Feminist viewpoints on prostitution and sex work

p-sto wrote:

As a male I'm rather curious about the suppostion that the sex trade is fundamentally degrading to women by creating disposable women and sex on demand.

Ideally speaking a sex worker should be allowed to refuse any client she wishes and have control over the terms of sex.  In practice this fails because because the worker may face violence from the person she refuses, violence from a pimp, fear of losing a client due to not meeting their demands, emotional coercion or she may be compelled by financial requirements.  These concerns excluding pimps also exist outside the sex trade in more socially accepted relationships.  I very much doubt that men would treat their partners or women in general in this fashion do so because they have learned it from sex workers.

As opposed to claiming sex work degrades women I am more inclined to believe that there is a significant portion of society that does not respect women and this lack of respect plays out more frequently within the sex trade as it is viewed as more permissible.

For the record Susan I am in support of decriminialisation.  However, I consider the law and the police to really be the smallest part of the battle.  A respecting sex trade can't really exist in a society that does not fully respect women.  The law is very little if it is not supported fairly by society.

Good luck in your struggle.

i couldn't agree with you more, and thankyou.

So, susan, what you're saying is that there have been presentations made to the UN but no rulings on the scope of the articles you quoted.

susan davis wrote:

i might point out also, they adopted decrim and trusted workers.

In case you haven't picked it up, for the most part, it's not the "workers" that many of us question here.

also, no one seems willing to acknowlegde the cultural piece of older workers becoming madames and passing on their knowledge....

i am not talking about you loretta, it has been stated here by others.i try to cut people slack, i really do. but i refuse to sit by while mis information about us is promoted as fact.

i understnad what you mean now about articles...duh?sorry brainfart!!

no, i have never seen any UN or human rights cases presented or won in regard to the articles of the charter i posted.we are not recognized as a distinct culture or easily identifialble group...etc-so do not qualify for protection from discrimination

no one will ever silence you remind, you have a right to your opinion.

stargazer-it's ok, it's the same old argument- sex workers are not recognized as a distinct culture- even though we are present all throughout human history.this is why we are interested in being recognized as such.

people aren't allowed to discriminate against workers.....?and the UN has already established a precedent of sex work as work in that regard. if child slaves in india can unionize carpet making, why can we not do the same......why can we not expect equal protection under the law?our ptrofession is discriminated against on so many levels starting with seperate criminal provisions for violence against us. 

You need to read what we're writing, susan, not what you're reading into it.

In terms of madames nurturing younger women in the brothels, I don't think this is the reality. Emma Thompson has been working to expose that as a myth in her interactive art exhibit Journey. There, a very different story is told.

Also, I think it's important to hear from those who don't support the move to legalize prostitution and set up a brothel in Vancouver. Rick and Lynn Frey, mother of Marnie Frey, a young woman among Robert Pickton's victims, strongly object and have posted a piece called To Anyone Using Our Daughter's Legacy on the website of the Vancouver Eastside Missing Women.

i would also like to point out, there are already brothels in vancouver....why should we not, in a triage, worker controled kind of way, stabilze the immediate safety of the sex workers on the street? why can we not give them a toilette to use, security, access to resources? when i worked ouside it was awful. you find a decently secluded spot and use in for a while but then some one will complain about the mess( i have never worn a condom, not sure why it's balmed on workers) and the police will follow you and bust you naked while engaged in?coitis" with your curtomer in a car. extremely humiliating. as well as these secluded spots are great spots to rape and kill you...no one to see, no one to hear....i had to dive out of cars and run for my life....it was insane. the police routinely kicking us all out of the hotel where we lived.

outside you are completely vulnerable...raining, cold, wet....there isn't even a 24 hr space yet...almost...and damn its nice....

how can we argue we are enabling...it is happening now....it has been for years......we need to stop the slaugter right now.....why is it not ok to connect people to resources, alternative income sources(the other coop enterprise aspects) and a community to be part of anf proud of....?we all share the same eperiences...we are the best medicine for each other.

it's not like we're talking about rounding sex worker up and putting them into government controled limited access to our vaginas institution as has been suggested by others.

we were inspired by a sex worker coop in india and a man who won the nobel prize for peace, not some over romanticized version of history as peeople would have you believe. we are not looking to paint some pretty woman picture. we are woking hard under direction from sex workers themselves, our membership -a genre and gender and racially diverse group of workers all with varying capacities- we spent 2 years working up to incorporation to ave all our work thrown in our faces by a lie- the olympic brothel lie- our actions were misrepresented, the wishes of the workers themselves ignored- meanwhile a huge misinformation /fundraising campaign ensued.....

i  choose to honor the voices of the workers, much respect to the families of the victims but i am responsible to my constituency and must remain true to direction.

susan davis wrote:

i  choose to honor the voices of the workers, much respect to the families of the victims but i am responsible to my constituency and must remain true to direction.

OK, but it should be no surprise that most of us are going to be looking at the broader picture of the effect on all women when considering the issues.

Didn't she just post the link to a story? Is there some other infraction susan has committed against these people to warrent that G.Pie? I haven't seen it so maybe you can enlighten me.

Aw forget it, I found it. It is called a difference of opinions. Susan was not speaking directly to that family, she was speaking to the media.Who knows what was edited out.

G. Pie wrote:

susan davis wrote:

i  choose to honor the voices of the workers, much respect to the families of the victims but i am responsible to my constituency and must remain true to direction.

 

Loretta wrote:

Also, I think it's important to hear from those who don't support the move to legalize prostitution and set up a brothel in Vancouver. Rick and Lynn Frey, mother of Marnie Frey, a young woman among Robert Pickton's victims, strongly object and have posted a piece called To Anyone Using Our Daughter's Legacy on the website of the Vancouver Eastside Missing Women.

i am not "using "manrie fey's legacy....i am also great friends with her cousin who is my cohort....

i am taking direction from sex workers.

i do repsect the families and as stated am friends and in contact with some, sat on boards and committees with some....?

give me a break gpie- i don't find you too damn respectful either

 

Susan, I don't think you showed "much respect" or even any respect to Rick and Lynn Frey here.  I know that sometimes reporters chop stories and can take statements out of context but that whole exchange was painful to read.

One of the reasons these threads are so difficult to moderate, and there are lots, is that by the time something comes to the moderators attention a lot of posts have passed under the bridge and it is certainly very impractical if not impossible to read upthread or reference other threads to appreciate the context of any post of concern.  Lots of threads, lots of posts, unusually high average word count. (frankly I don't think the content justifies the utter overwhelming volume, but I've always seen concise as a cardinal virtue)

So with respect to this post...

Stargazer wrote:

Low blow remind. Shall I post a few nasty pieces up from the abolitionists crowd? Then I can do so in a passive aggressive way and say, "oh, I posted this not to taint you with that brush! I would never do that". Classy.

 

How about this: abolitionists don't really care about women, they care about controlling women's sex. Puritanical people who wish to infantilize women. make them slaves.

 

Really remind. Is this the best you can do?

Stargazer you and remind aren't seeing eye to eye on these threads.  We get that.  When you say that about abolitionists I know you're using it as an example, but it's infammatory, unjustly accusitory, and relates to why we don't allow ironic racism for example.  Abolitionists are NOT motivated as you suggest, so don't post it.

It's also a personal attack.  Doubtless you don't think it is.  I could probably find posts of remind's which sound like personal attacks on you, and she would think they aren't.  (that's not an invitation to start looking for them BTW)

I don't think that anyone here is badly intentioned in what they post, but could we please make this about issues, and not eachother , and not speculate about eachothers intentions.

also, jmartin;

i thought we were all posting links to reading material....?i would be happy to exchange literature.are you in vancouver?i could lend you books and you could lend me books!!!

p-sto

i have a hard time wrangling the concept as well....?are one group of women more valuable than another? worth compriising the safety of for the sake of the safety and protection of the other? are we unsavable, damaged goods to be left on the curb.....?

this has always been the most difficult argement to hear, it will compromise the safety of "real"women....like the police man i did new recruits training with telling new recruits..."taking bad date reports from sex workers is important, it could help to solve a crime against a real woman".....

are we not real? do we not deserve protection....?am i not a human being entitled to equal protection under the law.....?

these hypothesis or "but what ifs" promoting fears of escalated violence against "real"women under decrim, are not justification for doing nothing. my friends are dead and aren't on any lists...their bodies were found, their murders in some cases solved.

how many people who cry "but what if...." face being kidnapped,terrorized,stripped, assaulted, murdered,raped,robbed,freezing to death,OD....when they try to work everyday....and by that i mean, earn money?

i guess i do still to a degree....but not compared to what i witnessed on the street....nice choices i have eh? which of the dangerous environments is least dangerous....?dangit!!

P-sto:  no, do not go elsewhere. I was just wondering...

good I think any general ban would be very counter-productive. Nuff said.  Thanks OldGoat

your link does not support your assertion, you attacked the brothel the same way the last time i posted about it remind.

as i explained before, i expressed that thhere were 5 distinct wtrolls in vancouver and that coop business models could support those groups in deciding what they need on a localized level.

your link merely goes to the same article you posted before and as i explained before, it is a mis quote by a reporter.please do not post misinformation about sex workers with no data to back your claims. i have expressed this over and over. you are confusing the debate by presenting statements as fact. please post a link to support your assertion of 90% of sex workers being there by choice....?or should we trust a reporter...or you?....as an expert i mean...?

as far as i know such a census has never been taken and there is no real way of proving these numbers which are for the most part based on sample studies groups of street entrenched, drug addicted survival sex workers who comprise 10% of our industry and interestingly enough reflect child abuse estimations among the entire general population...10%.

c'mon remind, we already did this once a;ready in this thread...it's getting tiring...where's your link to support your assertions? you could always pull up another article describing us as mentally ill/ crazy and not in control of how we really feel....with our fake arguments.....

it is not an accurate representation and should be considered as fact in these discussions.

post a link to support these assertions or don't post them at all.

Thanks remind. As someone who had to field dozens of media calls as to a feminist ant-violvence response to the plans to open brothels for the oympics, I am grateful for the correction of the slur that the abolitionists constructed this situation and did so as some kind of trick. 

I do see that it is no longer in the interests of the sex trade profiteers to blithely claim that the olympics is just another business opportunity for the sex trade.  And I do see how those interested in building the "coop" brothels for slightly better motives in both Vancouver and Victoria got the impression that there would be an exemption from the law, cooperation from the regulating bodies and tolerance from the "progressives".

But now the profiteers and their apologists feel the outrage of the community at this back door way of decrimializing/legalizing and normalizing a dangerous business. The business and its promoters no longer want to have us see the connection between sporting events and sex tourism between the promotion of brothels and the number of johns, between domestic prostitution and the trafficking of women from the poorest parts of the world to meet that demand.

But reality more than clever abolition strategy keeps the issue in front of the public: The Bakker case of torture of both Asian children and addicted Vancouver women prostituted, the Pickton case of indoor "partying" with  the Hells Angels and the destitute women of the downtown east side, the Ng case of suspected trafficking of Asian women, the trafficking of the Fujian women from China through Vancouver to the USA, the recent murder conviction of an indoor massage/escort by Andrew Evans and the missing Aboriginal women of both the downtown eastide and the highway of tears in the interior do that (and there are many more)

The tolerance for and even promotion of the demand for prostitution of women and children in Vancouver and the trafficking of women and kids to Vancouver became a public issue when the then mayors Larry Campbell then Sam Sullivan appeard to be going along with the brothel notions and the notions of red light districts. The coop developers bragged of money from Van city and promises from politicians.  Feminist spoke up.

It certainly is true that Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter objected early to the tolerance of prostitution by the authorities who seemed only too content to let women die in the streets and let women migrate into danger for the sake of the pleasure of individual men and the profit of motorcycle gangs and international traffickers. My earliest memory of such work was the old slogan of "For the prostitutes and against prostitution" and a public protest in the death of Linda Tatrai pre Expo.  We remain against the criminalization of ther women and children and few men sold in prostitution and for the criminalization of those who exploit them as johns pimps and owners.  (despite the revisionist hestory posted here of both a constantly divided women's movement and a joyful golden age of prostitution)

Authorities have been content to harass women trapped in prostitution but let john's pimps and bawdy house owners escape the rule of law. Not to speak of evading the human responsibility to put an end to the demand that supports this multimiliion dollar international trade in human beings. Criminalizng the buying of sex is one good way to do that. 

geez lee, are we back to calling me a profiteer?castig me as representing business owners? the group in victoria succesfully opened a worker controleed escort service with extended medical etc. we won public support for our coop brothel in vancouver and it seems we will not need an excemption, just equal treatment to other brothels that already exist all over vancouver. it's nice that you are trying to blame me now, for the mis information camapaign started by you and your affiliates and to blame me for the subsquent media onslaught which i also had to field, featuring some of the most aggressive abolitionist reporters i have ever encountered. and attacks from your associates everytime i try to speak publically and trying to ambush me by luring me to speak on panels that you, once i confirm i will speak, immediatley highjack and fill with your supporters so you can all take turns taking pot shots at me. it looks like i will once again have to post my proof here;

i never once asked for an olympic brothel and my assertions about the harms caused by these anti olympic brothel campaigns on the real activities of the coop are true.

a letter between myself and a member of awan;the date is on dec 12,th 2007- we debated after this and these groups were told we were not planning an olympic brothel but chose to go ahead any way in order to forward their own position. i would have welcomed a balanced debate on the safety impacts of a safe work environment for those people still entrenched in the street level trade. but instead it as been made out to be an "olympic issue" and never was. it is a misrepresentations and as disasterous efforts on our goals for alternative income sources for sex workers during the games and their high level security and displacment of workers.post cards, pressure on government and police leading to a series of raids on asian massage parlours in reaction to mellissa farely coming to vancouver at the request of the same groups...3 asian massage parlour workers have been killed this year....any sense of responsibility for destabilizing the safety of these workers? you know by forcing raids to find "trafficking "victims?will you push for the same during the games?

Laura H)

Sent:
December 12, 2007 10:15:18 PM

To:
susan davis

Hello Susan,
Thank you for the Email and your phone call today.  It would be best at this point in time if you Email us with the information that you suggested presenting to us.  
With the holiday season fast approaching, it does not seem possible that we can meet with you & the two First Nations women you mentioned in your phone call today.
Best Regards,
Laura

From: susan
To: laura h
Subject:
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 12:19:45 -0700

hi there!
my name is suan davis and i'm a sex worker of 21 yrs .
i am also the coop development coordinator for the sex worker cooperative we are opening with the sex workers in the downtown east side of vancouver.

i find it very difficult to hear your opposition to this action as it is the action called for by the sex workers themselves in the downtown east side.
we have a coop development team made up of the sex workers from that community and 2 of them are first nations sisters. the coop is not just the brothel. it is the foundation of the sex worker community beginning to rebuild and stabilize our safety.
i agree that no one should have to do sex work and that we must end the survival level trade.

Three Major points about the sex worker coop;

1.                          The coop will be owned by and operated by the sex workers who access it. Direction of the company and distribution of any profits will be voted on by the membership, sex workers from the downtown east side.

2.                          The coop is more than the safe work site. It also encompasses other community economic development activities  such as an art collective (every sex worker I know is an artist), coop catering company, coop publishing company, and coop consulting firm (we do training for the VPD, Fed government and wish to standardize these curriculums and allow other sex workers to be empowered through these engagements as well as get paid!)

3.                          The coop brothel will not go forward without extensive community consultation and an amnesty from the criminal code of Canada. We respect due process and feel strongly that a limited amnesty could be achievable in this case. We will not however go ahead without community support and do not want to put the police in a position where they have to arrest us.

please remember, we are trying to prevent people from being killed or hurt when they are forced to make these choices and engage in sex work. all we want is to give the sex workers in the east end what they are asking for, safety from violence while they work, a place to clean up after they work and the right to define what safety means to them for themselves.

these actions were designed by and for the sex worker community in the east end- please do not deny them the right of self determination and the right to be safe at work.

i would welcome any comments or concerns and would really love to opportunity to present your group with  our plan  for stabilizing the safety of the most vulnerable sex workers in the east end.

thank you
susan davis
(604)671-2345

again,lee.... i would like to ask that people do not refer to the men who kill us by name.

we refer to it as the trial in the case of the missing women and it the other case, we could refer to as the trial in case of the torture of women in the DTES.....as explained it is our assertion that fame is a contributing factor in these crimes and so we respectfully request people do not use those persons names.

Susan posted a link a while back that indicated an increase in the number of sex worker deaths and correlated the increase to more restrictive legislation regarding sex work.  As some one that works in statistics I consider it a bit problematic to draw any conclusions from the numbers she posted for a variety of reasons.  Part of me wouldn't mind seeing the link again to get a better sense of the numbers since I only gave them a cursory view last time.

On the other hand, I'm getting rather tired of seeing both sides trot out statistics that are going to be at least some what inaccurate since the entity they're examining is by it's nature difficult to pin down.

At their best statisics tend to offer a vague idea of the scope and shape of a situation.  They're often much less informative than people assume them to be because reporting can often be inaccurate and apparent relationships are almost always conflated with factors not considered in the analysis.  A dogmatic following of the numbers can be very misleading.

Statistics can inform us to a degree in this issue but a definitive answer as to the right approach isn't going to from them.  Personally I'd like to see less numbers in the discussion and better effort of both sides to address each others concerns.