Get prostitutes off streets, into Jack the Ripper show

[sam]

As a teenager, my backpacking tour through England included the tourist trap that is the London Dungeon and mine eyes did view the lackluster Ripper show. It was slightly less a waste of money than the Tower Bridge tour and slightly more a waste of money than the terrible Chinese food I ate afterwards. -sam

Get prostitutes off the streets - and into a Jack the Ripper show

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/dram ... 87,00.html

Julie Bindel
Thursday January 24, 2008
The Guardian

What is the best way to help women in prostitution off the streets? Let me introduce to you an idea currently being explored by Nelson Bostock, the PR firm working with the London Dungeon, which is tantamount to I'm a Celebrity Prostitute, Get Me Out of Here.

This year, the London Dungeon plans to relaunch its Jack the Ripper show, according to the PR firm, which emailed a support service for women trafficked into Britain for prostitution. "The show will be an actor-led experience with Victorian-era 'prostitutes' talking to visitors about the Jack the Ripper killings."

The firm was hoping that the support service would approach Billie Piper, star of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, to secure her as a "celebrity judge", who would audition "real" prostitutes for the roles. They were asking the service to put them in touch with prostituted women: "We feel this is an opportunity to help them off the streets," said the email.

Finn Mackay, a founder of the new Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution (FCAP), thought she had been set up when shown a copy of the email. "I actually looked around the room for hidden cameras," she said.

When I spoke to the PR firm a second time, they were back-pedalling, suggesting that the new show might not happen after all. I hope not. Asking women in prostitution, who have been chronically abused and whose lives are constantly in danger, to take part in such a show is insensitive and misguided at best.

"Retrace the infamous steps of mysterious serial killer Jack the Ripper, just a mile from where his first of five murders occurred. Beware: he may be skulking in the darkness, watching and waiting," reads the blurb on the website. Visitors will learn the "grisly details and injuries of each victim".

The new show was scheduled for mid-March. It is possible that the Ipswich murder trial will still be in progress. Feminists have long protested outside the Dungeon, calling for an end to the practice of displaying the mutilation and murder of society's most vulnerable women as entertainment. It is time the show is pulled altogether. If the Dungeon really wants to "help women off the streets", a donation to FCAP might not go amiss.

[rmott]

I suppose this not that surpising as prostitution is seen as entertainment. But, I get so depressed by the constant glamourising of murderers of prostituted women and children. Murdered prostituted women and children are made into faceless statisics, whilst their murderers are made folklore.
I find Jack the Ripper very triggering. Many men that abused prostituted women and girls may speak of how they will "Kill a whore", using his example as some kind of mascot. I was remember men like that, is very occasionally is in my nightmares.