This event will look at how prostitution is very different for the punters, who are almost entirely male, than for those who are directly involved, who are mainly female. It will also look at how structural inequality and systemic poverty drive many marginalised people into the sex trade and traps them there – while the sex trade simultaneously reinforces and strengthens that structural inequality.

We will hear about Fiona Broadfoot’s campaign to force the UK government to end the criminalisation of loitering and soliciting in a public place for the purpose of prostitution and to permanently wipe women’s criminal records for such offences from the police national computer (PNC), where they are currently held for 100 years. What could exemplify the inequality and double standard more clearly than that the pimps and brothel keepers who exploited Fiona when she was a child got off scot-free, but the UK Government insists her criminal records gained while a sex trafficked child remain on the PNC until she is 100 years old?

We will hear from Professor Kathleen Richardson about her work in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) and how through this she has come to see that as a culture we are rapidly losing the ability to come up with a meaningful politics informed by empathy, reciprocity, and mutuality and how this is related to the way (mostly) women and girls are treated as commodities in the sex industry.

Kellie Ziemba will talk about the impact of prostitution on the women her organisation supports on a daily basis. Siân Louise will talk about the connections between systemic poverty and women’s entry into the sex trade and how too often poverty traps them there.

Event details

This public event will take place in a central Nottingham venue. It is wheelchair accessible and within walking distance or a short tram ride from Nottingham train station.

We will email ticket holders with the details of the venue on the morning of the event. If you can’t see the email, please check your spam folders.

Ticket prices

Standard tickets are £5, solidarity tickets are £10, and concessionary tickets are £3.

Please select the ticket that best matches your financial circumstances. If you want to come but cannot afford a concessionary ticket, please email nordicmodelnow@gmail.com and we will endeavour to provide you with a free ticket.

If you want to purchase tickets for a group, please fill out the registration and ticket form separately for each person.

No refunds.

Speakers

Fiona Broadfoot: When Fiona was 15 years old, her ‘boyfriend’ groomed and pimped her into prostitution on the streets and in brothels. She suffered violence and abuse from her pimps and punters and was frequently arrested by the police whilst they exchanged friendly greetings with her pimp. As a result of the police actions, by the age of 17, she had 39 convictions for soliciting and loitering. She eventually escaped prostitution aged 21 after she heard about the death of her cousin, Maureen Stepan, who had also been exploited in prostitution and was murdered by a punter. Since the 1990s, Fiona has been actively and passionately involved in feminist activism against the sex trade. She is the founder of Build a Girl, a survivor-led social enterprise working with girls at risk of or experiencing sexual exploitation, and has spoken in the media and at numerous events.

Kathleen Richardson – Kathleen has a long connection with Nottingham, having grown up on the council estates in Radford and the Meadows. She is now Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University, and Director of Women Ethics Robots AI and Data (WERAID). She is also the founder of the Campaign Against Porn (‘Sex’) Robots, which aims “to warn against the dangers of normalising relationships with machines and reinforcing female dehumanisation.”

Kellie Ziemba – Kellie is passionate about the needs and rights of women and girls. Her professional career has spanned the fields of youth work, education and criminal justice. Previously a strategic lead for a large rape crisis centre, she now runs an organisation that supports women at risk of or subject to sexual exploitation, including women involved in street based prostitution. Outside of work, Kellie founded a feminist group 3 years ago, primarily to meet and learn with other women, which has since grown into a thriving collective. She has long advocated for prostitution to be understood as a form of violence against women and girls.

Siân Louise – Siân is a working-class feminist and socialist organiser based in Nottingham. She’s a trade unionist, anti-racist and women’s liberationist. She came to feminist organising with the Nottingham Women’s Conference in 2013. She was the organiser of the Class Matters 2018 feminist conference. She’s a lover of books and women-only spaces, and hosts the monthly women-only book group, Radical Readers. She’s a sex trade abolitionist and a believer in a better world.

Rebecca – Rebecca is a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation, and believes strongly that a society in which sexual consent can be commodified is one which fails us all.

Shabbana Kiyani – Shabbana has been involved in the campaign against the sex trade for several years. She has worked in education for 28 years in a number of roles from classroom to leadership. Shabbana will chair the event.

Questions

There will be time for questions during the event, but you are welcome to email in advance any questions you would like the panel to consider. Please put ‘Event Question’ in the subject line and email it to nordicmodelnow@gmail.com. Time constraints mean we will be limited in how many questions we can address.

This is a mixed event

This event will include women talking about some of the worst forms of male violence. We ask everyone, but particularly men, to be mindful of this and how both speakers and members of the audience may find this triggering because it resonates with their own experiences of male violence. We ask everyone to be open and respectful.