CBC's "The Current": Debate on Prostitution Law

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Listen (24 minutes):

 

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/06/13/ontario-prostitution-law/

 

Ontario Prostitution Law - Panel

 

Susan Davis has been in the sex industry for 25 years and testified in the first court challenge. She was in Vancouver this morning. Also in Vancouver we were joined by Summer Rain-Bentham. She is a former prostitute who now works with women through the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter and and she will be in court as an intervenor this week for the appeal.

[SamanthaEvans 166766]

Susan has been a very vocal presence for a long time. She often tends to emphasize "compassionate sex" clients--men with disabilities, physical limitations or who are about to have prostate surgery and face losing erectile function permanently. These are not the majority of most companions' clients, however. She did very well in this interview, I think.

 

Summer-Rain isn't very articulate and is easily confused about the facts. Specifically, the claim that most paid companions enter the sex trade around age 12 or 13 has been debunked many times, but Summer doesn't seem to know it. She also said that she doesn't consider the sex trade to be a form of employment at all, but toward the end of the interview, she says that most women go into the sex trade because of poverty, because of needing to support children and because of having no other options. Her analysis may be correct--though there's some debate about that--and it certainly puts her in the anti-woman camp, overall. When women have no other options, making them criminals is only putting them in greater risk of losing their children.

 

Overall, I think Susan came out sounding reasonable, reflective and aware of the complexities and subtleties related to the appeal, whereas Summer sounded much more doctrinaire, scripted and limited. We'll see how she does when she's actually in court.