Fight to stamp out human trafficking
Activist works to abolish prostitution
With heated debate in this country over how to regulate and police the sex trade, Free Them is a group that is pushing for the end to the industry. That position puts it at odds with advocates looking to decriminalize it, and with some sex workers. Shae Invidiata, the founder of Free Them, recently sat down with Postmedia News. This is an edited and condensed version of that conversation. A study from the University of Victoria recently said that approximately 80 per cent of sex trade workers are comfortable in their profession. What do you think of that type of portrait of the industry?
“When looking at the word ‘comfortably,’ what does that mean? Are you ‘comfortable’ in the position that you are in, or is it a lack of options or resources?” There has been a well-publicized shift in how we describe some prostitution, using terms such as “human trafficking.” Why is the language around it something you have stressed?
“It’s amazing when you remove one word or you interchange it with a different word how it radically changes the meaning. Looking at just the word ‘prostitute,’ you add on ‘ed’ at the end and you get ‘prostituted’ and those are widely different, radically different.” There’s a debate going on publicly, legally and socially, in many ways, about how to define what prostitution is. What is your take?
“You’ve got two sides of the debate that, to really put it in black and white, will say that prostitution is violence against women; it’s degrading; it’s a violation of human rights and women’s rights. And then you have the other side, that believes the woman has the right to sell her body and utilize her body as she sees fit. And we can debate that all day long ... I think the more important question that needs to be focused on is who is making up the industry and when did they enter?” Who is making up the industry?
“One of the things that’s often left out of the debate is looking at the average age of entry that a girl is — I’m going to use the word ‘forced’ (to start prostitution), and forced meaning raped, being abused at home by a father, a stepfather, an uncle, a brother and has no other options. So leaving and being on the street, maybe in a shelter, getting picked up, approached, whether it’s by a boyfriend figure or maybe by a female what we would call madam to offer them the one time ‘You won’t always have to do it but you can do this for 1,000 bucks for one night — and that one time never turns into one time.” What’s your ideal outcome?
“In a perfect world, I would love to see abolition across the board: A world where the idea of purchasing sex, period, is not even something that our young males grow up to conceive, and having our young girls growing up and having so much self worth and dignity for themselves that they would never even think of letting a stranger enter into their private space and technically violate them.”