Personal submission to @ScotGovJustice Consultation now available on @UmbrellaLane website

Full response - https://t.co/WCB4Y3qNrN

A thread of main arguments to save anyone having to read through what became a second thesis 🙄 on these important issues 1/8

#NotEqualNotSafe

@scotgov sweeping definition of all prostitution as inherently violence renders invisible actual acts of abuse in the sex industry; continues an ineffective& dangerous reliance on criminal justice approaches that fosters unsafe working practices&deters victims to seek redress 2/8
The push to criminalise clients is a misplaced moralistic agenda put forward at the expense of a much needed social justice &public health approach in policy & services that centres the varied needs of people this consultation states intention to support 3/8
The focus within Equally Safe strategy on ‘reducing demand’ fails to address root causes& factors that exacerbate the vulnerabilities of women&girls 2violence, which extend beyond the narrow focus on eliminating prostitution as a means to achieve gender equality in #Scotland 4/8
A platform of social justice – rights, redistribution, respect, inclusion and recognition – extending from decriminalisation as a VITAL first step, has the potential to avoid the trap of a coercive welfarist approach as set out in current policy 5/8
Which only creates new forms of intervention in the lives of marginalised, stigmatised &criminalised women. Being able to openly challenge structural oppressions of #gender, #class & #race is essential in the de- marginalisation of women who sell sex 6/8
Only under full decriminalisation are these reforms possible.

@scotgovjustice has an opportunity to lead the way internationally on an agenda for change that co-creates laws & policies meaningfully with people with lived experience 7/8
I remain hopeful that this consultation acts as a catalyst for an opportunity to recognise &value the citizenship, voice, agency of sex workers, whilst creating policies to affect systems change for all women; two important tasks that need NOT be treated as mutually exclusive 8/8

More from For later read

1. The death of Silicon Valley, a thread

How did Silicon Valley die? It was killed by the internet. I will explain.

Yesterday, my friend IRL asked me "Where are good old days when techies were


2. In the "good old days" Silicon Valley was about understanding technology. Silicon, to be precise. These were people who had to understand quantum mechanics, who had to build the near-miraculous devices that we now take for granted, and they had to work

3. Now, I love libertarians, and I share much of their political philosophy. But you have to be socially naive to believe that it has a chance in a real society. In those days, Silicon Valley was not a real society. It was populated by people who understood quantum mechanics

4. Then came the microcomputer revolution. It was created by people who understood how to build computers. One borderline case was Steve Jobs. People claimed that Jobs was surrounded by a "reality distortion field" - that's how good he was at understanding people, not things

5. Still, the heroes of Silicon Valley were the engineers. The people who knew how to build things. Steve Jobs, for all his understanding of people, also had quite a good understanding of technology. He had a libertarian vibe, and so did Silicon Valley

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