FOR
LEGALIZATION
Gurpreet
Kambo // News Editor
It
is ironic that prostitution as a profession is one of the most criminalized.
Compare the sex trade to others that are also outlawed – drug dealing or
murder. With murder, there is clearly a victim, as the person being murdered is
(generally) not a willing participant. Drug dealing is a little bit different,
in that it can be said those partaking in the services are willing. However, drug
dealing depends on the severe and debilitating addictions that one develops
from many drugs – which often defer a person’s ability to make reasonable
decisions for themselves to one of pursuing their “next fix” – also shows that dealing
drugs is not a victimless crime.
What
does this say about the sex trade, then? It is different in that the ones
affected by the services of this profession aren’t being harmed. It has been
argued that the victims are sex trade workers themselves – and this may be
true; however, each singular act of providing sexual services for a “john” is
one that both participants willingly involve themselves in, and is also one
that gives the worker the ability to put food on their table. The victimization
of the workers arises from the fact that one does not (to generalize) become a sex
worker by choice, but due to one’s social circumstances. It also comes from the
fact that their lower position on the social ladder allows johns to exploit
them for sex.
What’s noticeable, then, with sex trade workers is that the one offering the “service” is not the one who is doing anything wrong, and yet outlawing it unfairly punishes them.
With
prostitution being the “world’s oldest profession”, it is clear that regardless
of police crackdowns, laws banning it, and so forth, it is not going anywhere.
With this in mind, the concept of “harm reduction” proposes that it does more harm
than good to make illegal certain things that may widely be considered morally
objectionable. Prostitution and drugs are things that are often argued should
be legalized, under the harm reduction banner. By making these practices legal
they can be controlled and regulated by the government, ensuring that the
violence and exploitation that regularly occur as part of these enterprises
(and are surely sometimes just the cost of doing business), no longer happen.
What
making them illegal does ensure is that the business of selling sex is
regulated by the pimps, the real criminals in this venture. It ensures that,
unlike other “legal” workers, they are not protected by any legislation that
the government can pass to ensure their safety, their fair treatment, or their
remuneration in the workplace.
Furthermore,
to put forth what may be a radical notion, what’s to say that it is impossible
a man or woman wouldn’t want to legitimately pursue this as an occupation? In
this case, there is simply no reason why it should then be illegal, because in
that case both the service provider and consumer are participating of their own
volition – in that case, what business is it of anyone’s, let alone the
government, to tell them not to?
For
clarity’s sake, the simple act of exchanging sex for money is not illegal in
Canada, though it is effectively illegal because any activities surrounding the
act are. Regardless of whether the practice is morally objectionable, or
whether or not a person wishes to partake in it, prostitution should be
legalized. Its continued criminalization is a result of a large part of
Canadian society considering it to be morally objectionable; however, morals
are not what one should set laws by, and those that object should realize that
its continued criminalization harms and victimizes more people than the
practice itself.
AGAINST
LEGALIZATION
Celina
Kurz // Copy Editor
Who
is a prostitute? The question is deceptively simple, but once you begin
thinking about it, there is no one definitive answer. As soon as people begin
to try to answer the question of whether or not prostitution should be
criminalized, we put a label on what exactly a sex worker is – and the fact is
that there are as many different kinds of sex workers as there are kinds of
women.
The
dominatrix who works out of her own house; the high-paid escort who drives a Mercedes;
the often-overlooked male sex workers. However, one truly sad fact about our
world is that a large number of the women involved in the sex trade – and
street prostitution in particular – are there because they reached a point where
there were no more options: illegal human trafficking fuels an unsettling
portion of the industry, and poor socio-economic circumstances, abusive
relationships, and drug addictions turn many women to prostitution.
The
dangers of prostitution cannot be understated. According to a study cited in
the a paper by the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit of the London
Metropolitan University involving 240 women working in both indoor and street locations,
“almost two thirds (63 per cent) reported violence from customers, and over a
third (37 per cent) had been assaulted in the three months prior to the
survey.”
Legalization,
while it takes prostitution out of the darkness and can offer protection in a
formal way via governmental organizations, sadly doesn’t often work in the way
that we hope it does. If we look to the Netherlands, for example, we see a sex
trade that has ballooned since it was decriminalized. This is coloured in an
even uglier light when we note that their child prostitution rate rose an
estimated 300 per cent from 1996 to 2001, according to one study. Of the
estimated 15,000 children, mostly girls, involved in the Dutch sex trade, an
estimated 5,000 are illegally trafficked from Nigeria.
Other
countries which have legalized the sale of sex to various degrees, such as
Germany and Australia, have also experienced increased demand for workers in
the sex trade. This demand results in foreign workers, including illegally trafficked
women and girls, being brought into the country.
Unfortunately,
the alternative to this, criminalization, can put sex workers in danger as
well, by pushing the practice behind closed doors. As stated above, many of the
women involved in sex work can see no other options. To take one example, drug
addiction is a key factor in many sex worker’s lives.
Statistics
on prostitution are difficult to find due to the quasi-illegal nature of the
work, but one survey, cited in a paper by the Child and Woman Abuse Studies
Unit of the London Metropolitan University, showed that, of the population
sample of street workers, 62 per cent stated that “their main reason for
involvement in prostitution was to fund a drug habit, primarily heroin.” Due to
the nature of drug addiction, criminalization of prostitution is virtually
ineffective unless the necessary rehabilitative supports are also instated. If
we don’t want women to turn to prostitution, we need to have safe alternatives where
they can turn.
Many
countries, when contemplating reform to prostitution law, have begun to look to
Sweden as a working example. In Sweden, prostitution itself is not illegal, but
purchasing sex is, and part of the punishment is that the offenders names are printed
in newspapers. This is interesting in that it flips the shame solidly onto the
shoulders of the client rather than the prostitute, and has been effective in
reducing the sex trade in Sweden.
However,
according to Patty Kelly, anthropologist and author of Lydia’s Open Door:
Inside Mexico’s Most Modern Brothel, this hasn’t been entirely favourable to sex
workers in Sweden: while the number of men looking to purchase sex has gone
down, those that remain are more violent.
Any
action that forces prostitution into secrecy makes the profession more
dangerous for the women who are participating in it – and this includes laws
that target sex buyers. One thing to remember is that, for those who do work in
the sex trade, it is a job – they want clients, and they want to be paid well.
Regardless of what the laws say, they will find ways to work around it. At the end
of the day, we must admit that prostitution is alive in our culture, and
choosing to criminalize it will only result in women and girls being at the brunt
of assault.
What
I am ultimately against is not legalization or criminalization, but rather, the
attempt to make cut-and-dried solutions for an immensely complex problem that
is not going to go away unless we make drastic efforts to change the framework
of our society.
What
we need are creative solutions that emerge from discussions that include input
from women from all degrees of this trade. The ugly side of prostitution – the
violence, the sexism, the virtual slavery – is not something that is going to
go away simply by making it illegal, and evidence shows that decriminalization,
too, does not do enough. There will still be women in poverty with no choices
and no safe place to go home to, and therein lies the root of the problem. Both
complete criminalization and complete decriminalization are band-aids on a
gaping wound that requires complex care.
// Graphics by Tiaré Jung
// Graphics by Tiaré Jung
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