I did read your comment and I don't disagree that decriminalization would be good. This is especially important to readers here since it is *clients^ that are criminalized in Canada (and people living off of the earnings of sexwork but not my role or expertise to defend them).
I just don't think a single group will get to decide sadly. The choice we will likely face is some additional repression (likely just making the fear of repression more likely to control the business) or more legalization but with some constraints.
We likely agree here that minors/coercion should be policed. It is not customers sole responsibility to do that (although sex workers, clients, and bystanders have some agency here to help). I would prefer a free market to an enforced one but would not protest if the government introduced minimal hygiene/STD verification. Same for blacklisting abusive providers and clients (once truly proven to have been abusive of course).
Not sure how we get to decrim though. It feels like part of feminism truly stands against it (while another supports it of course).
Decrim is good for everyone involved including clients.. And we know that clients are criminalized. I just find it strange that some clients here want it legalized and don't support us in wanting decrim, when in fact they would have a lot more options as clients if it was decriminalized vs legalized. And it's been shown through multiple studies that in places where sex work is legalized, a lot is still pushed underground, and the multiple providers who aren't able to work at brothels are punished. So are their clients. The government doesn't know shit about sex work and dosn't know how to take control of it. We as sex workers and the organizations that are here to support us know what's best, they know decriminalization is the way to go.
I don't really understand what you mean by ''abusive providers'', unless you mean scammers. But that's another thing that decrim would protect you against.. If you were scammed by a sex worker, as a client you could report it to LE. Otherwise everyone would be forced to work at brothels, and the ones who can't could still scam clients and the clients who saw them would still be criminalized if they saw the worker outside of a controlled brothel.
It's really hard to prove that a client is abusive. You talk about ''truly proven to be abusive''.. How can you even prove that? Aside from massage parlors where I have seen clients run out of rooms without paying or girls run out of rooms crying because they were assaulted, it's very hard to prove that a client raped you or pushed boundaries. Most of us have absolutely no reason to lie about a client being abusive. There is just no point in doing that. But it's impossible to prove it..
I don't think that argument is useful here tho.. It's really exhausting to argue about this.
