Page 232 - Cultural Theory

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••• Feminist Knowledge and Socio-cultural Research •••

‘manage’ prostitution in the Walsall South HAZ area. In this section the findings
from our work with residents and sex workers are identified and re-presented
through visual ethno-mimetic texts.

Prostitution affects my life and my children. I go home and there it is, all week-
end, there is no escape, no rest.
(A resident in O’Neill and Campbell, 2001)

Figure 11.2 ‘If this is what our children see’

In 1995, Benson and Matthews completed a survey of vice squad activity in the
England. They found that:

Vice units explained that the main complaints from the public were general
problems of noise and disturbance associated with street prostitution. In some
areas, there were moral issues related to the fact that the working women were
openly selling sexual services, but for the most part residents were concerned
primarily with noise, litter and the activities of kerb crawlers particularly in rela-
tion to the harassment of local female residents.

Responses of residents fit broader concerns documented nationally, such as noise
from kerbcrawlers, and the slamming of car doors; litter such as condoms and dis-
carded syringes; increases in traffic; intimidation of residents and fear of reprisals and

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