I think it's a very short-sighted vision. When we look at it from a very, very micro lens, to some people it might make sense: “She says she wants to sell sex, and who are we to infringe upon personal freedoms?” But we need to start looking at the collective good, and especially the collective good of womanhood here in Canada. Again, we know that many of us are being subjugated to male depravity, essentially.
It's very, very hard. It's very defeating. I think we need to take the zoom-out perspective and recognize the activity for what it is, which is coercive sexual access. It is not work. We have to look at where the lines between agency and submission exist. I really don't think many of us are operating with a lot of agency. I know I wasn't. Sure, I didn't have a gun put to my head. I didn't have a pimp or a trafficker. But poverty was my pimp. That's the case for so many women. Because we are so reliant on that, because materially we are subjugated in Canadian society, we lean with our abusers. We side with our abusers. We smile in the face of our abusers as they abuse us, because we need that money. It's not fair to do to women.
So yes, this is a huge problem. It is a multi-faceted problem. We need to tackle it from all different angles. There is so much work to be done. We can't just abandon women, put a green light on exploitation, and think that the problem will somehow solve itself. It won't.