Brothels are okay? Really?
Prostitution is a rotten thing, dangerous, filthy and soul-destroying. And yet male customers keep it going, along with an endless PR campaign — in tandem with activist prostitutes — about catering to its inevitability.
But is it inevitable? Throughout history, people have taken dangerous drugs, committed suicide, raped their offspring and behaved appallingly and self-destructively in a huge expandable array of acts, but we don’t shrug and say, “Such is life.” We work with great passion to put a stop to it. As we should.
So why are Torontonians suddenly so passive in response to the Ontario Court of Appeal decision allowing brothels? We’re rolling over for the sexual small-business mentality and considering making it easier for brutes to rent the bodies of desperate women and men.
We are now earnestly discussing how brothels are okay really, and accepting the self-serving advice of madams that condo towers are full of lite-whorehouses anyway and that a red-light district is simple good sense. You know, for that type of person, we think patronizingly. But we’re being scammed.
It’s patronizing reverse-liberalism. We think we’re being kind to prostitutes when in fact we’re skating away from the hard work of helping them. It’s too much trouble to contemplate fixing the root problems they face: their poverty, despair, drug addiction and sheer lack of life options. And for so little gratitude! So we curl up like possums and pass ourselves off as humane.
If Toronto is in fact thick with mom-and-pop brothels — the implication being that these cosy places offer butter tarts in the parlour for gentleman callers — then we and our children are sharing the elevators with johns. We’re in more danger inside than we are outside from falling glass. If I don’t want prostitute-buyers in my neighbourhood, I shouldn’t be blithe about their marching about the neighbourhoods of the poor.
I don’t like these men and I won’t tolerate feeding their sexual ineptitude. Let them wash up, buy women a drink and take their chances like the rest of us. This is Toronto, not a Chicken Ranch. Street sex workers have to be protected from violent men. It’s up to the police to do that. The fact that the Vancouver police aggressively ignored the Vancouver women who disappeared at the hands of serial killer Robert Pickton is not a reason to give the police a pass. As Angel Wolfe, the daughter of Brenda Wolfe, one of Pickton’s first victims, said tearfully and angrily after the ruling, “I believe that all women should be shown a viable way out of the sex trade.” Who knows better than this brave young woman? When we give up on fighting prostitution, it means we are bowing not just to johns but to incompetent cops. Why not fight prostitution itself? It’s a great battle that should never cease. In 1847, Charles Dickens came up with an idea for a refuge for London women selling their bodies to survive. This “house of fallen women,” named Urania Cottage, was financed by Dickens’ friend, an heiress named Angela Burdett Coutts. For 16 years, until Dickens’ own domestic life fell apart, it provided a home, care and feeding for street women so poor we can hardly imagine it today. It trained them for the meagre work available to poor Victorian women — mainly sewing and housekeeping — and also offered passage to the colonies for female Oliver Twists wanting to escape their past lives. Yes, it was patronizing. Yes, it was punishing. But it offered a life raft. The magnificent Dickens always wanted to improve lives being lived, throwing himself into causes with a scary energy and eloquence. I can’t imagine what he’d say if he heard us today saying, yes, if our daughters “want to” provide oral sex to buy the drugs they’re hooked on, who are we to deny them? And how wearying it would be to try. I see this fatigue in many fields now. Why shouldn’t wealthy Canadians pay South Asian surrogates to endure embryo implantations and bear them children? If vaginas are nice earners for prostitutes, why shouldn’t underperforming wombs be pressed into trade too? By all means, buy the kidneys of the poor of Eastern Europe. They do have two, after all. We’re sliding down the slipperiest of slopes. Every organ is a commodity. Where’s the harm? The harm can be seen on the faces and bodies of prostitution’s victims. The damage to their heart’s core is invisible, but that doesn’t make it incalculable. hmallick@thestar.ca
Riley, 27
Riley (her working name) was 14 when she began going on paid dates — some sexual, some not — with men she met on the Internet. She has since worked in pornography, as a webcam model and for an escort agency. She now works independently, seeing clients at her apartment. THE STORY: I want to do something else. But I also have it in the back of my mind that if I do something else, my past may come front and centre. It has in other jobs as a problem, when that’s not who I am as a person. When I was working (at a movie theatre), the manager was a former client. He wasn’t able to act professionally at the workplace and decided to tell everybody. It wasn’t paying well. It was like $8 an hour. So I sacrificed what I was making before to do something that wouldn’t pay rent. I got treated worse in these “real job” environments than I got treated working in the sex industry. So I came back to it. I enjoy it, but I don’t want to see myself doing it for a long period of time. It’s great because of the options that it gives. I want to get into midwifery. I have to really figure out if I’m going to keep using sex work to pay for tuition, and then once I get there, hopefully sex work
When I got in here I realized I enjoyed it because of the people that I got to meet, and it’s actually a pretty good job.
My relationship with my husband was more strained (before I got into the business) because we were both working long hours.
If my daughter came to me and said, “Listen, this is what I want to do,” I would support her in her choice. I would definitely put the pros and cons out there. It’s not for everybody, just like there are jobs out there that I’m amazed that people do. A dental hygienist — I cannot look in people’s mouths. As crazy as that may sound, that’s gross to me. But I can do other things that don’t gross me out.
Take a look around; I will guarantee you, this industry is huge in this city. And the people that I meet are not dirty old men that are portrayed in the media. There’s the blue-collar worker who is saving the lunch money that his wife gives him. There’s corporate businessmen who have a handful of girls they see on a very regular basis — or see just one. I have clients that I have seen for eight years. What about the 32year-old who’s in a wheelchair? His brain and his emotions are all intact, but the body that he has isn’t, so he uses a sex worker. Should he be denied that?
I work with a group of independent women. We do our own thing and what we’re doing works. It’s safe, it’s clean, it’s quiet. Nobody knows it exists. The way it works right now, it quietly hums throughout the whole city in little nooks and crannies. doesn’t come back (to haunt me).
And then there’s the fear that (if sex work) is being registered and regulated, then that record is public record, where it could be seen in some criminology class. I want this to be like any other job.
Katarina Macleod
Just 21 when she became a prostitute, she was beaten by her clients and addicted to drugs. Working in a Brampton brothel, she saw five to 15 clients a night. Macleod quit the business and now helps others do to same. She’d like to see tougher prostitution laws that criminalize johns. THE STORY: I have a Grade 8 education. I got pregnant in Grade 9, so I never got to finish school. I was already doing drugs, and once I entered the business it was 10 times worse. I just didn’t feel like I had a way out.
Our boss used to go through strip joints, on the street, wherever he could, and recruit girls. They were usually about 16. A lot of the girls were addicted to crack, partying in the room with the clients. (The men would) want to do things I didn’t want them to do. They felt they kind of owned me. And there’d be a lot of physical fights. I’ve had my jaw dislocated. I’ve been bitten, spit on. I’d go out of the room crying and if my boss was there he would make us go back in.
My (four) kids have always been with me. My oldest two, now 21 and 24, they suffered the most. They were used to drunk and high mommy. They knew what I did.
Most girls will say, when they’re in the room (with a client) you want to get them in and out as quick as possible, so you’re putting on this big show for them. Your mind’s thinking, “Okay, I have to do groceries.” I used to count the holes in the ceiling so I would just not have to realize I was there. I find that these men would never do the things that they’re doing with prostitutes with their wives. It’s like we’re below everybody.
(Those who want prostitution laws struck down) are opening up a world where you’re telling your daughters that this is a choice now. You can be a lawyer or a doctor, or you can be a prostitute. We call it cattle calls. When a customer comes in, you’re all dressed scandalous. You go up there and you try to flirt with him and hope he’s going to pick you. I’m going to tell anybody who has never been a sex worker: Go work for a few days and then tell me that you don’t feel shame, and dirty, and you have no self-worth.
Chris, 44
He has a day job at a Bay Street brokerage. His ex is a sex worker and suggested he help others in the business do their taxes. He charges $25 an hour. THE STORY: You tell the government what your business is by using an industry code that currently does include sex work (“Other Personal Services,” 812900). It’s important to comply with the law. When you comply correctly and honestly, you have less trouble down the road. Anyone can be audited, but if all of your ducks are in order, and you’re honest and forthright and believable, there’s no problem at all. It’s painless. Until this decision that was reached at the appeals court in Ontario, providing any service to a sex worker (for money, under “living off the avails” laws) was a criminal offence. It’s absurd.
Jennifer, 29
Jennifer (not her real name) has a full-time job for which she earned a degree and a diploma. She started working as an independent escort a year and a half ago because she had been curious about it. She sees only three to five clients a month. She says she doesn’t need the extra income to survive, but it helps her save, take vacations and pay off student loans. THE STORY: The way that I work is completely legal, in terms of the old laws. I only do out-calls to hotels. I’ve always screened my clients, meaning that I know their first and last names, I get references from other sex workers before meeting them. The laws won’t really affect my work. I have what’s known in the industry as a safety call, so basically when I go to meet someone, I call someone when I get there, the client sees me calling them, they know that someone knows my whereabouts, and then when I’m leaving my safety call is expecting a call from me. I’ve always paid this woman to do this. She’s my support staff, and so that is illegal (under “living off the avails” laws). But I do it anyway. I risk it. I don’t see 50 per cent of the people who email me. If someone emails me and it’s just a short email at 3 in the morning: “Are you available?” No. I’m not available. I’m asleep. I like when someone emails me and says something about themselves. I don’t need to know their life stories, but something that lets me know we’ll get along and have a nice time.
Wendy Leaver
A retired Toronto police officer, she spent 20 years in the sex crimes unit, and helped create the special victims section, dedicated to investigating sexual assaults against prostitutes. THE STORY: Pimps are amazingly manipulative people. In my career, I don’t know how many young people I’ve worked with where I’m sitting across from 14-, 15-year-old girls who I’ve just taken out of a place, who are saying: “But you know, he only hits me when I disrespect him. I get pedicures, I get manicures, and he loves me.” So that’s a whole other group, okay? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do something that was more of a prevention issue for that. Because what Val (Scott) and Terri (Jean Bedford) have done is wonderful. Constitutionally, these people do have the right, for safety, to hire bodyguards, because prostitution is legal in Canada. And if that was all that prostitution was, then the (new) laws are good. But it’s not. With lack of police resources, with brothels being legal, how much time and effort is going to be put into dealing with that group — with the addicted, with those on the streets, with the girls who are brought over here from other countries, who are put into the hotels?
Nikki Thomas
Thomas, 31, hosts clients at a secret spot in Toronto (not her home). As the tweeting executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, she has advocated decriminalizing prostitution. The U of T student — with three degrees and no debt — has a registered business and an HST number. THE STORY: I sometimes get a little bit wary about sharing too much about my personal life. I’ll be honest, this is something that I do because I think it’s right and I think that the laws need to be reformed. But I also don’t expect to be a career hooker or anything like that. This isn’t something that I expect to do for the rest of my life. (The first time I was dancing at a strip club) I was thinking to myself, wait a second, is this the point where I’m supposed to feel degraded or dehumanized? And it didn’t really happen. I thought it was kind of fun. I was nervous, but I didn’t feel bad about myself because of it. It wasn’t long until I started seeing people privately.
From my perspective, if a client feels that he is going to be criminalized for talking to me, then he is going to remain as anonymous as possible. It means that my ability to make him accountable is decreased. I ask for a basic physical description — age, height, weight. Not for any discriminating reason. I just want to make sure the person who shows up at my door is the same person. I usually ask them what sort of encounter they’re hoping for, whether they have any experience, sometimes I ask for references from other sex workers.
I have never been in a position where I had to take a client on the 29th because I had to pay my rent on the first or anything like that. And if I have any reservations whatsoever I will not hesitate to cancel, even if it’s five minutes beforehand.
My family loves me and cares about me no matter what, and they made that clear when I explained what it is that I do. They don’t like to hear details (laughs). My parents are much more concerned about my safety than they are about assigning any moral judgments to what I do.
(The people who want prostitution criminalized) call themselves abolitionists because (they act like) they’re trying to abolish slavery. We refer to them as prohibitionists because they think that by prohibiting something and pushing it underground it’s going to solve the problem. We’re not pretending that everyone has a good experience. We know that lots of people have bad experiences. But at the end of the day the laws on the books have not done a thing to stop those bad experiences from happening, and if anything, they just make it worse.
Megan, 42
A transgendered woman, Megan (not her real name) has worked on and off the street for 23 years. She’s had three run-ins with violent men — one of whom attacked her in his car. THE STORY: I started doing sex work when I was 19 for survival. In 1989-90 there was still a lot of discrimination around trans people. We were stigmatized. You could not get a job being trans at that time.
I personally enjoy what I do. To me it’s a job. Like any job I have my days where I don’t want to do it. I’ve kind of desensitized myself, it is work. I’m putting myself in another character. I’m a fantasy for these men. I think that with every job there’s always the good and the bad, but I never regret it.
(The anti-soliciting law) validates the community thinking that people who work indoors, run bawdy houses or escort services are better than people who work on the street. It also validates what society thinks of people who work on the street: That we’re nothing but scum.