Leaving well enough alone.

[TheRiddlerMan 872]

Last night I caught the end of a W5 "expose" on prostitution. It was all about getting women out of the sex trade, with the usual carte blanche association of all prostitution with street walking, under age workers and pimps. They ended it by pushing the Swedish model of targeting the users rather than those providing the service.

 

To me this illustrates how hard it would be to ever make a case to the public that prostitution should be decriminalized across the board. The women on the show obviously had been in awful situations, and deserve any sympathy and support they can get. At the same time, they're easily used as tools in the fight against legalizing prostitution.

 

I really believe that it would have better to leave the current laws alone. It's far from ideal but even if the legal challenges go through at the Supreme Court level, I'm convinced that the Conservative majority will simply pass a new law along the Swedish model. When they do, they won't just have the moral majority types on their side, they'll have:

 

- NIMBYs who believe that legalizing it will flood their neighborhoods with sex workers.

- that subset of feminist opinion that considers all prostitution an assault on women and that sex workers are not truly consenting.

- all those concerned about human trafficking of women from other parts of the world into Canada to be forced into sex work.

 

It's that last group that gets the most attention these days. It's a rare day when I don't see another story about it. They almost universally push the Swedish model. Passing a law along those lines would be an easy win for Harper and I suspect it would have NDP support as well.

 

People can quote papers and statistics all they want, but it's popular perception that ultimately matters, and that perception is conditioned daily by seeing abused women with an accompanying byline that ties their abuse to prostitution in all forms. There's just no arguing with that.

[Guest W***ledi*Time]

Of course there's arguing with that. Is leaving the law as it stands really the same thing as leaving "well enough" alone?

 

The tide of dead sex workers suggests otherwise.

 

And it was in 2007, at the moment when the horrific Pickton case was galvanizing public attention and focusing it on the central issue, that the current constitutional challenge was launched. And right after Parliament's own Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws concluded in December 2006 that:

 

Canada's current quasi-legal approach to prostitution ... causes more harm than good. It marginalizes prostitutes, often leaving them isolated and afraid to report abuse and violence to law enforcement authorities. ... sexual activities between consenting adults that do not harm others, whether or not payment is involved, should not be prohibited by the state ...

 

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=2599932&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=1?

 

The issue of safety continues to be prominently in the news, and before the attention of the public, in the form of the current Missing Women Inquiry, due to report 31 October 2012.

 

Yes, parliament is another, perhaps the toughest, bridge to cross. If and when it comes to that, it won't be easy. But again - remember parliament's 2006 Subcommittee on Solicitation, which, after all, recommended a sensible approach.

 

It will be up to us to bring the example of models that work (New Zealand) to the attention of MPs and the public, and to point out the real emptiness of the ideological propaganda being bandied about regarding models that don't work (Sweden). It will be up to us to make sure that the attempt to confute sex work and human trafficking is exposed as the intellectual dishonesty it is. And prostitution need not be decriminalized across the board - in fact, some sort of legalized regulatory structure such as New Zealand's is entirely viable. No, it won't be easy, but social justice is worth fighting for. Even if it is inconvenient to stand up for the safety of members of our society.

 

As for the public being confused by these ideologues and fear-mongerers, polls have consistently shown that the Canadian public do support sensible reform to prostitution law:

 

http://www.cerb.ca/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=330265&highlight=poll#post330265

http://www.cerb.ca/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=244662&highlight=poll#post244662

[TheRiddlerMan 872]

You're looking for a reasonable treatment from people who have no motive or intent to be reasonable. This is the government that is building more prisons and imposing harsher sentences along the American line, even though there's mountains of evidence that it's not only ineffective but actively counter-productive when dealing with crime. Compared to that, prostitution is a slam dunk for Harper.

 

The Swedish model is probably the most "reasonable" solution on the table - they may continue following the American way and simply declare it illegal across the board. That's why I think it would have been better to leave this issue as is, though of course the ones who initiated the court challenge couldn't have known what the political climate would be like today.