Julie Bindel
Julie Bindel is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and researcher. She has been active in the global campaign to end violence towards women and children since 1979 and has written extensively on rape, domestic violence, sexually motivated murder, prostitution and trafficking, child sexual exploitation, stalking, and the rise of religious fundamentalism and its harm to women and girls.
Julie has authored over 30 book chapters and reports on a range of topics relating violence and abuse of women and girls. She writes regularly for The Guardian newspaper, the New Statesman, Truthdig, the Sunday Telegraph and Standpoint magazines, and appears regularly on the BBC and Sky News. Julie was Visiting Journalist at Brunel University (2013 - 2014) and Visiting Researcher at Lincoln University (2014 - 17). Julie’s book on the state of the lesbian and gay movement in the UK (Guardian books, 2014) has been praised for being thought-provoking and challenging.
Julie is co-founder of Justice for Women, set up in 1990 in response to cases of spousal homicide in which men killed their female partners and were given sympathy and understanding by judges and jurors, in contrast to women who killed their male partners or ex-partners after suffering domestic violence and abuse, and were punished disproportionately by the criminal justice system.
Julie’s latest book, published in ANZ by Spinifex Press, is entitled The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth. The book is a detailed examination of the global ‘sex workers’ rights’ movement and how the ‘happy hooker’ narrative has come to shape our perceptions - including many women involved in prostitution - of what is misleadingly named as ‘the oldest profession’. In it, she examines the situation in the UK, Netherlands, the Nordic region, Germany, South Africa, East Africa, North America, South America, France, New Zealand and Australia, South Korea, Turkey and India.
Translations
The Pimping of Prostitution by Julie Bindel (Italy, Morellini Editore, 2019)
The Pimping of Prostitution by Julie Bindel (Hungary, Közkincs Könyvtár, 2019) Not pictured.
Julie Bindel
This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe – the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether ‘sex worker’ activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved.
Over the course of two years, Bindel conducted 250 interviews in almost 40 countries, cities and states, travelling around Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and countries in East Africa. Visiting legal brothels all around the world, Bindel got to know pimps, pornographers, survivors of the sex trade, and the women being sold by men classed as ‘business entrepreneurs’. Whilst meeting feminist abolitionists, pro-prostitution campaigners, police and government officials, and the men who pay for sex, Bindel uncovered the lies, mythology and criminal activity that shroud this global trade, and suggests a way forward for the women seeking to abolish the oldest oppression. Informed by the lived human experience of those interviewed, this book will be of great interest to feminists, students, criminal justice advocates, criminologists and human rights activists.
2017 | ISBN 9781925581232 | Paperback | 210 x 148 mm | 382 pp