Hello,

My name is Lou Sands I am currently undertaking my PhD in film practice looking into Utopia and Dystopia.

I am making documentary on sex work in conjunction with two London based sex work charities and I am funded by the Arts and Humanities Research council. I have a small budget of £500 and would like to offer £100 to any story I use within my documentary. Around 3 or 4 total. If more are used participants will be contacted and compensated from my own funds.

Whats is it about?

The documentary is around dystopia and policy especially concerning women who are forced to work alone. Who are not given the same basic human rights and freedoms associated with any other job? Especially with regards to Covid-19 that have seen women on the bread line and migrant workers fighting for survival.
The film will also explore sex work as one being of the oldest occupations but still one of the most highly stigmatised industries for both worker and customer. The documentary is to raise awareness and is pro-decriminalisation of sex work and the message that women should be able to work together for a safer environment.
 
I am part of an ethical committee for my research, which means anything I use will be shown to participants before its release for their assessment and feedback.
Participants will remain completely anonymous. The letter submitted by participants will be read aloud by an actor or myself in the style of Chantel Akerman’s film Letters Home.

Participants will be given information regarding the screening and access to the film once it has been made. A non-disclosure agreement will be signed by myself and given to you in receipt of the letter used to provide both transparency and the comfort that you will remain anonymous. If you do wish to be credited you can be as either a participant, story consultant or in the thanks credits. If you wish to read your own letter aloud this can also be arranged and can be edited in post-production to change or distort your voice if you so wish. Please let me know via email. Here is a link to my website if you would like to find out more about me https://www.louisesands.com/blog

How do I participate?

If you would like to share your experiences and write a letter please use the letter guidance below and send to lousandsart@gmail.com by the Sunday the 11th of October. Please also feel free to contact me via email if you have any questions or suggestions regarding guidance or anything else. I will contact all participants who send in letters to let you know if the letters fulfil the requirements of the films message. Those letters who do meet the requirements will be contacted to discuss preferred payment methods and usage of the material once the selection has been made.

Thank you for your time

Louise Sands 

Letter Guidance: The written letter should be emailed to the above address and make an attempt to answer as many of the questions as you can. Please feel free to adapt them to suit your response. Please also add anything you may think I have missed or anything you feel is significant.

How old are you?
How long have you participated in sex work?
Do you have children or family/ dependants to support?
Has poverty or having children and dependants forced you into sex work?

What are the problems you have faced with criminalisation surrounding sex work? I.e. not being listened to by law enforcement, sexual assault, putting yourself at risk working alone, immigration laws, working illegally and not being able to use law enforcement etc…

Have you tried or wanted to leave sex work behind? Has a criminal record stopped you pursuing a different career or trapped you into sex work?

What has been your worst experience of the job? i.e. Could be one particular incident or a re-occurring problem.

What would make you feel safer at work? I.e. working with others, screening your clients etc …

Has Covid-19 had an impact on your work or working conditions? And if so, have you been able to get access to help via the government, charity or otherwise?

Has the stigma/ shame of sex work effected the way you see yourself and your value? How do you think this can be overcome? i.e. education, more positive representation, decriminalisation.

Do you think decriminalisation of laws specific to sex work would help women be safer, be paid a fairer wage and give them access to benefits that they would with any other job?

What do you enjoy about your job and what kind of future do you imagine for yourself?

Any final thoughts or things that you feel might be significant in raising awareness or exposing problems for discussion?

Decriminalisation  Doh! Sorry about that.  Just made a quick edit  Thank you Cass

So you only want to talk to women from Northern Ireland? The exchange of sexual services for money is already legal everywhere else in UK.

Criminalisation of just about everything else around sex work does affect us though.

Criminalisation of just about everything else around sex work does affect us though.

Exactly. When people talk about criminalisation (and decriminalisation) of sex work they're generally talking about the laws which restrict what we may do and how we may work that are specific to sex work and make no sense - the brothel laws that prevent us from working together, and so on. I imagine that's what the OP means.

Hi Guys,

Thank you all for your reply's. It has been really helpful to understand some of the problems faced in the sex work industry. I'm sorry Nelly and Aussie Male. I did mean the criminalisation surrounding sex work not the sale of sex.

I'm aware that sex work is legal and has been for some time. However, my friends and some of the women I have spoken to have found themselves in awful situations when working alone; being robbed, domestic violence and sometimes worse. Women who use their homes as a place to carry out sex work have been subject to wrongful evictions, they have also been robbed by clients and are either unable to report it or it hasn't been received well by law enforcement.

Migrant sex workers are disadvantaged and discriminated against because the trade is not recognised as work in the UK – noting many people, therefore, do not have the documentation, including the record of waged work, that is needed to establish a right to stay in the UK. These are just some of the problems I am trying to expose under the law here.

I did not mean to cause you any offence Nelly and perhaps I could have phrased the question a little better. I will now change it to surrounding sex work.

Lou :-D

Please don't forget to mention in your documentary that exchange of sexual services for money is legal everywhere in the UK except Northern Ireland. I hope you don't intend to mislead your viewers by portraying sexwork as a universally awful job. It does sound that way from your questions. I really dislike documentaries and any form of journalism that seeks to paint a picture of all sexworkers as desperate, impoverished, exploited, trapped, lonely, stigmatised, ashamed, borderline criminal, victims. Please note that I'm taking words from your own post. I don't identify at all with any of the above and I've met thousands of sexworkers in the 12 years I've been escorting and renting out incall flats by the hour. Very few of the escorts I've met would identify with any, let alone all, of the description above. There are survival sexworkers but they are already massively over represented in the media. The majority of sex workers I've met treat their work the same way any reasonably successful sole trader treats their business. As a job. The public never gets to hear about a version of sexwork that the majority of sexworkers would recognise as resembling their own experience. Only the worst off sexworkers are portrayed and occasionally the high flying, jetsetting, highest earners of the industry. But never the majority of us who fall somewhere in between those two extremes. Do you really want to create yet another sensationalist piece that ignores reality to appeal to the pearl clutchers and fear mongers?

Very well said.

Hi AME,

It is definitely not my intention to mislead viewers. On the contrary. I have friends like yourself who do very well and are very happy in their jobs. The focus is on the criminalisation surrounding sex work and how they are let down by the stigma attached to the job and the fact that it isn't recognised as legitimate work. The fact that you cannot set up a working business as a group, which would keep women safer if they could work together. The stigma is important for me to consider as it women have been called every name under the sun for just enjoying sex and sleeping with more than a handful of men. I understand that you are probably very happy in your line of work and I know there are many more people like you that enjoy their job. However, my work is about the dystopia that women face in modern society, the focus on aspects of the negative but its not about the finer details of the job and how people are deprived, lonely exploited, trapped. Its about human rights and what happens when you stigmatise a group of people and criminalise activity surrounding it. Thus leading to a risky environment when women are made to work alone, cannot register there job to fit with immigration laws, are evicted from their accommodation for simply working, when any other freelance job lets you work from home. Its about human rights and women's rights. I will also be interviewing scientists, economists, and women who work in AI for the bigger picture project but its generally about finding out where these dystopias exist and highlighting that its not in some dystopian future but here in the present and things must change to accommodate a better future. This will not be a sensationalist piece and I am in no way affiliated to any news based channel or journalistic route. Fear mongering is what they do best. I hope to make something that helps women's rights charities gain exposure and highlight policy that should be changed.

Lou :-D

     Sorry doing this from my phone. Still no excuse