I found this book while I was out walking the dog one day. Stacey Dooley presents documentaries; she always comes across as thoughtful, curious, and kind. She has a fabulous accent, which is disarming in its lack of pretension.
Danny Cohen, who saw her in a documentary about fast
fashion, the controller of BBC3, described her as “quite inquisitive: you asked questions and you weren’t worrying about coming across as stupid, you empathised, you sympathised.” and he offered her a job as an investigative reporter on her own documentary series.
The first chapter covers a visit to a couple of American prisons, where her direct (maybe naïve) approach managed to break through her perceived privilege to the hearts of the inmates. She warms to a number of them and takes you through her journey on her growing understanding and compassion for the women that she is spending time with. She realises that these women are not bad people, but are products of their environment and have had horrendous lives.
She also discovered the concept of “gay for the stay” (that’s not a typo – stay as in the duration of their sentence) where the women pleasure each other. One of the prisoners says that Stacey would definitely be a bitch if she were imprisoned, rather than a mistress, because she was small.
She visits a “shock” prison, which operates like a military boot camp, she also visited a standard prison. The shock prison was, well, shocking, but did have a lower rate of recidivism. The staff at the shock prison did appear to be committed to helping the girls. However, both prisons simply dumped prisoners who had finished their terms straight back into the very situations they had been removed from.
Stacey describes the criticism she got for the episode, which seemed to centre on her common accent and underprivileged background. The very things that actually make her such an engaging documentary maker.
I think the US Border Patrol saw the migrants more as numbers than people, anyway. There wasn’t much sympathy with the Border Patrol. They called them “illegal aliens”, which made them sound like they weren’t even human.
Page 64
It is essential to see people as non-human in order to abuse them the way that certain quarters want to. Whether it’s migrants (whatever their motivation), disabled people, others who just don’t look they “belong”, people who experience sexual attraction or gender different from the mainstream. The less human they are seen, the easier it is to discriminate and abuse them.
There’s a chapter on child sex abuse. It is harrowing.
Throughout the book, the message is that poverty is exploited to force people to do things that we simply cannot image doing ourselves. Whether that’s fleeing the country of our birth, growing drugs, or putting ourselves or members of our family to sex-work. The perspective is female, but then females bear the brunt of poverty and abuse the world over.
There is also the horror of what women do to other women – or worse, their own children. Mother’s selling their young girls (and occasionally) boys for sex.
Stacey is one brave girl for using her privilege to bring the plight of others into the light – and full of compassion and empathy.
Social stigma is probably the biggest obstacle for trans people as they try to get on with their lives.
Page 165
Stacey goes to Brazil, Turkey, and the States to talk to trans sex workers, whom she refers to as “women” and “girls”, irrespective of where they are in their transition – and given the income available to sex workers in those countries, the sacrifices necessary to transition are immense. I believe that in the use of women and girls that she is using the language they themselves use.
Shockingly, in the States, nearly half of all homeless people are LGBT.
Everywhere trans rights are sliding backwards, and an already difficult life is becoming ever more so.
Stacey tackles this with deep compassion and no distinction (other than getting their own chapter) is made between cis and trans women in Stacey’s book about women who fight back.
When Stacey is asked to do a piece on the Yazidi women in North Iraq, who had escaped Isis and trained as fighters to rescue other captive with, her fear sweats itself off the page. Yet, her journalistic integrity and dedication to championing the rights of women everywhere win through.
One can only respect these women, who were captured, watched friends and relatives murdered, and we’re then raped and beaten every day for years turn it back on Isis as they became fearless avenging angels intent on freeing their sisters.
If I hadn’t seen this book abandoned on a wall, I would never have picked it up. I am glad I did.
Stacey is an articulate, passionate, and compassionate writer and documentary maker. She has true courage: she admits her fear and does it anyway – giving voices to the voiceless.
Thanks to this book, I know that she is an ally to LGBTQIA+ people – especially to be trans women.
I strongly recommend her and this book.
Eunuchorn 
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