Welcome to genderberg.com!

     menu
  • Home
  • FAQ
  • Feedback
  • Samantha Berg articles
  • Stories Archive
  • Topics

  •      search



         forums

    visit the genderberg forums

         resources

    genderberg resources

     News: Prostitution need not always be with us


    Before we just give up and condemn women and children to this enslavement, why don't we tackle the basic problems?

    Vancouver Sun
    Saturday, October 07, 2006

    It's a terrible indictment of our society that prostitutes are 40 to 120 times more likely to be beaten, raped or killed than the general population.

    It's inevitable. I'm so sick of hearing that about prostitution, poverty, homelessness and child abuse. I'm tired of people pronouncing it a fact of the human condition, sighing and then going on about ways to regulate the misery inflicted on the weak and the vulnerable.

    I'd like to blame demographics: Too few idealistic and optimistic youth and too many worn-out, tired old baby boomers who long ago gave up on saving the world. But that's too simple, too easy and too damned depressing.

    Besides, when did we suddenly give up on change when so much has been accomplished in the past 50 years?

    People once laughed at the idea that women are equal to men and that children have rights.

    Twenty years ago, people believed clearcut logging would continue until British Columbia was as denuded of trees as Scotland or Switzerland. Nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States seemed certain. Whole generations grew up believing that the Iron Curtain would last forever.

    So before we ensure that enslaving women and children to the supposedly insatiable desires of men by legalizing prostitution and before we condemn generations to desperate measures by not addressing poverty and abuse, why don't we at least consider that it need not be?

    Why don't we consider tackling them with all of the resources of our society instead of making excuses?

    Everybody agrees that, with a few exceptions, people don't see selling their bodies as a career choice. Everybody agrees that at the root of prostitution is poverty, desperation, addiction and abuse. Finally, everybody agrees that regardless of the hows and whys of women and children prostituting themselves, it's a terrible indictment of our society that they are 40 to 120 times more likely to be beaten, raped or killed than the general population.

    But what's happening in the public debate is that, having acknowledged those things, almost everyone glides on to talk only about how to keep the prostitutes safe while they're working.

    Pivot Legal Society identified the root causes that people are entering the sex trade at an average age of 14 in Voices of Dignity in 2004. But in its most recent report called Beyond Decriminalization, it concluded that "criminal law reform is the first step towards a shift from the status quo, where sex workers are subject to extreme levels of violence and social marginalization, to a society where sex workers are empowered to create safe and dignified working conditions."

    The recently released Living in Community report called Balancing Perspective on Vancouver's Sex Industry didn't make a specific recommendation on the laws. But sheer weight of words has it leaning toward decriminalization and legalization as in Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia.

    Sweden dared swim upstream against a worldwide wave of legalizing prostitution. It rejected the inevitability of prostitution and human trafficking and that women and children would be forever sold as commodities.

    Instead, it criminalized all aspects of the purchasing of sexual services, saying prostitution is incompatible with gender equity, human rights and human dignity.

    But it was dismissed in a single sentence in Living in Community's report.

    "The Swedish move to a more stringent prohibitionist policy follows a history of the Swedish state enacting stricter laws where other countries have been more liberal and pragmatic, and less focused on the moral authority."

    Sweden's Violence Against Women Act defines prostitution as a serious form of male violence against women and children because the perpetrators are invariably men. And it links legalization and decriminalization to the explosion in human trafficking worldwide.

    To coincide with the act becoming law on Jan. 1, 1999, the Swedish government increased spending on social services that make it easier for prostitutes to exit the trade and less desperate to prostitute themselves in the first place.

    Before the law was in place, an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 women and children were prostituted in Sweden. The most recent estimate is that there are now 1,500 and approximately 400 respectively working on the streets.

    Critics -- including Vancouver East MP Libby Davies who chaired the parliamentary committee looking into prostitution -- says that the "prohibitionist approach" has driven vulnerable women and children further underground.

    Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry, a committee member, agrees and has called the Swedish system "hypocritical" and "illogical."

    But when Gunilla Eckberg, the special adviser to the Swedish government on human trafficking and prostitution, squared off against Davies and Fry at a committee hearing a year ago, she denied that the number of illegal brothels had increased in Sweden. But she noted that in Melbourne, Australia, the number of illegal brothels has gone to 400 from 100 after legalization.

    The number of child prostitutes in the Netherlands jumped to 15,000 in 2001 after legalization, from 4,000 in 1996.

    Eckberg also disagreed with MPs' characterization that she and other Swedes are being "judgmental" of other women's job choices.

    "The situation of being a prostitute is the same as being a battered woman," she said."The violence you experience is normalized. To live in that situation and to find dignity in being abused, many women will of course say they have chosen this and that it's work."

    It's probably not surprising that, like the parliamentary committee, both Pivot and Living in Community have played down the Swedish experience. Both relied on advice from groups like Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society (PEERS) and Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE).

    But they excluded other women's groups. Many of those groups, including the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, the Native Women's Association of Canada, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women Against Violence Against Women, support the Swedish model.

    Talk is cheap and dreams are free. So let's have lots of both from everyone who's interested before we reach any conclusions. Let's have lots of facts and research on the table.

    And, let's jettison the labels like prohibitionist, moralistic and right-wing that taint the discussion.

    dbramham@png.canwest.com




         myth-heard by men
    There are only three things in the world that women do not understand; they are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. -G.K. Chesterton, "Women" (1910)

         ms-heard by women
    Children's talent to endure stems from the ignorance of alternatives. -Maya Angelou

         SMBerg Links

         site dedication
    This site is dedicated to Phillip Michael Peck




    PHP-Nuke Copyright © 2005 by Francisco Burzi. This is free software, and you may redistribute it under the GPL. PHP-Nuke comes with absolutely no warranty, for details, see the license.
    Page Generation: 0.13 Seconds