It’s Monday evening, Natal Day. While the rest of the city recovers
from the long weekend, a woman sets out for work on Agricola Street.
She trolls the strip, letting the stares and comments of passers-by
roll off her back, until a “date” stops to pick her up. They drive
together to a remote part of Bedford—an area sure to have fewer
prying eyes, fewer prowling cops.
But when she asks for her money, things turn ugly. The man gets
violent, pulling a knife and holding it to her throat, before insisting
the woman disrobe and service him. After she’s done, he throws her out
of the car without paying, leaving her naked and alone at the side of a
dark road.
Thought it’s an act of assault, the woman’s story doesn’t make it
into the local papers. It doesn’t get reported on the radio. The
reason: her job. For sex workers in Halifax, violence is a
frighteningly common daily threat—from harassment and beatings to
knifings, rape and, occasionally, murder. But fearing they’ll be
arrested or harassed by police, many women who have been attacked on
the job tend not to report the crimes—no matter how brutal. It’s a
vicious circle in the truest sense of the word.
“People have no idea as to the violence going on against sex
workers, cause it’s not being reported,” says Rene Ross, executive
director at Stepping Stone, a non-profit organization based in the
north end that supports both former and current sex workers, most of
whom do street-based “survival” sex work. Since the majority of violent
attacks go unreported, those who perpetrate the crimes get off
scot-free.
“When it is reported,” says Ross, her steady voice straining with
frustration, “it is all too often dismissed by a society that views sex
workers as disposable.”
Therein lies the rub. Our culture has a double standard when it
comes to sex. On a superficial level, we’re obsessed with it. From the
softcore TV ads that penetrate our living rooms to pole-dancing fitness
classes and thongs for tweens, there’s nothing we like more than a
little titillation. It’s the real stuff that scares us to bits: The
people who sell actual sex are among our culture’s most
marginalized and vulnerable, often viewed as throwaway people who are
somehow deserving of the treatment they get.
And then there’s the criminal issue. Today, it’s legal to be a sex worker, but illegal to do sex work or advertise your
wares. That’s like being a legal house painter and trying to run a
business in a scenario where it’s illegal to paint a house or ask
anyone if they want their house painted. It forces those who do sex
work to operate underground, leaving them with little support and very
few options. And that’s why, when things go wrong, sex workers often
feel they have nobody to turn to.
Tracy (sex workers’ names have been changed for this story), a
soft-spoken woman who worked in the sex trade in Halifax for 20 years
before retiring last year, shrugs when she talks about on-the-job
violence. “You can’t do anything about it,” she says bluntly, her tone
resigned.
Lynn, seated nearby, is new to the city. She’s chatty and
straightforward, saying sex workers have to deal with violence “on a
continuous basis,” but that for many, going to the police is a futile
undertaking, resulting in ridicule more often than results. As a
parallel, she describes a friend in another city who, stalked by an
obsessive john, went to the police. “As soon as they found out she was
a sex-trade worker, they let it go. But what does that have to do with
anything?” says Lynn indignantly. “That guy was stalking her!” She
pauses, then says with dismay, “It just seems like we’re not
important.”
In 1985, three sex workers were murdered in Halifax. The details of
those murders are becoming lost with time, but Ross relates what she’s
been told: One was named Tina Baron. A second, Brenda Garside—or
Garson—was killed at the old Waverley Hotel. A third was named Kelly,
but Ross doesn’t know the woman’s last name—“She was not the same
Kelly whose body was found in the grain elevator,” she says, placing
the sex workers’ murders firmly in the context of general violence
against women.
In response to those murders, Stepping Stone was established in
1987, as a project of the Elizabeth Fry Society, to provide peer
outreach support for people who work in the sex trade. It became
independent in 1989 and is now celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Stepping Stone operates on a “harm-reduction” model, meaning it will
provide help only when asked for: Stepping Stone doesn’t try and get
people out of the sex trade against their will, though it will support
people who want to get out. The organization currently supports about
115 people a month (about 30 percent are former sex workers) on a
budget of roughly $200,000 a year. Besides providing housing help (the
organization placed 136 people in housing last year, though funding for
that program has just been cut), court support and advocacy, Stepping
Stone also does street patrol a few nights a week, passing out condoms
and copies of the “bad date” list that describes recent violent
incidents and people to avoid.
Over pizza in Stepping Stone’s tidy kitchen, their hands wrapped
around cold bottles of root beer, Tracy and Lynn express their
frustration with the way they are often harassed by the police (though
they’ll readily admit there are a number of good ones out there, they
both agree “that there are a lot of dirty cops in this city”) and the
way they are judged by the community-at-large, because of the work they
choose to do.
“I’ve been retired a year and I still get harassed,” says Tracy of
the cops. “I couldn’t even sit on my front steps and smoke a cigarette,
because the police would make me go inside ’cause they thought I was
working.
“I can’t even jaywalk,” she continues wearily, “because there’s this
one cop who says if you even jaywalk, you’re gone. I try to be so good.
But it’s just like they’re always waiting.”
Sergeant Richard Lane agrees the police’s relationship with the
city’s sex workers is a complicated one. Introducing himself as
“Richie,” a name that seems too diminutive for his impossibly muscular
frame, Lane, who is in charge of “special enforcements,” has clearly
spent time wrestling with the issue of how his force deals with
policing sex work.
“The majority of them are victims of one sort or another,” he says
sympathetically. “They don’t need to be victimized again by the justice
system or the police.”
And though he’s quick to mention that his unit—the vice
section—has a good relationship with “the girls on the street,” he
acknowledges, subtly, that that may not be the case in some of the
other units. The struggle, says Lane, is finding a balance between
“what the public wants and what the individual wants—we get a lot of
community complaints from people who live where prostitutes are
actively walking the stroll in front of their houses.”
The problem, he says, is drugs.
Many in the community see prostitution as inherently tied in with
drug use—a problem they don’t want to see lingering on the sidewalk.
But the true relationship between the two is a deeply complicated one.
Though the police may believe that the majority of Halifax’s
street-based sex workers are hooked on crack, Stepping Stone’s staff
insists that’s just an cruel stereotype.
“A lot of people work and don’t use,” says program coordinator Jeff
Liberatore. “But,” says Diane, who worked in the sex trade for 30 years
before retiring a decade ago, “a lot of people use [crack] and don’t do
sex work. I don’t see addiction and sex work together as a problem.
It’s just an added choice as a way for [addicts] to make their money,
but addicts make their money in a whole lot of different ways.” As far
as she’s concerned, they’re completely separate issues.
But crack was definitely a game changer for sex workers in Halifax.
It hit the streets with force in the early 1990s—about the same time
Tracy got involved in the business. Though she’s clean now, Tracy
admits turning tricks was an easy way to help her feed her habit.
Certainly, says Tracy, crack’s presence on the streets “brought a lot
of girls down. It almost brought me down.”
“There’s something about crack that takes over a person,” says
Diane. “I’ve used a lot of drugs in my life, but crack cocaine was one
of my worst addictions. It just consumed me more and more. My whole
life was about using and making money to get more drugs.”
That desperation has had a frightening impact on street-based sex
work. Diane, a lean, tanned woman, is blunt about the change: “The
money is not out there now, and I think they are more desperate now.
It’s a lot more ‘survival’ sex. When I worked the streets, the money
was good. We all had set prices. When crack came, women started
dropping their prices.”
It became common for a desperate woman to turn a trick for $20—the
price of a rock of crack. “You couldn’t make any money,” says Diane.
The johns “would go see the other girls who were charging less.”
Tracy says that if she hadn’t gotten off the drug, she was “gonna be
dead.” She sums it up deftly: “There’s been a lot more violence and
crime since crack cocaine came.”
If the relationship between sex work and drugs is complicated, so is
the question of how people find themselves working in the sex trade in
the first place. “Everybody has a different reason for going into sex
work,” says Ross, “it’s not a straight cut-and-dry.”
Our culture, of course, tends to explain sex work as fuelled by drug
addiction or early childhood abuse. But more often than not, the
unifying factor is economic.
“It’s not necessarily something we love doing,” says Lynn, who says
she started in the sex trade at age 12. “We do it ’cause we have to.
Because welfare doesn’t give us enough to live off.”
Certainly, sex work can provide far more money than a full-time,
minimum wage job—an important consideration, especially for women who
may be raising children on their own.
“It’s easy money,” says Lynn bluntly, before correcting herself. “I
should say it’s not easy money, it’s fast money. I’ve had guys tell me
that it must be the easiest job. Well, sometimes I feel so dirty.” But
right now, as far as she’s concerned, sex work is her best bet.
For Diane, sex work was a better option than her job as a hotel
clerk. “I had a friend who came to see me with all this money… all
these bills. So I asked, ‘How did you make all this money?’ Then I took
a leave of absence from the hotel and got into the sex trade.”
But that was 30 years ago. Today, retired sex worker Diane says
she’d be “very nervous” to work the streets. “I won’t walk my dogs out
there now,” she says. “People will kill you for $20. I’ve heard too
many stories, seen too much stuff. It’s a lot different out there now.
It’s a lot more dangerous now than it ever was.”
Adding to the danger is the frustrating “boundaries” issue: When a
sex worker is arrested, she has the option of being released with what
are called “boundary conditions”—she is banned from parts of the city
where prostitution is known to happen and is released only on condition
that she sign off on a map outlining those areas. Otherwise, she stays
in jail until she can meet bail or goes to trial.
“If a certain area gets known as an area where a john can go and
pick up a prostitute,” says Lane, “then if you take the girl out of the
area, it’ll eliminate the problem.”
Halifax is one of the last cities still using boundary conditions as
a policing tool to address prostitution, and the restrictions have only
been applied to female sex workers, not to male sex workers and not to
drug dealers. On the peninsula, the off-limits area extends from
Cogswell to Young, Agricola to Brunswick. In Dartmouth, it spans a huge
swath between Windmill and Victoria, all the way north past the MacKay
Bridge.
The problem is that many of the services sex workers need to
access—child care, food banks, the North End Health Clinic, probation
offices, even Stepping Stone—are within the bounded areas. And if a
woman lives within the bounded area, she can find herself on unofficial
house arrest.
If a woman is picked up in an area she’s been banned from, she’s
considered “in breach of her conditions of release” a far more serious
charge than the initial charge of “communicating.” It can lead to jail
time.
Lane insists women under boundary conditions are free to come and go
in a bounded area as long as they aren’t working. “Most of them get
charged with violating the conditions when they’re back on the corner
waving at cars,” he says.
But Ross says that isn’t the case. “How do you prove to someone that
you are just going to the food bank?” she asks. “We’ve had people
harassed just for going to the grocery store.”
“A few of my girlfriends are on the methadone program,” says Tracy.
The clinic on Gottingen Street is within the bounded area. For them,
getting treatment means risking arrest. “It’s so frustrating. And the
cops love that. It’s the only thing they have—it’s the only way they
have to get us now.”
“Is it the best solution?” asks Lane of boundary restrictions.
“Probably not the best. But it’s the best solution we have for the
problem.” As he sees it, getting women off the streets—getting them
healthy, getting them jobs and getting them “away from the abuses they
suffer,” is the goal.
Ross, however, says the only way to decrease the abuse sex workers
suffer is decriminalization, which would put “power back into the hands
of sex workers,” allowing them to maintain their independence with more
protection and less harassment. A better relationship with the police
would presumably decrease the violence and would improve working
conditions.
In his report on violence in Halifax, the result of mayor Peter
Kelly’s Roundtable on Violence, criminologist Don Clairmont recommended
that Halifax create sanctioned red-light and stroll areas for sex
workers. But Ross says this type of legalization of sex work won’t
necessarily solve the violence problem. “Where would a red-light
district go in Halifax?” she asks. “Way out where the women are being
attacked now? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Though they’re not always obvious, there are currently unofficial
strolls all over HRM—including in Dartmouth, Sackville, Bedford and
Fairview. “People say, ‘Where are they? I don’t see sex workers on the
street.’ But all that means is that sex work is being pushed further
and further into the margins,” says Ross.
Sex work has moved to back alleys and industrial parks—where it’s
far more risky for the women. Because they’re afraid of getting caught
by the cops, Tracy says women will sometimes jump in a car before they
have time to assess whether conditions are safe. “Sometimes you’ll
throw caution to the wind and you’ll go with someone who you don’t
know. Like this guy, he took me, I don’t know where—somewhere in the
country and then he started getting violent. And what could I do? I
took off out of his truck and hitchhiked back to town.”
“Quite a few rapes and beatings happen outside of the city,” Ross
says carefully. “I’ve heard about women tied to trees, raped, drugged.”
She’s quiet for a minute, struggling to explain the brutality and hate
some sex workers have to deal with, then says simply, “If someone is
willing to rape or beat a sex worker within an inch of her life, he’s
not an upstanding member of society. I don’t see how that’s not going
to translate to other violent crimes.”
“If somebody is sexually assaulted with a knife held to her
throat—somebody who does that to a prostitute would obviously do that
to somebody else,” agrees Lane. “It’s just the opportunity is there for
them to get those girls into a car, and that’s the big danger.”
In Toronto, a group of police officers works solely on cases of
assault against sex workers. Halifax, however, doesn’t have those kinds
of resources. The man who left the naked woman at the side of the road
on Natal Day was eventually picked up by the police—but only because
the woman, too vulnerable to do anything else, called for help.
But the average john picked up by the police (they’re caught trying
to pick up decoy women) merely pays a fine and is sent to “john school”
where he learns “the truth about what really goes on” in the sex trade.
Lane says he rarely sees a john arrested a second time.
For Lane, policing prostitution is a delicate balancing act. “The
violence is a huge issue,” he says, “and the quality of life issues for
our public that live in the areas [where sex workers work] is an
issue.” The solution to keeping sex workers safe, he says, is to “get
these girls off the street” and into better situations. He says if a
sex worker has been the victim of a violent crime, police will look
past the prostitution offence out of concern for their safety. But Lane
is clear: as long as sex work is criminalized, it will be policed.
Rene Ross writes the words “sex worker” on a piece of paper. Then
she draws a circle around “sex” over and over again.
“At the end of the day,” she says, without lifting her pencil, “it’s
about the morality of this. It’s the reason for the marginalization,
the stigmatization.”
If there’s one thing Ross wants people to understand, it’s that sex
work is work, and that the people who choose to do it for a
living deserve the same safe working conditions and harassment-free
living as anyone else. What she’d like to see is a climate where
violence is taken seriously—and where the police listen to sex
workers, rather than victimizing them.
“I want them to know that I’m somebody’s daughter,” says Tracy.
“That I’m a mother, somebody’s friend. And that we’re just trying to
make it in this world, just like any other human being.”
Meredith Dault is a freelance writer and sometime
broadcast journalist. She’d like to thank everyone who graciously
offered up their brain for picking in the writing of this article.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2009.
Great article!
Really highlights the issues that face sex workers, and tries to give them a face and
personalize them rather than make them out to be criminals.
This whole bounded area idea is ridiculous.
Thank you to all those wonderful people who are working at Stepping Stone. This is my first time
hearing of this organization, and it sounds very positive.
To all the sex workers out there, I am sorry that our current system is putting you in greater danger, and try and stay as safe as possible, despite the unfortunate circumstances in which you are forced to work, there are people out there who value you, and know that the system needs to change to better support you. Be safe!
Pay taxes like everyone else. Be able to tell your daughter or son. “I am so proud that you are choosing to sell your body for sex! Wait until I tell the family about your accomplishments”! No don’t kill sex worker’s, no don’t be violent…but not legalization…if so PAY TAXES like any other WORKING Canadian!
Give us as Sex Workers labour Standards and equal protection under the Law and than we can talk about Taxation. Has that Ten Penny gone to your head? Legalization and Decriminalization are two very different models. Decriminalization would allow for Taxation
Let’s remember, sex workers are not only street workers. There are escorts, dancers, porn stars, internet, and many other forms of sex work. Society seems to be okay with most of these, except when it comes to the street-based workers. Hmmmm???????
@Whatthehellever
Sex workers should pay taxes? WELL EXACTLY! In Germany, sex work is legal! All sex workers pay taxes, are members of the official old age pension scheme etc. — like every other honestly working person! Legally, they are regarded as self-employed entrepreneurs. Precisely, what you are suggesting, isn’t it?
what about the men who pick up sex workers. i’m tired of talking about the women, what about the men? let’s put the spot light on them. i think if we put johns under more scrutiny you might see less activity on their part. the punishment for picking up a prostitute should be harsher. much, much harsher.
Yes and get your daughters and sons lined up in the industry because it is something to be so proud of! You can hold your head high and say, I sell my ass for money. Nice one! I would be so proud if my daughter said I want to give head and spread my legs for money! NOT! Get real! Easy way out for people to be uneducated if they have a choice to be. In reality and thankfully it will never be accepted. I wonder if there will be a university class or college class to get a diploma in selling your ass?
“We do it ’cause we have to. Because welfare doesn’t give us enough to live off.”
Oh bull fucking shit. I was raised by a single mom with two kids and she busted her ass in retail, not on the streets. We were on welfare for a year, and even without it we had a roof, clean clothes and never starved. There’s one hell of a lot of people poorer than us growing up whose mothers didn’t decide to turn into a whore and sell their self respect.
Whatthehellever said: “Pay taxes like every other WORKING Canadian!”
Every other ‘working’ Canadian has certain rights and standards that apply not only to their employment but to safety in the work place protocols guaranteed by unions and labour interests.
Where I work, after I slurp down a coffee, I am guaranteed that my salary and benefits will be paid every two weeks in order to make sure than I can pay my mortgage and get groceries as well as hit a movie now and then and buy a tshirt on E-Bay.
Where sex trade workers find themselves, the day begins with (often but not always) finding a way to feed an addiction that allows them to remove themselves from the pain and self-hatred that burns their souls so that they can perform sex acts with usually married men who are seeking an answer to their hollowed-out lives by buying the body of a human being for however long they can sustain themselves in order to get home and kiss the wife good night.
Once a week, my supervisory committee checks in with me to see how I am doing with regard to my stated goals for that week. Multiple times a day, a woman working in the sex trade is harrassed, humiliated, and beaten by her ‘pimp’ who will take any and all money she has made in order to control and degrade her even further, as if that were even possible, and it is.
The comparison could go on and on, but suffice it to say, the “pay taxes” argument is moot.
These are people, these are victims, who lack even the most minimal support in their lives in order to make good decisions because they need to sustain themselves, despite learning to cope with such traumatic “working conditions” represented by no union, cared for by very few government employees, and looked upon with disdain by 99.9 percent of the population a certain percentage of whom procure her services in order to satisfy their own personal needs.
To suggest that our sisters and daughters on the street “PAY TAXES like any other WORKING Canadian!” victimizes them even further.
Well done. But I believe you, me, and all of us can do better.
Do you people not get it? This isn’t about paying taxes, and even if it was, if the same fair treatment came along with that, then I am sure sex workers wouldn’t mind paying taxes.
Whatthehellever….you are just ignorant, and part of the problem. You seem to have such a big problem with street-based workers, but I bet you love watching some porn and looking at dirty internet sites huh? You would be shocked at just how many people in the sex trade have college diplomas. Combine that with the experience they have in their fields, and I bet they have more education than most of you sitting there looking down your noses at them. You don’t want to accept street-based workers but you accept the rest though?
Swampdonkey…In one word…LIES!!!! The welfare rates are well below the poverty level, so who are you trying to convince? There is no way anyone who knows better will believe that you lived fine off a welfare cheque. And get it straight!!! The term is “sex worker!” Not “whore.” Whores are the ones hanging out at bars, giving it away for a few drinks.
Oh let’s see Lilith? Lies? No, no it’s not. I lived fine, my brother lived fine. My mother went without one hell of a lot and worked 40 hours a week for two decades crawling up the pay scale, was frugal and scrimped. Do you know how many people in Canada live below the poverty level? About 10%. Being below the poverty leve(and Canada does not have an official poverty line, btw, it’s based on comparison to other countries) does not automatically mean “holy fuck, my life is horrible and not okay in the least!”
And a whore is a prostitute, sunshine. The only place I’ve seen actual sex workers is in the Netherlands. The ones hanging out at bars giving it away could be called sluts, if you wanted to be a sexist bastard. I don’t care if someone wants to work in the industry, I’m fully behind it being legalized. But I’m not going to take “oh welfare sucks and we can’t live on it” when that is a flat out falsehood.
This is not called The Oldest Profession for nothing.
If there was no demand, it would disappear. The fact that is has survived and often flourished despite determined if clumsy official efforts to get rid of it, and despite the unpleasantness, stigma and serious danger of the trade shows it’s here to stay.
This is sheer hypocrisy and wilful blindness at it’s worst.
Of course we don’t want our sisters and daughters (nor our brothers and sons) doing this, so legal steps have been taken to discourage them. Most of us would likewise not approve of young people being put in the path of humiliation, injury or life-threatening danger, yet that is evidently a side effect of our failed attempts to quash or contain the sex trade. It’s not new and it’s well known so nobody should really be all that surprised.
So we are in effect condoning violence against young people in the interest of protecting them. That sure sounds smart.
The police may well be a contributor to the problem. They come from our wider society, they reflect our values and they bring with them a very strong sense of moral judgement and they enforce the blunt instrument of the law using it. They must have to face some pretty unpleasant and frustrating situations in dealing with street sex workers, and like most of us they may hold them in very low esteem, putting them further at risk.
It seems to me that first we have to resign ourselves that the sex trade is not going away, and current laws that try to stop it will continue to fail. So we need to replace them with new ones that get these people off the streets for their own safety as well as for the benefit of their non-violent clients and the residents who don’t want this stuff happening in their front yards.
In my view, it should be possible to operate legal brothels, where sex workers could work anonymously, without risk of violence from pimps or johns.
It would be a place where they would be tested frequently to ensure they met medical hygiene standards, for their own benefit as well as that of their clients.
It would be a place where the clients were guaranteed discretion and no health risks (and would be swiftly dealt with, if they got out of hand).
It would be a place where sex workers could access government run programs to get them off of drugs, and to retrain them to do something more fulfilling with lives, should they wish (and to encourage them to do so).
And yes, it would be a place where they would pay taxes.
Maybe it could become a lucrative arm of our much vaunted Nova Scotia Hospitality Industries: a service you might expect to be available at the Casino, the Delta Barrington or the Holliday Inn? Now we’ve mined out all our coal and vacuumed out all our fish and already turned to gambling to fund government services, we could make our mark as the Sex Capital of the East coast. We might even attract all those high-rollers who were supposedly going to flood Casino Nova Scotia.
Sound like a great future for your little girl, does it?
Seriously though, the current state of affairs clearly doesn’t work for anyone. Are we going to turn a blind eye or are we going to face reality and fix the problem?
So Swampdonkey…what is your secret, the secret your mother had that enabled her to raise a family so wonderfully on welfare??? Or was it her job, or both? Or was she scamming the system? Or was she an undercover sex worker? Your mother could really share alot with the rest of low-income families on how to survive on income assistance. Have you seen the statistics? Do you even realize that a family of 3 on income assistance has less than $6 per day to live off? How do you feed 3 people off that? No, you may not starve, but you defintely do not get all the vitamins and nutrients a growing body needs.
Actual sex workers???? WTF does that mean? Because they are legalized? Well that kind of is the whole point here. The argument is for decriminalization, to allow sex workers to become part of the working class society.
Lilith, I believe I went over that for you, so let me slow it down to your level in short sentences. Working 40 hours a week. Sacrificing personal comfort. An understanding of frugality, and asking for help when needed from social programs her taxes helped to support. My mother isn’t the only one to do it, and did you miss where 19 of those years weren’t on social assistance? Shockers! Self respect and a work ethic, my stars. Would you like to call every other single parent doing that without spreading their legs or other illegal activities a cheating liar?
And bullshit, not get all the vitamins and nutrients. Flyers, food banks, bulk barns, church lunches and support, dented cans, knowing how to cook and make it stretch. Child tax credits paying for our school supplies and cough medicine. We live in a nation where fresh food and ample places to purchase staples are abundant. I lived the statistics and so do millions of other people.
And again, I don’t argue against legalization. I argue against the bullshit statement that welfare isn’t enough to survive on. It IS, if you fucking work. It’s a financial band-aid, not a long term solution.
I can’t help but feel if you took the word “Sex” and “Sex worker” out of a lot of these arguments for decriminalization and substituted the word “Drugs” and “Drug Dealer”, peoples’ compassionate reactions would be different.
For example
1. Many people find themselves selling sex because welfare and minimum wage jobs do not pay enough.
1. Many people find themselves selling drugs because welfare and minimum wage jobs do not pay enough.
2. If people were not out looking for sex, sex workers would be out of business. The fault is with the buyers, not the sellers.
2. If people were not out looking for drugs, drug dealers would be out of business. The fault is with the buyers, not the sellers.
3. Selling sex is dangerous. You have to deal with people you don’t know who could beat you up and refuse to pay or kill you and you can’t go to the police about it.
3. Selling drugs is dangerous. You have to deal with people you don’t know who could beat you up and refuse to pay or kill you and you can’t go to the police about it.
4. Society owes it to sex workers to provide them with a safe, legal environment where they can sell sex without police or community harrassment.
4. Society owes it to drug dealers to provide them with a safe, legal environment where they can sell drugs without police or community harrassment.
and finally,
5. Sex has always been around. We can’t stop sex work. We should accept sex workers as people as providing a legitimate service and give them the respect they deserve.
5. Drugs have always been around. We can’t stop drugs. We should accept drug dealers as providing a legitimate service and give them the respect they deserve.
As far as I am concerned, sex workers are no different than drug dealers. If you think the profession is dangerous, get out and do an honest job like most of the population. You can’t spread your legs for a living and then wonder why people do not respect you. Respect is something that is earned. It is not a right that is given at birth.
“2. If people were not out looking for sex, sex workers would be out of business. The fault is with the buyers, not the sellers.”
If people were not out supplying sex, buyers would be shit out of luck.
Interesting read;
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianp…
@ Turts NoooOOooO last I checked, drugs are addictive and eventually lead to downward spirals in self-control and, oh, I don’t know, a general lack of quality in life.
Show me how sex does the same thing. Go on. Tell me how consumers of sex services suffer from physical ill consequences. You can’t even use the STD argument, because pro prostitutes are conscientious about condom usage (and often will not serve a customer who refuses to use one).
The profession is not inherently dangerous. (Neither is drug dealing.) It’s the people involved in society that make it so.
@ SwampDonkey: Ya don’t say! Short simple sentences as if life was really all that simple for everyone in the world! My goodness, if it really was that simple, why am I hearing from regular folks who do the 40hr/w, sacrificing personal comfort, and all that jazz — STILL having trouble even after years? Oh let’s ignore inflation too.
Everybody else: Thanks for the support of our local sex workers. I’ve volunteered at Stepping Stone before and the folks there are truly human. If any of you are interested in knowing more, check out Leslie Ann Jeffery and Gayle MacDonald’s Sex Workers In The Maritimes Talk Back which covers all sorts of stats, laws, social mores and health issues related to sex work in the Atlantic Provinces.
An important article, thank you!
It raises many complex issues… Unfortunately, many comments here seem to focus on the character of the sex workers themselves rather than address the conditions that produce the need for sex work (unemployment and underemployment being the most important) and the widespread misogyny and violence against women cutting across every neighborhood in the city, affecting all women everywhere.
According to the National Crime Ranking published in Maclean’s Magazine in March of 2008, Halifax has the third highest incidence of sexual assault in Canada
This violence is enacted with an alarming frequency against sex workers because their bodies and their lives have been so horrifically devalued and even demonized by social sentiment. When we see these crimes committed against sex workers, however, we need to see them as acts of violence against WOMEN first and foremost and then move forward to address the particular vulnerabilities and risks attendant upon this line of work. But to speak of these crimes without speaking of a broader culture of misogyny and without address the long-standing feminization of poverty as well is to seriously trivialize and misrepresent the issue.
As a final point, I find the repeated references to the “girls” on the streets rather patronizing towards the sex workers, and I suspect this language reflects an ideology (especially in the police force) that positions these women and their work as deviant and irresponsible, associated with other delinquent behavior (see repeat references to drug use in this article) or developmental issues: these ‘girls,’ their work, (and the assumed addictions it supports) are assumed to be incapable of being ‘upstanding citizens’ because they are always understand to be irresponsible, like young girls who’re acting out and have gone astray, thereby putting the police in the position to ‘discipline’ them, and set them back on the right path by essentially grounding them – confining them to certain neighborhoods or even to their homes. For those that try to speak of sex work with compassion or sympathy but end up referring to its laborers as ‘girls’ — this is undermining the possibility that these are the experiences and choices of rational, self-respecting, self-sufficient adults.
“It’s not necessarily something we love doing,” says Lynn, who says she started in the sex trade at age 12. “We do it ’cause we have to. Because welfare doesn’t give us enough to live off.”
Explain how a child of 12 needs to enter the sex trade because welfare isn’t enough to live on? It is not a child’s responsibility to have enough money to “live off”. It is the responsibility of the parent. If this can’t be accomplished the child should be removed from the home in the first place.
Prostitution is not a safe occupation. It is well known. It is known that violence can occur and that there is little to nothing done about it. Everyone has a choice. If you choose to work as a sex worker. You choose the risks that come along with it. If you don’t like heights don’t become a pilot. If you don’t want a concussion don’t play professional sports. If you don’t want to deal with the consequences of sex work.. DON’T BECOME A SEX WORKER. It really is that simple. Not to mention there are services available to you through Stepping Stone. If you aren’t happy with your career choice, make a change. But if you do enjoy your career of having sex with strangers all day long then take the risk and know that you might not be alive to tell your story tomorrow.
Swampmonkey..I definitely would call anyone who made the same claim as you, a liar. Yes, there are programs and food banks out there, but as someone who works in non-profit, I know exactly how those things work. The food banks provide dry foods, very seldom are you able to get fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, or dairy products from a food bank. Fresh food may be ample in this country, but money is not.
You said your mother worked in retail, so I am pretty sure she earned minimum wage or very close to it. Look at the statistics for families trying to survive off minimum wage. You say your mother went without many times, so I guess that does go to show that things didn’t go so well for the whole family.
The comparison to drug dealers and users is just ridiculous. Drugs kill people. Sex does not. Drugs are illegal. Sex is not. Why is it that the street-based sex workers are the ones being crapped on, but again, I re-state, the other forms of sex work seem to be accepted by most of society?
Lilith – you say sex doesn’t kill so please try to explain that to someone dying from HIV/AIDS or Hep C that was contracted through unsafe sexual activity.
voice_of_reason – When I say sex doesn’t kill, that is in reference to a safe, consenual, act of having sex, not unprotected or forced sex. There are safe ways to do drugs, to protect from HIV/AIDS and Hep C, but the drugs can still kill you. Chances are, if you take the precautions while engaging in sex for money, you will not die from that! Which brings us back to the whole point of this article….decriminalization as way to better protect those involved in the sex trade, and the customers.
The prostitute, Tina Marie Barron, mentioned in this article, was a child. She was a 17-year old girl lured into prostitution by a pimp from Preston. She tried to get out many times but her pimp(s) repeatedly threatened to kill her and members of her family. She and her family were stalked by her pimps. She had nowhere to escape to and her parents did not have the financial means to leave Nova Scotia and start a life in hiding elsewhere. I believe she was killed sometime around 1985. What a tragedy. I hope there are more resources in place today to prevent this type of thing from happening.
In Germany, sex work is legal!…. that’s true.
In Germany, sex workers are often sex slaves imported from broken countries…. that is also true.
I’ve written this before, eleswhere,
But this has always made me wonder & the stupidity of it, causes me to shake my head & question the stupidity & wonder is this because of people’s outdated religious belief’s, fucking up peoples lives who aren’t even members of any religious groups to begin with.
So- why is it, 2 consenting adults can meet somewhere…lets say a Bar. They decide to go back to one apartment & have sex. It is perfectly legal. They spend the night in each others company engaging in sexual activities .Nothing has been done to break our laws & they split up & decide to not bother with each other again.
No one bats an eye over their behaviour, although you practitioners of a religion will of course get your nickers in a knot & spew the usual diatribe based on your religious beliefs to any poor bastard close enough to hear.
Now you take those 2 same people, meeting in the same Bar & the older woman offers the young male $100.00 to come to her home for some adult fun. They’re both over the age of consent, they’re both going to spend a night having sex…yet because money has changed hands…it is now an illegal act !
That is IMO BULLSHIT ! Which is why the illogic of it causes me to shake my head at the stupidity.
The entire Prostitution Problem is actually Societies problem, by not supporting legalized Prostitution, by not allowing for safe working sites, permits from health practitioners, showing bi weekly medical screening, having access to programs for education etc.
By not having anything in place WE AS A SOCIETY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE, THE DRUG ADDICTION & THE PIMPING.
Because if these simple programs were allowed, women & men who now have no other choices, would be able to get help, they would be able to get off drugs, they wouldn’t be hunted by pimp’s , & they would be having frequent, regular medical exams. This would go along way to cleaning up this industry…& it is an industry& it at this time is an industry that criminals are profitting from.
You judgemental bastards & bitches may not like the fact, the simple fact that this has been around for thousands & thousands of years, means its going to continue to be around & we as a Society, as a Group of individuals need to stop the Judging of others & simply apply a little logic & compassion for others who have little or nothing now. If its legalized, that doesn’t mean you have to go hire a Protitute once a month, you who have never even spoken to one before, won’t have to speak to one if this was implemented. But it would be a way to remove the violence, get on top of mental & addiction problems, it would remove the criminal element, because the Government & all the services (including POLICE PROTECTION) would be available, & it would be the humane & IMO proper way to deal with this .
First let me say, Tina and Brenda were both on the streets due to pimps. Pimps that threatened and beat them. Second they were both murdered by two different serial killers.
This is a business in which competition is strong, nightmarish even. Sex workers might argue that they supplement if not outright replace the services provided by ‘amateurs’ but the fact is, there’s a lot of amateurs out there. And there’s also a lot of professionals out there, as well, because let’s face it, nobody got into this work because they opted for it as an alternative to a career as, say, an electrician or a lawyer or a nuclear physicist. So the probability that high enough rates can ever be to charged so as to cover the real costs of administering the business competently, and safely, is unlikely. You make several references to the lack of funding, i.e. subsidy. As a taxpayer, I’ve no problem subsidizing counseling services to help women get out of this business, because it is a disaster: it relies on a fallible piece of latex against disease; the ‘associates’ – read, the pimps – are notoriously abusive; and then there’s the risk of accidental conception. So funding outreach programs is one thing, as is refraining from enforcing prohibitive laws, but asking me as taxpayer to subsidize the salaries of what amount to personnel managers of a private business is quite another.
However the real problem is that it simply isn’t an industry for which the government can offer any guarantees. You suggest that sex workers have a right to be free from physical harm as they work. However, just as the state hasn’t been able to effectively ban sex work, neither can it realistically attempt to guarantee the safety of sex workers. Police have a hard enough time protecting the victims of domestic abuse, in which the participants, both of them, are usually clearly identified, and both usually have some form of known fixed address – often the same one. Whereas customers of this business are notoriously ‘prudish’ about being identified, and that includes running the risk of being seen going to the address of a known sex work business – especially if they are high profile members of the community. They want anonymity, the very thing that poses most risk to the person providing the service. Attempts to screen customers online is no solution, since the Internet affords even more anonymity than that darkened car.
I knew Tina Baron when she was a young girl and she was very sweet. Her father John was also a wonderful person. I was heartbroken when Tina was murdered. She was just a child in a mixed up place. Violence against women especially those in the sex trade needs to be taken much more serious and they need to feel safe to report it.