#146 The Pimping of Prostitution by Julie Bindel - Audio Book Launch
Journalist, author, co-founder of Justice for Women and Feminist activist Julie Bindel and founder of SPACE International Rachel Moran discuss one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe – the international sex trade.
This episode of the FiLiA Podcast is the recording from the Audio Book Launch of Julie Bindel’s book ‘The Pimping of Prostitution. This new release is timely and pertinent. As the pro-prostitution lobby gathers pace in both the UK and elsewhere, so must the abolitionist movement, which is fully represented in this book.
Listen here (or scroll down for the video):
Julie Bindel
Julie Bindel
In The Pimping of Prostitution, renowned investigative journalist and feminist activist Julie Bindel takes the debate on prostitution legislation head-on, exposing the lived realities of women in contrast with the dominant discourse in current academic and liberal feminist debates. Based on more than 250 interviews with the people involved in and affected by prostitution around the world – from trafficked women to legal brothel owners to the men who drive demand – this book uncovers the lies, mythology and criminality that shroud this global trade, and suggests a way forward for the activists seeking to abolish ‘the oldest oppression.’
Over the course of two years, Bindel conducted interviews in almost 40 countries, cities and states, travelling around Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand and East and South Africa. Visiting brothels all around the world, Bindel got to know pimps, pornographers, survivors of the sex trade and the women currently being sold by pimps who are classified as ‘business entrepreneurs’. The book gives an account of the struggle of those harmed by the sex trade, who she argues make up the majority of those involved, and shows that the popularly accepted tropes about ‘agency’ and ‘choice’ in prostitution are challenged by the testimony of its survivors.
The Pimping of Prostitution exposes the harms of the global sex trade and documents the emergence of the exciting and vibrant survivor abolitionist movement – leading us to question when the policymakers, politicians and international human rights organisations will start to reject the mythology around prostitution, hold sex buyers accountable for the damage that they do, and truly begin to fight for the human rights of women around the world.
Rachel Moran
Rachel Moran
Rachel Moran (Ireland) is the founding member of SPACE International and author of the bestselling ‘Paid For - My Journey Through Prostitution,’ regarded by legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon as “the best work by anyone on prostitution ever.” Her work has also been endorsed by Jane Fonda, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and many others.
“Paid For” has been published in ten countries and numerous languages with a Spanish translation currently underway. Ms. Moran was prostituted for seven years in Dublin and across Ireland, beginning when she was 15 years old. Ms. Moran later completed her education and received a degree in Journalism from Dublin City University and a Masters in Creative Writing from University College Dublin. She first addressed a crowd in 2011, which gathered at the launch of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign urging Ireland to adopt the Nordic model.
As an abolitionist, Ms. Moran was instrumental in bringing the Abolitionist (Nordic) Model to Ireland in two separate processes on either side of the Irish border, and works centrally within the international survivors’ movement, which calls for the implementation of the Abolitionist Model worldwide. She speaks regularly at the United Nations, the European Parliament and other global institutions.