Through the hearings and beyond we heard a few opinions that criminalizing the men—the buyers and the johns—will put women in more danger, and Françoise, based on your Twitter last night, I am worried that you accept these opinions. Those who made this claim called for a harm reduction approach via complete decriminalization or legalization of prostitution, and I'm using quotation marks when I'm saying “harm reduction”, because these methods will not reduce the harm, on the contrary.
We heard that women will be safe if they can work indoors and my allies in the Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution made a clear argument about men attacking women in private behind closed doors. Men control women privately behind closed doors, and promoting indoor prostitution as a safety method is false. It will protect the pimps and the johns, not the women. We heard that if we criminalize the johns, “the screening”—again, in quotation marks—will be rushed. Women will not be able to use their intuition to decide whether or not the john is dangerous.
We reject the idea of privatization of women's safety and security, and we don't believe it will work in reality. We know from our front-line work that it's impossible to know who is a dangerous man. You cannot tell a rapist, a pedophile, or a wife beater by his look or by his manners in public.
A “sex workers” advocate—again, l'm using quotation marks—told us yesterday, as a way to assure us, that we need not to fear from the johns since they are ordinary men who come from all walks of life. This is not reassuring at all. Rapists and wife beaters, the father who rapes his daughter, and the boss who harasses his female worker, are all ordinary men from all walks of life, often professional and educated, as someone used those phrases yesterday. I repeat my ally's statement that the cause of the harm in prostitution is the men. Therefore, it's illogical that, in an attempt to reduce the harm, we encourage these very same men to have a paid access and control over women's bodies.
In prostitution, as in rape, wife battering, sexual harassment, and incest, we need laws that will deter and will hold men accountable for their sexist attacks on women. As in other forms of male violence against women, we expect the state—we demand that the Canadian state—will protect women from men's violence.