Wayne C. This is a status with which I am very well acquainted as a sex worker. We might define this as the Stockwhore Syndrome. We have worked hard, no matter how exasperated we felt, against having our work conflated with trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Now our new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has appointed Jody Wilson-Raybould, an aboriginal woman and a lawyer, his justice minister. This testimony, given in the fall of , includes statements from representatives of sex work organizations, women who identify as independent sex workers, abolitionist groups, women who identify as victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, religious organizations and people considered experts on sex work laws in Canada and other countries.
These hearings were ostensibly organized as a means of accurately understanding and, if necessary, reforming Bill C, which ultimately came into effect intact on December 6, Most people have fairly predictable definitions of what is too obscene to look at.
Mine: watching people who do not pay my rent sitting around a boardroom table using byzantine language to debate how I may or may not use my vagina for commercial purposes. This is like allowing people who have been traumatized by forced marriages as teenagers to determine whether or not marriage should be criminalized, even though there are already laws in Canada preventing forced marriage.
You might ask why abolitionists and victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation were afforded so much space to speak on issues that have already been addressed in the Criminal Code. Many sex workers and activists spent a year advocating for their right to give expert testimony in favour of decriminalization, only to be positioned as out of touch.
We could talk for eight days about how breathtakingly patronizing this is, but instead let me draw your attention to Gunilla Ekberg, an attorney with Swedish and Canadian citizenship, a professor at the University of Glasgow and one of the architects of the Swedish Model of prostitution ultimately adopted by the Harper Conservatives. There are individuals who are exploited.
