Lecture 11: Sex Work/Commerce

Question 1

True or False?
Sex work is illegal in Canada

Answer 1

False !
it is legal to sell sex services but illegal to purchase sex services from sex workers

Question 2

What is prostitution?

Answer 2

The consensual sale of sexual activity for money or goods of value
◦If not, it is sexual violence or rape

Question 3

Street-based sex workers

Answer 3

• Often live lives of sex, violence, disease, and substance abuse
• Many feel powerless to control their own fates
• Many die young from drug abuse, disease, suicide, and physical abuse
• they are often brought in from a young age

Question 4

Brothel/massage parlour workers

Answer 4

Occupy a middle position in the hierarchy of sex workers

Question 5

Escorts

Answer 5

• Post ads in telephone directories and newspaper personals to attract conventioneers and businessmen
• Sex workers who work for escort services usually come from middle-class backgrounds and are well-educated

Question 6

Call girls

Answer 6

• Sex workers who arrange their sexual contacts by telephone
• “Call” refers to telephone calls and being on call
• Occupy the highest rung on the social ladder of female sex work
• Most attractive, best educated, charge the most money
• Work on their own (without pimps)
  Serve as companions and sex partners

Question 7

What were the 3 laws that were argued as unconstitutional?

Answer 7

1. Illegal to communicate with somebody about selling your own sexual services
   * Argued: this is unconstututional as it prevents sex workers from screening potentially dangerous clients
2. Provision against body houses (brothels)/illeglal to work in a brothel.
   * Argued: this is unconstitutional as it prevents sex workers working in a safe indoor enviorment.
3. Illegal to live off any of the profits you have made of sexual services.
   - unable to hire security
   - unable to hire driver to drive you to places

• Argued: that the sex workers would not be able to use security or driver to drive them around

Question 8

In response to the constitutional laws against prostitution what three goals did the canadian government bring up?

Answer 8

Proposed Bill C-36:
Bill C-36 treats prostitution as a form of sexual exploitation that disproportionately impacts women and girls. Its overall objectives are to:
* protect individuals who sell their own sexual services
* Protect communities especialy children from the harms caused by prostitution
* Reduce the demand for prostitution and its incidence

this bill shifted how we conceptualize prostitution

Question 9

What are the prostitution offences in Canada from Bill-C 36?

Answer 9

• Purchasing offence: Obtaining sexual services for consideration, or communicating in any place for that purpose
• Advertising offence: Knowingly advertising an offer to provide sexual services for consideration
• Material benefit offence: recieving a finanacial or other material benefit obtained or derived from the commission of the purchasing offence
• Procuring offence: Procuring a person to offer or provide sexual services for consideration (active involvement in the prostitution of others).
• Communicating offence: Communicating for the purposes of offering or providing sexual services for consideration in public places that are next to school grounds, playgrounds, or daycare centers.

Question 10

is Bill-C 36 solving issues? Is this law any better than making prostitution illegal? Does it offer any additional advantages to women in terms of their safety?

potential short answer quetion

Answer 10

• these new laws make it harder for women to stay safe
• prosecution as a deterrent - will it work now?
• Will force prostitution underground- where to find customers?
• Does not address root issues as to why people become involved in the first place
• Views all sex workers as victims…..VS. making a free and valid choice (does not differentiate between those are victims and those willing to engage)
• Helping people, companionship

Question 11

What are some harm reduction strategies for prostitution?

Answer 11

*Reduce risky drug use (not drug use per say)
* Prevent drug overdose
* Provide honest drug education
* Increase users’ contact with services and treatment

Question 12

What is meant by the term harm reduction?

Answer 12

• The term harm reduction implies that sex work/prostitution can cause real harms
• Harms are not an inevitable consequence of sex work
• Harms are psychological, physical, social, legal, economic
• Harms are to individual, family, community, society
• They can be prevented or reduced through a range of strategies

Question 13

What are the benefits of sex work?

Answer 13

• Boost self-confidence
• Offers you higher income without investment in education
• More autonomy
• Status
• Money

Question 14

Who is more likely to experience the harms of sex work?
a) street level sex workers
b) call girls
c) Escorts
d) all of the above

Answer 14

a) street level sex workers

Question 15

What are some things that harm reduction programs can include?

Answer 15

• Support services in place for individuals who need it
• STI screenings
• De-stigmatize and decriminalize sex work
• Education on STI prevention and transmission
• Occupational health and safety training
• Interventions and outreach including peer education
• Training in condom and negotiating skills
• Harm reduction and safer sex tools including male and female condoms.

Question 16

What are some harm reduction principles?

Answer 16

• Pragmatic (practical), not idealistic
• Hierarchy of goals
• Non-judgmental, non-punitive, non-coercive
• Neither condemns nor condones
• Humanistic & human rights-based
• Reduce stigma
• Autonomy
• Flexibility

Question 17

Why is harm reduction good?

pros

Answer 17

• realistically we will always have a society engaging in prostitution
• Enforcement has its limitation
• Not everyone will abstain from sex
• People are still going to engage in risky sex work and suffer the consequences (STIs, abuse)
• We can reduce illness, suffering, abuse and other harms that people experience.

Question 18

What are the cons of harm reduction?

Answer 18

• Little change in behaviour, safe sex education limited to the sex workers
• Placed onus on women to negotiate condom use or use female condom
• Is prostitution the same thing as addiction?
• For the sex worker, prostitution is not an ‘addiction’
  Client as ‘user’, sex worker as ‘being used’.
  Critics argue that sex work should be compared to domestic violence, slavery, sexual harassment, torture, incest and rape - not addiction.

Question 19

What is the difference between sex work and prostitution?
(sterotypes come to mind when talking about prostitutes - thus we need a push for shift in terminology)

Answer 19

• Sex work is work = highlights economic and labor aspects, push for need for worker protection
  ◦Many prostitutes have redefined themselves as sex workers, and “prostitution” as “sex work”
• ◦These terms are coined by the sex workers themselves to redefine commercial sex
  ◦Highlights the economic and labour aspects of the work and need for worker protection
• try to increase safety and have regulations
• Push to decriminalize sex work

Question 20

Why might some people be opposed to the new terminology for sex workers? (calling them sex workers rather than prostitutes)

Answer 20

• Normalizing abuse that happens in sex work industry
  ◦Religion in politics
  ◦More complicated and nuanced than just slapping a new label onto prostitution

Question 21

Bill-C 36 treats prostitution as:
a) A valid career choice
b) Women’s equality
c) Financial gain
d) Sexual exploitation

Answer 21

d) Sexual exploitation

Question 22

Which one of the following contitutional challneges was not brought up:
a) the provision against communication for the purpose of prostitution
b)the prosecution of pimps to use/exploit sex workers
c)The provision against bawdy houses
d)the provision against living off of the avails of prostitution

Answer 22

b)The prosecution of pimps to exploit sex workers

Question 23

What are some of the criticisms or cons to Bill-C 36 for sex workers?

Answer 23

• street based sex workers are pressured to get into cares without being able to screen clients
• indoor sex workers are obligated to work in hidden or remote locations
• since purchasing sexual services are illegal in canada, sex workers avoid the police, thus increasing their risk of victimization

Question 24

What organization offers support services in canda to sex workers?
a)Canadian Public Health Association
b) Maggie’s: The Toronto Sex Worker Action Prioject
c)Pivot law Society
d) None of the above

Answer 24

b) Maggie’s
- provides info about sexual health, STI & HIV prevention, canadian law and dangerous clients

Question 25

True or False?
Street-based sex workers are more likely than other types of sex workers to be socially, racially, or economically marginalized.

Answer 25

True!

Question 26

Which of the following is the correct term when young people are trading in sex for food, shelter and money:
a) sex work
b) prostitution
c) survival sex
d) all of the above

Answer 26

c) Survival sex

Question 27

True or False?
Many advertised massage and escort services are fronts for sex work?

Answer 27

True!

Question 28

Which type of sex worker occupies the middle spot in the hierarchy of sex workers?
a)Call girls
b)Street-based sex workers
c)Brothel workers
d)Escorts

Answer 28

c)Brothel workers