Thank you, Laura.
I was involved in sex work for 30 years in many venues of the industry. I was not sexually abused as a child. I was not exploited. I was an adult who chose to enter the industry. The laws did not protect me when I reported numerous violent crimes, including attempted murder. Instead, I was treated with contempt, ridiculed, discounted, and dismissed. I was treated as a criminal, as though I deserved to be treated this way.
Regrettably nothing much has changed in protecting sex workers or upholding their criminal justice rights. In fact this shocking new bill stuns and horrifies me. It lacks insight, totally disregards evidence-based research, and is a deliberate, unrealistic attempt to abolish prostitution in this country.
I believe the root of this decision is how the government views prostitution. These discriminatory views, moral values, and judgments discredit sex workers. It marks us as other, as being in some very significant way not like us. It assumes we are involved in the industry because of a history of mental illness or abuse, that we need to be rescued or fixed somehow. It views us as helpless victims, that sex work is so degrading no one would ever choose to do it, that we are objectified and reduced to a commodity bought and sold on the market.
A sex worker certainly isn't the only one who is made into a commodity. All of us are objectified under capitalism into commodities for sale on the market that sells us. A person has the right to sell their sexual services just as much as they have the right to sell their brains to a law firm when they work as a lawyer, or to sell their creative work to a museum when they work as an artist, or to sell their image to a photographer when they work as a model.
It assumes we are amoral without common decency, that we are social nuisances, that we are damaged or dirty, that we are home wreckers, that we are coerced and exploited, that we are too dim-witted to know what is good for us, that we are unqualified or uneducated and not capable of doing any other work, that no decent Canadian would engage in such work, and that only a desperate person would stoop to sex work, that it is shameful and degrading work.
This bill reinforces this hophobia, this systemic marginalization, and the idea that prostitution is a social ill and a form of men's violence against women. It will prevent us from accessing important health, social, or police services for fear of judgment or punishment if our occupation is discovered. This narrow preconception discriminates against and creates naive, insulting stereotypes of those who do sex work. This is hypocrisy at its finest.
Under the guise of protecting women and children in this country, this new bill is irrational and undermines our constitutional rights. It will create a multitude of harms. The broad statement that all prostitution is always and by definition abusive and exploitive is not based in reality. You are ignoring the experiences of thousands of human beings.
The fact is, sex work is work, an activity that generates income. Sex work is not just about sex. Stigma for all sex workers must be recognized as a major contributing factor, not only the negative emotional impacts and accessibility issues, but also as a destructive factor that comes down to life and death.
If you are so afraid of being outed and do not seek police involvement as an option when your life is in danger, then it is stigma—not sex work—that kills. There is also an assumption that all clients who frequent sex workers are bad and should be penalized, that they are perverted consumers of a degrading practice. This view is disjointed and disconnected beyond belief and is fundamentally inaccurate.
Men who frequent sex workers are ordinary men who come from all walks of life. A john, or a client, is different from a predator and there needs to be a distinction here. A predator looks at people's vulnerabilities and ruthlessly exploits others. They may present themselves as clients, but their intention is to inflict harm, not to purchase a service. They may seek out sex workers specifically, as the criminalization of sex work reflects and reinforces that laws do not protect us.
This bill prevents sex workers from having a relationship with a pimp, without knowing what a particular relationship entails or if the relationship is agreeable to both parties. Usually a pimp is portrayed by the media as an evil person or a slick fellow who cons young girls and grown women into selling their bodies and giving them all their money, and that society must protect the poor, mentally defective sex worker from any relationship in which the other person benefits financially from commercial sexual activities. This concept is so outrageous it is offensive, but, unfortunately, it is the prevailing view of most of society, of some feminists, and other individuals who wish to rescue sex workers from the clutches of pimps.
Would anyone ever consider interfering in the relationships of the many actresses who get involved with totally unsuitable partners? How should society prevent women from selecting potentially abusive husbands? Should there be some sort of governmental agency to sort out who, for its female citizens, would be suitable as boyfriends, husbands, and significant others, to prevent unsuitable and potentially dangerous relationships?
Clearly, that goes well beyond what a government ought to do regarding the private and personal relationships of its citizens. Why, then, does this government feel it is its duty to stop a sex worker from having a relationship with someone simply because it finds the concept of a pimp to be morally repugnant? Many sex workers freely make a decision for themselves and do rely on their pimp to protect them from harm.
The problem here—