Some of the most shocking statistics about prostitution are as follows: Almost 70% of women in prostitution (in the US for instance) were sexually abused as children, as much as 81% suffer from PTSD as a result of having a history of prostitution (higher than for war veterans), https://twitter.com/DrJoGrady/status/1336786933947772935

the murder rates for prostituted women in the US is almost 100 times higher than for the general population, depending on locations the prevalence of physical assaults on prostituted women varies from 57% (Canada) to 93% (Cambodia).

These figures clearly demonstrate that prostitution is not "work" but abuse. The driving forces behind prostitution are not the expression of women's free will but in the majority of cases it is financial desperation in conjunction with a history of grooming, rape, drug addiction

trafficking or low self-esteem, and of course, the idea that men are entitled to sex and to women's body. It is clear to me that in order to induce a cultural shift that would benefit women in prostitution and women's status in society overall, we need to be able to criminalise

the men who enable and benefit from this abuse, while the women victims of prostitution must be given the opportunity to heal and to exit this dehumanising "trade".

The appalling example of the Leeds "managed zone" which has seen an increase in the number of reported assaults

and harassment against women both in the sex trade and outside of the sex trade (school girls, mothers with infants) shows that decriminalising the buyers leads to the notion that men are entitled to any woman or girl's body regardless of consent. In a world where women are

already under constant pressure to be sexually available to men and where our rapes rare hardly ever prosecuted, encouraging the idea that it's lawful to demand access to desperate & vulnerable women's body is highly unlikely to deter predatory behaviours against women from men.

Ppl who tell you they have listened to SW who want full decrim seem oblivious to the fact that often these women are entirely at the mercy of pimps and that they will say whatever the pimps want them to say. Pimps' interests are not the same as those of the women. End.