‘Stop pimps and hoes party in Sheffield’
News: Sheffield Telegraph online 24-hours a day.
SHEFFIELD MP Paul Blomfield this week added his voice to concerns about a student bar crawl in Sheffield next month with the theme of ‘Pimps and Hoes’.
The event, organised by the company Carnage UK, has attracted criticism from leaders of both the city’s universities’ students’ unions.
Mr Blomfield MP, a former general manager of the University of Sheffield Students’ Union, said: “Carnage is an organisation with a history of causing problems in Sheffield but this upcoming event is a new low even for them.
“I strongly urge Carnage to listen to what student representatives from both of our universities are saying and scrap this offensive theme. It trivialises prostitution and violence towards women and is deeply sexist.
“This event will cause offence across Sheffield and they should think again. If Carnage refuses to change the theme then I’d call on local businesses to wash their hands of this bar crawl.”
The city centre party on Monday, October 8 is being billed on the Carnage website as ‘Sheffield’s biggest Fancy Dress T Shirt event’.
Owned by Varsity Leisure Group, the company was embroiled in controversy three years ago when a student on a bar crawl was photographed urinating on the war memorial in Barkers Pool. But it denies it encourages irresponsible drinking.
It said: “The students’ unions do not like Carnage UK events because they compete with their own, less well-resourced events.”
A students’ society had organised it own ‘Pimps and Hoes’ event last year, it added.
University of Sheffield Students’ Union Women’s Officer Amy Masson said she was ‘deeply disturbed’ by the theme of an event aimed primarily at the city’s students at the start of the academic year
“As a representative of women, and having worked in a refuge for women trafficked into sexual slavery, I feel that this theme utterly trivialises violence against women – specifically violence against women in the sex industry.”
She said a pimp is a man who uses manipulation and violence to coerce women into prostitution to take their earnings, while categorising women as ‘hoes’ was “disturbing in the context of what is allegedly a party atmosphere”.
Helen Francis, President at Hallam Students’ Union, said: “I feel it is irresponsible to glamorise the sex industry and demean the complex circumstances of vulnerable women in society.
“Hallam Union does not condone commercially-organised bar crawls due to their negative impact on student welfare, personal safety and the local community.”
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Weather for Sheffield
Sunday 26 May 2013
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