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gugu

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In the USA

How the Government and the Christian Lobby Quash Real Research on Sex Workers

The government only allocates funds to researchers that mistakenly conflate sex work with sex trafficking. As an academic and a sex worker, Juniper Fitzgerald knows just how warped this thinking is.

JUNIPER FITZGERALD JUN 15, 2015

http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-l...an-lobby-quashes-real-research-on-sex-workers

For the past decade, and in numerous capacities, I've toiled as a sex worker. I've peddled my trade in bars and hotel rooms, on the sets of feminist pornos, and in shady peep shows. I also work in academia—arguably, an equally shady enterprise. If there's one notable, cultural shift that has impacted both my occupations over the past 10 years, it's the increased focus on—indeed, an obsession with—sex trafficking. And this isn’t the first time in recent history that cultural “do-gooders” have turned their attentions to the wiliest and most unsavory among us—The Whore.

As documented by historian Judith Walkowitz—who has researched 19th-century contestations over sexuality for the past 30 years—representations of sexual danger in late-Victorian London emerged as a projection of larger cultural and political unrest. Because of bourgeoisie anxieties over sex working women’s upward mobility at the turn of the century, narratives of sexual danger circulated as justification for the state control of poor women’s bodies and sexual behavior.

For the past decade, and in numerous capacities, I've toiled as a sex worker. I've peddled my trade in bars and hotel rooms, on the sets of feminist pornos, and in shady peep shows. I also work in academia—arguably, an equally shady enterprise.

Unsurprisingly, history repeats itself. Contemporary discourses on sex trafficking have become so integral to conversations about the sex industry that crucial distinctions between coercive and agential labor have all but disappeared. Vital analyses of labor under capitalism have been abandoned in favor of sexual danger narratives. We're all familiar with the standard advocacy facts: "the average age of forced prostitution is 13,” and "300,000 children are forced into sex slavery in the United States every year.” These so-called facts come from a study called “The Sexual Exploitation of Children” by researchers Richard Estes and Neil Alan Weiner and have been circulated and reified by the U.S. Department of Justice. This is despite the researchers' concluding acknowledgement that, “The numbers presented in [the research project] do not ... reflect the actual number of cases of the CSEC [commercially sexually exploited children] in the United States...."

More reliable data suggests that the greatest amount of human trafficking occurs in agricultural industries, domestic housework, restaurant work, and sweatshops. But with recent federal law conflating sex work and sex trafficking, it is nearly impossible to objectively research the occurrence of forced sexual slavery among youth. As Lulu*—a victim of sex trafficking as a child—explains, “if prostitution had been legal when I was being trafficked [into an illegal brothel], the other women [who were not trafficked] could have called the cops without fear of themselves receiving a felony for trafficking.... Instead, because I was “rescued,” I became trafficked by the state ... social workers took my money ... foster care parents hated me ... [so] I lived on the street.”

But with recent federal law conflating sex work and sex trafficking, it is nearly impossible to objectively research the occurrence of forced sexual slavery among youth.

The Estes and Weiner study was largely funded by the Department of Justice, and key informants for the study consisted of private human service organizations that receive federal monies. Essentially, a federally funded research project was tasked with analyzing the performance of federally funded organizations and found the federal government’s performance “adequate." The federal government is, basically, citing itself as good reasoning for its own financial decisions.

Perhaps as a result of criticism from the academic community, the Department of Justice subsequently funded a nationwide, ethnographic study of homeless youth engaged in transactional sex. Alongside countless researchers including Ric Curtis and Meredith Dank from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and Barbara Brents and Andrew Spivak from the sociology department at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, I was hired as an ethnographer for the $500,000 project. Our most significant findings shattered the widely accepted stereotypes of a child prostitute—young people involved in transactional sex rarely reported having pimps and almost always described sex work as the surest way to support themselves. Another pattern surfaced in the 100-plus interviews I conducted: Youth routinely reported harassment and sexual misconduct at the hands of law enforcement, social service providers, and foster care parents. And yet, racialized narratives of “traffickers” and their demoralization of sexually innocent white girls continues to inform policy. An obvious question emerges: Why?


It is well documented that one of the largest and most conservative lobbies in Washington—Shared Hope International—is behind much of the so-called anti-trafficking policy in the U.S., policy with politically and socially vested interests in conflating sex work with sex trafficking. It is no secret, of course, that the religious right opposes prostitution on purely moralistic grounds. Regressive ideologies of gender and sexuality contribute to the belief that prostitution is moral bankruptcy for women and, furthermore, that Godly salvation is the only path to “restoration.” As a result, sex workers—and other so-called sexually deviant women, often poor women—are scapegoats for anxieties surrounding sex and sexuality more generally.

Our most significant findings shattered the widely accepted stereotypes of a child prostitute—young people involved in transactional sex rarely reported having pimps and almost always described sex work as the surest way to support themselves.

Perhaps less well known is the link between lobbyists, anti-trafficking non-profits, allocations of federal grant money for academic research, and the subsequent propagation of sexual danger narratives.

In 2009, Shared Hope International received a grant from the Department of Justice to research child sex trafficking in the U.S. The resulting report, “The National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children,” like the 2001 Estes and Weiner study that preceded it, employs the moralistic language of “rescue and [restoration]” without distinguishing between women and children or sex workers and victims of sex trafficking.

Then, in 2013, Shared Hope International supported the Justice for Victims Act (H.R. 3530; 113th Congress), which authorized the Department of Justice to appropriate $25 million annually to research grants over the 2015-19 period for scholars and state organizations claiming to fight human trafficking. Because federally funded “research” has so masterfully conflated sex work with sex trafficking—through the lens of religious, right-wing propaganda—“mitigating sex trafficking” is now synonymous with state control of poor women’s bodies and sexual behavior.

"When practitioners and social workers discover that my research doesn't necessarily promote the criminalization of prostitution, they refuse to collaborate with me ... because they're afraid of losing grant money."

What this means for researchers like Spivak is the "polarization of ... scholarship into factions ... which see their mission as advancing evidence for policy goals rather than making true social scientific discoveries.”

Researchers like Brents, whose extensive research on the sex industry spans almost two decades, are approached with a degree of caution. "When practitioners and social workers discover that my research doesn't necessarily promote the criminalization of prostitution," Brents says, "they refuse to collaborate with me ... because they're afraid of losing grant money." Recalling how a collaborative project—designed to assist street-based sex workers and trafficking victims—was stalled after she expressed her stance on criminalization, Brents says, "They risked losing funding if I so much as joined them for a cup of coffee.”

A recent Supreme Court hearing—Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International—ruled it constitutional to deny federal funding for research that “promote, support, or advocate ... prostitution." Ron Weitzer, a sociologist specializing in criminology and a professor at George Washington University, explains the speech-chilling effect of these provisions:

A few years ago ... a request for proposal [was] sent out by The National Institute of Justice. [It] had the requirement that the applicant certify that he/she did not support prostitution or the legalization of prostitution. When I emailed the contact person at NIJ and asked if this was not an infringement on free speech, she did not respond to me.

Paternalistic narratives of sexual danger have a two-pronged effect on sex working academics like me—either we “restore” our natural, womanly innocence by claiming the identity of a “former” sex worker or we invite the perusal of critics who view our sex work as incompatible with intellectual rigor. As Jenna*, a sex working academic who recently completed a master's at a state university in the Southwest, explains, “Many of my peers act like I got here [academia] by accident ... in fact, one of my advisors implied that I could ‘overcome’ my sex working past by expressing shame and remorse over it.”

“Many of my peers act like I got here [academia] by accident ... in fact, one of my advisors implied that I could ‘overcome’ my sex working past by expressing shame and remorse over it.”

Similarly, Vivian Salt*, a sex worker who recently obtained a master's of social work from a prestigious university in New York, explains that, “because of the criminalization of sex work ... and the need for a singular narrative by which to categorize people ... sex workers are reduced to their experiences with sex.” In a political and social environment where sex is perceived as “unprofessional,” immature (consider, for example, the paternalistic backlash against sex working educators), and even inherently harmful, sex working academics are “handled with kid gloves,” Salt says. “There’s something very interesting about ‘passing’ in academia as an advocate for—as opposed to a laborer in—the sex industry in order to avoid being infantilized by peers.”

Infantilizing narratives of sexual danger, when juxtaposed with the criminalization and demonization of sex workers, deeply impact women on the margins of society. Piercing deeper than any academic or political setback are the strained intimate and emotional relationships produced by the social stigma of sex work. Indeed, the harshest words my mother ever uttered, upon discovering my sex work, were “get out of my house and don’t ever come back.” The belief in The Whore’s impenetrable malfeasance—as well as the burdensome insistence that she restore social purity through penance—have been skillfully perpetuated by contemporary moral crusaders, who have anxieties similar to their late-Victorian peers. Clearly, more research is needed on the intricate workings of these moral discourses. But I’m not holding my breath for funding.

*All names of sex workers, including the author's, are pseudonyms.
 

CaptRenault

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Jun 29, 2003
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This article is laughably inaccurate and misleading. The only person making sense is the spokesperson for STELLA, Stéphanie. Other than issuing silly statements about the Montreal sex scene, the Montreal police did not do anything beyond what they normally do to combat obviously illegal activities such as the use of underage girls and drugs. Most sex businesses in Montreal, such as escort agencies, indy escorts, strip clubs and massage parlors operated normally during the Grand Prix, with no extra interference from the police.

So why do the police make these kind of statements? It's just propaganda designed to make feminists, social conservatives and others who target the sex industry feel good.

The "reporter" who wrote the story should be embarrassed by its inaccuracy. At least he had the good sense to get some comments from STELLA.

One thing that the Montreal police did do differently during the grand prix was raid the Time Supper Club three nights in a row (see below) Why? Nobody seems to know. No arrests were made, no violations charged and no other club was "raided," at least not three nights in a row. I suspect that the explanation is that the owner of the club did not pay sufficient tribute (i.e. cash) to the Montreal Police Officers Association.

My respect for the Montreal police is low. They lie to the media about their actual policies and practices and stage phoney "raids" on legit businesses. Furthermore, for the past year they have dressed like clowns (they all wear camouflage pants or shorts and red baseball caps) as a negotiating tactic during their never ending contract negotiations. They have also defaced police cars with union stickers. They neither act nor look professional.

Montreal merchant angry after police raids during Grand Prix weekend

Club owner Thierry Havitov says Time Supper Club was raided 3 nights in a row

By Brennan Neill, CBC News Jun 09, 2015

Partygoers celebrating Grand Prix weekend were not the only ones out at all hours of the night this weekend.
The Montreal police also had their hands full conducting a number of raids on bars and clubs according to one supper club owner.
Thierry Havitov, marketing director of Time Supper Club in downtown Montreal, said police raided his club not once, but three times over the Grand Prix weekend.
Havitov said the club has been the target of similar raids in the past, but never for three consecutive days.

"They do this every once and awhile, but never this often," said Havitov. "They knew we were going to be busy because of the Grand Prix but they still came."
Havitov said his club was raided by 40 to 50 officers on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.

Each of the nights had planned to have celebrities in attendance, including a number of NHL players, singer Joe Jonas, and reality TV celebrity Scott Disick.

Havitov said that on one of the nights that police visited, the club was fundraising for charity ONEXONE to support their "feed a child" campaign.
Havitov said the officers asked partygoers for identification and never really detailed who or what they were looking for. He said that a couple of officers made light of the situation and found the time to take a selfie with PK Subban, who was in attendance one of the nights.

Havitov said that when police arrived to raid the club many patrons slipped out, leaving Havitov with about $30,000 in unpaid tabs.
Havitov said he understands that they may have felt scared or worried about the heavy police presence and did not wait around to find their waitress.

"We're a nightlife city and places like Time have put Montreal on the map internationally," said Havitov. "What kind of a reputation will the city have if someone goes out and they're in a police raid?"
Sergeant Laurent Gingras,a spokesman for the Montreal police, confirmed that a number of bars and clubs were visited by Eclipse, the police's anti-gang unit, this weekend.
Gingras said that when there are large events in town, the unit increases the amount of visits they make to bars and clubs.

"During these activities you may have the presence of street gang members or people linked to organized crime," said Gingras. "We check capacity, ask people present for identification and check for minors."

Gingras added that they sometimes act on information which may indicate that a known gang member is at an establishment. He said that following the visits made to Time Supper Club, no arrests were made and no fines were issued.


 

Siocnarf

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Gingras added that they sometimes act on information which may indicate that a known gang member is at an establishment.

So what? It's not illegal for a gang member to have a drink in a bar. It really sounds like a lame excuse for some repression.
 

CaptRenault

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Jun 29, 2003
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So what? It's not illegal for a gang member to have a drink in a bar. It really sounds like a lame excuse for some repression.

I agree. The police clearly had some ulterior motive for raiding Time three nights in a row. I don't think they were really looking for gang members or other criminals. Even if they found them, they couldn't arrest them unless they were breaking the law or there was an outstanding warrant for their arrest. These three "raids" are as farcical as the make-believe crackdown on prostitution during the grand prix. There are plenty of real criminals committing real crimes in Montreal. Maybe the whole charade of raiding Time and issuing press releases about prostitution crackdowns is just an elaborate cover story for not pursuing the real criminals as a means to pressure the city to give in to their contract demands. Citizens of Montreal, you should tell les clowns of the Montreal police force: Arrêtez votre cirque !
 

ed Johnson

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attempting to purchase sexual services on line from underage girls

I have to wonder how they caught these individuals attempting to purchase sexual services ON LINE from underage girls?
I imagine they look at the on line ads and then set up a sting?, but I never noticed an ad for underage girls so I suspect the police may stoop so low as to falsely frame some one and once arrested they broke the law regardless of the age. Under age just makes the entire thing scarier
 

Siocnarf

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In other words, more than that 95% of potential clients are completely uninterested in 16yo girls. This is actually a good proof that clients are mostly not ''pervs''.
 

gugu

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Superb! Thank you, Joy. Montreal police has been watching prostitution daily since 1833. They don't know what they are talking about. What a total idiot.
 

Siocnarf

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And who decided that the US are the gold standard in human trafficking? A country where the ''victims of trafficking'' are treated like criminals should get their logic straight before they tell others what to do. Their ''Trafficking In Persons Reports'' are just a way they coerce other countries into banning sex work.
 

gugu

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A former prostitute has called a report advising that prostitution should be decriminalised "ludicrous and offensive", for claiming that the sex trade will never end because men's need to buy sex is "ineradicable".


06/08/2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...-institute-of-economic-affairs_n_7942344.html

Diane Martin CBE, a survivor of prostitution and trafficking, said the report from the Institute of Economic Affairs read like "a charter for pimps and male sex buyers".

The 'Supply And Desire' research from the right-leaning think tank calls for Britain's £4 billion sex industry to be completely decriminalised. It says that "all attempts to regulate prostitution are ineffective, ill-informed and a waste of public money" and that women working in prostitution would be safer if laws prohibiting the business were removed.

Currently, it not illegal to sell or buy sex, but running a brothel, working as a group of prostitutes, soliciting on the street or any other third-party involvement in prostitution is illegal.

The report rejects what it calls the "feminist myth" that men and women have an equally strong desire for sex, saying that surveys from around the world show that men have a far greater desire for sex.

It claims that men have double the sexual desire of women, which creates a "sexual deficit" meaning that men look to pay for sex. As women get more independent, the report argues, this "deficit" is increasing as woman are now free to decide not to have sex or relationships. Therefore, it argues, "Male demand for sexual entertainments of all kinds is thus growing, and ineradicable."

The report adds that the demand for prostitution may have increased as people have become richer because "economic growth drives demand for luxuries" and sex is seen as a luxury.

Its author, Catherine Hakim, told The Huffington Post UK that after analysing over 30 sex surveys she had found "the imbalance of sexual interest between men and women, leading to the seriously high and continuing and inevitable demand for the sex industry, which therefore I conclude is never going to be eradicated."

She added that moral objections or campaigns against prostitution would make no difference to its growth: "It's going to continue regardless. You don't stop people eating because you say there are moral grounds for staying an average weight. If there's an obesity epidemic, you don't stop people eating by telling them it's not a good idea to eat excessively: they carry on. This is no different. The moral thing just doesn't come into it. Human behaviour is human behaviour."

But Diane Martin, who survived trafficking and prostitution and is director of Dovetail which advises government around the sex trade, told HuffPost UK: "Prostitution is violence against women and girls, an industry based on a foundation of inequality and an abuse of human rights.

"The idea that men have no control over their sex drive is ludicrous and offensive. Anyone with the most basic understanding of prostitution and the sex industry knows that sex is not the fundamental driver, power and entitlement are."

"The report says that 'Economic growth drives demand for luxuries,'" she continued. "Here again we see women described as inanimate goods and learn that 'the distinction between amateur and professional sexual encounters is becoming increasingly blurred.'

"As a survivor of supposed 'high class' prostitution and being trafficked to an overseas prostitution ring, I can tell you that what is blurred is your eyesight after you've been battered and the blur of one man after another doing exactly what he wants regardless of your saying no."

"Removing ethics from being part of the study mirrors the practice of the sex industry itself; where women are stripped of both clothes and dignity and viewed as an expendable and interchangeable commodities.

"This reports reads like a charter for pimps and male sex buyers; offering them even more justification than they already give themselves that buying women's bodies is a need that must be met.

"The author describes prostitution laws as "outdated, misinformed and redundant" the very words I would use to describe the theories and recommendations in this report."

Critics slammed the IEA report for not addressing the ethics of prostitution, but Hakim explained a recent study from the institute had done this in detail. She added: "I'm a social scientist, so I write as a social scientist: I write about the facts. I'm not a priest and so I don't write about ethics, it's not my interest and it's not my area of expertise."

Emily Sawyer, a campaigner for LIFT, which calls for prostitution to be recognised as a form of violence against women, said she disagreed that men's demand for buying sex was "ineradicable".

"I don't think that you can make sweeping statements about men's sexuality. Living in a patriarchal society, women's sexual agency has not been encouraged as much as men's has. Women are seen as the objects rather than the agents, and that's how we have come to this situation. To say that men have an uncontrollable sexual desire is actually suggesting that men are incapable of self control, and that's quite insulting."

She believes that demand for prostitution could go down in future: "It could increase of decrease with legal and cultural changes. In Sweden, where they have decriminalised the women but criminalised the buyers [which is the approach LIFT supports] demand for prostitution has gone down."

She added that the report made negative suggestions for women in prostitution and for feminism: "The report says that women's economic independence means that men are looking for sex outside relationships, but the answer is not for men to pay for sex, because that means they are having sex with women who are often vulnerable and disadvantaged.

"It's only a minority of men who pay for sex and the rest of them seem to find other ways to satisfy these urges.

"There's no black and white in these arguments in research," she added. "Different countries have found different results in changing their rules around prostitution: in Iceland, which has been a pioneer of making the sex trade illegal, gender equality is higher than in many other countries. In 2013 an LSE report found that legalising prostitution actually increases human trafficking. But there isn't a final answer to these issues yet."

"But what we can see is that many women in prostitution experience depression, anxiety and PTSD, so there is much evidence that working as a prostitute, whatever your circumstances are, has a detrimental effect on your mental health."

Kat Banyard, a spokesperson for End Demand, an alliance of organisations calling on the Government to adopt the 'Sex Buyer Law' which would make it illegal for people to buy sex, said:

"As the Crown Prosecution Service recognises, prostitution is a form of violence against women. It is a cause and a consequence of inequality between women and men, not an inevitable fact of life. The overwhelming majority of those who end up in the prostitution trade are highly vulnerable and suffer acute harms as a result.

"The prostitution trade, and the trafficking of women in to it, is underpinned by the principles of supply and demand. A minority of men currently feels entitled to sexually exploit women and girls by paying for sex acts. Without their demand there would be no ‘supply’. That demand is not inevitable: during the 1990’s the number of men who pay for sex almost doubled. If demand can grow it can also shrink, and that is exactly what has been shown by countries such as Sweden and Norway where the Sex Buyer Law has been adopted."

Supply and Desire report available here
 

BadChap

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This law, if upheld by Canada's highest court, should be applied to everyone in every profession and vocation, especially "law makers" and their staff and political (money) supporters, "judges", medical professionals like medical doctors, police officials, etc. They can offer to sell their professional services but anyone who buys them should and must be imprisoned and persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. So, Canada will be a country where there will be sellers of services and no buyer of those services! Like the U.S. Constitution, equal protection of the law should and must extend to everyone in Canada's soils. Yes, why not take such a law (C-36) to its extreme "logical" end! I don't think Adolph Hitler would have been this stupid or extreme! Let the sex workers earn an honest living! We know politicians don't!
 

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RobinX

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Scientists score one over celebrities in battle to decriminalize sex work

The Conversation - September 3, 2015 8.06pm

http://theconversation.com/scientis...ies-in-battle-to-decriminalize-sex-work-46314

On August 11 2015, Amnesty International passed a historic resolution in favor of decriminalizing all consensual commercial sex work.

A few weeks earlier, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) – an organization that seeks to abolish prostitution – received a leaked version of the proposal. CATW lobbied against Amnesty’s impending decision. Several Hollywood celebrities including Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Angela Bassett, and Lena Dunham joined CATW in opposing decriminalization. They argued this change would only empower pimps and clients in their oppression of women.

But many others supported Amnesty’s proposal, including leading global health researchers and human rights advocates. In their op-ed for The Huffington Post, Dr Kate Shannon, Anna-Louise Crago, and Dr Chris Breyer wrote:

The science is there and unequivocal – criminalization has devastating effects on sex workers' health and human rights, including widespread rights violations against sex workers including discrimination and violence against sex workers by policing agents.

While celebrities typically capture more attention than scientists, Amnesty listened to the latter. After two years of consulting with global health and human rights researchers as well as sex workers and victims of human trafficking, the largest and arguably most respected human rights organization in the world made its game-changing declaration. Amnesty International will now develop policy on nation-states’ ethical obligation to decriminalize sex work. They seek to “ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal legal protection from exploitation, trafficking and violence.”

It is unclear what, if any, impact this will have on policies across the world. But as a researcher who has studied the politics of sex work for more than 20 years, I was not surprised by the range of strong emotional responses.

Initial reactions

Immediately following the vote, CATW issued a press release declaring that Amnesty International “turned its back on women.” They wrote that the decision constituted a “willful and callous rejection of women’s rights and equality.” CATW’s press release also mocked Amnesty’s research process:

Throughout the deliberation and “research” process that Amnesty claims led them to its resolution, they deliberately excluded the voices and expertise of survivor-leaders and women’s rights organizations working to end violence and discrimination at the local, regional and international levels.

To be sure, research is never a value-free process. But given the rigorous and prestigious research cited by Amnesty, in combination with a dearth of medical and academic researchers affiliated with either CATW’s board of directors or petition, this particular accusation may ring hollow.

Notably, the celebrities who helped sell CATW’s campaign to the media have remained silent. Even Lena Dunham – one of the most outspoken of the anti-prostitution actor-activists – has, for now, withdrawn from public discussion on sex work.

In contrast, reactions on social media from sex worker rights advocates were celebratory. Meg Valee Munoz identifies as a former sex worker and a survivor of domestic sex trafficking. She is the founder and executive director of Abeni – a rights-based organization that provides support to individuals in the sex trade. Upon hearing the news, Munoz tweeted:

Sitting in my car, crying as I read this... Thank you for seeing us, thank you for hearing us, for standing with us. https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/631133666610184192
12:43 PM - 11 Aug 2015

Despite their jubilation, sex workers and their advocates also noted that the work was now just beginning. As advocate Melissa Gira Grant explained in The Nation:

By backing decriminalization, of course, Amnesty has not changed any law; their policy sets the groundwork for campaigning by Amnesty’s members and national sections. It’s this that could be a substantive boost for sex workers’ rights advocates.

Global health evidence

Regardless of one’s opinion about the exchange of sexual services for money, the research is clear. When sex work is criminalized (including clients), sex workers of all ages, races, classes, and genders are harmed.

For example, criminalization of sex work has been shown to increase harm to children involved in the sex industry. It also increases rates of HIV/AIDS and violence against sex workers. Criminalization, aggressive policing and forced “rescues” also harm the human rights of individuals in the sex industry, their children and families.

And despite stated political concern for protecting female sex workers, sex workers in criminalized sections of the US suffer from far higher rates of police abuse, violence and mortality compared to locations where sex work is either legalized, as in parts of Nevada, or decriminalized, as in New Zealand.

The future of US sex work policies

For some political observers, Amnesty’s vote has helped to highlight the current hyper-criminalization of sex work in the US. This includes the invasion by US Homeland Security of the male escort agency RentBoy. This raid resulted in several arrests and $US1.4 million seized in civil forfeiture. It was conducted exactly two weeks after Amnesty’s vote and has been condemned by many sex worker and LGBTQ organizations, including the Sex Workers Outreach Project and the National LGBTQ Task Force.

Many will now be watching the US to see if, and how, its anti-prostitution policies will change. The road to decriminalization is likely to be bumpy, uneven and frustrating. The US is notorious for exporting conservative sexual politics to aid-dependent countries via the Global Gag Rule and the Anti-Prostitution Pledge. The US is also home to both a profitable criminal punishment system and an enthusiastic and well-funded rescue industry.

Once presented with global evidence, though, I believe that reasonable individuals will turn away from the belief that consensual sex work should be criminalized, as they turned away from the notion that homosexual sex should be criminalized. Yet for transformative justice to occur for all individuals in the sex industry, advocates must also directly challenge the US criminal punishment machine.

Amnesty International’s announcement has clarified at least this: it is no longer acceptable to prioritize the opinions of celebrities over those of sex workers and the scientists who advocate for them.
 

Vuko

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This article in Salon is the first one in a long time that bring something new to the subject matter.
It makes us, customers, face to face with our own sin, not those of attributed to us and to the prostitutes by the conservative/christian/feminist coalition of "bien-pensants" but with the fact that we, as a group and as individual, often lack the basic decency of treating our temporary companions as human being.

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/19/my_..._i_learned_the_myth_of_the_high_class_hooker/
 

Siocnarf

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....but with the fact that we, as a group and as individual, often lack the basic decency of treating our temporary companions as human being.

But where did you get that this is a ''fact''? You can't judge a whole category of people based on the story of one abolitionist who claims to be an ex worker. You have to read what all the different sex workers say about their clients, and also sociological studies on the matter. The bottom line is clients are essenstially undistinguishable from the average person.

You could easily find plenty of nurses, waitresses and housemaids, who think all their clients are jerks that treat them like crap. That doesn't mean it's an accurate assessment.
 

oldbutartful

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Apparently Bill 36 was Harpers response after his family home had the emergency call due to a drug related issue and a guest of his son at a party became "over intoxicated" Also at the party were two "Strippers" the police were going to arrest and prosecute them but the "Madam" who supplied them had also supplied "Working Girls" to another party hosted by the PMs office so they could coerce some awkward foreign diplomats. She threatened to blow the whistles so the Strippers were let go. Harper apparently was furious and vowed to get even. Bill 36 was supposed to give "Working Girls" the same rights as other Workers. Harper and his cronies made sure this did not happen. Now Harper Conservatives are attacking the Liberals for not supporting Bill 36. and supporting prostitution. Politics is a dirty business and Harper apparently is the Dirtiest of them all.

PS I found this on the internet so cannot verify its authenticity if it offends then Mod please remove it
 

RobinX

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SEX WORK CONFESSION
As an advocate I've been trained not to betray emotions to the media, but I'm optimistic about Trudeau's new justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould
Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has promised to proceed on sex work law "in a way that is open and engages people."

BY FLEUR DE LIT, NOW Toronto
NOVEMBER 18, 2015 6:47 PM

Wayne C. Booth was an American literary critic who may be best known for his book The Rhetoric Of Fiction. I am familiar with Booth for only one reason: he coined the term "unreliable narrator," defined as a speaker whose credibility is dubious. This is a status with which I am very well acquainted as a sex worker.

You can imagine, then, when you've been positioned as an unreliable narrator for so long, what it's like when people do believe you. We might define this as the Stockwhore Syndrome.

As sex workers, many of us have fought for those who've been exploited both in and out of the industry to have agency and legal recourse and be considered experts in their own lives. We have worked hard, no matter how exasperated we felt, against having our work conflated with trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Last year we were rewarded for those efforts by having our work criminalized in Canada by the former Harper government under Bill C-36: The Protection Of Communities And Exploited Persons Act.


Now our new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has appointed Jody Wilson-Raybould, an aboriginal woman and a lawyer, his justice minister.

In an interview with Maclean's, Wilson-Raybould says she's been in discussions about Bill C-36 - which the Liberals have promised to repeal - and that in moving forward, "the safety of the workers is fundamentally important." The Liberals, she says, will "proceed in a way that is open and engages with people."

I am optimistic about this, specifically about Wilson-Raybould's use of the word "workers."

Over the last little while, I've been watching videotaped testimony on CPAC presented before the Canadian Senate during debate on the validity of Bill C-36. This testimony, given in the fall of 2014, includes statements from representatives of sex work organizations, women who identify as independent sex workers, abolitionist groups, women who identify as victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, religious organizations and people considered experts on sex work laws in Canada and other countries.

These hearings were ostensibly organized as a means of accurately understanding and, if necessary, reforming Bill C-36, which ultimately came into effect intact on December 6, 2014.

I'm a little late to the table commenting on the Senate testimony, but I simply couldn't look at it when it was all going down. Most people have fairly predictable definitions of what is too obscene to look at. Mine: watching people who do not pay my rent sitting around a boardroom table using byzantine language to debate how I may or may not use my vagina for commercial purposes.

This testimony makes it clear how, despite the fact that Canadian laws criminalizing kidnapping, rape and sex with minors are already in place, the Conservative government and largely Conservative Senate managed to defy the Supreme Court of Canada ruling and the Constitution when they implemented Bill C-36: they simply foregrounded the testimony of people who identified as having been kidnapped and/or raped (often as minors) to establish that there is no such thing as consent when money is exchanged for sexual services.

This is like allowing people who have been traumatized by forced marriages as teenagers to determine whether or not marriage should be criminalized, even though there are already laws in Canada preventing forced marriage.

But I'm watching this testimony now because I'm curious to see what the Liberal Senators had to say that might be worth mentioning when I pen aspirational letters to them about how I look forward to their sensible and sensitive actions in repealing Bill C-36.

You might ask why abolitionists and victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation were afforded so much space to speak on issues that have already been addressed in the Criminal Code. Many sex workers and activists spent a year advocating for their right to give expert testimony in favour of decriminalization, only to be positioned as out of touch.

We could talk for eight days about how breathtakingly patronizing this is, but instead let me draw your attention to Gunilla Ekberg, an attorney with Swedish and Canadian citizenship, a professor at the University of Glasgow and one of the architects of the Swedish Model of prostitution ultimately adopted by the Harper Conservatives. She categorically rejects the words "prostitute" or "sex work."

"I would prefer if we didn't use the word 'prostitute,'" Ekberg says in her invited Senate testimony. "Let's call them individuals in prostitution." And then again, "There is no such thing as a prostitute. There are individuals who are exploited."

Language used by Ekberg parallels that used by the Conservative Party, which puts sex workers' bodies, rather than the services they provide, squarely in the role of commodity.

This framework, which purports to value women as equal citizens, positions "the man as morally superior to the woman" because "he is criminally culpable for his decisions, while she is not," writes "un-retired call girl" Maggie McNeill.

Like the Swedish sex work laws, Canada's laws suggest that "adult women are legally incapable of giving consent, just as an adolescent girl is in the crime of statutory rape," McNeill writes. As part of this agenda, "the prostitute" is commoditized symbolically (but also to the financial benefit of those crafting laws, writing policy, appearing as experts and staking their academic, political and legal careers on it) to promote a national identity of gender equality contingent on the abolition of sex work. If "the prostitute" does not agree to be a victim, laws will be enacted that assure this happens.

Questions and comments from many Senators during the hearings on C-36 often involved naive and shopworn preoccupations "left over," as the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Reform observes, "from the days when the upper classes didn't quite trust democracy to turn out good decisions."

Watching this, I understand the logic behind Trudeau's expulsion of all Liberal senators from his caucus (they must be elected by the Canadian populace, he declares). But frankly, those Liberal senators - in particular Serge Joyal and Mobina Jaffer - who keep returning to the importance of sex workers' health and safety and questioning why they were not explicitly mentioned in the bill are the only ones who stayed the course. Joyal is almost recklessly levelheaded, but it is Jaffer's remarks that I keep revisiting.

I've been trained as an advocate for the decriminalization of sex work by watching other sex work activists. We don't betray our emotions to the media. We don't speak of the shitty things about our work, because it provides ammunition for abolitionists to tell us not only that we don't exist but that we don't know we are being raped each and every time we work. We don't reveal the nuances of our lives - that we are poor and struggling and have been hurt and humiliated like everyone else.

But I confess, when watching Jaffer's testimony, I'm moved to tears. This Liberal senator from BC changed her mind on her opposition to sex work during the judicial process, and her tentative but firm approach to matters she had learned about by listening to "sexual workers" is… well, it's pretty remarkable. Yes, Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould and Senator Jaffer, we are workers. Thank you for this very significant distinction.

Fleur de Lit is a pseudonym.

[email protected] | @nowtoronto
 

gugu

Active Member
Feb 11, 2009
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Sex trafficking cases hard to prove as trial process hard on victims

At one court level in Ontario, convictions are achieved in only 7 per cent of cases.

By: Staff Torstar News Service Published on Sat Dec 19 2015

http://www.metronews.ca/news/toronto/2015/12/19/sex-trafficking-cases-hard-to-prove-.html

Sex trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in Ontario, but the justice system is struggling to hold pimps to account for luring girls into the sex trade, a Torstar News Service investigation has found.

...

“A lot of them don’t want to testify against their ‘boyfriends’,” said Det.-Sgt. Nunzio Tramontozzi, head of theToronto Police Service’s human trafficking enforcement team.

...

A Torstar investigation into The Game — domestic sex trafficking — found this is one of Ontario’s fastest-growing crimes and thousands of young girls and teenagers are being lured into the sex trade by so-called “Romeo pimps.”

...

Over the past two months, Torstar has spoken to six victims of sex trafficking in Toronto. Only one has testified against her trafficker in a trial.

What a load of bs.

There is not one bit of evidence in this article to show trafficking is increasing.

Thousands every day! Oh come on! This is ridiculous.

There are good reasons to believe that political pressures have forced some police services in Canada to increase the number of trafficking accusations without proper evidence. That explains the very low rates of convictions.

Torstar has succeeded, apparently, to talk to 6 victims within a 2 months investigation, 5 of which did not go to court. Out of thousands every day???

This a piece a propaganda by both Torstar and the Toronto Police Service’s human trafficking enforcement team.
 
Ashley Madison
Toronto Escorts