Prostitution Law Ignores Societal Roots of Violence

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[B][U]Prostitution Law Ignores Societal Roots of Violence[/U][/B]

By Julie Kaye | December 11, 2014

[URL="http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/Prostitution+ignores+societal+roots+violence/10458631/story.html"]http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/Prostitution+ignores+societal+roots+violence/10458631/story.html[/URL]

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[B][I]Kaye is an assistant professor of sociology and director of community engaged research at The King's University in Edmonton.[/I][/B]

The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act came into effect Dec. 6 to replace the laws struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada's Bedford case.

The decision emphasized that prostitution laws must not violate the safety and security rights of sex workers. Yet the question of their safety and security remains irrelevant for many advocates of the new law, who argue that prostitution is an inherent form of violence and that sex-trade industries must be abolished.

For such advocates, the over-representation of indigenous women as "victims of sex trafficking" was seen as an important justification for the new legislation. Yet, far from addressing sex trafficking, this new law adds to a long and destructive string of government responses to violence against indigenous women that not only fails to prevent such violence, but also perpetuates harm.

Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario is right to raise concern about the effects of the new law on "those who are most vulnerable," and to ask the Ontario attorney general to advise on the constitutionality of the law.

Anti-trafficking advocates argue for the criminalization of sex industries, particularly purchasers of sex, to protect women from violence. But criminalization does not address societal vulnerabilities or the reality that violence is rooted in multiple and overlapping systems of domination that produce spaces of dehumanizing poverty, restricted choice, isolation and commodification.

Rather than reduce violence, criminalization reproduces another version of a long history of colonial state violence executed against indigenous women "for their own good." This includes responses to missing and murdered indigenous women that do little more than increase police powers, despite demonstrated failures of the criminal justice system and significant mistrust of police by indigenous women

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