MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
Effects of prostitution laid bare
struggle
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JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Any Girl
by Mia Doring
Hachette £14.99
ANY GIRL takes an uncompromising look at the Irish sex trade. Author Mia Doring works now as a psychotherapist specialising in sexual trauma, but this book is her harrowing personal account of how she ended up in the Irish sex trade.
Doring chronicles the rape, the sexual abuse and the emotional scaring that led her into prostitution. Her gradual sexual exploitation reinforced the perception that her sole value lay in her sexuality. This all gave her a false sense of power and control.
The fallacy that prostitution is a deliberate, conscious and empowering choice for young women is turned on its head by Doring’s powerful testimony.
She writes about the “dead eyes” and the “cold gaze” of one punter who she felt could comfortably have killed her and how the threat and reality of violence was all too often part of the exchange with men who feel entitled to access women’s bodies, wanting to “try her” and “rent her” as a present or a treat for themselves.
More from this author
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As some celebrate a pay rise, outsourced, privatised workers face continued exploitation — ending this injustice by bringing them in-house must become a top priority for the labour movement, writes HELEN O’CONNOR
HELEN O’CONNOR sees a worrying trend of women exiting the labour movement in their thousands, and warns that if this tide is not stemmed with proper and effective action, it will only be to the benefit of the capitalist class
Far from being ‘more efficient’ and providing ‘choice,’ privateers taking over the public sector have worsened service delivery, and workers rights’ have been utterly compromised on the altar of corporate greed, warns HELEN O’CONNOR
