Good afternoon.
I'm here representing REED, Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity, a faith-rooted women's equality-seeking organization that offers support to women in prostitution, provides public education, and addresses the root causes of sexual exploitation.
Over the last nine years we have worked with women who have been trafficked into the prostitution market in Vancouver from countries such as China, Mexico, Indonesia, Peru, and others. We have also supported Canadian women prostituting indoors and outdoors and those in both high-track and low-track prostitution.
It is from the perspective of a front-line anti-violence worker that I am speaking this afternoon.
Bill C-36 is a progressive, historic piece of legislation that finally dares to criminalize the source of harm in prostitution, the johns, and largely decriminalizes those being exploited.
The bill contains many assertions to be applauded. The preamble to the bill clearly affirms the inherent violence of prostitution, the social harm caused by the commodification of women's bodies, the disproportionate impact of prostitution on women and girls, and the fact that the demand for paid sex fuels the prostitution market.
Buyers will face criminal sanctions, the financial benefit from the prostitution of others is illegal, and you have pledged funds to help women exit prostitution. We affirm the steps you have taken to frame prostitution as a form of violence against women, and are encouraged that you do not accept prostitution as inevitable. Bravo.
At the same time we are concerned that section 213 of the Criminal Code, which allows for the continued criminalization of women selling sex, undercuts the intent of the bill. While selling sex is otherwise decriminalized throughout Bill C-36, it is considered illegal if the solicitation happens anywhere in public near where one can reasonably expect to find persons under 18.
We at REED are concerned that section 213 allows broad loopholes through which prostituted women can be criminalized and subject to further vulnerabilities, undercutting the stated intent of the bill.
We are in support of Bill C-36, but recommend that section 213 be removed.
I want to talk just a little bit about why we affirm the bill, and then I want to talk about why we're concerned about section 213.
First, why we support asymmetrical criminalization. Prostitution is a form of violence against women. Women should not be penalized for their own exploitation; rather, those perpetrating and benefiting from it should be criminalized. Prostitution is the sexualized subordination of women and hinders women's equality.
In crass economic terms, the sex industry operates as a market based on supply and demand. There is a demand for paid sex and exploiting the vulnerability of women and girls creates the supply for this market. Women and girls suffering from racial discrimination, the effects of residential schools and colonization, poverty, sexual assault as children, and other, and developmental issues such as fetal alcohol syndrome, are coerced into being sold to men for sex.
Pimps are shrewd businessmen. Make no mistake, they know exactly who to target and how to approach them. From what we know from supporting women at REED, and from studies done as well, the overwhelming majority of women are recruited into prostitution at below the age of 18. We see it all the time. Most often their entry into prostitution was preceded by repeated trauma.
According to research by Susan Nadon and others in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence and other academic studies, and the first-hand accounts of women, the majority of prostituted women report a history of childhood sexual abuse. As feminist writer, Andrea Dworkin, has said that “incest is boot camp” for prostitution. Childhood sexual abuse damages a child's sense of self, normalizes forced sexual contact, and teaches them that their bodies do not belong to them, thus reducing their threshold to seeing themselves as sellable.
Whether it's high track or low track, in a brothel or on the street, or perhaps in pornography that someone might view from the privacy of their own home, women in prostitution are seen as body parts. Their feelings and person do not matter.
The essence of Bill C-36 goes a long way to recovering the humanity and dignity of women, and of men. Frankly, I think the humanity and dignity of men is diminished when society condones their behaviour by not holding them accountable for violence against women. We need to expect more for men and more from men. I invite you to join me in this.
REED works throughout metro Vancouver, but certainly in the downtown east side it is not uncommon to see men in minivans on their way to work at 8 o'clock in the morning, sometimes with a child's car seat in the back, cruising the alleyways on the way to work, looking for a quick $5-to-$10 blow job from a severely sick and addicted woman. The power differential is horrific, but the sense of inequality and male entitlement is the paradigm of prostitution, even though it doesn't always present itself in such stark visible contrasts as this interaction does.
Research has focused a great deal on women in prostitution, who they are, what happens to them, and how they might recover from the trauma. All of these are critical questions.
But who are the men buying the bodies of women to have sex in or on, and what do we know about them, particularly their attitudes toward women? How do they feel about women? We have two decent sources of information: the handful of academic studies done on men who buy sex, but also what they themselves report on prostitution review forums online—direct first-hand data. For those of you who don't know, these are online forums where men discuss and review the women they have bought in prostitution.
Unfortunately, I am unable to tell you in this professional setting what most of them say, as it is degrading and violent, which is telling in itself. However, I will share with you one snippet that I read on a forum yesterday. Don't worry; it's okay to say on TV. One man gave a consumer report of a woman by saying this: “You can make her your sex toy or whatever you want, if you can crack her”.
Roughly 99% of research in the field has been done on prostitutes, and 1% has been done on johns, yet buying sex is so pervasive. In a rigorous empirical study done in Boston, in 2011, the research team reported that they had a shockingly difficult time locating men who really didn't buy women. The use of pornography, phone sex, lap dances and other services has become so widespread that the researchers were forced to loosen their definition in order to get a control group of a hundred people. They finally had to settle on the definition of non-sex buyers as the following: “men who have not been to a strip club more than two times in the past year, have not purchased a lap dance, have not used pornography more than one time in the last month, and have not purchased phone sex or prostituted women”.
What did they find out? Sex buyers were nearly eight times as likely as non-sex buyers to say they would rape a woman if they could get away with it.
This is also echoed in a solid 2009 study published by Eaves, in London, who found that the more accepting sex buyers were of prostitution, the more likely they were to also accept cultural myths about rape, such as, “women say no but they really mean yes”, and “a woman who dresses provocatively is being asked to be raped”.
Sex buyers, in the Boston study, used significantly more pornography than non-sex buyers, and three-quarters of them said they received their sex education from pornography. Over time, as a result of their prostitution use, sex buyers reported that their sexual preferences changed and they sought more sado-masochistic and degrading acts.
Sex buyers often prefer the licence that they feel they have with prostituted women. I quote: “You are the boss—the total boss”, said one john. “Even us normal guys, we want to say something and have it done, no questions asked. No, I don't feel like it. No, I'm tired. Unquestionable obedience. I mean, that's powerful. Power is like a drug.”
Sex buyers repeatedly commented that they liked the power relationship in prostitution. One of the women who we have supported at REED was told by her pimp to act like she spoke less English than she did so she would increase the power differential in the act, and that men wanted to buy women who were more vulnerable.
They're seldom lonely, and the majority are married or in a committed relationship. Many johns view their payment as giving them unfettered permission to degrade and assault women. One reported, “You can find a ho for any type of need—slapping, choking, aggressive sex—beyond what your girlfriend will do.” This is direct data from the johns themselves.