six-week waits to process claims, rejections, disputes, cuts, repayable loans that mean people never get back on their feet etc. The welfare system is yet again exposed as not a safety net but a tattered spider’s web that vulnerable people crash through, straight to the ground.
It’s not just parents; students also turn to sex work to stay afloat. The female body has traditionally risked being commodified by poverty. There are even crude jokes about it: “Every woman is sitting on a fortune.” Ha and ha. What a certain kind of man smirks about, the impoverished woman dreads. It’s not an “option”, it’s a nightmare. It must take extreme, sustained pressure for a woman to turn to sex work, but if not being able to afford food, clothes and shelter for your children doesn’t count as “extreme”, what does?
The women who spoke to the committee can be proud that their testimonies made a difference. They led the Department for Work and Pensions to apologise for a prior (shabby) response that such stories were “anecdote”. The committee chair, Frank Field, said this “belated” acknowledgment must be accompanied by action on recommendations, including scrapping the wait, introducing non-repayable advances, and respect for the “lived experience” of those struggling on universal credit.
Let’s hope this leads somewhere, but I won’t hold my breath, for surely the government must have suspected this was happening. This concept of survival, more precisely barely surviving, has been at the root of Tory austerity, the idea that people needing state help should suffer and scrabble, rather than get “too comfortable”. That this has spread to sex, the most intimate of interactions, may be heartbreaking but it’s entirely predictable.
As with so much to do with austerity, it goes beyond everyday frustrations with the built-in chicanery of the benefit system and into the realm of basic human dignity and who’s allowed it. It is plain wrong that a system drives desperate women to have sex with strangers for school shoes and breakfast cereal. Whatever sex is, or can be, it should never be a survival mechanism.
Sorry to be Blunt, James, but you’re full of hot air
A maxim for our times could be: “Lord save us from posh boys who don’t have to suffer consequences.” Enter multimillionaire singer James Blunt, who announced that we should “get the fuck on [with Brexit] because our lives won’t change”. For him, it would just mean that his tour manager had to “fill in a few more forms”.
Blunt served in the army, touring Kosovo, but maybe fame has left him soft-bellied, not to mention ill-informed and stupid. He didn’t say whether he was a Leaver or Remainer but, just as a musician, he must know that Brexit would be a disaster for many artists.
Far from a “few forms” (nice respect for his tour manager there), Brexit would mean extensive costly adjustments, in order to transport people, equipment and merchandise around European states, with visas, driving permits, customs checks and health insurances to deal with and more. Boris Johnson’s deal has been criticised for being even worse for performers than Theresa May’s and calls for a “musician’s passport” have been ignored. Brexit could influence whether European artists include the UK on their tours, while smaller, underfunded British artists may have to give up on the idea of touring Europe altogether.
This is Blunt’s industry. How could he not know this? Even if he’s established enough not to feel the effects, why is he so insensitive to others? But then, while he didn’t go to Eton, he went to (ta-da!) Harrow. Clearly when he said that “our lives won’t change”, what he really meant was “my life won’t change”.
In recent years, Blunt has made the odd self-deprecating quip that made him appear witty and “blokey”. But when it comes down to it, here he is: just another posh berk who has no idea and, crucially, couldn’t care less what impact (multifaceted, relentless and devastating) Brexit would have on ordinary people and ordinary artists.
Thanks, Rory Stewart – you’ve shown your true colours
Should former Tory Rory Stewart barricade himself indoors – for the sake of his campaign to be London mayor? Stewart described three young black men he filmed in east London while campaigning to be Tory leader as “minor gangsters”.
He said: “I can go to Brick Lane and three sort of minor gangsters can come up to me and spend a minute telling me I’m an idiot.”
Smashing. Except why were they “minor gangsters” – would Stewart have said this about white men? All they did was calmly decline to be interviewed, because they “didn’t fuck with politics”. Otherwise, they were charming and friendly, chatting about being from Dublin, with one saying “peace, bro” as he left. It turns out that the trio are a rap group called Hare Squead, who later described Stewart as “looking a bit fucking creepy” and a “corny, goofy-looking man”.
They also said his depiction of them was racist and that he should apologise. (Stewart did apologise on Twitter.)
This was even more unacceptable in the week that official figures showed that black, Asian and minority ethnic people were still four times more likely to be subjected to a police stop and search. Note to Stewart: not all black men are “minor gangsters”, but too many are treated that way, even by self-styled “streetwise” politicians.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
