If you’re shocked that Brighton University is offering advice on sex work at freshers’ week, you need a reality check

There are many reason why students sell sex. Covering tuition fees, paying rent and buying food are high on the list. Not so high on the list: meeting an outreach worker with a pile of leaflets during freshers’ week.

In 2015, five percent of the students – in survey by the Student Sex Work Project, led by academics from Swansea University – said they were engaged in sex work. One in four said they felt unsafe at work.

In light of this, offering support to student sex workers seems not only compassionate but vital. As is the way when the topic is sex work, however, all rationality went out of the window last week when Brighton’s Sex Work Outreach Project (Swop Sussex) set up a stand at the University of Brighton’s freshers’ week fair.

What began with a few angry tweets spiralled over the weekend into a slew of sensationalised newspaper headlines.

“How to be a sex worker – advice for freshers,” raged The Sunday Times. “Uni blasted after freshers’ week stall gives students advice on ‘how to be a prostitute’,” spluttered The Sun.

The university itself was accused by The Sunday Times of “encouraging its students into prostitution”.

On Twitter, Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, waded in, claiming: “Brighton University offers Freshers advice on becoming prostitutes. 1. They’re colluding with organised crime & abusers 2. This is grooming 3. How is this aspirational/challenging gender norms?”

But here’s the thing, Swop Sussex was neither “offering advice on how to become a prostitute” nor claiming sex work is aspirational. Its presence at freshers’ week was simply an acknowledgement that student sex workers exist and that they deserve support.

In a tweet, Swop Sussex said it “never idealised sex work. However, we understand why students may turn to sex work, and navigating the legal precariousness as well as potential danger mean that students are extra vulnerable and we will help.”

Back in the mists of time, during my first year at Goldsmiths in 1998, I worked in a hostess bar in London’s Soho. Men would make their way down to the red-lit basement and we’d sit there sulkily in miniskirts until they bought us outrageously priced champagne which we’d pour on the already-mouldy carpet behind the seats. Officially, no one was supposed to sell sex but lots of the women working there were hookers and I certainly wasn’t the only student slouched across those tatty brocaded sofas.

I was lucky though. The following year I got myself sorted and accessed a maintenance grant. Unimaginable now: not only were my fees paid, I was given money to live.

Millennial students whose parents can’t support them have no such safety net. In 2018, annual tuition fees are in excess of £9,000. Student finance website, Save The Student, estimates that, with an average monthly spend of £770, maintenance loans frequently fall short of covering living expenses. This is the “demand” which drives students into sex work.

It’s here where feminist ire at the influx of students going into prostitution should be directed. We should be calling furiously for an end to tuition fees, for rent caps, for free student accommodation, for a return of maintenance grants.

Harm reduction is not enticement. No credible person would claim that abstinence-based sex education works, that safety information about drug-taking should be hidden away for fear it encourages people to get wasted, that handing out condoms is irresponsible or that visible access to the morning-after pill encourages women to have unsafe sex. By the same token, safety advice for sex workers is there to protect, not to encourage.

Back in 1998, there was no easily accessible advice for student sex workers. I certainly never came across any. At the end of a shift in the D'Arblay Street basement, women would sometimes go and stand outside Stringfellows nightclub to pick up clients. I’m pretty sure no one had safety procedures in place and it was wildly unsafe.

The “prostitution tips” Swop Sussex is being slammed for handing out are safety tools. Its leaflets detail the legalities of sex work, offer advice on staying safe during bookings and signpost people to further help. It’s chilling to see feminists take umbrage with something so utterly sensible.

I spoke to a woman in her twenties who has just begun a post-grad degree. “I have to do sex work to cover my bills, rent and food as my mounting student debt continues to gain interest and the loans don’t even begin to cover what I need,” she told me. “If I saw an outreach project had a stand at freshers’ fair I’d feel like the uni is a place that wants me to succeed and will support me through study regardless of my work in sex work”.

Commentators are angry about the “normalising” of sex work apparent in Swop’s presence at Brighton freshers’ fair. But sex work is “normal” in a society which pushes students into poverty.