Editor’s note, August 23: an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Amy Lebovitch.
It’s September 2010 and Rene Ross is sipping coffee from a cracked mug while she drags me through a tour of sex-work policy in Halifax, all from our booth in the Good Food Emporium on Gottingen Street. Boundaries are areas in the city where sex workers who have been arrested are not allowed to return to—we’re sitting in one, she points out. Police officers, she sniffs, regularly pose as johns to trap girls on the street. She gets anonymous, violent threats on the regular, for no other reason than leading sex work support group Stepping Stone. I’m squinting at her and trying to wrap my head around it all.
Things are changing. According to a Forum Research poll, provdided exclusively to The Coast, 50 percent of Canadians now support making sex work legal, compared to just 36 percent who want to keep the status quo.
But as consensus slowly shifts, the scene on the ground has been in tumult. Ross is no longer the sex work matriarch of Halifax—she stepped down from her position when the group’s funding dissipated this year. Her professional nemesis, erstwhile police chief Frank Beazley, has been replaced with the laissez-faire Quebecois stylings of Jean-Michel Blais. Boundaries are no longer enforced. The criminal code has been facing the sharp legal axe of dominatrix-cum-shit-disturber Terri-Jean Bedford. The prudish public—anti-sex work feminists and family-valuing conservatives alike—are giving way to a slowly building consensus that creating legal conditions around sex work is the only way forward. But it’s not there yet. Pearl-clutching over the hooker at the end of the block is still the main driver for police action on sex work.
Canadian NIMBYism proves regional. Respondents in the Prairies tended to be the least supportive, with a bit more than a third in favour of the idea. More than half of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia wanted to make sex work legal for both the workers and their clients. Atlantic Canada was split, with equally 43 percent supporting and opposing it.
“Are you a cop?”
The entire sex work regime in Canada is an anomaly. Virtually the only legal part is, paradoxically, paying for sex. Leaning over a car window and negotiating a price? That’s “communicating for the purposes of prostitution,” which is a summary offence. Working out of your apartment is “operating a common bawdy house” that will net you up to five years in jail. Using the profits of prostitution can be tried as “living off the avails,” punishable by up to 10 years. Those three provisions, advocates say, push sex workers onto the streets, and into the shadows.
So the sex workers took it to the courts, arguing that the laws put them in danger, and were therefore unconstitutional. The governing Conservatives, jumping at the chance to save the laws, made the case that sex workers chose the life of sex work, and all the risks associated. And the government can’t just let them get away with it.
As one of Ottawa’s expert witnesses, Melissa Farley, put it: “Prostitution is to the community what incest is to the family,” continuing, “just as pedophiles justify sexual assault of children…men who use prostitutes develop elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women.”
The government lost the case. The judge axed all the sex work laws. Anarchy was set to descend on the country. Luckily, the government moved in to stay the impending depravity. After some wrangling, the case is now before the Supreme Court.
As the Supreme Court justices look to push the plunger and blow the laws sky-high, vice squads nationwide have been scrambling for cover. The Vancouver Police Department, which deals with some of the most high-traffic strolls in the country, has opted to jettison the contested laws that criminalize sex workers. In February, the department released a policy sheet that outlines its new “graduated response” approach, one where “alternative measures and assistance must be considered with enforcement a last resort.”
Some have called it a “no arrest policy.” While a spokesperson was quick to reject that title, he did note that the force is looking to stop enforcing the laws against soliciting and living off the earnings of prostitution.
That policy is one that Halifax will be studying when it drafts its own sex work guidelines, says sargent Andrew Matthews, the detective in charge of the HRM-RCMP Integrated Vice Unit. In the meantime, that train of thought has already begun filtering into the Vice Unit’s work.
It’s a real shift in approach. In the late ’90s, Stepping Stone intervened in an appeal against a prostitution charge, where a sex worker recounted her interaction with one of those undercover officers.
“Are you a cop?” asked the sex worker.
“No,” answered her john.
“Can you prove it?”
And he did. He put his hand in her pants and touched her crotch. They haggled for price—$20 for a blowjob, $40 for sex. They turned onto Agricola Street and a cop car pulled behind them.
“Are you a cop? Because the guy behind us is.”
“Yes.”
He wrestled her into handcuffs. He was one of Matthews’ predecessors as head of the Vice Squad.
“Traditional vice work has moved away from going undercover and pulling up as a decoy to street-level sex workers,” says Matthews. That, in part, is because of the changing landscape of sex work in Halifax. Matthews says street-level work is dwindling, now that workers can advertise online and avoid the dangers of getting into a car with a stranger.
The changing realities have led to a new approach. The new leadership, under chief Blais, has also had an impact. “He’s quite progressive,” notes Matthews.
The boundaries that Rene Ross had explained to me are now on their way out. Matthews says the province has moved away from pushing those release conditions—stipulations that Matthews notes, echoing many sex work groups, may bar them from accessing vital resources or even returning home.
Ross and I were outside Gus’ Pub just before Blais stepped into the job in the fall of 2012, while she was still head of Stepping Stone. She had just sat down with him for the first time and was beaming. “Justin, he seems like he actually gets it.”
But Matthews underlines that while the force is keeping in mind the ongoing appeal, “we use the criminal code as our guiding principle.”
“A few neon lights”
Alan Young is the lawyer that lit the spark that would eventually detonate those provisions of the criminal code.
“Everyone saw my case as amusing,” he tells The Coast from his office at the Osgoode Law School in Toronto. He has spent years “challenging, one-by-one” laws that tread over issues of consent in Canada—things like the differential age of consent for anal sex.
He conscripted three veterans of the sex industry: Terri-Jean Bedford, former prostitute and infamous dominatrix; Amy Lebovitch, sex worker and activist and Valerie Scott, a sex worker who has worked in every sex work venue imaginable.
“Dean” is a supporter of Bedford, who has worked alongside her as a strategist. He called me, never giving me his real name or number, on behalf of Bedford (she tested positive for Hepatitis C in 2002, and is often too ill to do interviews).
Dean says while he and Bedford have fought to break down the laws, there’s no telling what could come next.
“One must not presume that there is going to be a rational, open, fair debate,” he tells me.
In the course of my dozen-or-so interviews, I’ve heard theories about what could come of the Supreme Court case: that Harper will leave it up to the provinces to decide, that he’ll set up the so-called “Swedish model,” which seeks to criminalize paying for sex work, or that he’ll discover a new way to criminalize sex work through a backdoor.
Backdoors be damned.
“Everyone’s talking out of their ass,” says Young. “The only thing that’s going to happen is that they’ll be paralyzed by fear.”
Young says that the Conservative government will be be madly off in all directions— pulled both by the abolitionists, the social conservatives, the liberals and those advocating decriminalization.
The final decision isn’t expected anytime in the next year, so the decision might not be Harper’s to make.
Is Harper stalling? I ask.
“Oh yeah. Yeah,” says Young.
Whether it’s Harper or someone else in power when the ruling comes down, there will be tough choices to make. Like a new car or a washing machine, Young says “there are different models to choose from.”
The Swedish model, a favourite of the anti-sex work feminists, criminalizes the purchasing of sex, making the johns the target. The Netherlands adopted a de facto decriminalization model that turns a blind eye to the brothels in the red light districts. Australia let its provinces decide, with some banning it outright and others permitting and regulating brothels. But one model inspires the most love from sex work advocates—New Zealand.
Catherine Healy is the national coordinator for the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. She’s a former sex worker herself (“I’m far too ancient to be one now,” she laughs) and has seen her country go from a situation very similar to Canada’s towards a full legalization model in just a decade. The Coast reached her by Skype.
“The legislation, at its heart, states that sex workers are protected—that their human rights are acknowledged,” says Healy. “It’s been a 360 degree turn.
“The police would entrap,” she continues. “They would pose as clients. In your discussions, you would always be anxious. It meant you couldn’t pull back the layers.” Now, she says, “our relationship with police is really important.” Sometimes she tells war stories to the current generation of police officers. They’re incredulous at the tales—like one story she tells me where police officers informed a sex worker, who was in the station reporting that she had been raped, that she could face prostitution charges. The greenhorn police officers ogle at the stories, she says.
Under the current regime, sex workers can operate on the street—which some still do, mostly out of necessity—while many operate in commercial brothels, and nearly half work in their own apartments, in small-scale operations, or with friends.
“You wouldn’t have a sense of the sex industry if you drove through New Zealand,” says Healy. “Aside from a few neon lights.”
There have been some suggestions that sex work establishments should be properly zoned. Aside from that, is anyone advocating that the industry be scaled back or re-criminalized?
“No, not at all. Not at all,” she says, shaking her head.
She offers one compelling statistic—nearly two-thirds of sex workers interviewed by the Ministry of Justice say they’ve been more able to turn away a john since the laws were introduced.
But women in Canada often don’t have that luxury. In the void, groups like Montreal’s Stella have stepped up.
The group does street-level outreach, warns workers of bad johns and operates medical and legal clinics. Robyn Maynard does street outreach for the group in the city’s downtown, especially in Montreal’s many massage parlours. From her point of view the “daily reality for people who are working on the street [is] a general fear of being arrested.”
The laws criminalizing both street-level and indoor sex work lead to those in the industry “putting themselves in dangerous situations to avoid getting arrested,” she says.
Maynard gives one example from her work in erotic massage parlours: “when the police often go in, they’re looking for condoms because they’re using them to hold over people’s heads and say ‘this is evidence of what’s going on here,’ so people are more and more reluctant to take condoms, even though they’re crucial for HIV and STI prevention,” she says. “The police are actually going through the garbage cans. I’ve heard more than one report of this, looking for condom wrappers as evidence.”
“The link between the laws and the women’s ability to fight the violence against them is what the crucial messaging is here,” says Maynard.
Stella’s spacious, if cluttered, office in the Centre-Sud neighbourhood of Montreal gives the impression of a group that has been doing the nitty gritty work for a longer than they ever imagined, but still have some gas left in the tank. Groups like Stella worked in the shadows for many years, as there appeared to be no national appetite to talk about the issues around sex work. But Maynard says things are shifting.
“I think what these legal cases have brought to the forefront are a lot of the issues surrounding the fact that the sex trade exists and that the women in the sex trade should have the right to be free from violence in their workplace,” she says. “It’s given voice to this idea.”
But things aren’t looking up for sex workers in Montreal. The city has moved to push workers out of what used to be the red light district, but what is now the rapidly gentrifying entertainment district. While Halifax and Vancouver look to take a collaborate approach towards sex work, Montreal has stepped up enforcement. Oh, and they still have boundaries—“quadrilaterals.” Mayndard tells me that sometimes those no-go zones for sex workers can be as large as the island of Montreal.
While Stella keeps trucking, Stepping Stone, at least in financial terms, appears to be running on empty. In 2009, a year into Ross’ tenure as executive director, the group pulled in almost $220,000 from all three levels of government. Last year, it reported only $78,000 to the Canada Revenue Agency, all from the provincial government. With Ross’ departure last year due to lack of funds, it appears as though that number may have slumped even further. Some street-level workers complained to the CBC this year that Stepping Stone no longer offers the level of services that it used to.
“I don’t use the word ‘prostitution’”
As theatre of the absurd plays out on the streets and in the courts, national political will to fix the regime can be described as somewhere between complete indifference and moribund defeatism. Any tepid enthusiasm that new, liberal-leaning justice minister Peter MacKay may change the government’s approach is profoundly misplaced.
“In our government’s view, prostitution is harmful to vulnerable persons, especially women. Our government believes that current Criminal Code provisions are constitutionally sound as they denounce and deter the most harmful aspects of prostitution,” says a spokesperson for MacKay.
One issue that the Conservatives are willing to tackle, however, is human trafficking. Winnipeg MP Joy Smith has led the charge from the government benches to crack down on the issue, which she calls “modern-day slavery.” She’s gotten two bills passed on the issue.
“Human trafficking is where a predator targets a prey,” she says, explaining that she got into advocacy years ago while her son was a cop, working to fight child exploitation online.
She recounts one story of how a man lured a girl into a relationship. When her guard was down, he effectively kidnapped and sold her into the trade for more than $250,000. From there, she was passed from man to man, until she eventually escaped and told her story.
“The heartbreak and the terrible trauma these girls go through is unbelievable,” she says over the phone.
It’s hard to imagine, but advocates like Smith are the chief campaigners against people like Ross and Maynard.
When I ask Smith about the sex work, her voice becomes steely. “I don’t use the word ‘prostitution,’ I use ‘human trafficking,’” she says. “I’m very proud of the laws that are in place. They help to protect women. I’m not of the opinion that we should legalize anything. The laws we have right now—we need a lot more of them.”
Smith is emblematic of the holdouts against decriminalization. She’s a part of one of the largest anti-sex work movements in Canada—women. The Forum poll shows that while 60 percent of men support making sex work legal, with less than a third opposing it, women are much more divided. Only 41 percent of women support any form of legalization, with 44 percent against.
The abolitionist movement’s opposition to sex work is grounded in feminist roots, focusing on the idea that prostitution is exploitative. Worldwide, they’ve proven more effective at criminalizing sex work than even religious or social conservative groups.
One of the more radical examples come from an Icelandic group calling itself Big Sister, which set up a vigilante sting operation in 2012. Big Sister attracted and monitored men who tried to purchase sex through newspaper ads or through one of Reykjavik’s illegal massage parlours, then provided that list to police, and vowed to continue the work. Iceland, like the rest of the otherwise-socially liberal Nordic, criminalizes sex work through the Swedish model.
“The debate really has sharpened,” says NDP health critic Libby Davies. Her riding, Vancouver East, encapsulates the infamous Downtown Eastside, known as one of the highest-traffic areas in the country for sex work and drug use. “I think it’s a calculated and deliberate strategy. They always talk about human trafficking and sex work in the same breath. It makes it difficult to have a thoughtful, rational debate because you’re always having to sort that out.”
Everyone advocating for laxer sex work laws that I spoke to says essentially the same thing: Human trafficking, when it happens, is an evil that needs to be combatted. They note, however, that there is considerable legislation against the act, that police forces dedicate substantial resources to stopping the practise and there are very few arrests for the crime. The RCMP estimates there may be a few thousand victims who pass through Canada every year, but admit that it is notoriously hard to measure.
The NDP has long advocated for decriminalizing sex work, but has never had a codified policy to that effect. The party came close, at its convention in April, when Manitoba MP Niki Ashton, flanked by sex workers, supported carving out dedicated policy plank. But, at Davies’ urging, the motion never came to a vote and was referred to the party’s federal council instead.
Davies tells The Coast that it was taken off the floor of the convention because there was some problems with the way the motion was worded. She remains confident that the plank will become part of the party’s platform by October.
It’s no secret that sex work is a politically toxic issue. It’s easier, in the end, to leave the issue well enough alone and pretend like the current system is working, even though most admit it’s not.
Davies sat on a special committee tasked with examining Canada’s solicitation laws: “We all agreed that the status quo is unacceptable.” Yet that was just about the only thing that the committee could reach consensus on.
Everybody, using Young’s phrase, is paralyzed by fear. Everybody except the sex workers, who will be hitting the stroll tonight. a
Justin Ling is a freelance journalist and recovering Haligonian, based in Ottawa, via Montreal. He tweets at @Justin_Ling.
This article appears in Aug 15-21, 2013.
Smith and those like her do not care about either the ‘children’ or the adult women in sex work. Their concern is only for their ideological crusade against consenting adult commercial sex. They don’t care about the violence that sex workers experience- AT THE HANDS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS, or the children who are sexually exploited by the majority of predators- people whom the child knows and trusts.
The World Health Organization recently reported that 33% of all women worldwide experience violence against them – the majority of that violence is at the hands of their spouse or significant other. When one out of three women around the world is the victim of domestic violence and yet no one suggests that as a way to combat that violence, we ban marriage or other personal relationships- what are we to think when they use the ‘violence’ sex workers experience to continue to ban our work, arrest out non violent, non abusive clients, employers and associates? And no, we do not want to ban marriage. We want the hypocrisy of these individuals exposed for what it is… bigotry. The worst form of bigotry is that which is presented as concern for the target of the bigotry.
http://www.policeprostitutionandpolitics.c…
“The prudish public—anti-sex work feminists and family-valuing conservatives alike—are giving way to a slowly building consensus that creating legal conditions around sex work is the only way forward.”
No this is false.
Anti-sex work feminists as you call them, better known as abolitionist feminists support the Nordic Model on sex trafficking, which criminalizes the buying of sex but does not target sex workers. “Sex work” is a euphemism for the hell that is being a prostituted woman.
Prostituted women are crime victims and punished by the male supremacist society that threw them under the bus in the first place.
No woman’s flesh is capital. Our bodies are not for sale! No man has a right to buy a woman’s body to use and abuse. I have talked to many prostituted women who have suffered unimaginably in this so called tradeand had no choice due to poverty.
Money does not equal consent.
The men who abuse prostituted women are absolute scum and legalizing the sex industry industry itself and not going after the pimps and johns for the criminals they are would be a huge mistake and a huge blow to the status of women in Nova Scotia.
Legalization of the sexual slavery industry has failed to keep women safe from male violence in countries that have tried it. It is widely proven to be failed and should not even be considered. It puts the most vulnerable women due to poverty, skin color, disability and other social disadvantages at risk of being trafficked.
Stepping Stone in my opinion is an insult with their ad campaigns and use of euphemistic terms such as “sex work” and “consent”. There is no meaningful consent when a man in a patriarchal society with money buys a woman’s very body to torture in any way he pleases. The ideals of this org denies basic dignity to victims of human rights abuses! Being prostituted is not simply a “job” like any other as flipping burgers. Does your boss and McDonald’s rape you in the ass until you bleed?
Women deserve more than being prostituted. No woman wants that. Men do NOT have any right exploit women through the sexual slavery business!
More on the Nordic Model can be found here:
http://www.equalitynow.org/sites/default/files/Nordic_Model_EN.pdf
Why “sex work” is not just another job (it is a completely unnecessary service first and foremost:
http://rageagainstthemanchine.com/2012/03/15/porn-part-11-the-difference-between-huffing-dong-and-flipping-burgers/
I have been to New Zealand and I know there laws might make sex more permissible, but the red light districs were significantly smaller and the cities were alot safer because of how the police task force is set up. I would also like to note to normajeana that people like Smith do care about children being in the sex industry and other people that are unable to defend themselves. Did you know in Britian most prostitutes are smuggled in and controlled with drugs, if the goverment legalises proititution controlling sex workers with drugs will not happen because there will be standards. The biggest problem with with drugs and sex crimes are the regulations involved and the punishments, if the rules change then law enforcement can focus on the violent crime side and the issue of human trafficking which are dangers to everyone. I for one would much rather have police investigating a rapist than looking into prostetution rings because as an individual living alone I dont fear the prostitute, I fear for myself and the prostitute since to the rapist we are both potential victims. The prostitute is just the more likely victim because targeting a prostitute is easier and the chances of being caught and charged for rape go down. Also I would like to point out that prostitution is nicknamed the oldest buisness because people want sex and will pay for sex. In a culture where there is a market and one that puts such emphasize on sex there will always be individuals who will take advantage, some with human trafficking rings others with makeshift brothels. Unless the goverment changes the economy away from our current liberal model to one more like the chinese model there will always be prostitution, the only way to control an industry is legalise and regulate, like what was done with liquor.
Decriminalization and legalization allow organized crime in as pimps, brothel owners and human traffickers.
You want women to be safe? Follow Sweden’s model. Since 1999, they’ve criminalized the johns, increasing jail time, re-training police, lawyers, judges, social workers, health care professionals, all to assist women in the trae, leavingit, or out of it. The results are spectacular- not only is prostitution cut in half, but woman abuse numbers are down, and the cops chase traffickers and johns – numbers ‘way down there, too. Women aren’t judged, they’re given a choice, with real alternatives. And who put this legislation through? The Swedish Parliament, composed by almost 50% WOMEN.
Any more questions?
You want safety for sex-trade workers? The New Zealand model doesn’t protect workers from bad johns, abusive pimps, the infiltration of the Trade by organized crime, or trafficking.
You want a model that protects girls and women from all of that, plus re-trained police, judges, social workers, and more, that states sex trade workers are not criminals. The system goes after the johns and the traffickers, imprisoning them while supporting the workers. The numbers of sex workers injured, the level of prostitution, the level of violence against women, all reduced by unprecedented numbers since 1999, when a Swedish Parliament composed of almost 50% women voted for legislation that doesn’t criminalize sex trade workers – it criminalizes the johns.
This solution offers girls and women support: for those in the trade, those looking to get out, and those who have left. These are viable alternatives, solutions that don’t leave sex workers without support, don’t offer either empty moralizing or. roadblocks to real choice.
No other legislation in New Zealand, Australia, Nevada, U.S.A., England, Denmark, NONE can do better than Sweden.
Just to be utterly clear before I go off on my rant: I am not a sex worker. I have engaged in survival sex work just enough to realize that I do not have the psychological makeup to be a good sex worker, and I have done duo work with my wife, who was working on the streets and as an escort for years of our relationship, and who still identifies as a sex worker now. I am not a sex worker. I am an ally.
But I am, dammit, one of the best-educated sex work allies out there. I lived outside for years; I’ve been strung out on most of the drugs that a lot of outdoor workers use. I’ve watched very close friends, my wife, and easily dozens of people I knew engage in virtually every type of sex work practiced in Canada – outdoor work, escort (outcall) work, and in-call work. I know when my experiences are relevant, and when it’s a really good time for me to shut my mouth and listen up and learn something from those who have more first-hand knowledge than I will ever have. I’ve done a lot of talking and I’ve done a lot of shutting my face in the last decade, and all of my experiences have led me to a number of conclusions. Anyone reading these comments is getting them, both barrels.
1) Sex work NEEDS to be DECRIMINALIZED. Legalization would be a goddamned nightmare. People conflate these two terms almost constantly. If I’ve explained the difference once, I’ve done it until my jaws ached. Decriminalization would make sex work an industry like any other – free for people to go into, and free to develop ITS OWN workplace standards, safety codes, and so on. LEGALIZATION, on the other hand, would require a very specific legislative act in the House of Commons. That act could contain ANY provision – such as the situation in Nevada, where sex work is legalized, but workers can ONLY work in certain buildings (brothels operated on a medium-business scale), ONLY get about a third of the money the client is charged, CANNOT turn down a client, and are often forbidden to demand that a client wear a condom, at risk of their jobs. Sometimes they have to sleep on premises, too. I’m NOT joking. The workers who work in such conditions are the most desperate of workers – often illegal migrants, in fact. Workers whose economic situation provides them with more options continue to do so individually, technically illegally, often from their own homes. And they have more rights that way.
Legalization has the dubious advantage of providing an instant set of rules for the industry, but that is the sole advantage it offers. However, that dubious advantage also denies the industry – and the individuals who make up the industry – the right of self-determination. In what other industry has government EVER stepped in and made a complete list of rules that MUST be followed from the very beginning, enshrined not in workplace codes, but rather in a legislative act? None. Ever. Not in Canada. Oh, they’ve stepped in when things got out of hand with workplace injuries and strikes, but they’ve never started off so heavy-handed. Why, then, should sex work be considered different from any other fledgling industry? Why should there be the unspoken assumption that sex workers don’t know how to take care of themselves, don’t know what they need to be safe in their work? How do any of us have the right to make such a judgment? Oh, that’s right. We don’t.
So. Decriminalize, let the industry develop, and step in if things get too crazy. Treat sex work like any other industry, because that’s what it is.
2) The Swedish model. Where do I even start with this? It has been proposed repeatedly and for fifteen years now as an alternative to our current model, which criminalizes the workers, rather than the act or the client. The Swedish model decriminalizes sex work, sure – but it criminalizes the client. It does so on the premise that all sex work is inherently degrading to the worker (actually, usually they say “women”, totally ignoring the fairly large number of male sex workers, both gay and straight). Therefore, the twisted logic goes, the worker is already sufficiently punished (I assume) by the awful, traumatic act of sex work. It is the CLIENT, the awful, creepy, predatory, coercive JOHN, who should be jailed for the crime of needing to get off with a warm body nearby. The Swedish model UNIVERSALLY ASSUMES THAT NO ADULT WOMAN IS CAPABLE OF GIVING INFORMED CONSENT TO SEX WORK. And it does this in the name of FEMINISM?!?!? If so, that’s no feminism that I, as a woman, want a damned thing to do with.
Look. Sex work isn’t always fun. Anyone can have a client who leaves them feeling ecccch, just as anyone can have a really crappy day at work where their crazy boss yelled at them for no reason. It’s a job like any other, and people do it for the same range of reasons they do any other job – it’s a way to make money, it’s a jumping-off point, it’s a career, it’s a vocation. However, if decent clients, people who just haven’t had a chance to get laid in months and want to get their rocks off, plain and simple, are afraid of being arrested for such a natural, human desire, what clients remain? Those too crazy or too brutal to care about the law. The Swedish model serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives decent and desirable clients underground, leaving only violent scum to openly seek out sex workers. Also, to assume that people can make totally rational choices to do anything else for a living, but if they choose to engage in sex work it must be because they’re coerced, victimized, or irrational, is to assume one or all of the following: that nobody is able to be rational about sex; that anyone buying sex wants to brutalize the worker (simply untrue) and that workers are too dumb to know this; or, that sex is somehow different from any other skills or abilities a person has or can develop, in that we are free to sell all our other abilities, but not this one (this last, by the way, is something that most people in our culture feel viscerally. If the belief is examined rationally, it proves to be a judeo-christian holdover from an insanely morally restrictive era. We’ve left the other restrictions behind, but this one lingers. Why should it?). We, as non-sex workers, have no right to make such assumptions about sex workers, unless we want to put in place some legislation that states that choosing sex work as an occupation is tantamount to declaring oneself non compos mentis. I don’t think anyone is willing to argue that all strippers, porn stars, fluffers, hookers, etc., are legally insane. But all of those things are sex work, plain and simple.
3) A commenter above, who supports the Swedish (ick!) model, argues that decriminalization will not give protection to sex workers. Well, no shit, Sherlock! What an awful, halfway argument. What decriminalization does is something entirely different and in a sense far more liberating. Decriminalization allows sex workers to legally and far more universally put into place the mechanisms (well-known and already frequently practiced illegally by privileged workers – high-class escorts and some indoor workers) that will allow them to protect themselves. A driver to get them to outcalls – paid a flat rate. Security guards for in-call buildings – paid out of the gross profits. Receptionists to book AND SCREEN clients – paid out of the gross. The ability to tell people where you will be and when, without having to worry that such information can later be used to help convict you.
This person also argues that decriminalization does not protect against pimping. First, let’s define pimping. I define it as a coercive business practice in which unwilling or unknowing workers are pushed into doing work they aren’t comfortable with. NOBODY, not the most ardent supporter of decriminalization, is arguing that pimping, thus defined, should be decriminalized or legalized. Coercing someone into doing work they don’t want to do is and should always remain punishable with jail time. However, we in Canada see far more ‘pimping’ of illegal migrants in non-sex work than we do of sex workers. Where, pray tell, is our moral outrage about that? There’s something in the Bible about dealing with the beam in your own eye before pointing out the mote in your neighbour’s. Why don’t the Christian anti-sex work groups remember that parable before they get on their high horses?
I’ve known hundreds of sex workers in the last 12 years. Never did I meet one who was currently being pimped. They were, almost without exception, independent workers who kept all their earnings. So let’s keep the picture honest. Pimping happens, sure, but nobody is trying to make it okay under the law, and it’s far less frequent than people would have you believe.
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“We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.”
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
@ WildaBeast Derbygirl on 12/16/2013 at 2:06 PM, that was very informative. I don’t see how you can argue with any of that. It reminds me of a time when I was arguing with my Mom about the reasons they should decriminalize marijuana. Her response was “I don’t want someone down the street from me smoking pot and getting high.” I found that to be a very silly thing to say. To tie this analogy in, I could see a lot of people saying “I don’t want prostitution decriminalized because I don’t want sex workers doing sexy things in my neighborhood, EVEN IF that is the absolute best option in terms of keeping them safe!” People are brainwashed, and ignorant.
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects…
Legalization and decriminalization actually increases the human slave trade. How does this offer the protection sex workers seek?
Let’s look at the German model for legalized prostitution. Michael Beretin, the German brothel owner profiled in the link, whose personal wealth comes from the sale of women’s bodies, finds it unimaginable and unthinkable for his own daughters to be “employed” in sex work has no problem whatsoever with exploiting the genitalia of other men’s daughters.