I am trans, I'm also an ambitious and well educated woman with a higher degree. However, like many trans women post transition, I've found that barriers to working as a professional abound. My mother, a feminist, politician and writer taught me to aspire to be the best I could possibly be. Consequently I trained as an educator, working in universities, colleges and schools.

I am a supporter of the Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. He has brought world class economists into the British political debate for the first time in 35 years. He has broken the hegemony of neoconservative foreign policy. He has forced the media to admit the existence of the strong left-wing critique of the European Union. But, just as I favour withdrawal from the EU at this stage rather than once Corbyn's proposals for a Social Europe had been rejected, so I also disagree profoundly with him about the sex industry.

Prostitution is the commodification of the bodies of women of girls. It is born out of the ideology that women are second-class citizens raised to service men. Decriminalisation would reinforce that, declaring that women's rights must come last. If you think that is acceptable, you cannot stand for women's rights, you cannot stand for women's liberation and you cannot stand for equality.

In 2012 the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that sex workers contributed £5.7 billion to the economy. This calculation was produced in response to an EU demand that 'prostitution and illegal drugs' should be counted as part of a country's gross domestic product...

Most people are voiceless because no one is letting them talk or listening to them when they do. There is a lot to be said for quitting being the voice of the voiceless and letting people speak for themselves. But not by those seeking to abolish the sex trade. Words are put into people's mouths when they can be, and when they can't, those people are silenced and dismissed.