Chapter 7 - Pornography and the Sex Trade Flashcards
Sex Trade
adults (19+) who exchange sexual services for money which “necessarily, but not exclusively, include direct physical, sexual contact with clients…”
includes street workers, escorts, entertainment workers, brothel workers, erotic masseurs, BDSM practitioners, etc.
Their conditions vary.
Most data is based on criminal charges of street workers even though they are 10-20% of all sex workers in Canada. (Kendall, p. 135)
Advocates: One law against all forms of prostitution does not address the multiple problems facing sex workers.
Cecilia Benoit, Understanding Sex Work (2015)
Selected findings:
60-80% of indoor workers never experience any work-related violence
24% of sex trade workers are attacked on the job
“Working in the sex industry becomes a rational option with identifiable benefits for those who do not have the money, education, privilege, or social support systems in place to support themselves otherwise.”
Implications?
Human Trafficking
“The 3rd largest money-making enterprise in the world, after drugs and weapons, is the traffic in people” (Malarek cited in Kendall, 3rd ed, p. 153)
Many women are exploited as they seek to migrate from persecution, dire poverty, hopelessness, and are vulnerable to recruitment and promise of work.
The scale of operations can be large, medium, or small.
human trafficking is often conflated with sex work
Prositution
The commercial exchange of sexual services between consenting adults is not illegal and never has been illegal.
But activities related to it are illegal.
eg. communicating in public for purposes of buy or selling sex; involvement in the procuring of sexual services contradictions
“It is almost impossible to engage in the trade without breaking the law.” (Kendall, 133)
exacerbates the risk for sex workers
Chief Justice McLachlin
The prohibitions at issue do not merely impose conditions on how prostitutes operate. They go a critical step further, by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution; they prevent people engaged in a risky—but legal—activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the risk.
Current Legislation
McLaughlin gave the federal government one year to write new laws
But on 4 June 2014, Peter MacKay, Minister of Justice, introduced legislation to amend the Criminal Code
Bill C-36, “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act”
It undid the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Canada v Bedford
criminalizing sex work in Canada
Protection Of Communities And Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA)
Provision 213: Communication
Stopping or impeding traffic in order to offer, provide or obtain sexual services for consideration and communicating for the purpose of offering or providing sexual services for consideration in a public place, or in any place open to public view, that is or is next to a place where persons under the age of 18 can reasonably be expected to be present.
Provision 213: Communication
Increases isolation and dangerous working conditions for street-based sex workers
street-based sex workers will abandon established tactics such as working in pairs, soliciting in familiar, well-lit, populated areas, and taking the time to carefully assess a client prior to entering a vehicle
They will shift sex work areas to industrial zones
Provision 286.2: Material Benefit from Sexual Services
Everyone who receives a material benefit (profit) knowing it was derived from the purchase of sexual services is liable to imprisonment; s. 286.2(3): Living with a sex worker, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, is presumed to be proof of such a benefit; s. 286.2(4) & (5): If a person receiving benefits is in a “legitimate” (i.e., family or intimate) relationship with or provides services at fair market value to the sex worker, exceptions may apply, but not if that person uses threats or violence, abuses a position of power or trust, provides intoxicants, or receives benefits in a “commercial enterprise” to sell sexual services.
“Most sex workers in all areas of sex work are independent of pimps and likely have never interacted with them.” (POWER 2012, cited in Benoit & Shumka 2015)
Legitimate 3rd parties include managers, agency owners, security personnel, drivers, phone girls, booking agents, website operators, and other sex workers
They can play a pivotal role in the health, safety, and security of a sex workers.
eg. screening of clients’ personal information, zero-tolerance policies for clients engaging in inappropriate behaviour, reliance on bad date lists, and use of security persons
Legal Models Governing Sex Work
Criminalization: (a) Prohibition, eg. US (except Nevada), 30 nations in Africa, 25 in Asia, 20 in Europe
Partial criminalization: selling sexual services is legal, but it is illegal to buy them; criminalization of related activities, eg. Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada
Legalization: sex work is regulated, eg. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Nevada
Decriminalization: labour rights are recognized and the sex industry is regulated, eg. New Zealand
The Debate over Decriminalization - PROS:
Pros: “Serving men sexually is one of the leading forms of employment and survival for women on the planet” (Ward & Edelstein cited in Kendall, 130)
It is work, like any other, that requires protection for the workers.
US research: minimal violence occurs in regulated sex work environments (Benoit & Shumka 2015)
New Zealand research: trafficking of women, drug abuse, and increased rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) do not result from decriminalization of sex work.
The Debate over Decriminalization - CONS:
Sex work is an extreme, flagrant form of abuse of women, and is always exploitative.
Can’t be separated from the drug trade, trafficking, pornography, child abuse.
Legalization will not help the women who are drug addicts, abused, and enslaved
It will legitimize pimps and sex traffickers
Social morality arguments
Advocates’ Recommendation
“Decriminalization is a first and necessary step to address the rights and safety of people who sell or trade sex, particularly those who are overpoliced and underprotected. However, decriminalization is not enough on its own.
Functionalist
sex work is a criminal activity = deviance
a breakdown in society’s function to socialize everyone to conform to norms
but it also has its own functionality that may be tolerated
Conflict Theory
“choice” of sex work arises from poverty and sexism
treat the root causes
and regulate sex work like any other labour issue
sex work is determined by the inequities btw men with power and women without power
change the male-led infrastructure that preys on women, not the women and what they must do to get by
Interactionism
explores the experience of sex work and factors involved, eg. the meaning of prostitute as a label; stigma
How this is negotiated by different kinds of sex workers
Some research gives voice to the workers (and to male clients)
Feminism
Supporters:
Sex work is legitimate work that requires regulation and protection for workers.
Canadian law increases the dangers for sex workers and should be repealed.
Race, ethnicity, social class, age differences have to be recognized.
Have to distinguish btw “traffic in persons and forced prostitution” and “respect for the self-determination of adults who are voluntarily engaged in prostitution” (cited in Kendall, p. 145)
Fix the root cause of inequality problems of public health, violence, racism, esp for the most dangerous kind of sex work
Pornography
obscenity = materials generally regarded as offensive according to accepted standards of decency
Criminal Code, s 163 = undue exploitation of sex, or of sex together with crime, horror, cruelty, or violence
erotica = materials that depict consensual sexual activities that are sought by and pleasurable to all parties involved (Kendall, 146)
What divides obscenity from erotica?
Pornography Debate Pro
the industry is already so large, it is impossible to shut down
you cannot censor use of the internet without curtailing public use of the internet in general
pornography can be separated from exploitation of women and children by implementation of the Criminal Code
most of it is harmless
It is a form of sexual freedom
Pornography Debate Con
pornography cannot be separated from the exploitation of women and children
pornography is exploitative by definition
pornography is increasingly violent: this normalization has to be stopped
social morality arguments
Prostitution
The sale of sexual services (of ones self or another) for money or goods and without emotional attachment.
May include pornography, live sex shows, international sexual slavery, and prostitution.
It is estimated that 80-90% are women and girls world’s oldest profession (4000 years neither completely accepted nor condemned)
History of Prosetution
Christian leaders St. Augustine and St. Thomas argued that prostitution was evil, but encouraged tolerance towards it
Served as a basic need and if unmet, would result in greater harm than prostitution.
16th century Europe thought that it should be eliminated on moral grounds
Prostitution debate
Some argue that prostitution is a valid expression of female sexuality outside of marriage and should be seen as a legitimate career choice.
Others see prostitution as rooted in global gender inequality.
Dan Allman - prostitution among indigenous people did not exist until Europeans began to settle here
The Global Sex Industry
3 decades - industrialization, normalization and globalization f prostitution.
Normalized with no legal impediments to promote it as a commodity it is normalized and seen as entertainment
Globalization of prostitution refers to the process by which the sex industry is becoming increasingly global in scope (conglomerates)
Globally Sex Industry
There has been an increase in Canada of migrant often trafficked sex workers - Soviet Union, eastern and Central Europe as “Natashas” - you can buy a woman for $10,000 and make your money back in one week.
Estimated that 2.45 billion people were trafficked resulting in $31.6 billion in profit
Trafficking as a crime
Shall mean the recruitment transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of persons, bu ,exams of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of
Trafficking in persons
power, or of a position of vulnerability, person receiving payment or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include at a minimum the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
Trafficking in Canada
The demand for prostitution is greater in areas were military congregated for extended periods of time in the military or on business far from home
Natural disasters or wars saw many displaced or marginalized women taken to or drawn to these areas to make a living.
60 incidents in 2011, 54 in 2012.
Victims
Issues of PTSD, shame and stigma
Sex tourism
Luminal space - betwixt and between in socially condoned marginality, neither bound by the mores of home nor by the host community Women are getting involved in this - white women exploit poor black men Patriarchal view of power has all but made invisible the inequalities that exist in this relationship based on race, class and gender.
Prostitution in Canada
It’s not illegal in Canada
Sections 210-214of the criminal code do prohibit many transactions that are quite necessary to prostitution, particularly the safer sale of services.
Section 213
Prohibits the selling of sexual services
Section212
Prohibits lining of the avails of prostitution - procuring or soliciting a person to exchange sexual services for money
Section 210
Being involved in a common bowdy house - providing direction to or driving someone to a bawdy house
Section 214
Buying sexual services from someone under the age of 18 years old.
Bristish COlumbia and Ontario
Issue of safety, citing constitutional concerns
They are not convicted of offences but fines - max penalty is $2,000 or 6 months in jail.
Federal Laws of Prositution in Canada make it almost impossible to engage in sex work:
Lowman - argues that this fact adds to the already existing moral political marginalization that sex trade workers endure
Contributes to legal structures that revictimize, prostitution becomes part of an illicit market, alienates workers from the protective services of police
