SweetRachel

[Patricia]

To answer a phone does not entitle you to 50 percent of a girl laying on her back. So sorry, I will never be down with they help us get here so they are cool. Get here on your own, you want to be called indie.

I think you have to accept some ladies choose to work for an agency, just like you choose not to work for an agency. Globally, not all agencies are bad I think. Even in the UK there are many agencies and it is not all 50% for doing nothing more than answering a phone. In Ireland the law is much the same as the UK but discrimination against agencies is so strong that almost no lady wants to admit to being agency. Thus we don't know much about agencies. I think we are burying our heads in the sand on this issue. If it is a reality that a significant number of ladies choose to work for agencies, I think we need to face that reality, not keep discriminating against agency escorts, which only drives the issue underground.

[Rachel Divine]

I think you have to accept some ladies choose to work for an agency, just like you choose not to work for an agency. Globally, not all agencies are bad I think. Even in the UK there are many agencies and it is not all 50% for doing nothing more than answering a phone. In Ireland the law is much the same as the UK but discrimination against agencies is so strong that almost no lady wants to admit to being agency. Thus we don't know much about agencies. I think we are burying our heads in the sand on this issue. If it is a reality that a significant number of ladies choose to work for agencies, I think we need to face that reality, not keep discriminating against agency escorts, which only drives the issue underground.

Maybe it is what some want to fit their own agenda.

[Patricia]

It could be said, that those people who want to end prostitution because they believe no woman can choose to work as an escort, are burying their heads in the sand, avoiding the reality that women do choose to work as escorts.

But we are doing something similar here perhaps? There is huge condemnation of agencies within this industry from both clients and escorts. People find it distasteful that a woman would be an agency escort. People don't understand how agencies work. It is like a hidden world. Maybe we are feeling quite like the people who want to end prostitution entirely?

Interesting discussion. I think it would be a good thing if we understood more about working for an agency in Ireland. I feel ignorant on this subject and it is because it is never talked about.

[Rachel Divine]

I do not understand what you are saying. A legal agency will still take a fee, therefore profit from the control of prostitution. We would need a standardised format for agencies to adhere to, and that will never happen. What you need to do is educate and reach the new and disadvantaged escorts, and we dont need to empower the people that seek to exploit them to do that. We need a situation where they can be reached, visited, and helped. Nothing else. Im not interested in Bills that enable people more money on our back.

If ladies wish to come here, to work in the sex industry, that is fine. If they come here and are exploited, made to pay half their earnings and told what to do, that is not. I don;t really care if it gave them a start you see, all I see is the profit they gave the human trafficker. Who will do it again. And again.

To answer a phone does not entitle you to 50 percent of a girl laying on her back. So sorry, I will never be down with they help us get here so they are cool. Get here on your own, you want to be called indie.

From your post "A legal agency will still take a fee, therefore profit from the control of prostitution" you once runned an agency in UK and took a fee , profit from the control of prostitution. Was it okay then?!
"Im not interested in Bills that enable people more money on our back" you did pay bills on escorts back then...
"made to pay half their earnings and told what to do," like any other job one agrees to terms , it is told the hours has to work , where and how...I am sure you did told the escorts working for you those things...
"I will never be down with they help us get here so they are cool" But you did the phone and provide accommodation for escorts and at that time you were cool, or am I wrong?!

Once running an agency I dont know why you say how bad they are now.

[Lucy Chambers]

From your post "A legal agency will still take a fee, therefore profit from the control of prostitution" you once runned an agency in UK and took a fee , profit from the control of prostitution. Was it okay then?!
"Im not interested in Bills that enable people more money on our back" you did pay bills on escorts back then...
"made to pay half their earnings and told what to do," like any other job one agrees to terms , it is told the hours has to work , where and how...I am sure you did told the escorts working for you those things...
"I will never be down with they help us get here so they are cool" But you did the phone and provide accommodation for escorts and at that time you were cool, or am I wrong?!

Once running an agency I dont know why you say how bad they are now.

Slightly different to be involved in the management of a legal UK agency that takes an introduction fee sweetie. At no point did any agency I have been involved with provide accommodation, bring ladies to England or indeed, facilitate their prostitution in anyway. A lady would not be told when to work, nor live in house, she would ring up and say when she wanted to work. Which is probably why agencies in the UK arent held in quite the same low esteem. I dont know why you are trying to make this into a personal issue though

Personally I think Irish agencies rip the girls of, hence my comments. Nothing to do with working for one, to each their own. Unfortunate the ladies are left to take the flack when they get busted though. Plus profiting from prostitution is illegal and it is my belief it will remain so.

My original statement was that unfortunately they could be no standardisation for agencies, and so they cannot be regulated.

[Tommy H]

I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to SweetRachel and all the other sexworkers that turned up for todays conference on The Future Direction of Prostitution Legislation...Rachel done us all proud

Well done Rachel!
I don't think you could have picked a better or a more articulate person to present and defend the case at conference!

[Rachel Divine]

Well done Rachel!
I don't think you could have picked a better or a more articulate person to present and defend the case at conference!

Thank you.
Queeny didnt pick me , I went to the conference because I wanted to.

[Patricia]

Quite right, Rachel has not been "picked" to speak up for E-I, and any serious suggestion she has would be seriously insulting.

If you read E-I's submission to consultation you'd know E-I did not recommend legalised prostitution. But I still think these things need to be talked about more, rather than buried.

[Tommy H]

Well done Rachel!
I don't think you could have picked a better or a more articulate person to present and defend the case at conference!

Correction! It was more a figure of speech!
Still mean the same!
Well done Rachel!
You are well capable of presenting and defending case at Conference

[Clyde]

Well done Rachel!
I don't think you could have picked a better or a more articulate person to present and defend the case at conference!

Your dam right tommy all I can say is Rachel is very articalite and is not afraid to speak her mind and that's what's needed and she has chosen to put herself forward which is more commendable.