Hi Amy,

Honestly, I was acknowledging the fact that I'm grateful for some actual legitimate links. I'm not questioning their authenticity or your motive for providing them. My whole point of visiting the SAAFE site, as opposed to just finding some blogs on my own was that so many blogs appeared after the Brooke Magnanti episode when the legitimacy of virtually any blog claimed to be written by a sex worker was questioned.

I was hoping for the opions of real sex workers. Wow! I'm certainly getting them. You are so cynical. OK, maybe you've had good reason to develop that cynicism. I had a feeling I was going to get another bollocking for something or other.

Ron

Can you blame us for being cynical when a complete stranger with an as yet unexplained but apparently considerable interest in our work appears out of nowhere and begins purporting to be in a position to alter the public view of us? Particularly one with so little actual knowledge of either us or our industry I'm amazed that you were able to find this forum.

Many of us have been royally stitched up by outsiders, including but not limited to the media, and the earnest and well-meaning but essentially ignorant in terms of how wider society affects and interacts with our work on a day-to-day basis (and I know you think you know how it does) have been known to do the worst damage of all. All in all, the majority of us just want to be left alone to earn a living in peace like any other honest working people, not treated like lab animals to be studied and discussed.

If you want to learn, read and absorb - I do suggest that you get over this bizarre fixation with blogs you seem to have picked up and try some solid, checkable texts; blogs are all very well, but they are not subject to any rules or guidelines regarding factual accuracy and are hardly valid research material. But until you have done the job yourself, you can never know, and this is probably why the people here are not that interested in talking to you. The amount of time I've spent reading and responding would be worth a couple of hundred quid to most of us and apart from anything else we tend to resent being asked to give up our time for free.