Vancouver's Sex Trade, 2010
Groups hurry to change the law, and how business is done.
Susan Davis of BC's Coalition of Experiential Communities.
Flip through the back pages of the Westender, the Georgia Straight or Xtra West, and you will see several solid pages of ads that offer a wide variety of sexual services in Vancouver: everything from "lingerie haircut" to sadomasochistic domination to "personal shaving services for men" from "Mr. Baldnutz."
As Vancouver readies itself for the eyes of the world for the 2010 Olympics, the city tries to recover from the stigma of association with the Pickton murders and the Downtown Eastside. Both tragedies are connected to prostitution, but while some groups want to decriminalize sex work to make it safer, others are vehemently opposed to changing the laws, saying it would increase the exploitation of vulnerable women and children.
Incorporated in February of this year, the West Coast Co-operative of Sex Industry Professionals is a project to organize sex workers both locally and nationally. Apart from plans to run a co-op brothel, the group also plans to provide a variety of other services to sex workers, such as helping them find alternate employment in exiting the sex trade and serving as an industry association, with occupational health and safety training and minimum labour standards.
A plea for amnesty
One of the co-op's founders is Susan Davis, a veteran of 22 years as a sex worker and a member of the B.C. Coalition of Experiential Communities. She says that criminalization and increased enforcement of sex work laws has actually made it less safe for the people involved. "They've closed 20 strip clubs in three years. I've got exotic dancers who are now asking me how they can work safely as escorts when they never wanted to have full contact. Now they're being forced to choose sex work that's beyond their physical boundaries. What will be the emotional impact of that?
"And the escort job market is so tight that as they enter, generally they're younger, more beautiful, more marketable, and inevitably someone else will lose their job, and be pushed out onto the street. This elimination of the safe work environment and the undermining of the stability of our industry is creating the environment that's allowing workers to go missing and be killed at levels that are just ridiculous," says Davis.
However, the co-op brothel could violate the Canadian Criminal Code's regulations regarding sex work. Davis asks for an amnesty from the authorities. "All we were asking for was that the amnesty be limited to within the walls of the physical site, limited for a certain amount of time, let's say two years, subject to review, all those kinds of things. But it's our intention to go out on a series of community engagements across the city of Vancouver, to try to negotiate the terms and limitations with all stakeholders, including business owners and residents."
Suit filed in BC to overturn sex work laws
In a typically Canadian compromise, the exchange of money for sex is legal under the Criminal Code, but many activities associated with it are not. Section 210 prohibits keeping a bawdy house, such as a brothel; Section 212 criminalizes living off the avails of prostitution; and Section 213 prohibits communicating for the purposes of prostitution.
These laws, argue the reformers, actually make sex work less safe.
Section 210 forces sex workers to work on streets instead of indoors with greater comfort and security. Section 212 is intended to control exploitative pimping, but it also prevents sex workers from supporting children or partners, or hiring drivers or other support workers. Section 213 prevents sex workers from sharing information about bad dates or recommending clients to each other, and makes it difficult for sex workers to negotiate with clients beforehand.
Two different legal challenges set aside the issue of the morality of sex work and instead approach from the perspective of harm reduction.
Vancouver's Pivot Legal Society has launched a challenge to those sections in the B.C. Supreme Court. Based on interviews with 91 sex workers in the Voices for Dignity project, PIVOT found all but one who addressed the issue demanded the bawdy house law be repealed.
"We overwhelmingly heard women say, 'Build a house, build a house, build a house,'" says Karen Mirsky, a lawyer for Pivot Legal Society. They cited reasons of, "Safety, dignity, the ability to have a shower after meeting with a client. To use a bathroom. To know that there's somebody there, that if they ring a bell, they can get assistance if they need it. The ability to negotiate with somebody semi-privately, not on a street corner, so that everything's clear and everybody agrees to the details of the contract."
Challenge in Ontario Supreme Court, as well
Pivot's challenge is based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, claiming that the prostitution law violates freedom of expression, the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right to equality.
Meanwhile in Ontario, a partnership of madams and lawyers leads another challenge in the Ontario Supreme Court.
Alan Young, an associate professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School, has made many challenges to laws that criminalize consensual acts, including obscenity and marijuana possession. His current challenge to the prostitution laws comes after the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the communications and bawdy house laws in a separate challenge in 1990.
Young says, "Under Section 7 of the Charter, you can argue what's called gross disproportionality, which is the harms created by the law grossly outweigh the benefits of the law. You could not find a phrase that's better tailored to the prostitution argument, because the idea of this prostitution case is simple. The law puts prostitutes into situations that jeopardize their physical and psychological safety. That's the harm of the law. What's the benefit of the law? This is where people just look at you dumbfounded."
Freedom from pimps?
One of the plaintiffs in Young's case is Terri-Jean Bedford, a 22-year-veteran of the sex trade who used to operate a bondage bed and breakfast under the name Madame de Sade. She says current prostitution laws disadvantage sex workers. "They just can't communicate, which again leaves them vulnerable. They have to get in the car, and go around to a dark alley. They don't have any sheets to question the client: what do you like, what don't you like? And then afterwards, where's the cleanup? You can't wash up, you can't sanitize.
"In a house, that's all available to you. There's dignity, there's self-respect. They can have a coffee and talk. In my house, we had a three-page questionnaire, so I could weed out the people I didn't want to deal with, or refer them to people who do like to deal with that type of person."
Bedford says that legitimate houses of prostitution would help get sex workers off the street and away from exploitation. "I think when you give women their freedom, dignity and respect, things change, attitudes change, and their opinions of themselves might change. Before they decide that they're going to work for a pimp, someone that's going to abuse them, I think they might choose working independently in a house."
Wide range of sex work
Though the stereotypical image of the sex worker is the woman in skyscraper heels on a street corner at night, street-level prostitution comprises only a minority of Vancouver's sex trade, anywhere from 8 to 20 per cent, depending on who is asked. The majority is made up of escorts and massage parlour workers, as well as exotic dancers, dominatrices, webcam performers and others who don't do direct sexual contact. These sex workers skirt the edge of the laws regarding bawdy houses and living off avails.
Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH drop-in centre for women working the sex trade in the Downtown Eastside, says "The [Vancouver] police don't use those laws a lot. They use them some, but they're always a threat, so they can be used. I think that many of the arrests are usually complaint driven."
Inspector John Dehaas of the VPD's Diversity & Aboriginal Policing Section says that the enforcement is mostly about location and asking sex workers to move elsewhere in response to complaints. He wouldn't give any position on decriminalization, but he did say that, "Making things illegal sometimes has unintended consequences."
Advocates of decriminalization also allow that it might not provide much help to survival sex workers. "The law really has very little bearing on their daily activities, except for the fact that they are out there, and they can be charged, and they can be arrested for communication, and they can get a criminal record for it. But the law probably isn't front-of-mind in whatever they do. Women who work in the survival sex trade need all kinds of other supports like housing, some financial security, all the social determinants of health that they probably don't have, and some nutrition," says Gibson. Survival-level workers may be unable to find work in legitimate brothels because of mental health or addiction issues.
'Criminalize the men'
Despite the widespread support for decriminalization among sex workers, activists and agencies such as the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, some women's groups are strongly opposed to any decriminalization.
Daisy Kler, a spokesperson for Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, says, "[For] the person with the drug addiction, the harm is the drugs being used. In this case, the harm is being done by a john, or a pimp. So really, if we were to reduce the harm, it would be by what we say, proposing to criminalize the men who are buying and selling the women."
"I think anything that legitimates prostitution as either work or a free choice among women entrenches the harm that's done to women and affects all women's equality."
The Aboriginal Women's Action Network released an e-mail statement that said, "Prostitution is inherently violent," and rejected the harm reduction approach. "Contrary to current media coverage of the issue, the available evidence suggests that it [decriminalization] would in fact be harmful, would expand prostitution and would promote trafficking, and would only serve to make prostitution safer and more profitable for the men who exploit and harm prostituted women and children."
Irene Tsepnopoulos-Elhaimer, executive director of Women Against Violence Against Women, says, "The laws, as they now stand, don't protect women in the mainstream, so we don't believe that the laws for prostitution being changed will protect women in that industry."
"There is no doubt that the winners here are the pimps, the organized crime and, frankly, the state. If we're really looking at ending violence against women, why do we cut funding to women's centres, why do we marginalize women's organizations, rape crisis centres, and why does the federal government put out a budget that mentions women six times and organizations 120 times?"
To license or not?
Decriminalization advocates also stress the importance of social services, of helping women with exit strategies and of preventing violence and exploitation. Alan Young wants the law prohibiting living on the avails of prostitution struck down, so sex workers can hire drivers and bouncers legally, "but that leaves nine other subsections of [Section] 212 to deal with exploitive pimping. I'm sick of people accusing me of bringing a case to create a pimp's paradise."
If the laws are changed to allow brothels, what regulations will apply to them? Bedford and Davis both say that the state should take a hands-off approach, leaving sex workers to build solutions on their own, instead of the kind licensing regime in parts of Nevada. Young says, "A lot of sex trade workers are deathly afraid of regulation, [and] are willing to be criminalized to keep away from what they consider to be the horrible regime in Nevada.... It's a little off-putting that you do three-day shifts and you're not allowed to leave during the three days unless you're chaperoned. The medical testing is overbearing."
In August 2007, Nicole Parisien, a 33-year-old woman, was found murdered near a Kitsilano apartment which she had been using as a massage parlour. The police arrested a suspect less than a week later.
The Parisien murder demonstrates that even indoor sex workers are targets of violence, and it shows that prostitution is not confined to downtown or the Downtown Eastside or the industrial areas of Strathcona. Sex work happens in bourgeois Kitsilano and everywhere else in Vancouver, defying any attempt to confine it or stamp it out. To say "not in my back yard" to a brothel ignores the fact that there probably is an outpost of the sex industry closer to your home than you know.
Talking to people about prostitution is like asking the blind sages about the elephant. One group tells of a business that is unfairly stigmatized and persecuted by archaic, moralistic laws that do more harm than good. Another tells of a meat grinder that acquires and consumes the most vulnerable and powerless women and children for profit, and existing laws are the only thing preventing it from being worse. It's pointless to use the same term, "prostitute," to describe both an independent escort who earns over $10,000 per month and a 13-year-old First Nations girl on the "kiddie stroll." The questions are, does the existing regime harm both of them, and what can be changed to help both of them?
Related Tyee stories
- Ghetto Feminism
An insider's view of protecting sex workers. - How Do We Protect Sex Workers?
Montreal Massacre memorial raises hotly debated question. - 'Survival Sex Work' in BC's North
New Hope centre helps prostitutes in Prince George.
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no1important
12-08-2008
It should be legalised.
It should be legalised. prostitution has been around since humans first crawled out of the swamp in South Central Africa.
legalise it, let the government regulate it and get a bit of the 'cut', allow 'Cat Houses' so it will be safer for all involved and the criminal element should disappear.
The reality is, no matter how many johns/prostitutes get arrested it is here to stay.
deeby
12-08-2008
deeby
This is a complex issue, but I can't help thinking that Rape Relief, Aboriginal Women's Action, and WAVAW are holding fast to views that undermine peoples' right to self-determination, both in terms of economic choices, and in terms of how they use their own bodies. There are sex-trade workers, especially in the Internet age, who insist that they are happy with their career choices, and who would welcome the right to work legally.
Also, the article doesn't mention boys/men. If young men are forced into the sex trade for economic reasons, can we not find ways to make that choice a safe one?
I find Daisy Kler's analogy specious. The harm to drug addicts is not just the drug being used; the attendant diseases and exposure to criminal elements are equally harmful. Those risks are also present in the sex trades, and can be mitigated by harm reduction/legalization measures.
I think the ideology of certain groups is trumping their common-sense....
speedo
12-08-2008
Before I had hookers, pimps
Before I had hookers, pimps and dealers operating within steps of my home, I was all for liberalizing the sex trade. Unfortunately, the close-up reality is very ugly: the prostitutes I see are not working moms with a heart of gold or grad students struggling to make a buck. They are barely-human husks whose interior lives consist of scrabbling for drugs and scrabbling for the money to pay for them. They are not rational agents in a parallel economy that we look down on; they are reduced to doing the single thing some dirtbag might want them for in exchange for the single thing that matters to them.
Enough with the enabling: we must find ways to help these women develop skills that will get them into safer circumstances. We're not doing them any favors allowing them to continue in harmful ones.
AMP
12-08-2008
I disagree
While I empathize with the plight of sex workers, decriminalizing prostitution is not something I want.
Let’s make life a little more fun and social so that real people can come together and eventually have great erotic lives - whatever their persuasion.
It's arguable that decriminalization will only encourage more and more violence for young women and men, and make it more difficult for them to feel protected. Already there is much evidence that young people are doing things that they are hardly conscious of - and taught to think of it as no big deal. They may not know what they feel.
Sorry for the old women that keep getting thrown out of work. Wow, how lucky the young ones. But we are going to have to change a lot more than a few laws if you want to change this. Try basic perceptions. Again, getting back to investing more time in real people relating as equals.
I feel the same way about pot, making it easier for people to smoke a lot of weed may be their right, but they are also a part of my community and they become a boring burden on the rest of us as they become more addicted. Sorry, but too many people I know have been addicted and I see no good that could come out of decriminalizing the situation. We actually have some level of responsibility to ask one another to try to do something meaningful in these extremely bad times for the earth.
Of course, all pot is not wrong, but we've all had the chance to get some! It just makes it harder for folks to get it regularly.
See part 2
AMP
12-08-2008
I disagree part 2
The pressures on young people are already so high to trivialize their sexual experience, that I think this makes it easier. Places that have decriminalized prostitution also offer much fewer opportunities for women to have meaningful work from what I can see. Perhaps Amsterdam excluded. Singapore is dreadful, don't think folks there are happy about it.
I don't really have much sympathy for sex work as a way of life, and hope that the sex industry won't grow.
I have friends who have had to work in the industry. I don't think making it more legal would have made it any less shitty for them. I remember the relief my one 20 year old friend had when she finally got a job at a bookstore. She was so excited. She no longer had to go through flash backs of sexual abuse from childhood after a gross days job giving strangers hand jobs. Many people have not had this experience. She went on to get a PHD at an ivy school in the US. She never remembers those days fondly. If it's someone you know or respec, good times. But otherwise...??? Come on.
It's true that the situation can't stay as it is. But decriminalization is an easy answer to a deeper problem. One of these problems is poverty. Another cultural sexual immaturity and violence.
Sex actually means something - it is a fundamental part of life and people need to learn how to relate with integrity to equals about it.
If you really want to argue that you are an equal with a paying client - ask yourself when was the last time you felt equal to your boss in any other job.
AMP
12-08-2008
part 3
So, I don't really think the sex trade is of much value to culture. And I'd rather see emphasis put on other things, like making life safer and more financially egaliarian. So that more safe people can go and have the erotic loves they want - freely.
I really think the emphasis on keeping older sex workers employed is massively scewing the larger issue for the whole community.
AMP
12-08-2008
heartbreak
You know, after all these years of watching feminism and participating, I find it so heartbreaking that issues like this get center stage. Is anyone paying attention to what is happening to those who can't speak? The vast magority??
What about the vast magority of women who still experience sexual violence?
Maybe decriminalizing child porn would help also. Maybe all those young women will magically not be center stage any more.
These women are so much more powerful than any of the young people in the trade.
The amount of sexual abuse and violence directed at people is as high as ever.
It's the more empowered ones who can speak. And it almost seems like rather than healing these issues, that there is competition going on between age groups. Thanks for the protection and mentorship.
As anyone even thought about this??
It's not the voiceless who should be asked to speak at a time like this. We have the stats. But I guess it makes for a more boring story. Why not try something new? Bring back burlesque, go for a half solution. Tassles on the breasts may not solve the issue, but atleast it's somewhat milder. Pretty funny eh? Marginally thought provoking... We're all comfortable with these ambiguities because we are all mature and have had years to think on this. Let's revamp a whole bunch of 50s photos. At least the women were chubbier then. There's a real solution. It's that simple.
But as my 15 year old friend informed her mother recently: "They've revamped the base system mom..."
It's great that a bunch of empowered women get to have some fun, make cash. That's not what feminism is about. Is it?
We've completely eroded the fabric with which young people can evolve sexually in a consious way, and now folks want to give up and profit. Maybe a co-operative would be a better way also to take the last of the world's oil supply. Heck, why be degraded while doing an alienating job?
This solution is a sell-out, it's saying: well, we can't change this. So, let's make our working conditions a bit better.
It's not going to help everyday people be happy. It's not teaching anyone anything new, or giving women a meaningful voice where they can feel beautiful, safe, and not like commodities.
Sorry to take up so much space, but I've met so many young women who simply will not have speak for themselves and have been through the unlivable. I'm so tired of this "sexual ambiguity" nonsense. There's feeling safe and there isn't. There's being respected and there isn't. There's feeling safe and lovely and then there's giving up and asking for the lowest common denominator.
ME2
12-08-2008
Don't muddy the waters AMD
AMP's rambling discourse re various aspects of our current moral / legal attitudes concerning women's freedom to choose lifestyles hearkens to the age-old rant that "If only we could go back to the values I learned in my childhood, everything would be OK".
If that was true, everything WOULD be OK, but then as now, those newer values conflicted with those of the seniors in THEIR times who fought change, then as now.
The inescapable fact is that to date no-one has devised a set of moral laws that delivers true freedom to the individual. If someone did so, as with the better mouse-trap, the world would beat a path to her/his door.
The major road-block in the path toward the attainment of individual freedoms arises because freedom for us hoi polloi means a lessening of the chokehold exercised on us by the power elites.
Our major religions, which support and are supported by the State, are authoritarian in nature. They hold that the average citizen is incapable of making a moral, altruistic decision on her/his own, being guided otherwise by the curse of "original sin", and constantly inveigled by the Devil sitting on his/her shoulder.
And so the convenient, traditional answer for our supposed predilection for sinning is to abide by our religious laws, the stricter the better. This solution is best seen in some Muslim countries where every action is dictated by Shariah Law, and since everyone must follow the exact same rules, nobody feels singled out.
This works fine just as long as expectations are kept low, but falls apart when people begin to realise things - such as ritualised poverty - don't necessarily have to be that way. The penetration of such Western expectations is what underlies today's clash between Muslim and Christian cultures.
Ever since the Reformation, we have been following a Secular vs Religious path. For example, the Christian position on the current debate re Prostitution and other sexual "crimes" has nothing at all to do with the welfare - physical or psychological - of the individual, but rather concerns the forcible retaining of Christian moral laws that haven't worked in the past any better than they do today.
AMP
12-08-2008
Your missing my point
Rick - This is not an either/or situation. It is possible that something else could be done. What about getting rid of the draft? Has that made it better for the current round of soldiers? There are other options. Yes, it's hard, and we haven't found them yet.
I'm not saying that the current legislation is great. But decriminalization is missing a whole bunch of important points also. See my ideas about youth.
ME2 - This is not nostalgia. I'm neither pining for Nornam Rockwell, nor hoping that some kind Christian will save us all from these horrors. I was a youth worker for young women when I was in university for young women without homes. I have friends who have directly experienced these things. I have personally been in legal brothels.
Will the sex trade continue? Well, there's no reason it will stop.
The thought of women having more control over their destiny gives me a sense of relief of course.
But guess what, we have more sexual freedoms than ever before and it is not helping either. A few examples are the internet, and what passes for legal porn. The voiceless are the ones who have these examples experimented on them. Some of them are sex workers, some are high school students.
I'm a little resentful that people keep also denying the fact that this stuff is also perpetuated as it is further allowed.
Let's not kid ourselves that these isn't a whole other unspoken reality going on.
Furthermore, there is no reason to suggest that women run sex work areas will be any better. There are tons of stories of young women being used and bullied by older ones. Look at the history of Geishas. Women don't really do much better, as recent years have proven. In fact, older women use younger women in business all the time. It's called profiting.
So, did anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with some of these problems? Or am I just a young, naive rambler???
AMP
12-08-2008
Broader Responsibility
I think that sex workers need to take more responsibility for the larger social context in which they are working.
Co-operatives are great. For the rest of the young women out there there will still be no co-operatives, mentorship, or safety.
AMP
12-08-2008
Also, am I the only one
Also, am I the only one being naive??
An all female co-operative where young women won't take business from the older ones? A group of women together, getting a long, not harming one another?
Isn't that also a historically old conundrum when sex and money are involved?
Admit that the situation sucks, try and get out of it. Or, try and help women in kind make something different possible.
A woman made version of deep throat by a film co-operative may not be the answer. Feminist porn is not all that different. And yes, I'm sure some people did have fun, some women.
Shooting bottles in a distance with a hand gun is also a great passtime. The bullets likely won't hit you. I'm sure some women like that too.
deeby
12-08-2008
What are you talking about...?!
AMP, are you suggesting that sex-trade workers shouldn't have the right to create cooperatives or organize for their own safety because they're not acting in solidarity with other abused women?
Or are you suggesting that the younger workers will be victimized by the older ones?
Or are you suggesting that older workers will be victimized by younger ones, who will force them out of the industry?
Sorry, I've lost track of your point?
Dungeness_Crab
12-08-2008
Amp, you made some good points
Unfortunately you lost me when you described cannabis use as an addiction. There's a plethora of scientific evidence disputing that notion.
People can get "addicted" to shopping, food, sex or pretty much anything. Use is not necessarily abuse. That is a function of the mind, aka psychological habit. Cannabis is not physically addictive in the same sense that, say, opiates are. Habituation is a different animal from physical addiction.
I can't help but wonder what other misconceptions you labor under?
Peace, DC
ME2
12-08-2008
deeby.
While her sincerity is unquestionable, I think that her visioning of whom are the victims and who are the victimisers is a little hazy.
AMP
13-08-2008
Pot, Victimizers, Clarification
Hey guys,
Thanks for your response.
ME2- nope, I'm not being hazy here. There are many victims. But the biggest ones are youth. Folks who continue to have these larger social patterns sent downstream. We all have an obligation to help. Victim or not.
Cannabis - well, I was trying to bring up the parrallel fight to legalize cannabis. I just think there are way bigger problems in the world right now then helping folks get blotto with more ease and comfort. I've done it myself!!! But seriously, read the news...
Deeby - I'm suggesting that this is no way to solve a much bigger problem. While our daughters are trying to get through grade 9 biology, all of these things are being sent downstream to them. Believe me, they won't be speaking up. They won't be getting their faces in the paper, then they would no longer be children in the eyes of their fathers, so they keep on with the keeping on. They are sitting there, protecting their parents, while second base becomes head with strangulation. The pressures are enormous. Where did this stuff get started?? It's totally taking this issue out of the larger context. There are many many victims here. I do empathize with these women.
I think the stronger message would be for all of us to stand behind them and help them do something else. Or just to broaden our focus and tactics. Sometimes the argument is that this is one of the oldest trades for women, that it is a viable trade and needs to be done with respect. But it also attests to a deep fragment or violence in our culture.
So, these women are part of a problem. Yes they are victims. But they are also responsible to something greater as we all are. Most young women are bigger victims. They have to get through their days with no bravado, wondering why their last date was so terrifying, sluffing it off... No one has ever stood up for me like this, I can tell you that. And I didn't see it happen for any of the young women I have worked for.
What men learn in these environments, even if it is gentle, even if it is in a co-operative is about commodification and what their money will buy. Just as this is an age old profession, this also remains an age old problem.
I think it is pretty irresponsible to gloss over this.
It works to suppress all of us in looking for a kinder, less violent world.
I know I may sound patronizing... but I'd rather take that risk then forget about all of those young people who simply will not speak out for themselves.
I do back these women, but the intelligent effort used to form a co-op might be better spent on a different theme. It might work out better also.
If you say: well, they won't do that... Maybe this isn't the first place to start to solve a larger problem. When these men walk back out their doors... they do go home somewhere. A place with no mention, and currently a lot less glory.
AMP
13-08-2008
stopping the cycle
If we really want to help, let's look at stopping the cycle rather than perpetuating it.
What are our efforts for young women who may just be starting out on this path?
AMP
13-08-2008
What's really sexist
What's really sexist is pitying these sex workers as though they also can't cause harm.
Sure, they are victims. They are more than that. They are people who's actions matter and affect others.
I bet there are a ton of people out there who feel the same way that I do, and know the facts, but are biting their lip because they don't feel that they have the right to speak. It's just not PC.
I bet men feel especially harnessed on this one.
Well, how about one round for the children? We expect more from them, don't we? We expect more from our own daughers than we are asking from these people.
RickW
13-08-2008
AMP
If legalizing the trade isn't an answer, then the johns should be held to task........
AMP
13-08-2008
Bang on Rick
Yes, I totally agree.
A good friend of mine did some research a few years ago into the protitution in his neighbourhood.
What they discovered was that well off men from out of the city were finding crack addicts and simply paying for their next fix in exchange for prostitution.
He worked together with the cops on this issue.
They did a bust and absolutely none of the men were even from the city. They were all in from their suburban lives. Even the men who were suppossedly to blame weren't the ones.
Crack addiction, and prostitution has been reduced in the area.
AMP
13-08-2008
wish there were more voices on all sides
I feel badly, because I know that I can't really do this issue the justice it deserves.
But atleast I can speak from what I do see and know.
That's an important part of the puzzle also.
We simply must put our heads together much more about this issue.
Everyone's perspective and voice is important because we are all so affected.
The other day, I was eating sushi, and these 4 really cute, well dressed guys were at another table. They didn't really even seem to feel ashamed about talking about their experience with prostitutes. They were joking about how absolutely wigged out and crazed the women were, how trippy it was.
I can't go back to that restaurant.
They somehow don't see that their actions matter either.
We all matter, and we all have a stake in this.
Yes. It's good to be thinking of options. Let's support these women in a way that supports us all.
AMP
13-08-2008
The Sega guide to Foreplay
We put young men in front of electric boxes, where they can have things as fast as they want.
When they grow up they have no talents to show for it, and no charisma with women.
Women don't want to be with them. Perhaps these women or girls have also learned little about how to be.
Finally some of them try prostitution to get some experience. Guess what? They get the wrong experience and become more alienating.
Then we get nostalgic about how prostitution in the past was a teacher to men to be sensitive to women. We begin to argue it is a trade. We get righteous about it.
How about this instead: give them lives where they know girls and women. Where they want to impress them, and where those girls want to impress them too.
Fish-counter
13-08-2008
This whole topic makes me queazy.
Eeeeeeew!
Personally, I can't imagine any guy paying for relief who has a bit of imagination and a box of Kleenex.
As for the women; be real careful out there. Yesterday I saw a young girl hop out of a truck, crying. She was wearing her T-shirt and carrying her pantss in her hand. Was it rape or a trick gone bad? We will never know, because like most of you reading this post, I had no intention of getting involved.
The sex trade is not a victimless crime. It is just as dirty as government-run gambling. Promoting it offers a career option to our own kids. We ought to be doing other things with our time.
Budd Campbell
13-08-2008
THANKS, PETER
My thanks to Peter Tupper for an excellent and informative article. His review of the situation, ranging from survival sex workers to the well paid escort, covers all the bases, or at least all that can be covered in this amount of space.
While it's tiresome to hear of the 19th Century McDworkinite rants of Rape Relief and WAVAW one more time, some readers may need to see this utterly insincere and ridiculous nonsense.
Some people who are rational and who haven't been previously exposed to this dishonest rhetoric will be shocked to learn that some organizations in Vancouver who describe themselves as feminists are vehemently opposed to removing criminal sanctions from prostitution. It's an important piece in the political jig saw, explaining at least some part of the intransigence and political inertia that stands in the way of doing anything that would actually improve the situation.
I do have a question though about the law on "bawdy houses". How does this law apply, or not apply, to massage parlours, where tens of thousands in revenue a day comes in and no massages are performed.
Stump
13-08-2008
Paying for an illusion
I won't profess to know whether the sex trade should or shouldn't be legalized or otherwise legitimized, but I find it odd that it's legal for an actor/actress to simulate sex in a regular movie or engage in sex in a porn movie, but buying/selling the experience itself is illegal. I question a set of laws where filming the act apparently takes away the illegal aspect of paying for sexual activity.
AMP
13-08-2008
McDworkin, John Lennon, Movies...
Hey Stump - I would say that people are considering it art instead. Whether you agree or not...
But it kind of makes me think of gun control in the US. When the founders of the nation wanted everyone to have access to weapons, they didn't necessarily mean machine guns.
I think one of our problems with the idea of freedom of expression over here is that we deny that we have a real impact on people. Basically it also renders our democracies meaningless. A whole bunch of words pretending to have no consequence... just don't threaten our freedom of expression. We need to feel a bit safer and start to examine these ideas.
Budd - On conjuring memories of Andrea Dworkin! Oh dear...and Mc at that! My least favourite restaurant. Now I can empathize more with her.
Well, it's now post 2000. McDworkin faded pretty quickly. She had nothing to sell. She didn't look good. Lennon said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. McDworkin said that all hetero sex was rape. John seemed to recover better publically. Maybe if she would have had his guitar...
The 'tiresome' feminist debate between porn/sex work or no faded from view while the business of porn grew. I'm sitting here tonight with nothing to sell and nothing to gain from this whatsoever. Many women who currently don the noble badge of feminism really don't give a damn about other women or people. They feel like making some coin is enough. Ironically back in the day MEN weren't even suppossed to just make money. It was for their families also. By the way, folks who want to start co-operatives obviously have a good awareness of this, though I do disagree in this instance.
But guess what, the fruit fell in my garden. All the women who cried 'Danger' became immediately unpopular and made no cash. The noble women who proclaimed their right to express were in line with the market at the time and still are. I can't believe they profess much bravery when they clearly have so much more to gain than the other side if they want to do business in the industry.
But there was danger. Now I am the one censoring people, apparently. But if you'd like to read the details of some of what I have seen and heard... there are other voices coming out that no one will ever pay a cent to hear. They are those of our youth.
The men of your generation are now the ones often writing about this, they're doing great work. And not on behalf of women, but often to give men back a little mojo. Consider the new work by Norman Doidge on Brain Plasticity. "The Brain that Changes Itself." He details in one particular chapter the male loss of sexual creativity, he argues that particular loops can change the brain, getting them addicted to unreal fantasies that leave them feeling terrible. He's a psychologist who has worked with countless people.
RickW
13-08-2008
AMP
Women don't want to be with them. Perhaps these women or girls have also learned little about how to be.
A short bit on the sex trade on CBC radio the other day, part of which was an informal poll taken of 20-something guys, and the concesus was they could hardly wait for cloning to take off, so Pam Anderson could be cloned, and get rid of all the "nasty chicks" (their words, not mine). You are being charitable when you say "when they grow up". They don't.
Further to the notion of going after the johns, that would (sadly) be akin to going after drug USERS (and here I refer to middle America), instead of the present practice of pretending to go after some down-and-out Peruvian subsistance farmers, trying to stay alive with a patch of coca plantings, the only sure money makers.
The only reason for the pretense of the War on Drugs is to ensure that prices stay high. And the only reason for keeping the sex trade illegal is to ensure that costs stay low and profits remain high.
Now in a just world, the johns would face an automatic "Bobbit-ization".......
AMP
13-08-2008
thanks rick...
Hi Rick,
Thanks for your analysis on the drug trade. I'd like to admit that I'm not up to date on it. I have, however, travelled enough to see that where pot is completely permissable, I'm surrounded by potheads who seem to be wasting their lives from my worldview! Or, addicts.
I have a lot of great men in my life, as well as women. I have two younger brothers and tend to see men as easily victimized and drawn into cycles as women.
... our future of Pamela Anderson martians... I'm lucky to very rarely meet these men. Not sure what Bobbit-ization is!
They unleash this stuff however onto sex workers. These women often suffer the brunt of this, and then it ripples back out into society.
Not from the perspective of penalization, but of simple addictions... don't we tell folks if we feel that they are in an abusive cycle - regardless of their role?
AMP
13-08-2008
Okay, of course I've been
Okay, of course I've been afflicted also by scary guys. I've had the fortune of being protected somewhat, but have mostly seen other's and what they have suffered.
Maybe this stuff won't change...
again, no one has ventured on my original question of youth...
I've seen what has been done to women of my generation, and gotten away relatively unscathed...
I have a duty to speak up, but I'm feeling kind of queasy myself.
Stump
13-08-2008
Castration
Ridiculous. Torture and dismemberment for the terrible crime of paying for sex?
If (a big if to be sure) prostitution were fully legalized, I doubt it would become a hot career choice. However, it would at least recognize that people (men and women both) from all walks of life are willing to trade money or material goods for sexual favours and take away the social stigma of the profession that is the seed of all the harmful side-effects.
Whether it suits our personal morality or not, there's nothing inherently wrong with trading the use of your body and brain for money. Construction labourers do it all the time. So do bike couriers, pro athletes, etc, etc. Pretending sex is always some sacred act is naive. It can be... but it's not a given. Sometimes women just want a roll in the hay... and the man to go away. too. Again, not always, but it does happen. It's just rarely a monetized transaction.
So, putting all the ills of prostitution at the feet of men is to be wilfully ignorant. We wouldn't have given the word 'Madame' a whole new meaning if there weren't enough people to wear the label.
It's obvious that the sex trade won't go away. Mitigating the harm of forcing it underground is the only sensible option... if we are to put practicality ahead of morality. I'm sure (as with many shitty jobs) it is demeaning, gross, and repellent (to sleep with someone for money), but we can find ways to make it much less dangerous. If we are truly concerned about the women involved IMO, that would be the first priority and whether or not it's a career choice we would wish for our children wouldn't be a consideration at all.
AMP
13-08-2008
Well, true to form to my
Well, true to form to my experience, the only younger people that got mentioned all day were immediately discarded. No one seems to no what to say, easier not to consider it.
This is not about the sacred, but it is about something more. There's a lot more to construction - make sure you make a good house for example. People will live there.
If we don't see a broader analysis placed on these issues - this WILL be all that is possible, or something equally bad.
This is just a theory you are touting. Give me something more.
As usual, the most silent stay that way.
Stump
13-08-2008
building houses
It takes more brains to be a sex trade worker than to wheelbarrow concrete. I've done the latter and the only skills required were obedience, strength, and enough coordination not to spill the load.
What are the larger issues? Life is unfair? People exploit each other? Children are abused? All terrible things, but they can't be legislated into extinction.