After work today, GC and I attended two very different events: Marion Dewar’s Lying in State at City Hall, followed by the Sex Trade Workers Rally on Parliament Hill.
The lineup inside City Hall led directly to Marion Dewar’s five children, where we could offer our condolences before filing past the closed casket and signing the guest book on our way out.
After half an hour we were getting close to the front of the line and I chickened out. I didn’t want to look her children in the eye and tell them I was sorry their mother had died. I was afraid I’d burst into tears. I felt just awful for them and thought it was a generous thing they were doing under such difficult circumstances. But I couldn’t look them in the eye and not cry, so we ducked out of the lineup and headed over to the Sex Trade Workers’ rally.
The rally was sponsored by POWER: Prostitutes of Ottawa/Gatineau Work Educate & Resist. Their mission statement is: “We envision a society in which sex workers are able to practice their professions free of legal and social discrimination, victimization, harassment and violence and in which sex work is valued as legitimate and fulfililng work making an important contribution to society.”
This event was to raise public awareness about Canada’s current prostitution legislation, which isolates and marginalizes sex workers and therefore puts them at increased risk of harm. POWER wants prostitution decriminalized.
There were several speakers, including a University of Ottawa criminology professor who used to be a sex worker, and an older gay man living with HIV who spoke quite eloquently about the role of sex workers in society.
Eloquent though he was, I had some difficulties with his assessment of sex workers as teachers and healers who are sexually authentic and have a genuine understanding of human sexuality. I’m sure this is true of some of them, but I suspect they’re in the minority. Most sex workers haven’t had the luxury of choosing their occupation. I’d guess most have ended up doing sex work because their options were limited by abuse, addiction, poverty and despair. I’m not sure it’s helpful to try to glamorize prostitution in an effort to decriminalize, de-stigmatize and politicize it.
I think we have to address the social problems that result in involuntary sex work, before I’ll be able to regard sex work as “honourable work, worthy of celebration.”
This doesn’t mean that I oppose the decriminalization of prostitution. I was at another rally earlier this week on Parliament Hill for missing and murdered women, and many of them were sex workers who just disappeared. It was chilling.
Do you think it’s time for Canada to decriminalize prostitution?
Street prostitution, or “involuntary sex work”, is sexual abuse and rape. You don’t punish the abused, you jail the abusers.
I suspect they’re in the minority also. often wonder why politicians don’t legalise prostitution – they’d quickly tax the arse out of it and make a squillon for their coffers
NOPE
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe prostitution IS legal in Canada. It is NOT a criminal act. Soliciting, on the other hand, IS illegal. Now, can the two be separated? I will leave that to the experts.
Decriminalizing solicitation is the first step in “sex harm reduction programs” In places that have legal red light districts there’s education and preventative health care easily available to sex trade workers without stigma.
Pimps who abuse women and children are still on the wrong side of the law in these places and if you can devote police manpower to stopping that rather than john sting operations etc I think it is a good thing.
Do I want my neighbourhood to be the red light district? No, but having spent years living in the market/lowertown I think Ottawa would benefit from one…atleast then people like me wouldn’t be getting approached by john’s at the school bus stop!
Glad to see sex workers in Ottawa organizing. Did any women speak at the rally, though?
Gabriel, I don’t think it’s rape, since technically it’s between consenting adults – but it’s often exploitative.
Nursemyra – I think the politicians would welcome the tax dollars, but are afraid to touch the issue since it’s a political hot potato.
Tom, you’re right, prostitution itself is not illegal. However, the cluster of laws around prostitution (sections 210 through 213 of the Criminal Code) make it virtually impossible to be a prostitute without breaking laws, thereby effectively criminalizing it.
“The Criminal Code prohibits all forms of public communication for the purpose of prostitution (s. 213 [5] ), and most forms of indoor prostitution as well: owning, running, transporting or occupying bawdy house (ss. 210 [6] and 211 [7] ), procuring or living on the avails of prostitution (s. 212 [8] ).” (Source)
Mudmama – you lived smack in the middle of an illegal red light district. Decriminalization might have improved your neighbourhood, actually.
Miss Vicky, yes, two women spoke: Kathleen Cummings, who is Executive Director of the AIDS Committee of Ottawa (and a former addict and sex trade worker), and the criminology professor who used to be a sex trade worker.
Thats what I meant Zoom…I still would have moved
but if it had been a legal area then there would have been a clear dividing line between professionals and mommies waiting at the bus stop!
I don’t think someone offering themselves up so they can avoid a beating or because they have an addiction which needs to be fed should be considered consent…
Since when is being off of the street a safe place for women? Isnt is true that most women arte hurt in there own homes? I started in the sex trade at 14 after being sexually abused…the reality is that you cannot legislate violence. No person should ever be charged with having to sell themselves to survive. But the pimps, johns, gang members and dealers who prey on the people involved need to be stopped by heavy penalties.
If it was decriminalized would any offer up or encourage thier own daughters to do this as a career? If not your own daughters than whose…..
Dawn, I know women who are neither drug addicts, teenagers, or abused women who work in the sex trade as an easy way to make money (for the high cost of university but that is another issue!) Why would you want police hours going towards stopping handjobs in massage parlours, or dom/sub play when it is taking time away from helping KIDS off the street, stopping pimps, stopping gangs, and dealers?
I agree that pimps, johns (who target children or are violent) gangs and dealers are a problem…but there is a whole other side to the sex trade and I don’t think manpower should be going to stop johns who want a blowjob from a transvestite (for instance)
I have thought that it should be decriminilzed for a very long time (I even wrote a report on it in Grade 10.. my teacher was not amused, but it was well researched adn thought out)
I think the only reason it is illegal now is because of the religion of leaders and people with power(not just one particular religion, many oppose prositution) But when you get right down to it, take away the moral issues it’s one person providing a service to another… and really no different that hiring a gardener or a mechanic. The person is providing a service you can’t do for yourself.
I think if it was decrimilized it could be taxed (which if spent right is helpful to all of us) and regulated, and help take a lot of the dangerous side effects out of it. Sex trade workers might not be afriad to get help if they need it.
Gabriel, I think you’re highlighting a whole fuzzy grey area on the continuum of consent. I met a street sex worker who was a drug addict and who genuinely loved his job. His consent was authentic. No doubt it would be easier to find sex workers whose consent is less freely given.
Dawn, I see your point. But prostitution has existed in virtually all societies since the beginning of time, so I don’t think we’re going to get rid of it anytime soon. Decriminalization would at least take it out of the dangerous shadows, no? Is your fear that decriminalization would somehow legitimize it and lead to an increase in it?
Mudmama, I agree.
Valerie – do you think that licensing and regulation might lead to a two-tier sex care system? Not every sex worker would want to comply with regulatory requirements. And not all of them would meet licensing standards (eg health reasons). So would we end up with a ‘legitimate’ tier of licensed sex workers and a secondary underclass of unlicensed sex workers?
Countries where prostitution is a legitimate career have solved some of the problems surrounding the trade, but not all of them. They’ve done away with organized crime, pimps and other hard core criminals being involved; they’ve done away with most of the street prostitutes, but it’s still an industry filled with unsavory characters and it still exploits women. The people who run the brothels aren’t always pleasant, they don’t always have their employees best interests at heart and the women and men who work as sex workers are still largely there for the same reasons people end up in prostitution here. That being said, yes, I do think it’s well past time we decriminalize prostitution.
Would decriminalization lead to more regulation? It is the possibility of regulation that I think could make things worse for sex workers. I was recently reading about how legalized prostitution in Nevada is regulated in such a way that it basically victimizes the sex workers.
In regards to regulation, I think it needs to be thoroughly thought out so as to see what works and what doesn’t work by looking at places that allow it (Nevada, Amsterdam, etc.)… however I don’t see a two-tier system developing, cause as a customer am I going to go with the unregulated worker, or the regulated one, who has to have a mandatory STD test once every two weeks (that is certainly a regulation I’d want)?
Morally though, if the government starts taxing it, doesn’t that just make it the pimp, so it gets it cut? (Of course in that same line of reasoning, the government acts as every workers pimp, sex trade or not, and it might be fairer than a traditional pimp, though it still takes close to 50% through taxation!)
Zoom you’re probably right, we would end up with a two tiered system, I’ve been told that’s what happened in Amsterdam.. there are the “certified” prositutes and the ” you’re totally taking your chances prostitutes, but at least it adds a little choice on behalf of both the prositutes and the johns…. it’s by no means perfect, but it may be better than what we have
Yes, prostitution should be legalized, and regulated if necessary.
Laws against prostitution, just like those against various drugs, do far more harm than good.
The government doesn’t want to address the hazards of the drugs/prostitution, for fear of acknowledging it exists. (See, for example, the discussions on Insite, or closer to home, the crack pipe program)
As a result, the government deals with them not as a health issue, but as a police issue–which is far more expensive and far less effective.
– RG>