Dr Brooke Magnanti - Scientist and former prostitute HARDtalk

That's the latest BBC News. Now it As Belle de Jour, my guests today

achieved global notoriety for years, writing a blog about her sexual

encounters as a high-class escort. Now, after revealing herself to be

an expert research scientist and no longer engaged in prostitution, Dr

Brooke Magnanti is calling for prostitution to be decriminalised.

But it is standing up for prostitutes or whitewashing a

profession that is often harmful Dr Brooke Magnanti, welcome to

HARDtalk. Many people will hear your name and

think, prostitution. Are you happy with that? I don't know if I'm so

much happy with it as side except that that will always be a part of

my life, a part of how people think of me. You are an accomplished

research scientist. What is it then that Major become an escort girl in

2003-2004 while you were finishing your PhD? The situation at the time

was that I had moved to London to look for work and vastly

underestimated how much it was going to cost to live there. I went

through my savings quickly, as many people do. But I am not from the UK

so I do not have the option to just go home and sleep on my parents so

far. I needed money and as far as I could tell that was the easiest way

to make enough money to live off of and still have the time to look for

a professional job as a scientist. You say that so casually but

traditionally students who are in need of money might write some

papers, they might take a temping job, working a cafe or bar.

Absolutely. The situation at the time for foreign students was that

I was prohibited from working more than 15 hours a week. Because I was

technically still a student, I would not have been able to earn

enough money working 15 hours a week unless I was working illegally,

under the table. Traditionally, students go into debt. The Judy

that? I could not get alone in the UK. -- did you do that. It was all

part and parcel of being a student here. You have saved in other

interviews that you have all had a pathological aversion to being in

debt. But if that is the case, one wonders why you did not have an

aversion to selling yourself, to selling your body. I suppose partly

it was because what I was afraid of was getting into something that I

couldn't get myself out of. I had seen a lot of friends of mine,

students, take on the enormous debt. I knew American students who took

on loans in the US to move to the UK and then of course you are

subject to the problems of, what is the Dolo were first as the pound?

They thought they were borrowing $200,000 and then went back to a

lot more debt than that. -- the dollar. But when you talk about you

feel about getting ensnared in debt, as an outsider, you question why

you would not fear getting ensnared in an underworld of prostitution?

Used to do had a relative that was a drug addict and prostitute and he

found out about that when he went down. Given that put you off?

If anything, it made clear to me that my situation was very

different. I knew my mind very well and I knew that I was unlikely to

take drugs if somebody offered them to me or to get myself into

situations just because I wanted to go along with the crowd. In a way,

I was in a position where I knew what I wanted out of it, which was

to be able to earn enough money to get on with life in London. Once it

got to the point where I didn't need to do with any more, I would

leave it. A Lucidi. The ventrally. But while you were engaged in it,

and early on, he decided to block about it. -- which I did eventually.

You call yourself Belle de Jour and of course that was it -- that will

conjure up that film with the impossibly glamourous actress who

chose to go into prostitution because she was a bored housewife.

Why did you write a blog featuring this happy hooker? I was actually

happy doing it. And I also realised at the time that it was an

explosive kind of secret. It was the sort of thing that if people

found out about it that the early in my career, it would have

prevented me from getting jobs. I was aware of what I was risking. I

knew I could not go to all of my friends and family and say, this is

what I am doing. But interesting things happened in the job and it

was a bit of a personal myth buster. As you say, I have known people and

had a relative who was in sex work and it was interesting to see a

very different aspect of it. It's a very broad topic, with all kinds of

people in it. Experiencing that was challenging a lot of my

preconceived notions. You say you wrote the block to be a myth buster

but at the same time the kind of experiencing you were describing,

not negative experiences... Just hearing from Danni Copen, a former

high-class prostitute herself, and she says the life is not glamourous

or sexy and she constantly feared for her life, was used by a

lecherous men who had no respect for her. She says the idea that

like Belle de Jour the job is about expensive hotels and good looking

and is absurd. It is the sort of thing that people bring with them a

lot of their own experiences into the job. I went in with almost, he

would say, a hard shell around me. I would definitely say that for

girls who do not know where they are in their lives, getting

involved in something like that can be very seductive almost. And when

they realise it is not like being a high-fashion model or somebody's

billionaire wife, some people really have a hard time reconciling

that. But it is my feelings that I went into it with the attitude of,

I know this is just a job. And so that made it easier for me. But as

you say, the job turned into a block. It turned into a TV series,

which attracted enormous amount of attention. You were a consultant on

that series. -- log. Sarah Hedley, she said about the TV series that

if the film pretty woman suggested a whole new career option two young

women wishing to spending their days working out of high-class

hotels, secret diaries is likely to do the same. Did you feel that was

responsible? Be is funny because you don't call people like that

pimps. It is very often a woman, she is your manager or your agent.

If you called her a pink she would be offended. A lot of people would

see the role as being very similar. But for me, but don't really like

about the television adaptation was that the main character did

represent my experience Qatar was not the only consultant on the show.

There was a diversity of characters representing a diversity of

experiences. When I was writing my own books, I couldn't because I

could only speak for myself. did you feel that you have

glamorised the profession? I don't. It's a profession that has existed

for a long time. Even the quote that you read, it brings up pretty

woman. I saw that when I was eight. There has always been a couple of

people who put their hands up and say, yes, some prostitutes are

abused, have terrible lives. Many of them don't. And then you get

accused of glamorising it. As if you have invented prostitution.

Were you ever find of for your own safety? Not while I was at work.

wonder that your mental well being? Rule afraid that being an escort

might make you feel used and degraded? -- would you afraid.

wasn't. But one of the things my book has covered in quite a lot of

detail was the contrast between my life of, you know, worrying about

getting into debt and living in a tiny flat and been in terrible

relationships, this is this job where I did put on the character of

who is very much in control. That was the part of my life that I was

the most control -- I was in the most control of. In 2009, you

decided to reveal yourself. I had an inkling that there was a paper

that perhaps have got some information about me. I was not

entirely sure how. And rather than let somebody else tell my story, I

decided I would put my hand up and say, "This is me. This is who I

really am". And you were not what a lot of readers were expecting.

I don't look like Catherine Deneuve. But there were many others in the

British press who assumed you -- you were probably a man, writing to

titillate other men. The DUP - like the idea of the Happy Hooker could

only be a man writing that. I find that the extraordinary because when

you look at the history, we have things like the story of, which for

decades people assumed had been written by men, a woman on her

deathbed reveals it is me, I am this woman that you overlooked.

This is a common theme. But there have been a lot of people who have

filled it in various guises, pretending to be sex workers,

pretending to be models or porn stars. They usually pretty quickly

found out. How did your friends and family react? Did it surprise you?

It did. My friends were absolutely brilliant about it. It really put

into perspective for me how much I had feared the moment of having to

tell people who I was. Having to take responsibility for my writing.

People were so much more accepting than I thought they would be, that

they wish they -- that I had told them before. Didn't you find that

people's attitude towards you shifted? You have said in various

interviews, if you want to identify a population that has been

consistently discriminated against, it is up there with racism and

religion. Absolutely. In general, the people who already knew me

accepted it. This is part of who I was. They already knew I was a very

sexual person who had had a lot of sexual relationships but this added

a different perspective to that. I was already -- also aware that for

a lot of people, it can come as a complete surprise to friends and

family. If there is anybody out there who has the secret in a past,

it can be very liberating to come out and tell the world who you are

but it can also be very frightening. You have spoken out extremely

strongly against critics of prostitution and the world of

prostitution. Can you not accept that there are people in this world

who have simple straightforward moral objections to the profession?

Yes, absolutely. But I think we are coming to a place where we have to

accept the fact that one person's morality is not for everybody. We

can argue about, for instance, what is on the internet, what is on

television. There will always be somebody who has an objection to

any kind of betrayal of sexuality. What I think is far more important

when we talk about prostitution is to look girded with a compassionate

viewpoint and ask the questions, why are women getting into debt? --

look at it. Why are they getting into prostitution, who are they and

do they want to leave? Of course there are many who want to leave

and many who don't. Those moral opponents would argue that they

do... They are looking at it with a passionate i've. John Sentamu, the

bishop of York, singled out Belle de Jour when he gave a speech

against glamorising prostitution. He said there is in leaf being

perpetuated, that many people who prostitute themselves do not do so

because they are repressed for a desperate for money but they see it

as an easy way to make money to a safe and relatively lucrative

I found it ironic because he gave that speech a month before my

identity was revealed and I noticed he had no follow-up comment 2 the

revelation that I turned out to be a real person. I don't think these

things are necessarily true. When we look at work and when we look at

wage work, why does anybody do a particular job? Yes there are

aspects of our jobs that we find fulfilling and there are aspects of

them that play to our talents. At the end of the day it is about the

need to make a living. John Sentamu, he said "We are meant to believe

the sex workers are independent women empowered by the hold they

have over men, but to treat it like any other day job." That is how you

describe it. He takes issue with that. It is a night job but not a

day job! Belle de Jour, she did it in the day! She did. I would

encourage him to get to know more people within sex work, not just

the people at the very desperate hard end of it, but the vast middle,

and then of course the people where I was, which was a very privileged

end. Those are ends of the Bell curve, but most people are ready

somewhere in the middle. Did it in power you? I'd do. Would you go

back to it? I would do it again possibly, but I am possibly now too

old and overweight for the work I was doing. If I could go in a

TARDIS and go back to two that snow and three I would make the choice

again. Feminist writer Andrea Dworkin said that it creates the

ability for men to feel big literally and metaphorically in

every way. She says a prostitute cannot feel empowered, it is the

man who is in charge for. My main objection to feminists like her,

they come at it from a point of view that assumes that all

prostitution is of women for the pleasure of men. When you look at

prostitution worldwide that isn't the case. There are a lot of men in

prostitution, there are a lot of female clients. This is something

even well-known feminist Julie Bindel has written about the market

for male prostitutes in developing countries for wealthy white men in

to go to. If she wants to criticise the power structure that allows

this to happen I see that as a valid criticism, but to paint it

entirely as the oppression of women by men is out of step with the

reality of the business. From feminists to scientists, what about

scientists who have taken the ante prostitution approach based on

their research, such as an American clinical psychologist, Melissa

Farley, she said all prostitution causes harm. Melissa Farley has had

an enormous hold on a lot of opinions to do with prostitution

and a lot of policy. We have to remember this is a researcher who

has not only been criticised by her own colleagues, but her testimony

was all but is regarded when she gave testimony in Canada regarding

the recent Russell cases for instance. Unfortunately she has the

tendency to take a very small self- selecting group of people that she

interviews. For instance one of her studies was a study of prostitutes

in brothels in Nevada or who are known to have problems because the

legal situation for them is so difficult. She then takes her

conclusions from that study and expansive to be all popper students

-- prostitution. She is hardly unknown among scientists or

psychologists to say that it is harmful. She does have an outside

influence because she does get everywhere. Let's move on from an

individual scientists if you well. Let's look at governments to look

to ban prostitution or criminalise prostitution. France's Minister for

Women, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, has declared this June that she wants

to ban prostitution altogether. Last year the French National

Assembly passed a resolution saying its objective was a society without

prostitution and sex workers face prison in a handful of European

countries, not just Britain, Sweden, Norway, Iceland as well. It is not

the case in Britain at the moment actually but there are

consultations going forward in Ireland and Scotland that would

criminalise people who bought sex. At the moment what is criminalise

would be people running a brothel, managing or pimping someone, and

solicitation, which puts the women at more risk. To go back to France,

I find it very interesting that they would like to have a society

without prostitution. As far as we know that has never existed in

human history. I'm interested to know if they feel that banning

prostitution is going to achieve that, how on earth is prohibition

going to move that forward. I would really like them to take a step

back and consider what all the circumstances under which

prostitution exists, making criminals out of people at the

tail-end of a number of decisions surely is not going to help anybody.

But theoretically legislators are trying to protect the public. I

according to the Home Office, figures in 2009, say that at least

60 sex workers have been murdered over the last ten years while the

average conviction rate for murder is 65 %, when it is a sex worker,

this falls to 26 %. It is funny because when we look at what is it

that drives people who attack sex workers, they are not attacking

them just because of sex. There was an interview with the Green River

Killer in the US before he died, and it was quite extensive in

asking why he singled out prostitutes. It was then sexually

motivated. He just wanted to kill people and this is a population of

people where literally is a prostitute dies the media will not

say woman is murdered, or man is killed, they will say prostitute

dead, as if we are a different species and not human. We ask you

asked some hard questions about whether that actually encourages

people to target prostitutes and I believe it does. -- we have to ask.

Moving on, you have written a book debunking myths about sex, one of

the issues you tackle is the sexualisation of children. The

government in Britain is reviewing whether adults should have to lock

in to out of material on the internet to protect children --

opt-in. You are against such interference? I am against it at

the government level because to be honest I am not a parent, I don't

know how hard a parent's job is. One thing is I would like to have

more say than the government does. We get into the worrying situation

of somebody else deciding what is or isn't harmful for children. I

would want to be the last line of defence. I feel that the government

does have a role in this. I feel that the government should be

promoting for instance there's quite a good blocking software that

exists on the internet that is under-used. If they put the

motivation behind promoting that and at educating parents that they

are trying to force on internet service providers... But some

children don't have the type of parents that will protect them. The

Susan Adele Greenfield said recently about this system, "If I

had to choose between unfettered internet access and having children

harmed psychologically or worse by pornography sites, the decision is

an easy one. We know that the young brain is honourable and easily

influenced and exposing young people to extreme behaviours might

influence their long-term behaviour." It is a shame because

she has been saying this for many years. She is a neuroscientist and

she has access to all kinds of research materials, she has never

actually produced or shown any research that proves what she is

saying is true. People have been asking these questions, Ben

Goldacre, the author of Bad Science, is asking about where the numbers

are. John Brown, the head of Britain's Society for the

Protection of children, he says some of the Most Honourable

children and young people now get access to hardcore pornography --

vulnerable children. It gives them unrealistic and sometimes a

dangerous view of sexual relations. He is a man who works with children.

He does but if we go back to the actual research, there needs to be

shown a connection that this is happening before we call in the

government to take drastic action. The only honest answer to the

question of is the internet harming children is we don't actually know.

Nobody has conducted the research yet. I would say to these people,

if you have a science background surely the first thing you would

want to do as a scientist the show the data and show the numbers.

Again and again we have assumptions being pulled out of thin air.

the end of the Dave do you believe that only people who work in

prostitution are the people that can really make judgments about it?

-- day. Historically they have been denied a place in the discussion.

When you look for instance at Scotland, there's a consultation

going on because they are members of Scottish parliament that want to

criminalise the industry of prostitution. This is happening

also in Iceland and Sweden and is being discussed elsewhere. When you

look at the people who have the input into the steering documents

that the Government's look at, prostitutes themselves almost never

have an input. I'm saying we need to get at first hand input because