Sex workers spread #FacesofProstitution as a rebuttal to the rescue industry

Mister T · April 4, 2015

Published on Straight.com

http://www.straight.com/blogra/424606/sex-workers-spread-facesofprostitution-rebuttal-rescue-industry

Sex workers spread #FacesofProstitution as a rebuttal to the rescue industry

by Charlie Smith on April 3rd, 2015 at 11:43 AM

Nothing riles some sex workers more than the suggestion that they need to be saved from their occupations.

Contrary to what Canada's justice minister, Peter MacKay, might think, there are sex workers who like how they make a living.

If he's in doubt of that, he should read Wrenna Robertson's 2012 article in the Straight entitled "Healing power of sex work".

Now in Australia, hundreds of sex workers are going public with their opposition to the way they're often stigmatized in the media.

In their view, they're not victims and they've had enough of journalists invariably presenting them in that light.

Using the hashtag #facesofprostitution, they're rising up against a blog post that was reprinted in Mamamia magazine. It purported that sex work is far worse than it was shown in the movie Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.

Of course, Canadians in the trade are less likely to participate in the campaign in light of MacKay's new antiprostitution legislation because it criminalizes the sale of sexual services.

"Let us be clear about Bill C-36's ultimate objective: that is to reduce the demand for prostitution with a view towards discouraging entry into it, deterring participation in it, and ultimately abolishing it to greatest extent possible," MacKay told a Commons committee last year.

In an astonishing bit of verbal dexterity, the Conservative justice minister even suggested that driving the sex trade underground will actually make things safer for sex workers.

Of course, that hasn't sat well with academic experts who study the issue.

"C-36 will not only fail to protect sex workers but goes many steps further toward exacerbating the negative effects of criminalization on sex workers' health, safety, and human rights," UBC associate professor of medicine Dr. Kate Shannon told the Straight last year.