On Dec. 6, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act received royal assent. This event was noteworthy for two reasons: It meant that the prostitution laws overturned by the Supreme Court in the Bedford case had been replaced, and they’d been replaced on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
To Conservatives, this probably seemed like a pretty slick move. After all, they’ve been selling the new legislation as the best way to protect women who are abused and made vulnerable by prostitution. What could be a better symbol than making this bill into law on the very day Canadians have set aside to support an end to violence against women?
The only problem is that sex workers – you know, the people actually affected by this new law – say that this legislation will just go back to making sex work dangerous for the people who do it. For the government to grant royal assent to this bill on December 6 was an imperious dismissal of those genuine concerns for the safety of everyone who does sex work.
There are basically two schools of thought on resolving the issues surrounding sex work. The first sees the sale of sex as something that’s necessarily exploitative: Because it normally involves women selling sex to men, sex work necessarily promotes the commodification of female bodies. Because it’s often an option of last resort for vulnerable people, sex work is always open to abuse. Because it’s often risky, sex work should be banned in all circumstances.
One can probably tell, just from the name of the Act, that this is the reasoning the government has used to justify its legislation. This new legislation positions all sex workers as victims, whether actual or potential; it positions anyone who purchases or enables the purchase of sex as an exploitative misogynist.
While such a black-and-white approach is appealing, it’s also unrealistic. It would be great if everyone stopped seeing women’s bodies as commodities. It would be great if no one was ever so restrained by their circumstances that they felt sex work was their only option.
But this law doesn’t address the underlying causes of sex trafficking and exploitation. It doesn’t alleviate financial desperation or provide access to treatment for drug addiction or mental illness. It doesn’t fund services that can help people escape from pimps or abusive partners who coerce them into sex work. Instead, the law plasters over the effects of an unstable social foundation – and then provides vulnerable people with no other options when the cracks in that foundation start to show.
This law also fails to recognize the people who choose sex work for themselves. Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott – the three claimants in the Bedford case – didn’t take that case to the Supreme Court because pimps forced them into it, or because they had no other choice. They did it because, in one form or another, they genuinely want sex work to be a safe option for the people who want to do it.
Those three women aren’t the only people for whom sex work is a consensual choice. There is no comparison between the sort of sex trafficking the government is targeting and the consensual sex work that some people do freely and enthusiastically. Treating them both the same is a recipe for terrible policy.
The second school of thought on sex work is more pragmatic. It recognizes that sometimes sex work is exploitative, and sometimes it isn’t; sometimes it’s a choice, but often it’s not. Even when people would rather not be doing sex work, they might not have an easy or immediate way out. And so this school of thought sees a different solution: Rather than protecting women (and other sex workers) by cracking down on the sale of sex in the vague hope that someday prostitution will no longer exist, we should make sex work safer right now — while giving people the means to get out if that’s what they want.
Had the government actually made an effort to listen to sex workers and their advocates, they might have found evidence pointing them towards a different approach. They failed to adequately consult with sex workers and their organizations, preferring instead to listen to police forces, religious groups and regressive moralists like REAL Women of Canada.
The Supreme Court ultimately found in the Bedford decision that Canada’s previous prostitution laws put sex workers in danger by making it difficult or illegal to screen clients, to create safe spaces in which to work, and to hire people to protect them.
The Conservatives have argued that the new law makes women safer (though they neglect to mention sex workers of any other gender). But most of the changes in this law are pure moralizing, and will put sex workers at greater risk. By prohibiting all advertising of sexual services, sex workers who want to screen clients before meeting them have no real way to do that. By making it illegal to communicate in any public place to buy or sell sex, vulnerable street-based sex workers have to rush their initial contacts, giving them less time to screen clients or otherwise protect themselves. By continuing to criminalize sex workers, especially street-based sex workers, this law will keep them from reporting abuse to the police. The aspects of the old legislation that put sex workers’ lives at risk are still present in the new law.
This Act doesn’t protect women. It protects the Conservatives’ electoral bottom line, at the expense of women and of anyone else who does sex work. Giving this law royal assent on the day we set aside to recognize and fight against violence against women makes a mockery of that cause. Sex workers deserve real safety – not cheap campaign rhetoric.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Devon Black
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