Read the whole article in The Times-Colonist…

Editorial: Time to reduce sex-trade risks

How long do we have to follow a failed and destructive policy before we smarten up? The Brothel Project, a well-crafted debut documentary by Victoria director April Butler-Parry and producer/writer Gillian Hrankowski, premiered at the Victoria Film Festival this week.

It raises — once again — our peculiar attitudes and laws about prostitution and their damaging effects as it follows the efforts of Jody Paterson, a Times Colonist contributor, and Lauren Casey, a researcher and outreach worker, to open a legal brothel here.

Prostitution is legal in Canada. One person can pay another for sex.

But virtually every activity associated with the transaction is not. Public communication to arrange the exchange is illegal. Owning or running or having anything to do with a brothel is illegal. “Living off the avails” is illegal.

Remarkably, the situation was much the same 130 years ago in Victoria.

The fascinating website victoriasvictoria.ca, a project of the University of Victoria history department, looks at all aspects of our history, including the thriving sex trade.

It notes that in 1881, “legally, prostitution itself was not regarded as an offence, instead it was dealt with by means of a charge for street solicitation or the operation of a ‘bawdy house.’ In effect, the test of it as an offence was the extent to which it became a ‘fact of public annoyance.’ “

The effect today, as it was then, is that the work is more dangerous than it needs to be and the participants — mostly women — are excluded from the basic rights and protections enjoyed by everyone else in society.

The risk of arrest for soliciting forces sex workers and their clients into dark and dangerous neighbourhoods at night. Instead of discussing the transaction with a client, like any other business exchange, hurried judgments must be made before climbing into a stranger’s car.

The bawdy house laws make it legally impossible for sex workers to operate a brothel like any other business. They exist, of course, surreptitiously or as massage parlours or escort agencies. They pay taxes and licence fees and advertise. But they operate in a legal shadow that penalizes workers. The laws serve mainly to make the sex trade dangerous.

And they perpetuate a view of those in the trade that makes them less than human — even disposable.

The slow and ineffectual investigation of missing women in Vancouver and the Pickton murders showed the results.

Society’s concerns about the sex trade are understandable. Human trafficking and forced prostitution do exist, with the biggest coercive factors being poverty and addiction. Those concerns must be addressed.

That would be simpler if the trade was regulated and conducted like other businesses, with access to the same workplace and legal protections.

Many people object to the trade based on personal views on the role of sex in life and relationships.

While those views should be respected, so should the right of adults to make their own choices and to be either customers or suppliers in the trade.

We have pretended to support that principle by making prostitution legal.

But we have left in place laws that serve mainly to make it dangerous and difficult and turn participants into second-class citizens.

Though this study doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, it’s welcomed nonetheless. Read more at The Times-Colonist…

Good news: Johns are just normal guys
By Jody Paterson

A new study out of Simon Fraser University concludes that people who buy sex are no more prone to violence than anyone else.

Fewer than two per cent of the 1,000 respondents who took part in SFU sociologist Chris Atchison’s study reported ever having hit, hurt, raped or robbed the person they bought sex from.

Granted, that’s just them saying so. But Atchison noted in a Vancouver Sun story this week about his research that there was little reason for the respondents to lie, given that the survey was anonymous.

That his findings are provocative is an understatement.

“It’s an outrageous study and it really works towards normalizing sexual assault,” said Aurea Flynn of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, which is the go-to organization in B.C. when media are looking for a quote from someone vehemently opposed to prostitution.

“I’m really angry about the emphasis on the compassion for johns that the study provides,” added Flynn, “and I’m very concerned about its impact on the continued normalization of prostitution in Canada because I believe prostitution is violence against women.”

Sex Worker conference is coming up.  Read the whole column at The Province….

Sex workers and advocates meet to discuss reducing stigma
By Sarah Petrescu

When Thea Cunningham helps sex workers find a place to live, visit a doctor or speak to a lawyer, she knows firsthand the kind of humiliating treatment they can face.

“I’ve gone to the hospital with pneumonia and had doctors and nurses ignore me like I was garbage and it was my fault because I was on the street,” said Cunningham, 36, who was a sex worker and a drug addict for 10 years before becoming sober just over a year ago. Now she co-ordinates a daytime outreach program at the Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society (PEERS). “A lot of the girls are my friends and I feel so good being out there for them . . . That’s what saved me.”

Cunningham was part of a group of sex workers, academics and advocates from around the world who came together in Victoria this weekend to brainstorm how to reduce the stigma sex workers face in their lives and the media.

“We’d like to find a way to get the message out that those — mostly women — involved in the sex trade are complex human beings,” said Cecilia Benoit, a sociology professor at the University of Victoria who organized the Challenging Myths and Misperceptions conference with the Women’s Health Research Network.

“The stigma that they cannot break free from is constantly being defined by what marginalizes them — the sex trade, poverty, race — and nothing else.”

That stigma has been around for a long time — in this newspaper in the latter part of the 19th century, sex workers were referred to as “women of ill-repute” and high-end brothels were known as the “sporting industry.”

Some brainy types (and their friends) are going to be hashing out some ideas to address the escort community’s needs.  Read the whole story at The Times Colonist…

Conference to explore sex workers’ issues
Topics to include health and safety, as well as decriminalization effects

A conference on sex trade workers is being held in Victoria Jan. 16-17, hosted by the University of Victoria hub of the Women’s Health Research Network.

The meeting intends to help with the public’s perception and understanding of the industry. Those attending include scholars, community advocates, health-care workers, policy planners and people who have worked in the sex trade.

The public is also invited.

Issues to be discussed include the impact of different policies on the workers’ health and safety and current challenges to the Canadian Criminal Code regarding prostitution laws, states a news release from the sponsoring group.

A lecture on the experiences of sex workers in New Zealand, the only country that has nationally decriminalized its sex industry, will be held at 6 p.m. on Jan. 16. The keynote speakers will discuss how changes in the social and legal environments affect the health, safety, and security of those working in the sex industry.

A day-long workshop on Jan. 17 will develop a curriculum for educating the public about the myths and misperceptions of the sex industry in a bid to reduce the stigma attached to sex work.

The conference, titled Challenging Myths and Misperceptions: Working to Reduce Stigma and Enhance Public Understanding of People Who Work in the Sex Industry, is free, but space is limited.

A conference overview and agenda is available at www.whrn.ca. Meetings will be held at the Bedford Regency Hotel.