Putting men’s ‘wants’ ahead of women’s safety
“I would respond to that by asking the honourable member across the way if it’s an area of work that she has considered.” So said Alberta Conservative MP Arnold Viersen in the House of Commons to a new and impressive NDP MP from B.C., Laurel Collins, who had been talking about the dangers of “sex work” or prostitution.
It was an appalling thing to ask and lately Conservatives have been saying things like that, Trump-style, in the House.
It’s an understated version of Trump crudeness and stupidity, but it’s still there. Why is question period always a blast of U.S.-style point-scoring instead of elucidation?
Ah, the lovely Viersen. He raps, white rural style, on Youtube. It isn’t good. On Tony Clement: “I’ve got the chops/Like to drink hops/Even on Twitter/I’m a heavy hitter/In cabinet for 10 years/ Leave the Libs in tears/The man from Muskoka/I’m the party’s Lee Iacocca.”
I’d like to give him points for trying, but charity fails me. OK, Arnold, A for effort.
Viersen apologized sincerely for insulting Collins. The MP lacks social skills but in fairness, the point he was making very badly was a feminist one. In the course of exploring women’s rights, I have asked this question of brothel managers as well as sex workers and sex work campaigners.
If sex work is work, is it work you’d want your daughter to do?
The January murder of Marylène Lévesque, a 22-year-old Quebec City sex worker, in a hotel room, was a horrible one that could easily have been prevented.
Eustachio Gallese, 51, has been charged with her murder. He was on day parole. In 1994, Gallese was convicted of violently attacking Chantal Deschênes, his ex-wife. When she tried to leave him in 2004, he smashed her head with a hammer and stabbed her to death.
Despite this, he was told by the parole board that he was allowed to meet women to have his “sexual needs” taken care of. It was a monstrous ruling that suggested sex workers are not worthy of care.
In other words, the “need” of men to purchase women’s bodies for sex trumps the need of Lévesque, and all women, not to have sex with a murderer on a violent mission against females.
It seems unreal, but this is the attitude that endangers every woman. Men must have sex. Women don’t need to. Women must not deny male sexual
“wants,” a word I prefer to “needs.” The beautiful young Marylène Lévesque died because of that board ruling.
In 2014, in response to a Supreme Court ruling, the Harper government reluctantly criminalized the buying of sex and living off the avails in Bill C-36 aimed at men, pimps and brothels.
Viersen told the house that no woman ever freely chooses sex work as a job and that it is inherently dangerous. He’s right. Women are trafficked or they need money desperately to pay the rent. Viersen and Collins actually want the same thing: protection for these good women.
His question to Collins was sexist and demeaning. But anger at the question does bolster Viersen’s point, that no one does sex work voluntarily. If you find it insulting to be asked if you have considered prostitution, then you yourself are contributing to the stigmatizing of sex work.
Feminists and sex workers alike who call for legal brothels in Canada so women may work more safely resemble the parole board in saying, first, that men’s sexual needs must be met and, second, that women must be safer while providing them.
Other feminists, including me, disagree. This is a male problem. Why is invading a poverty-stricken or trafficked woman’s body a male right? Maybe that so-called right should vanish socially as well as legally, which is why I oppose brothels.
Germany has legal brothels, giant factories of beauteous eastern European village girls servicing men, both locals and from the EU. They have weekend sales to service old men.
The young girls live in a huge dormitory above the sex floor. It’s very German in that the women are meticulously tracked in a way that seems rational. Until you think about it.
So think about it. Question period always leaves you to assemble your own thoughts, your own logic.