Prostitution has been called the oldest profession, and the debates around whether it should be de-criminalized or prohibited have raged across the world. Sex work, legal or not, carries enormous stigma, and it is often misunderstood or judged by the status quo. It is, however, present across the globe: from developing countries to our very own streets. Sex work also has a broad definition and tends to include street sex workers, erotic dancers, and webcam workers.The Peak explores the differences and similarities of prostitution in the east and in the west in a two-part series on sex work.
Haven’t read part 1 yet? Do it now: http://159.203.128.194/2012/10/sex-work-east-and-west-cambodias-sex-workers/
Last year, Sheri Kiselbach, a former sex trade worker, won a Naked Truth Adult Entertainment Award for her sex worker advocacy. “I got into sex work when I was about 20. At the time, it was definitely a choice of mine . . . I stopped working 10 years ago. I had this deep, foreboding, intuitive feeling that if I didn’t stop, something dreadful and horrific was going to happen to me . . . I felt I had played out all my odds,” she described in her speech. “You see, for many years, I had the most ruthless, cunning, cruel, cold, and manipulative pimp . . . this pimp totally enslaved me, this pimp was absolutely my master. This pimp was heroin.”
We have a certain idea about what a sex worker and their life looks like. We often imagine a woman who waits on the corner for a customer and is kept in a violent relationship with her pimp. This is the image we have been fed by years of media portrayal of sex workers. This by no means represents all, or even most, sex workers. “I’m a former sex worker, and all the circumstances of my doing sex work were very tied up with drug use,” says Kerry Porth the former executive director for PACE (Providing Alternatives, Counselling & Education), and Pivot board member. “My choices were certainly limited at the time that I got into sex work, but I certainly wasn’t exploited by anyone, unless you can prosecute heroin for exploitation.” She goes on to explain that the instances of pimping in Canada are grossly exaggerated. It certainly does happen, but a lot of female sex workers are in intimate relationships with a male partner that will look out for them and spot them. Her own story involved a man she was living with while she was in the sex trade. “He was useful to have around in case anything happened,” she explains. “But he definitely, definitely wasn’t my pimp. It’s just not that kind of relationship.”
What does sex work really encompass? The first connection that people make is that of streetwalkers, when in fact, sex work includes erotic dancers, webcam workers, and many other trades. If the favour exchanged for money is sexual in its nature, then it can fall under the category of sex work. Mary Shearman is currently completing her PhD in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at SFU. Her research focuses on one of Vancouver’s renowned strip clubs, The Penthouse. “Some of the dancers that I interviewed saw a very clear distinction between what they did and exchanging sex for money,” says Shearman. “There’s a stereotype about how strippers might as well be prostitutes essentially, but when it comes right down to it, when somebody’s willing to take off their clothes for money, they’ve got a pretty strict boundary there.” Erotic dancing has a long history in Vancouver, and is closely related to sex work on the streets. The Penthouse club was widely believed for many years to facilitate prostitution and to have links to the Mafia — mainly because of its Italian-Canadian owners. After a police raid in 1975, The Penthouse was closed for three years while the owners, the Filippones, were on trial. Shearman cited SFU criminologist Dr. John Lowman’s idea that this closure of The Penthouse marked the beginning of the trend in Vancouver to displace women and push them into areas that are less safe to work in. This is possibly one of the factors that played into the phenomenon of missing and murdered women in Vancouver. After The Penthouse closed, the women that had been dancing there, in a relatively safe and quasi-legal setting, were now forced to work in the West End. Their work, however, was not welcomed in the neighbourhood, which its inhabitants made perfectly clear by forming a group called CROWE (Concerned Residents of the West End). One of their initiatives was their “Shame the Johns” campaign, which was so successful that they managed to push the women into the Mount Pleasant area. This move dispersed and displaced these women even further, shifting them into the Downtown Eastside. To this day, displacement is ongoing. “What happens when they close all the strip joints is that women end up doing prostitution,” says Porth. “They may not want to, they certainly may not be prepared to do it, or have the knowledge to do it.”
“In terms of the Downtown Eastside, what you’re looking at is survival sex work,” says Shearman. “It’s basic fulfilling of needs, and all you’re thinking about is what your needs are.” Many times, sex workers — both dancers and those working the streets — see this option as being the fastest way to get money. “We live in a world where this option is going to get you what you need faster, as opposed to any social welfare system or any other type of relatively easy access to employment,” adds Shearman. Addiction is rampant in the Downtown Eastside, and many sex workers, including Porth and Kiselbach, cite substance dependence as being the driving force behind their initiation into sex work. Addiction and marginalization facilitate sex work in the Downtown Eastside, forming vicious cycles that are difficult to end. “There’s such a lack of relevant addiction services in this province,” says Porth. “It’s tragic that addicts that want to get out can’t get out.”
Porth recalls waiting 19 days to get a spot in detox. The wait was so long that Porth overdosed before she got her spot. Luckily, she survived, but while she was getting treatment, she began experiencing flashbacks related to her PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Instead of dealing with the childhood issues that were the root of her disorder, the centre threatened to kick her out. “Addiction services don’t always take women’s histories of trauma into consideration,” she says. Furthermore, once recovery begins in the community, the most widely accepted program is the twelve-step model. “The first step is admitting powerlessness. Well, women are already disempowered,” she explains. “It’s tough for women going into twelve-step programs, because men are able to get up and talk about breaking into cars or robbing people to support their habit, but god help you if you get up there and say you used to do sex work to support a habit, because you’re going to have a whole bunch of men interested in you at the end of the meeting.” Both Shearman and Porth discuss the
particular impact that this stigmatization has on Aboriginal women, already a marginalized group. “There are certainly a disproportionate number of Aboriginal women in the Downtown Eastside,” says Porth. “That’s the legacy of colonialism and residential schools.” There is another factor that addiction services often do not take into consideration: though it doesn’t specify a Christian god, the twelve-step model is inherently Christian in its approach — it focuses on sin and redemption — something that is certainly not the right approach for a group that has been the victim of many brutal attempts at assimilation.
One of the biggest barriers in helping and empowering sex workers is the stigma that constantly hangs around that label. Shearman talks of one of her friends, an active worker in the industry, and how she cannot bear to meet her neighbours’ eyes. “When you’re a sex worker, it’s really difficult to make eye contact with your neighbours, because you’re wondering what they’re thinking,” she explains. “You don’t want to see the judgment look. So, reducing stigma is huge.” Porth also mentions that many former sex workers do not have any formal education or employment outside of the industry, and that many have criminal recordsdue to their line of work, which inhibits them from getting jobs to replace their work. “I don’t think that sex work is inherently harmful. I think that what happens is that it’s criminalized, it’s stigmatized, and sex workers are universally shunned and shamed by the mainstream status quo,” says Porth. “When you do that, you invite predators to come down and prey on those women because you relegated those women as being less than human and available to be targeted.” Porth goes on to talk about the numerous cases where sex workers have attempted to report violence to the police, only to have them respond unsympathetically, telling them they got what they deserved because of their choice of profession. The stigma is bigger than just a social discomfort; it makes it almost impossible for sex workers to do their jobs safely. “Sex workers are never invited to the table in policy discussions or discussions about strategies,” says Porth. “We have all kinds of ideas about how to make our work safer, if only somebody would actually listen to us. But we’re constantly viewed as damaged children. You’ll hear the phrase ‘women and children,’ but women are not children. They’re adults. And we need to unpack that.”
No matter what the laws, prostitution and sex work are not going anywhere. “In my perfect world, I would only want to see women doing sex work when they’re not being driven by things like poverty and addiction, and mental health issues,” says Porth. “De-criminalization is certainly not going to be the answer to all the problems associated with sex work, but it’s an incredibly important first step to help reduce the stigma attached to sex work, and to allow sex workers to report violence to the police and to have the full protection of the law.”
In Canada, prostitution itself is legal, but most activities that are necessary to practice sex work are not. First of all, the operation of “common bawdy-houses” was illegal until recently, which means that sex workers could not offer their services anywhere indoors (such as a brothel, or even their own home). An indoor setting provides more safety measures and control than the current street work that many sex workers are forced to resort to, so this limitation had a huge impact on the safety of sex work. Furthermore, sex workers are not allowed to communicate in public places about anything that is related to prostitution, which includes communicating with one another, and discussing things like pricing with potential clients. The result of this is that sex workers are more likely to jump into a car without having had communication with the potential client, which is a dangerous situation indeed. “Most sex workers have developed a really good intuition and intuitive skills; if you’ve got a ‘no feeling,’ you don’t go,” says Shearman. “But again, you’ve got to balance that with your hunger, with when your rent’s due, and all this other stuff. It’s easy to ignore, which is why people end up in violent situations.” Lastly, it is illegal to “live on the avails of prostitution;” this law is meant to protect sex workers from pimps, but more often than not, it ends up hurting the sex workers and their loved ones. Sex workers often have dependents (such as elderly parents or children that are no longer minors) that can get charged with living on the avails of prostitution, simply because they are being supported by the money coming from sex work.
These laws have made it difficult for sex workers to do their job safely, and it is for this reason that a strong movement has risen to de-criminalize prostitution — that is, make all acts related to sex work legal. On March 26, in what has been called the Bedford Decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal ended a year-long deliberation on several points relating to prostitution. The Court struck down the bawdy-house provisions, deeming them unconstitutional, as they infringe upon sex workers’ safety. The decision also addressed that living on the avails of prostitution should be amended to apply only to those who do so “in circumstances of exploitation,” which would make it more specific to cases of pimping. These are viewed as huge successes for the sex work industry; however the decisions were not entirely cause for celebration. The Court has upheld the ban on soliciting for the purpose of selling sex, meaning that sex workers are still not allowed to communicate about their work. The federal government has since appealed this ruling and taken the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2007, Kiselbach and Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV), filed a constitutional challenge to Canada’s prostitution laws, claiming that the basic safety of sex workers is at stake in the face of these laws. In September of this year — five years after the initial challenge — the Supreme Court of Canada finally granted Kiselbach and SWUAV the right to challenge the laws.
These cases are the beginnings of a mainstream fight for de-criminalization of prostitution. These cases are making headlines and bringing sex workers closer to safety, one legal decision at a time. “[De-criminalization] is a first step towards reducing stigma. Sex work in its
quasi-legal state is pushing women on the street into more and more isolated areas,” says Shearman. “If somebody finds out what [the sex worker] does and threatens to tell their landlord, they can lose their housing, and what bears under de-criminalization, a lot of that stuff won’t happen.” But even Shearman, who is a strong advocate for de-criminalization notes that it is not a perfect system. “I’m not advocating for youth to participate in sex work, but there are still youth workers who are going to be criminalized, so what happens to them in that mix?” she notes. “So I think that de-criminalization in itself is definitely not perfect. But I do think that it will help with stigma.” Porth was also quick to bring up that minors engaging in sex work would probably fall through the cracks, even if prostitution were to be de-criminalized. “There are kids that run away from home because they’re gender non-conforming or they come from an abusive home. We don’t have really great services to look after those kids, so they end up selling sex for a roof over their head, or for food,” she explains. “The answer to those kids is to put them in jail, which is not very helpful either.”
The main argument of abolitionists — those who believe that prostitution should be entirely prohibited or abolished completely — is that sex work is inherently exploitative to those that engage in it; according to this view, those that engage in sex work are automatically victims simply due to the nature of the work. One of the biggest local advocates for this approach is Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, whose members strongly believe that sex work in any form is inherently violent and demeaning towards women. “Our feminist plan is to identify prostitution and trafficking as violence against women. Obviously then, those harmed by prostitution and trafficking should not be criminalized. If we understand that they are coping with very limited choices and they are victims of violence they deserve to get support and help in the form of exit services and transitional assistance to escape this growing form of slavery,” reads a 2008 statement on their website, written by collective member Lee Lakeman. “Today, there are those who want to tolerate prostitution or sexual slavery by de-criminalizing the sex industry, not just those prostituted. They think they can tame it or soften its horrors with local health regulations.” Rape Relief had members in The Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution, which was actively resistant to the Bedford case. Porth, however, strongly argues against this approach. “This idea of inherent exploitativeness presupposes that every sex buyer is a man, which they’re not; it presupposes that every sex-seller is a women, which they’re not. It also presupposes that every client of a sex worker is a violent, exploitative pervert, which they’re just not,” says Porth. “In order to believe in harm reduction, you have to give up this utopian view that’s it’s not going to exist, whether it’s drug use, whether it’s sex work.”
Sex work is not specific to any specific time period or place; the circumstances leading to this industry do not discriminate based on the country’s GDP. Many see it as unacceptable, as demeaning or degrading. “Degrading? Is it any more degrading than cleaning toilets?” exclaims Porth. “We just need to get over the moralizing and the fact that it’s about sex, and just treat it like work.”
