:00:14. > :00:18.That's the latest BBC News. Now it As Belle de Jour, my guests today
:00:18. > :00:23.achieved global notoriety for years, writing a blog about her sexual
:00:23. > :00:28.encounters as a high-class escort. Now, after revealing herself to be
:00:29. > :00:33.an expert research scientist and no longer engaged in prostitution, Dr
:00:33. > :00:36.Brooke Magnanti is calling for prostitution to be decriminalised.
:00:36. > :00:46.But it is standing up for prostitutes or whitewashing a
:00:46. > :01:08.
:01:08. > :01:11.profession that is often harmful Dr Brooke Magnanti, welcome to
:01:11. > :01:16.HARDtalk. Many people will hear your name and
:01:16. > :01:20.think, prostitution. Are you happy with that? I don't know if I'm so
:01:20. > :01:26.much happy with it as side except that that will always be a part of
:01:26. > :01:32.my life, a part of how people think of me. You are an accomplished
:01:32. > :01:36.research scientist. What is it then that Major become an escort girl in
:01:36. > :01:41.2003-2004 while you were finishing your PhD? The situation at the time
:01:41. > :01:45.was that I had moved to London to look for work and vastly
:01:45. > :01:50.underestimated how much it was going to cost to live there. I went
:01:50. > :01:57.through my savings quickly, as many people do. But I am not from the UK
:01:57. > :02:01.so I do not have the option to just go home and sleep on my parents so
:02:01. > :02:06.far. I needed money and as far as I could tell that was the easiest way
:02:06. > :02:10.to make enough money to live off of and still have the time to look for
:02:10. > :02:13.a professional job as a scientist. You say that so casually but
:02:14. > :02:19.traditionally students who are in need of money might write some
:02:19. > :02:22.papers, they might take a temping job, working a cafe or bar.
:02:22. > :02:28.Absolutely. The situation at the time for foreign students was that
:02:28. > :02:32.I was prohibited from working more than 15 hours a week. Because I was
:02:32. > :02:36.technically still a student, I would not have been able to earn
:02:36. > :02:40.enough money working 15 hours a week unless I was working illegally,
:02:40. > :02:46.under the table. Traditionally, students go into debt. The Judy
:02:46. > :02:51.that? I could not get alone in the UK. -- did you do that. It was all
:02:51. > :02:56.part and parcel of being a student here. You have saved in other
:02:56. > :03:02.interviews that you have all had a pathological aversion to being in
:03:02. > :03:06.debt. But if that is the case, one wonders why you did not have an
:03:06. > :03:11.aversion to selling yourself, to selling your body. I suppose partly
:03:11. > :03:15.it was because what I was afraid of was getting into something that I
:03:16. > :03:21.couldn't get myself out of. I had seen a lot of friends of mine,
:03:21. > :03:26.students, take on the enormous debt. I knew American students who took
:03:26. > :03:31.on loans in the US to move to the UK and then of course you are
:03:31. > :03:36.subject to the problems of, what is the Dolo were first as the pound?
:03:36. > :03:41.They thought they were borrowing $200,000 and then went back to a
:03:41. > :03:45.lot more debt than that. -- the dollar. But when you talk about you
:03:45. > :03:52.feel about getting ensnared in debt, as an outsider, you question why
:03:52. > :03:56.you would not fear getting ensnared in an underworld of prostitution?
:03:56. > :04:01.Used to do had a relative that was a drug addict and prostitute and he
:04:01. > :04:05.found out about that when he went down. Given that put you off?
:04:05. > :04:10.If anything, it made clear to me that my situation was very
:04:10. > :04:13.different. I knew my mind very well and I knew that I was unlikely to
:04:13. > :04:17.take drugs if somebody offered them to me or to get myself into
:04:18. > :04:22.situations just because I wanted to go along with the crowd. In a way,
:04:22. > :04:26.I was in a position where I knew what I wanted out of it, which was
:04:27. > :04:31.to be able to earn enough money to get on with life in London. Once it
:04:31. > :04:34.got to the point where I didn't need to do with any more, I would
:04:34. > :04:41.leave it. A Lucidi. The ventrally. But while you were engaged in it,
:04:41. > :04:45.and early on, he decided to block about it. -- which I did eventually.
:04:45. > :04:51.You call yourself Belle de Jour and of course that was it -- that will
:04:51. > :04:55.conjure up that film with the impossibly glamourous actress who
:04:55. > :05:00.chose to go into prostitution because she was a bored housewife.
:05:00. > :05:05.Why did you write a blog featuring this happy hooker? I was actually
:05:05. > :05:09.happy doing it. And I also realised at the time that it was an
:05:09. > :05:12.explosive kind of secret. It was the sort of thing that if people
:05:12. > :05:17.found out about it that the early in my career, it would have
:05:17. > :05:21.prevented me from getting jobs. I was aware of what I was risking. I
:05:21. > :05:25.knew I could not go to all of my friends and family and say, this is
:05:25. > :05:30.what I am doing. But interesting things happened in the job and it
:05:30. > :05:34.was a bit of a personal myth buster. As you say, I have known people and
:05:34. > :05:40.had a relative who was in sex work and it was interesting to see a
:05:40. > :05:43.very different aspect of it. It's a very broad topic, with all kinds of
:05:43. > :05:48.people in it. Experiencing that was challenging a lot of my
:05:48. > :05:53.preconceived notions. You say you wrote the block to be a myth buster
:05:53. > :05:59.but at the same time the kind of experiencing you were describing,
:05:59. > :06:03.not negative experiences... Just hearing from Danni Copen, a former
:06:03. > :06:08.high-class prostitute herself, and she says the life is not glamourous
:06:08. > :06:12.or sexy and she constantly feared for her life, was used by a
:06:12. > :06:16.lecherous men who had no respect for her. She says the idea that
:06:16. > :06:21.like Belle de Jour the job is about expensive hotels and good looking
:06:21. > :06:26.and is absurd. It is the sort of thing that people bring with them a
:06:26. > :06:31.lot of their own experiences into the job. I went in with almost, he
:06:31. > :06:34.would say, a hard shell around me. I would definitely say that for
:06:34. > :06:39.girls who do not know where they are in their lives, getting
:06:39. > :06:45.involved in something like that can be very seductive almost. And when
:06:45. > :06:50.they realise it is not like being a high-fashion model or somebody's
:06:50. > :06:54.billionaire wife, some people really have a hard time reconciling
:06:54. > :07:00.that. But it is my feelings that I went into it with the attitude of,
:07:00. > :07:05.I know this is just a job. And so that made it easier for me. But as
:07:05. > :07:10.you say, the job turned into a block. It turned into a TV series,
:07:10. > :07:20.which attracted enormous amount of attention. You were a consultant on
:07:20. > :07:26.
:07:26. > :07:31.that series. -- log. Sarah Hedley, she said about the TV series that
:07:31. > :07:39.if the film pretty woman suggested a whole new career option two young
:07:39. > :07:43.women wishing to spending their days working out of high-class
:07:43. > :07:48.hotels, secret diaries is likely to do the same. Did you feel that was
:07:48. > :07:53.responsible? Be is funny because you don't call people like that
:07:53. > :07:58.pimps. It is very often a woman, she is your manager or your agent.
:07:58. > :08:03.If you called her a pink she would be offended. A lot of people would
:08:03. > :08:07.see the role as being very similar. But for me, but don't really like
:08:07. > :08:11.about the television adaptation was that the main character did
:08:11. > :08:15.represent my experience Qatar was not the only consultant on the show.
:08:15. > :08:19.There was a diversity of characters representing a diversity of
:08:19. > :08:24.experiences. When I was writing my own books, I couldn't because I
:08:24. > :08:29.could only speak for myself. did you feel that you have
:08:29. > :08:33.glamorised the profession? I don't. It's a profession that has existed
:08:33. > :08:38.for a long time. Even the quote that you read, it brings up pretty
:08:38. > :08:43.woman. I saw that when I was eight. There has always been a couple of
:08:43. > :08:48.people who put their hands up and say, yes, some prostitutes are
:08:48. > :08:52.abused, have terrible lives. Many of them don't. And then you get
:08:52. > :08:57.accused of glamorising it. As if you have invented prostitution.
:08:57. > :09:01.Were you ever find of for your own safety? Not while I was at work.
:09:01. > :09:06.wonder that your mental well being? Rule afraid that being an escort
:09:06. > :09:10.might make you feel used and degraded? -- would you afraid.
:09:10. > :09:15.wasn't. But one of the things my book has covered in quite a lot of
:09:15. > :09:20.detail was the contrast between my life of, you know, worrying about
:09:20. > :09:25.getting into debt and living in a tiny flat and been in terrible
:09:25. > :09:31.relationships, this is this job where I did put on the character of
:09:31. > :09:38.who is very much in control. That was the part of my life that I was
:09:38. > :09:44.the most control -- I was in the most control of. In 2009, you
:09:44. > :09:48.decided to reveal yourself. I had an inkling that there was a paper
:09:48. > :09:54.that perhaps have got some information about me. I was not
:09:54. > :09:59.entirely sure how. And rather than let somebody else tell my story, I
:09:59. > :10:05.decided I would put my hand up and say, "This is me. This is who I
:10:05. > :10:09.really am". And you were not what a lot of readers were expecting.
:10:09. > :10:14.I don't look like Catherine Deneuve. But there were many others in the
:10:14. > :10:18.British press who assumed you -- you were probably a man, writing to
:10:18. > :10:22.titillate other men. The DUP - like the idea of the Happy Hooker could
:10:22. > :10:29.only be a man writing that. I find that the extraordinary because when
:10:29. > :10:38.you look at the history, we have things like the story of, which for
:10:38. > :10:42.decades people assumed had been written by men, a woman on her
:10:42. > :10:48.deathbed reveals it is me, I am this woman that you overlooked.
:10:48. > :10:51.This is a common theme. But there have been a lot of people who have
:10:51. > :10:56.filled it in various guises, pretending to be sex workers,
:10:56. > :11:02.pretending to be models or porn stars. They usually pretty quickly
:11:03. > :11:07.found out. How did your friends and family react? Did it surprise you?
:11:07. > :11:12.It did. My friends were absolutely brilliant about it. It really put
:11:12. > :11:17.into perspective for me how much I had feared the moment of having to
:11:17. > :11:21.tell people who I was. Having to take responsibility for my writing.
:11:21. > :11:26.People were so much more accepting than I thought they would be, that
:11:26. > :11:30.they wish they -- that I had told them before. Didn't you find that
:11:30. > :11:34.people's attitude towards you shifted? You have said in various
:11:34. > :11:39.interviews, if you want to identify a population that has been
:11:39. > :11:43.consistently discriminated against, it is up there with racism and
:11:43. > :11:49.religion. Absolutely. In general, the people who already knew me
:11:49. > :11:53.accepted it. This is part of who I was. They already knew I was a very
:11:53. > :11:58.sexual person who had had a lot of sexual relationships but this added
:11:58. > :12:02.a different perspective to that. I was already -- also aware that for
:12:02. > :12:06.a lot of people, it can come as a complete surprise to friends and
:12:06. > :12:10.family. If there is anybody out there who has the secret in a past,
:12:10. > :12:15.it can be very liberating to come out and tell the world who you are
:12:15. > :12:18.but it can also be very frightening. You have spoken out extremely
:12:18. > :12:22.strongly against critics of prostitution and the world of
:12:22. > :12:26.prostitution. Can you not accept that there are people in this world
:12:26. > :12:31.who have simple straightforward moral objections to the profession?
:12:31. > :12:35.Yes, absolutely. But I think we are coming to a place where we have to
:12:35. > :12:40.accept the fact that one person's morality is not for everybody. We
:12:40. > :12:44.can argue about, for instance, what is on the internet, what is on
:12:44. > :12:48.television. There will always be somebody who has an objection to
:12:48. > :12:52.any kind of betrayal of sexuality. What I think is far more important
:12:52. > :12:57.when we talk about prostitution is to look girded with a compassionate
:12:57. > :13:04.viewpoint and ask the questions, why are women getting into debt? --
:13:04. > :13:08.look at it. Why are they getting into prostitution, who are they and
:13:08. > :13:13.do they want to leave? Of course there are many who want to leave
:13:13. > :13:21.and many who don't. Those moral opponents would argue that they
:13:21. > :13:24.do... They are looking at it with a passionate i've. John Sentamu, the
:13:24. > :13:29.bishop of York, singled out Belle de Jour when he gave a speech
:13:29. > :13:32.against glamorising prostitution. He said there is in leaf being
:13:32. > :13:36.perpetuated, that many people who prostitute themselves do not do so
:13:36. > :13:40.because they are repressed for a desperate for money but they see it
:13:40. > :13:47.as an easy way to make money to a safe and relatively lucrative
:13:47. > :13:52.I found it ironic because he gave that speech a month before my
:13:52. > :13:56.identity was revealed and I noticed he had no follow-up comment 2 the
:13:56. > :14:04.revelation that I turned out to be a real person. I don't think these
:14:04. > :14:09.things are necessarily true. When we look at work and when we look at
:14:09. > :14:14.wage work, why does anybody do a particular job? Yes there are
:14:14. > :14:17.aspects of our jobs that we find fulfilling and there are aspects of
:14:17. > :14:24.them that play to our talents. At the end of the day it is about the
:14:24. > :14:27.need to make a living. John Sentamu, he said "We are meant to believe
:14:27. > :14:34.the sex workers are independent women empowered by the hold they
:14:34. > :14:39.have over men, but to treat it like any other day job." That is how you
:14:39. > :14:44.describe it. He takes issue with that. It is a night job but not a
:14:44. > :14:49.day job! Belle de Jour, she did it in the day! She did. I would
:14:49. > :14:53.encourage him to get to know more people within sex work, not just
:14:53. > :14:58.the people at the very desperate hard end of it, but the vast middle,
:14:58. > :15:03.and then of course the people where I was, which was a very privileged
:15:03. > :15:10.end. Those are ends of the Bell curve, but most people are ready
:15:10. > :15:17.somewhere in the middle. Did it in power you? I'd do. Would you go
:15:17. > :15:21.back to it? I would do it again possibly, but I am possibly now too
:15:21. > :15:25.old and overweight for the work I was doing. If I could go in a
:15:25. > :15:35.TARDIS and go back to two that snow and three I would make the choice
:15:35. > :15:37.
:15:37. > :15:41.again. Feminist writer Andrea Dworkin said that it creates the
:15:41. > :15:45.ability for men to feel big literally and metaphorically in
:15:45. > :15:52.every way. She says a prostitute cannot feel empowered, it is the
:15:52. > :15:56.man who is in charge for. My main objection to feminists like her,
:15:56. > :16:00.they come at it from a point of view that assumes that all
:16:00. > :16:07.prostitution is of women for the pleasure of men. When you look at
:16:07. > :16:10.prostitution worldwide that isn't the case. There are a lot of men in
:16:10. > :16:14.prostitution, there are a lot of female clients. This is something
:16:14. > :16:19.even well-known feminist Julie Bindel has written about the market
:16:19. > :16:22.for male prostitutes in developing countries for wealthy white men in
:16:22. > :16:27.to go to. If she wants to criticise the power structure that allows
:16:27. > :16:30.this to happen I see that as a valid criticism, but to paint it
:16:30. > :16:35.entirely as the oppression of women by men is out of step with the
:16:35. > :16:38.reality of the business. From feminists to scientists, what about
:16:38. > :16:45.scientists who have taken the ante prostitution approach based on
:16:45. > :16:55.their research, such as an American clinical psychologist, Melissa
:16:55. > :16:57.
:16:57. > :17:01.Farley, she said all prostitution causes harm. Melissa Farley has had
:17:01. > :17:05.an enormous hold on a lot of opinions to do with prostitution
:17:05. > :17:09.and a lot of policy. We have to remember this is a researcher who
:17:09. > :17:13.has not only been criticised by her own colleagues, but her testimony
:17:13. > :17:18.was all but is regarded when she gave testimony in Canada regarding
:17:18. > :17:22.the recent Russell cases for instance. Unfortunately she has the
:17:22. > :17:29.tendency to take a very small self- selecting group of people that she
:17:29. > :17:32.interviews. For instance one of her studies was a study of prostitutes
:17:32. > :17:36.in brothels in Nevada or who are known to have problems because the
:17:36. > :17:40.legal situation for them is so difficult. She then takes her
:17:40. > :17:46.conclusions from that study and expansive to be all popper students
:17:46. > :17:52.-- prostitution. She is hardly unknown among scientists or
:17:52. > :17:56.psychologists to say that it is harmful. She does have an outside
:17:56. > :18:01.influence because she does get everywhere. Let's move on from an
:18:01. > :18:07.individual scientists if you well. Let's look at governments to look
:18:07. > :18:10.to ban prostitution or criminalise prostitution. France's Minister for
:18:10. > :18:14.Women, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, has declared this June that she wants
:18:14. > :18:18.to ban prostitution altogether. Last year the French National
:18:18. > :18:22.Assembly passed a resolution saying its objective was a society without
:18:22. > :18:27.prostitution and sex workers face prison in a handful of European
:18:27. > :18:30.countries, not just Britain, Sweden, Norway, Iceland as well. It is not
:18:30. > :18:33.the case in Britain at the moment actually but there are
:18:33. > :18:38.consultations going forward in Ireland and Scotland that would
:18:38. > :18:42.criminalise people who bought sex. At the moment what is criminalise
:18:42. > :18:47.would be people running a brothel, managing or pimping someone, and
:18:47. > :18:52.solicitation, which puts the women at more risk. To go back to France,
:18:52. > :18:56.I find it very interesting that they would like to have a society
:18:56. > :19:00.without prostitution. As far as we know that has never existed in
:19:00. > :19:04.human history. I'm interested to know if they feel that banning
:19:04. > :19:08.prostitution is going to achieve that, how on earth is prohibition
:19:08. > :19:12.going to move that forward. I would really like them to take a step
:19:12. > :19:15.back and consider what all the circumstances under which
:19:15. > :19:20.prostitution exists, making criminals out of people at the
:19:20. > :19:24.tail-end of a number of decisions surely is not going to help anybody.
:19:24. > :19:29.But theoretically legislators are trying to protect the public. I
:19:29. > :19:32.according to the Home Office, figures in 2009, say that at least
:19:32. > :19:38.60 sex workers have been murdered over the last ten years while the
:19:38. > :19:43.average conviction rate for murder is 65 %, when it is a sex worker,
:19:43. > :19:47.this falls to 26 %. It is funny because when we look at what is it
:19:47. > :19:51.that drives people who attack sex workers, they are not attacking
:19:51. > :19:57.them just because of sex. There was an interview with the Green River
:19:57. > :20:01.Killer in the US before he died, and it was quite extensive in
:20:01. > :20:06.asking why he singled out prostitutes. It was then sexually
:20:06. > :20:09.motivated. He just wanted to kill people and this is a population of
:20:09. > :20:13.people where literally is a prostitute dies the media will not
:20:13. > :20:18.say woman is murdered, or man is killed, they will say prostitute
:20:18. > :20:22.dead, as if we are a different species and not human. We ask you
:20:22. > :20:27.asked some hard questions about whether that actually encourages
:20:27. > :20:31.people to target prostitutes and I believe it does. -- we have to ask.
:20:31. > :20:36.Moving on, you have written a book debunking myths about sex, one of
:20:36. > :20:40.the issues you tackle is the sexualisation of children. The
:20:40. > :20:44.government in Britain is reviewing whether adults should have to lock
:20:44. > :20:48.in to out of material on the internet to protect children --
:20:48. > :20:52.opt-in. You are against such interference? I am against it at
:20:52. > :20:57.the government level because to be honest I am not a parent, I don't
:20:57. > :21:01.know how hard a parent's job is. One thing is I would like to have
:21:02. > :21:06.more say than the government does. We get into the worrying situation
:21:06. > :21:10.of somebody else deciding what is or isn't harmful for children. I
:21:10. > :21:15.would want to be the last line of defence. I feel that the government
:21:15. > :21:19.does have a role in this. I feel that the government should be
:21:19. > :21:24.promoting for instance there's quite a good blocking software that
:21:24. > :21:27.exists on the internet that is under-used. If they put the
:21:27. > :21:31.motivation behind promoting that and at educating parents that they
:21:31. > :21:38.are trying to force on internet service providers... But some
:21:38. > :21:41.children don't have the type of parents that will protect them. The
:21:41. > :21:45.Susan Adele Greenfield said recently about this system, "If I
:21:45. > :21:49.had to choose between unfettered internet access and having children
:21:49. > :21:54.harmed psychologically or worse by pornography sites, the decision is
:21:54. > :21:57.an easy one. We know that the young brain is honourable and easily
:21:57. > :22:01.influenced and exposing young people to extreme behaviours might
:22:01. > :22:05.influence their long-term behaviour." It is a shame because
:22:05. > :22:09.she has been saying this for many years. She is a neuroscientist and
:22:09. > :22:13.she has access to all kinds of research materials, she has never
:22:13. > :22:17.actually produced or shown any research that proves what she is
:22:17. > :22:22.saying is true. People have been asking these questions, Ben
:22:22. > :22:27.Goldacre, the author of Bad Science, is asking about where the numbers
:22:27. > :22:30.are. John Brown, the head of Britain's Society for the
:22:30. > :22:35.Protection of children, he says some of the Most Honourable
:22:35. > :22:39.children and young people now get access to hardcore pornography --
:22:39. > :22:43.vulnerable children. It gives them unrealistic and sometimes a
:22:43. > :22:48.dangerous view of sexual relations. He is a man who works with children.
:22:48. > :22:50.He does but if we go back to the actual research, there needs to be
:22:50. > :22:55.shown a connection that this is happening before we call in the
:22:55. > :22:59.government to take drastic action. The only honest answer to the
:22:59. > :23:03.question of is the internet harming children is we don't actually know.
:23:03. > :23:06.Nobody has conducted the research yet. I would say to these people,
:23:06. > :23:11.if you have a science background surely the first thing you would
:23:11. > :23:15.want to do as a scientist the show the data and show the numbers.
:23:15. > :23:19.Again and again we have assumptions being pulled out of thin air.
:23:20. > :23:24.the end of the Dave do you believe that only people who work in
:23:24. > :23:29.prostitution are the people that can really make judgments about it?
:23:29. > :23:35.-- day. Historically they have been denied a place in the discussion.
:23:35. > :23:42.When you look for instance at Scotland, there's a consultation
:23:42. > :23:45.going on because they are members of Scottish parliament that want to
:23:45. > :23:49.criminalise the industry of prostitution. This is happening
:23:49. > :23:53.also in Iceland and Sweden and is being discussed elsewhere. When you
:23:53. > :23:56.look at the people who have the input into the steering documents
:23:56. > :24:01.that the Government's look at, prostitutes themselves almost never
:24:01. > :24:05.have an input. I'm saying we need to get at first hand input because