At the dark end of the street
It's time to legalize and regulate sex work
By Peter Tupper
Photography by Reuters: Lyle Stafford
The beginning of my education about sex work came from an essay by Carol Leigh, also known as the Scarlot Harlot, a veteran sex worker, writer, and activist. To my naive male mind, the idea of a sex worker actually talking about her life seemed strange.
I knew prostitutes existed, shadowy figures on Davie Street, back when it was Vancouver's main drag instead of the funky, queer neighbourhood it is now. Weren't they too ashamed or drug-addled or driven by nymphomania to form a complete sentence? I wondered. Instead of something pornographic, I got Leigh's essay about her personal experience as an escort — neither titillating nor horrifying.
Since then, I've talked with a number of women in the sex industry: adult store clerks, models, porn video directors, and professional dominatrixes and submissives. They griped about no-show clients, price-gouging credit card companies, and non-sensical, haphazardly enforced laws.
The Robert Pickton trial, related to dozens of sex-worker murders in Vancouver, makes it clear that the current laws are not working. Even though Canada's law made prostitution legal, it didn't protect the most vulnerable sex workers, and it made illegal almost any attempt to make sex work safer or more dignified, such as working indoors or hiring a driver or website designer. Decriminalizing the sex trade is a start toward making sex workers safer and less scorned, but what really needs to change is who talks about sex work.
We need to hear from sex workers themselves, the people who have the most to gain or lose from changes in public policy, and not just in the form of juicy confessionals like Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Confessional discourse on sex work actually prevents understanding, emphasizing the sensational aspects — be they glamorous or horrifying — over the less glamorous issues of legalities and economics.
In the past, European explorers filled the blank spots on their maps of the world with their own dreams and nightmares. Nothing was too bizarre to be believed by the people back home, because only those explorers had been there.
Writers on the sex industry have their own blank spots filled in with misinformation, even about the most basic economics. The 2006 U.S.-based Adult Video News annual survey estimates the total porn industry at US$13-billion per year, a figure which insiders and outsiders have questioned. Rival trade journal Xbiz pegs it at less than half that. In a quasi-legal business, with nearly all privately-traded companies, nobody really knows.
When I researched an article on efforts to decriminalize sex work in Vancouver, the police, the activists and the workers themselves estimated the street-level portion of the trade made up anywhere from eight to 20 percent. How can society engage with the sex industry and control its worst elements when even its most authoritative survey is full of questionable information?
Openness is the best solution, and that means removing the stigma so that sex workers can speak freely.
Of course, openness is not the same thing as surveillance. In the regulated brothels of Nevada, sex workers must undergo extensive background checks, live on the premises when working, and submit to weekly medical examinations at their own cost.
In the U.S. pornography industry, Regulation 2257 has the desirable goal of keeping underage people out of porn, but the law also means that every person even tangentially involved with the production or distribution of pornography must keep performer age records and can be held liable for violations. In both cases, the high-surveillance approach has drawbacks. If the rules about health tests, background checks and licensing fees for sex workers is too onerous, they won't bother with the legitimate venues and operate outside the law. Better to hold back on the stick and get a better carrot: make going legitimate more attractive, with employment benefits, legal protection and health and safety standards. History is replete with exploitative industries that have been reformed through both state intervention and organized workers.
If neither regulation nor condemnation is working, it is vitally important that there be more sex workers' organizations, more books like Carol Leigh's Unrepentant Whore, more magazines and blogs like $pread, more worker-owned peep shows and co-operatives like West Coast Co-operative of Sex Industry Professionals, and more constitutional challenges. If sex workers are ever going to get respect, they have to demand it for themselves, by taking control of the discourse and the industry. The rest of society will have to start listening.
