Men who rent and use women: film premiere of Honest Lies and debate about change in prostitution laws

Off the back of my discovery of the brilliant sites The Prostitution Experience and The Invisible Men, which put the responsibility, questions and scrutiny back on men who think it's okay to buy women...

At 7pm on 14th October at Amnesty International's UK headquarters in London MP Fiona Mactaggart, author Kat Banyard, campaigner Ruth Jacobs and Cheryl Stafford, Exiting Prostitution and Internal Anti-Trafficking Advocate at Eaves for Women, will be part of a panel discussing the decriminalisation of prostitution following the premiere of Honest Lies:

Honest Lies is an 11-minute film based on a story written by a woman previously involved in prostitution during volunteer-led workshops. The screening will be followed by a discussion about how to support women exiting prostitution, and the need for a change in legislation that will decriminalise the sale of sex, and criminalise its purchase. This is known as the Nordic model: a set of laws that penalises the demand for commercial sex while decriminalzing individuals in prostitution based on an approach first adopted in Sweden in 1999, followed by Norway and Iceland. The Nordic model has two main goals: to curb the demand for commercial sex that fuels sex trafficking, and promote equality between men and women.

To purchase tickets, please click here.

On 20th September 2013, the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law announced they were considering calls for countries to "repeal laws that prohibit consenting adults to buy or sell sex" and that ban "immoral earnings" and brothel-keeping, and also demands measures "to ensure safe conditions for sex workers". These announcements were met with horror from support organisations who are petitioning the UN to listen to survivors.

All panellists will be available for interview at the event and there will be a Q&A discussion.

Fiona Mactaggart MP (Slough) campaigned successfully for the law to be amended so that anyone paying for sex from those they know to be trafficked is criminalised, said:

At the moment, Britain’s prostitution laws target women who are trapped in prostitution, often by pimps or because of addiction, and the men who use those women don’t face any consequences for their behaviour. It’s time we did more to help women build a new life and exit prostitution instead of punishing them.

Ruth Jacobs, author and campaigner whose website provides a forum for survivors to share their stories, is also appearing on BBC1’s Inside Out programme on 21st October talking about the Merseyside model of policing. The Merseyside model refers to the Merseyside Police Force's pledge in 2006 to treat crimes against people in prostitution as hate crimes. The hate crime model has had outstanding results. In Liverpool, in 2009, police convicted 90% of those reported to have raped sex workers. In 2010, the overall conviction rate in Merseyside for crimes against sex workers was 84%, with a 67% conviction rate for rape. The national average conviction rate for rape is 6.5%. The event on 14th Octoberwill be the first time that Ruth will speak publicly about her status as a survivor of prostitution.

Gabriella Apicella, producer of Honest Lies, will chair the panel. Having run writing workshops at Eaves for the past 18 months, she ran a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign to 100% finance the making of the film, and adapted the story for the screen. She said:

I made this film because the women I have been working with told me nobody cares about their stories. Not only did I intend to disprove that, but I also believe that the stories of survivors of prostitution can facilitate a change in the law. Those who have been prostituted must be decriminalised, and the purchase of sex punished by law, as an expression by society that human beings are not commodities.

Kat Banyard, author of The Equality Illusion and founder of grassroots activism organisation UK Feminista is also on the panel, along with with Cheryl Stafford, Exiting Prostitution and Internal Anti-Trafficking Advocate at Eaves for Women.

Cheryl Stafford facilitated the writing workshops that the original story of “Honest Lies” came from. Eaves for Women is a charity organisation that supports women who have experienced violence. Specialised projects support women exiting prostitution, trafficked women, survivors of sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence. In 2013 The Scarlet Centre, a women-only drop-in facility where the writing classes in which “Honest Lies” was conceived were initially based, closed due to a cut in funding. Only volunteer-led activities continue to take place, each at the discretion of those who contribute their time.

To purchase tickets please click here.

For more information or to reserve a press ticket contact info@gabriellaapicella.com



Text (c) Honest Lies project and Gabriella Apicella

!Women Art Revolution: a brilliant and salutary film by Lynn Hershman Leeson

I am writing to celebrate the film Women Art Revolution, poster image above, which is being showcased by one of my favourite London galleries, the Whitechapel. For over forty years, Director Lynn Hershman Leeson has collected hundreds of hours of interviews with visionary artists, historians, curators and critics who shaped the beliefs and values of the Feminist Art Movement and reveal previously undocumented strategies used to politicize female artists and integrate women into art structures.

!Women Art Revolution elaborates the relationship of the Feminist Art Movement to the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements and explains how historical events, such as the all-male protest exhibition against the invasion of Cambodia, sparked the first of many feminist actions against major cultural institutions. The film details major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, including the first feminist art education programs, political organizations and protests, alternative art spaces such as the A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Los Angeles Women’s Building, publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies, and landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the entire direction of art. New ways of thinking about the complexities of gender, race, class, and sexuality evolved. The Guerrilla Girls emerged as the conscience of the art world and held academic institutions, galleries, and museums accountable for discrimination practices.

Over time, the tenacity and courage of these pioneering women artists resulted in what many historians now feel is the most significant art movement of the late 20th century. Carrie Brownstein composed an original score to accompany the film. Laurie Anderson, Janis Joplin, Sleater-Kinney, The Gossip, Erase Errata and Tribe 8 are some of the gifted musicians who contributed to our soundtrack.

About Lynn Hershman Leeson:
Writer / Director / Producer / Editor Lynn Hershman Leeson pioneered site specific, performance and interactive media. Most recently, she was honored by the Digital Art Museum in Berlin with the d.velop digital art award (d.daa), the most distinguished honor for lifetime achievement in the field of new media. Her other honors include the prestigious Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica, the ZKM/Seimens Media Arts Award and, as a Sundance Screenwriter Fellow, she was honored with the Flintridge Foundation Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. She has also received The Alfred P. Sloan Film Prize for writing and directing Teknolust, and in 2006, the International Association of Digital Arts award for “innovative storytelling,” Zero One Prize for “Media that Matters” and a Creative Capital Grant for her documentary, !Women Art Revolution. In 2009, she became a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Siggraph. Hershman Leeson wrote, directed and produced the feature films Teknolust, Conceiving Ada and Strange Culture, in addition to 14 other films and shorts. The films starred Tilda Swinton, were shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival, and were all internationally distributed. Her artwork is held in numerous collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The National Gallery of Canada, DG Bank (Frankfurt) and The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis). She has published extensively, is the Chair of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute and Emeritus Professor at the University of California.

Screening dates for !Women Art Revolution: 

• The official UK Première, Launch and In Conversation between Lynn Hershman Leeson & Achim Borchardt-Hume, Whitechapel Gallery's Chief Curator, is on Saturday 15 October at 3pm. The price is £6/ £4 concessions.
• Free screenings are on Sunday 30 October at 3pm, Sunday 13 November at 3pm and Sunday 27 November at 3pm
• There will be a screening and In Conversation between Griselda Pollock and Lynn Hershman Leeson on Sunday 11 December at 3pm, price £6

text (c) Whitechapel Gallery press

Orgasm Inc: business interests are not women's interests

Just because she's wearing a white coat
doesn't mean you should trust her.

Last weekend at the ICA I was privileged to be invited to chair a debate about sexuality, body issues and the pharmaceutical industry, following a screening of Liz Canner's documentary Orgasm Inc. The doc itself is a chilling examination of the false creation and medicalisation of a host of sexual 'dysfunctions' in women, prompted by the success of Viagra and companies' desperation to capitalise on the possibility of a female Viagra. While a series of funny and excruciating tests of female arousal for various pills, thrills, creams, patches and other devices throws some comedy over the issue, the underlying material is shocking. Canner's film shows executives at one of the pharmaceutical companies laughing amongst themselves and crowing over their stock options. When asked to justify their pathologisation of the 'female dysfunction' area, they can barely keep straight faces. Snickering, they say "The statistics never lie" but they become tongue-tied, evasive and nervous when questioned further. They push products which are proven not to work, and these products are endorsed in the media by a host of seemingly neutral physicians who, it turns out, are being paid to promote the products. This horrible, vast and lucrative world is thickly populated with quack doctors, opportunists and greedy tycoons - or wannabe tycoons - who do not give a damn about women, but give a big damn about big dollars. They are making money because there are so many women out there who are out of touch with their bodies, unconfident in their sexuality, unsure about what they 'ought' to be doing and oppressed by an absolutely artificial image of what satisfactory sexuality looks and feels like.

Contrasted with their avarice and callousness is a woman who is in a trusting, sensual and loving relationship, who has never been able to climax through intercourse alone. This is normal, but she doesn't know it. Instead she beats herself up about not having a 'real', 'proper' or 'normal' experience. She thinks that, despite the pleasure and joy of her life, there is a right and wrong way to do sex; when asked what she thinks about when making love she says immediately "war - fighting with myself." Her desperation to do it 'the right way' is painful to watch. She submits to any and every experiment, including the gruesome insertion of a nerve-stimulating device into her spinal cord. The risks of such a procedure are huge - she could die of shock or be paralysed - and the shot of the wires emerging from a hole in her back make the viewer shudder. The experiment fails utterly and one is left nauseated by the people who are, effectively, experimenting with the bodies, feelings and insecurities of these women, who trust them so completely.

I recommend the documentary, although it focuses more on the workings of the pharmaceutical industry than on the stories of the women who feel they need these products, even though they have proven to be ineffectual. To even up the debate, BEV invited the psychosexual health expert Dr Sandy Goldbeck-Wood and Sam Roddick, activist and owner of the Coco de Mer 'erotic emporium' (joke - I had promised her I wouldn't describe her beautiful shop of  sexy things in 1970s soft porn speak) as well as a leading figure in international fair trade and grassroots movements and the founder of Bondage for Freedom. These two speakers were an excellent combination: Sandy was crystal clear, calm, cerebral, very thoughtful and precise in referring to the women and men she treats; Sam was fiery and inspirational, a broad, warm and extremely engaging and voluble speaker. Together they provided a comprehensive and compassionate take on sexual 'dysfunction' in its commonest forms. Both advocated that people must learn to listen to and ground themselves in their own bodies, that the body is a barometer for the emotional self, that sex is something which happens between individuals and is not something that is done to you or that you 'do' to someone else, that pleasure flows from joy, connection and happiness and that there is - above all - no 'right way' to do it. We agreed that the image of sexuality which currently exists not only in the mainstream (say, in Hollywood romances or in novels) and in seemingly frank depictions of sexuality, like porn, are all falsified in some way. Either they are painfully raw, unsensual and workmanlike or they are airbrushed to perfection. As one woman in the doc comments, in a Hollywood film a couple is always beautiful, sex is natural and easy, it looks great, it's not messy, it's brief, nobody jokes around and they climax together. Every - single - time.

Both Sandy and Sam commented that, for all the seeming sexualisation of our culture, people are in fact extremely shy about talking about sexual problems with their doctors, with their partners or even with themselves. There is a fundamental split between the mind and the body, culturally, which leaves each person feeling alone and feeling as though they are a failure. Liz Canner's documentary shows what happens when huge corporations step into the breach and seem to offer solutions, which take advantage of individuals' feeling of inadequacy and reap the benefits while offering precisely no meaningful comfort, help, pleasure or care.