Hamilton Spectator Article: Society Has Misconceptions About Prostitutes They Are Just Like Normal Law Abiding Citizens.
The sex trade isn’t what you think it is
When was the last time you sat down and had a good chat with a sex trade worker?
Like anything in life, you really don’t know what is going on in the world, until you take the time to ask.
So I did, and when I had Julie Clark as a guest on my talk show on CHML and found out that the TV version of a girl strung out on drugs, on a street corner does not represent the majority of sex trade workers.
Last week, a Toronto judge, sitting in the Superior Court of Ontario, invalidated parts of Section 212 and 213 of the Criminal Code, which basically means Canadians can’t be charged with keeping a bawdy house, communicating for the purpose of sex and living off the avails of prostitution. This is far from being law, as appeals are promised by both provincial and federal governments.
Clark, who was speaking for the Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), said she and her coworkers were ecstatic over the ruling, which was largely granted for the safety of all involved. She said the laws that are in place to protect women are actually making their lives more dangerous as it forces the trade onto the street where workers have no idea what to expect.
In fact, prostitution is not illegal in Canada — but everything associated with it, is. The 10-year sex-trade veteran says the irony is “the transaction of selling sex acts is not illegal but everything that makes you safer doing it, is” — like being in a safe indoor environment.
The industry feels these changes will regulate the business and will be managed no differently than it already is by most municipalities — discretely and in industrial areas.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many massage parlors in these areas? It’s not all sore muscles and lower back pain.
Clark also says this is a great opportunity to educate the public on the industry.
If a prostitute is not the girl on the corner, who is she?
The mother of two says, “Look next door.” It’s the housewife, insurance broker and other stereotypes you would not expect.
Alan Young, a lawyer on the case, said at a press conference that at least 80 per cent of sex trade workers are invisible to the country. Clark adds it will remain that way and the public has nothing to fear. “You wouldn’t know us, you wouldn’t see us. It’s invisible sex work.”
It’s more “middle class” sex work that is never reported to authorities because there are really no complaints.
Wow! All of a sudden I’m looking over the fence with a little more imagination!
When asked about whether this change in law would open the door for organized crime, the 40-year-old Clark said it actually closes the door to organized crime by making it safe to report illegal activity without the fear of being charged.
When you prohibit something, organized crime makes it available. Just like alcohol, it’s easier to control when regulated.
This lady works for an escort service that provides a driver, security, bookings and a “bad call list” to identify johns that have been abusive or threatening. She adds, “The infrastructure is in place to protect us.”
When quizzed on what she thought the public perception was of the change, Clark said, “They’re afraid because they think that all sex workers are victims and the clients are predators.” She says most are in it for the money and don’t have a hangup or emotional issues with it. They’re very normal people, living everyday lives.
So whether you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision or not, it’s still one of the oldest occupations known to mankind and shows no signs of subsiding. Have you seen the Viagra commercials?
Maybe it’s time to solve the problem, if there is one, another way.
Discussion is a good start. The way it always is before good sex.
Hamilton Spectator Article: Forget About Morality In Relation To Prostitution Think About Safety Of Sex Workers.
Prostitution laws should be about safety, not morals
Most of the time when I write about sex workers, it’s because one has been murdered. Or raped. Or beaten.
There have been many victims in our community.
You don’t have to look all the way to the Robert Picton case in British Columbia to find a man who preys on sex workers. You don’t need to go to bigger cities for women who have vanished from street corners. You don’t need to search far to find johns who see the women they hire as something less than human.
There was Project Advocate, run by Hamilton police from 2002 to 2004. It looked at the murder of one sex worker, attacks on five others and the disappearance of two more. No arrests were ever made for the murder or disappearances.
There was Najim Khairzad, who raped, beat and nearly killed four sex workers. He pleaded guilty a year ago.
There have been others. The sex worker who was stabbed 30 times in an alley and survived, for instance.
There are an estimated 300 sex workers in Hamilton — mostly women. Last year, Hamilton police charged 51 people under the prostitution law.
Violence against sex workers happens all the time in this city. Maybe every day. For that reason, I welcome changes initiated last week when a ruling by an Ontario Superior Court justice struck down three key portions of Canada’s prostitution law.
No, this does not mean I support sex work. It means I support anything that might protect sex workers. I think the decision delivered by Justice Susan Himel has potential to do that.
Her decision weaves testimony of women involved in the sex trade with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the morals of average Canadians, the prostitution laws of other countries and some of the federal government’s own research on the sex trade — which concludes sex work puts women in grave danger.
With the help of Hamilton criminal lawyer Jeffrey Manishen, I’ve waded through the document trying to understand it and decide if it will do what its advocates say it will — keep sex workers safer.
The three areas of the law Himel struck down were these:
• The section that made keeping a bawdy house a crime. Now sex workers can work indoors, legally. Given that the most frequent and severe violence against sex workers happens on the street, this is a good thing. About 15 to 20 per cent of sex workers are on the street.
• The part that made it a criminal act to communicate for the purpose of prostitution. Now sex workers can talk to a john before getting in his car, which will allow them to better vet him for safety purposes.
• The section that made living off the avails of prostitution against the law. Now a sex worker can hire a driver or a bodyguard to protect her.
“The judge found that the current laws were unreasonable infringements on the rights of (sex workers),” Manishen summarizes. Himel found the old laws are “arbitrary and over-broad with an effect far beyond what they were meant to achieve,” he says.
And his own opinion?
“It’s an issue which has called out for a comprehensive analysis for a long time.”
At the Sexual Assault Centre of Hamilton and Area, director Lenore Lukasik-Foss supports legislation that protects women from rape.
“I think that this is a good move for vulnerable women who do sex work,” she says. “It means greater safety for the most marginalized women in our community.”
Rape is not just a job hazard for sex workers.
“It is outrageous,” says Lukasik-Foss, “that we suggest that because a person agrees to have sex with someone that they agree to be raped, beaten and tortured.”
Sexual assault is always under-reported. But that becomes more profound in the case of sex workers, the women at the greatest risk of sexual assault.
“If you’ve been arrested for the work you do, would you go back to the police to report a crime?” Lukasik-Foss asks.
A conviction could have serious repercussions: a child protection agency could take the woman’s child, or she could lose her public housing. Also, sex workers balk at going to court because they fear they won’t be believed.
“We have to push aside some of these arguments that (sex work) is not morally OK or is sexually exploitive,” Lukasik-Foss says. “It’s not going to go away. Regardless of where you’re coming from, you have to put those beliefs aside because women are dying.”
At the Elizabeth Fry Society, which runs Sex Trade Alternatives and Resource Services (STARS), executive director Leanne Kilby says her agency supports “the decriminalization of the sex work side, but not the decriminalization of the purchasing side.”
In most cases, that translates into charges for the men, but not the women. It is crucial, says Kilby, that men know they are purchasing a service and not a woman. Continuing to criminalize the actions of the john reinforces that, she argues.
Kilby also raises concerns that if portions of the law are struck down, Elizabeth Fry — which supports women in conflict with the law — may receive less funding to work with sex workers. STARS lost virtually all its funding last year and is now reduced to five hours of services a week.
It will likely be years before the appeals of Himel’s decision wend their way through the justice system. Meanwhile, “business here in Hamilton is status quo,” says police Chief Glenn De Caire. “We work toward the protection of all our citizens.”
Manishen says it’s unlikely, however, that police will lay many prostitution charges during this period of flux because the cases won’t be heard in court until the appeals are concluded.
So at most, we may have a revised prostitution law that will give sex workers in our community more options to keep themselves safe.
At least a worthwhile public discussion has begun.
Time Magazine Article: Is Legalizing Prostitution The Right Solution For Canadian Prostitutes?
Legal Sex Work in Canada Just Became Easier, But Will It Be Safer?
We have a complicated relationship with the world’s oldest profession.
In many countries — including most of the United States, where it is a state issue — prostitution is illegal. But even in countries where it is not, the web of restrictions and regulations can be confusing to prostitutes and customers alike: in Sweden, it’s legal to sell sex, but illegal to buy it. Lebanese prostitutes can legally work at a licensed brothel, but the government has a policy against issuing brothel licenses.
And though it has always been legal to sell your body for sex in Canada, until last week, it was impossible to make a living from doing it: illegal to live off the proceeds of that work, illegal to conduct that work in a house dedicated to prostitution and illegal to discuss or negotiate an agreement with potential customers.
When I lived in Canada three years ago, national attention was focused on a pig farmer from British Columbia named Robert Pickton who was convicted of killing six prostitutes from Vancouver’s down-and-out Downtown Eastside. Following his arrest, he had allegedly boasted to police that he was one kill short of 50 victims, a figure that matched missing-persons data for the city. This detail prompted many to ask how nearly 50 women could go missing before anyone noticed a pattern. It also prompted a national conversation about how to increase the safety of sex workers. (More on Time.com: Study of American Sex Habits Suggests Boomers Need Sex Ed).
Professional organization had already gotten underway, but the national conversation gave a boost to several cooperatives of sex workers who were hoping to create labor standards for themselves and their colleagues. One of these groups, Sex Professionals of Canada, went on to file suit in 2007 against the federal government over the criminal codes that made sex work hard to do legitimately.
Three years later, on Sept. 28, Superior Court Justice Susan Himel in Ontario struck down many of these federal restrictions, including the laws forbidding negotiations with customers for sex and the operation a brothel, ruling them unconstitutional. The Globe and Mail reported:
In her 131-page ruling which took her a year to produce, Judge Himel found that laws set up to protect prostitutes actually endanger their safety, forcing them to furtively engage in hasty transactions conducted in shady locations.
“By increasing the risk of harm to street prostitutes, the communicating law is simply too high a price to pay for the alleviation of social nuisance,” she said. “I find that the danger faced by prostitutes greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by the public.”
The conservative party, which is currently in control of parliament, though with a minority government, may appeal the decision within 30 days and try to persuade Himel to delay the institution of her ruling. But most experts believe Himel’s ruling will become law. (More on Time.com: In Postquake Haiti, an Influx of Dominican Prostitutes).
Supporters of Himel’s decision point to a wealth of data demonstrating that regulating the sex industry improves the health and well-being of its workers. Barbara Brents and Crystal Jackson, both sociologists from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and co-authors of The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland, have studied the legal prostitution trade in their city, and enumerated the ways in which it is safer for workers than in places where the industry remains illegal.
Brents and Jackson, whose work was cited in the recent Ontario ruling, wrote about their findings in an editorial in the Las Vegas Sun:
The ruling specifically cites research we conducted in Nevada’s legal brothels that points to a number of safety mechanisms that protect workers, such as: management listening over an intercom to negotiations with customers; cash is taken directly to a manager, providing the prostitute with an opportunity to communicate any reservations she may have about the client; panic buttons are available in every room to call management or set off an alarm if pressed; the brothel setting prevents clients from leaving very quickly and removes client anonymity; and after payment and before the sexual encounter, prostitutes perform a visual scan for indications of sexually transmitted infections — if there are issues, the money is returned and the client is asked to leave. More than 80 percent of licensed prostitutes we surveyed felt that their job was safe. We found no evidence of trafficking in the legal brothels.
Further, multiple studies have found that violence against sex workers goes hand-in-hand with the likelihood of drug addiction among victims. Addiction, in turn, lays the groundwork for chronic mental illness. Thus reducing the risk of violence would presumably improve mental health among prostitutes. (More on Time.com: Craigslist Comes Clean: No More ‘Adult Services,’ Ever).
Still, legal brothels are no panacea for sex workers’ drug addiction or mental illness. Many women who enter prostitution — whether it is regulated or not — are already struggling with addiction. The parents of one of Robert Pickton’s victims wrote a public letter after pro–sex worker rights groups invoked their daughter’s name:
Our daughter was forced into prostitution because of the need to feed her addiction to drugs. To think of prostitution as a ‘job’ and treat it as such is ridiculous. I am disgusted to think that anyone would think that prostitution is a job. It is not. It is violence against women.
Neither legalizing prostitution nor having a brothel would have prevented the murder of our daughter. The women of the Downtown Eastside need meaningful solutions to their problems. We tried on numerous occasions to have Marnie admitted to drug rehabilitation facilities, but found that to be very difficult because of the chronic lack of beds and funding for such places.
When an addict reaches out for help, the resources should be available immediately. Is the best we can do for these women is give them a safe place to sell their bodies? There is no such thing as a “clean safe place” to be abused.
Indeed, a 2003 survey of sex workers in the United States found that 90% reported wanting to leave the industry immediately, according to a report in Medical Anthropology. And many who oppose the Ontario measure do so on the grounds that it legitimizes an industry designed to prey on people who struggle with addiction. (More on Time.com: Does Mexico City Need a Red-Light District?).
But that does not discount the fact that the decriminalization of brothels could increase safety for those who participate in the sex trade. Currently in Canada, “indoor” prostitutes — those who don’t work on the street and are less likely to be in dire straits — have a much lower risk of being assaulted than prostitutes who work on the streets, according to testimony from Dr. Frances Shaver, professor of sociology at Concordia University and a founder of the Sex Trade Advocacy and Research group.
Of course it’s possible that prostitutes who work in brothels are exposed to less violence in part because brothels screen out women who are mentally unstable or drug addicted. Establishing legal brothels may do little to increase the safety of the women on the streets who are at greatest risk.
On balance, the future of prostitution in Canada looks less violent, less threatening to sex workers’ health and more stable, but the decriminalization of brothels should not cause us to lose sight of the 90% of women who do not wish to do what they are doing, who are trafficked, or in need of mental health and addiction care.
Gayblackcanada 