Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the bawdy house law, the communication law, and the living of the avails provision are unconstitutional. Here is a great video by PIVOT explaining the issues, and here is an article which gives a detailed summary of the court decision.
It is easy to criticize sex-workers or sex-work as being "immoral." And even if one does not fall into this facile attitude, it is easy to criticize the "larger system" which perpetuates the need for some to earn their living through this kind of job. Moreover, it is all-too-easy to say: "look, this is progress, but the real issue is not addressed at all; the real issue is the social system itself, and this kind of activism and court-decision only helps to cover up the real problem."
This kind of cheap criticism misses the important point made by the PIVOT activists and lawyers. Yes, the social system itself is flawed, and yes, sex-work itself ought not to be encouraged - but who disagrees with these moralistic points? In order to actually bring about an improvement, however, means, perhaps paradoxically, to protect sex-workers' rights. As one lawyer puts it, sex-workers have historically been marginalized, treated as "disposable," and the police has failed to protect them as citizens. The reference to history is crucial, for it strongly suggests that the outlaw of sex-work is part of the perpetuation of all the problems associated with it. Against this background, the legal protection of sex-workers means first of all to put the sex-workers themselves in the position to reflect upon their practices, instead of being traumatized by unexpected disasters, and, secondly, to normalize and discourage the work itself, to help society as a whole to grow out of its need to feed upon this business.
Meanwhile, another criticism of the court decision might be the following: since now sex-workers can enjoy legal protection, there is the "danger" that more people will be inclined to enter or stay in sex-trade, and so the fundamental goal, that of eliminating sex-work as such, becomes even more difficult to achieve. Why does this criticism also miss the point? Because it is based on a lack of understanding of the actual motivations behind the act of entering into the sex-trade business.
Most sex-workers enter into this trade out of economic necessity. Whether legally protected or not is really not the deciding factor. In fact, one could even argue that the main reason why sex-trade grows as a market, and why it is becoming more and more contemptible, just is the lack of legal protection for sex-workers. From the point of view of the "customers," it is infinitely easier to "buy" their "products" if they know that no matter what they do "with it," sex-workers will not have the power to appeal to the police or to court. Far from discouraging sex-trade, therefore, laws which outlaw the trade and its workers actually help to perpetuate the entire business.
Moreover, at least in Japan, there are cases where sex-workers start their business precisely because they do not enjoy legal protection. Ryu Murakami, in writing his novel Love & Pop, interviewed many high school students and older sex-workers about their lives. Murakami reports in a conversation (included in the collection The Unbearable Salsa of Being) that it is the fact that the law cannot reach them that makes sex-work an appealing field for these workers. The idea here is this: these students and workers are looking for places where they might live without being "normalized." Part-time work, "proper" entertainment and enjoyment, and ordinary school and work only give the impression that life flows monotonously and impersonally. Against this social system, there is a need to re-assert one's own freedom and autonomy - or so they feel. Murakami reports that it is out of this sentiment that the students and workers go for the "edge," where they can play a critical role against the established norms of contemporary society. This critical stance is, as Murakami notes, not as childish as it seems: and Love & Pop is written precisely in order to explain just how complex this stance is, and why it is necessary for this stance to be expressed in the form of sex-trade.
Murakami's work clearly shows - and in order to see this, it is necessary to read his works first - that criticizing the sex-workers from a safe and cozy moral standpoint only exaggerates the problem. This kind of criticism functions as a means to stop thinking about the more uncomfortable truths of the social structure which necessitates these jobs. On the other hand, providing legal protection for sex-workers paradoxically will discourage newcomers. It will show that society "recognizes" this trade as its inevitable product, and will also make it far less likely for those involved in it to feel like they are "on the edge." This will deprive the newcomer of the very motivation which he or she held upon entering this field in the first place.
Once again, it is important to emphasize that moral contempt against sex-work, and by implication also against the sex-workers, is part of the whole problem. It paints a certain narrow picture of what "they" - the work and the workers - "must be like," and then rejects it as something to be one-sidedly discouraged. The more this kind of work is criticized, and the more such a criticism is "justified," the more inclined the kid or the worker will be to enter or continue with this trade. Any criticism must instead be based on the standards which are held by the sex-workers themselves. What does a sex-worker demand? What is the ideal which he or she is trying to achieve with the work? Taking all this into account, the work done by PIVOT members is truly remarkable. PIVOT has produced a shift in perspective, a new way of approaching the issue of sex-trade, by helping the court to make this great decision.
