[SWAF-Potluck] Legalize prostitution? Are we nuts?

[Andy Sorfleet]

[Tell us what you really think! :^) Thought you might enjoy a little
glimpse into another Canadian perspective on the Supreme Court challenge.
as]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
GLOBE AND MAIL
Saturday, June 22, 2013

Margaret Wente



Legalize prostitution? Are we nuts?

Why are feminists and other progressive types so enthusiastic about
legalizing prostitution? It baffles me. Prostitution is the most
exploitative, degrading work on Earth. Despite those stories about
high-class call girls, its practitioners are overwhelmingly the most
wretched girls and women in society. Prostitution turns women into lumps of
meat that are bought and sold for the sexual gratification of men. If you
legalize it, you will probably get more. Please explain how that can be a
good thing.

The current case before the Supreme Court of Canada argues that indoor
prostitution should be legalized in order to improve the safety and dignity
of sex workers. Its poster girl is media darling Terri-Jean Bedford, the
leather-clad kitten with a whip who was busted way back when for operating
an upscale S&M service for clients who paid her to be tied up and thrashed.
I admire Ms. Bedford. She is a sharp entrepreneur and a brilliant
publicist. But she is no more typical of the sex trade than your Great-Aunt
Dorothy. For starters, the dominatrix didn't have sex with her clients. She
told them what to do, not vice versa.

Ms. Bedford's lawyer is Alan Young, who essentially argues that prostitutes
should be allowed to operate legally indoors, and to improve their working
conditions by hiring drivers and bodyguards. This idealized portrait of the
sex worker as empowered small-business entrepreneur could only have been
dreamed up in a women's studies course. This sordid trade has been heavily
sanitized by feminists and the sex-workers' rights movement, which wants to
rescue prostitutes from "victimhood" by abolishing the word "prostitute"
(too demeaning) and framing prostitution (sorry, sex work) as a legitimate
career choice.

This reframing conveniently omits the huge, destructive influence of pimps
and drugs, while invoking human rights as a justification for women's
freedom to use their bodies any way they want. In the words of Vancouver's
Pivot Society, one intervenor in the Supreme Court case, "All sex workers
deserve to have their choices respected and be able to work safely, without
fear of violence, discrimination and social stigma."

The enlightened classes have bought into this exalted nonsense. Today,
anyone who has qualms about normalizing the sex trade is likely to be
labelled as a religious nut, a prude, or an old-style moralist. Perhaps
this explains why our media's coverage of the issue has been so dismally
parochial. Most Canadians have no idea that over the past decade, vast
experiments with prostitution laws have been playing out in many countries
not unlike our own. The results are in. And they are instructive.

Let's start in Germany, where prostitution became legal in 2002. The change
was backed by the Greens and Social Democrats, who aimed to strengthen
women's rights and turn prostitution into a normal profession like, say,
bus conducting. So how's that working out? Today, Germany has become "the
cut-rate prostitution capital of the world," as Time magazine puts it. It
is a magnet for migrant sex workers, who are lured from their wretched
villages in Bulgaria and Romania and turned into virtual sex slaves in
Germany's 3,000 brothels. Police are nearly powerless to help them. The
number of prostitutes has exploded to about 200,000, and prices have been
driven to rock bottom. A devastating investigation into the sex trade by
Der Spiegel found that tourists can get flat-rate deals -- all the sex they
want -- for less than $100.

Idealists thought the new law would turn prostitutes into independent
agents and put them on an equal footing with their customers. Instead, it
has been a licence for exploitation on an unprecedented scale.

The Netherlands has fared no better. When prostitution was legalized in
2000, the idea was that prostitutes would join a union and that brothels
would be regulated, inspected and taxed. But much of the sex trade operates
outside the regulations. Legalization has merely expanded the market and
allowed the spread of brothels all over the country. Amsterdam's red-light
district has become a haven for money laundering and drugs. A 2008 Dutch
National Police report said, "The idea that a clean, normal business sector
has emerged is an illusion." And a study from the London School of
Economics found that human trafficking goes hand-in-hand with legalization,
because legalization encourages sex tourism and vastly increases the demand
for paid sex.

Several countries where prostitution has been legalized have begun to admit
that their policies have been an utter failure. Some have decided they
would do better to emulate Sweden, which took a sharply different course
after its own experiment with decriminalization failed. In 1999, the Swedes
decided to attack prostitution by punishing the exploiters, not the victims
-- and by offering the victims a way out. This policy is rooted in a
progressive feminism of a very different stripe -- a belief that
prostitution, whether voluntary or not, results in serious harm against
women and society. It should be marginalized, not normalized.

The results are persuasive. Street prostitution has been cut in half. Crime
and organized trafficking are down. Police say the sex trade has not gone
underground. Men who might otherwise have patronized prostitutes have been
scared off by the inconvenience and stigma. Many women, with the
sympathetic assistance of police and social workers, have found other lines
of work. Seventy per cent of Swedes support the law.

In Canada, some women's groups do not support the case for legalization.
Among them are the front-line sexual assault centres and the Native Women's
Association of Canada -- groups that work with the worst-off, most damaged,
most exploited girls and women of them all. They have no photogenic poster
girls like Terri-Jean Bedford. They have no illusions that legalization
means empowerment. They know it only means more degradation. Is that what
we want? I think not.
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