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Old 03-28-2012, 12:03 PM   #45
Saya
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 9,548
Technically, prostitution is legal in Canada, there is (was) just a lot of stipulations around it, like not being able to live off the profits of prostitution (which also was repealed) and having a "bawdy house" (not necessarily a brothel, but any indoor place intended for sex work, like a sex dungeon perhaps).

The big concern of mine is whether since not living off the funds of prostitution is struck down, I'm hoping they're rewrite the law to be that the profits of prostitution belong exclusively to the prostituted people themselves, and pimping remains illegal. The other huge concern is that in places like Vancouver, the majority of indoor prostituted women are Asian women who were trafficked here. There's a group in Vancouver called Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, and it was them I do believe who analyzed hundreds of advertisements on Craig's List for prostitution. in 60% of ads, Asian women were advertised, and in 75% of those ads, their race and vulnerability were advertised as an asset (with phrases such as "Fresh off the boat" "Doesn't speak English").

It also doesn't eliminate the economic coercion issue. First Nations and Aboriginal women overrepresent street prostitutes, and it isn't because they enjoy it. In places like the Netherlands were brothels are legal, the brothel workers are not wage workers, they have to pay a lot of money to rent a room for the night (like 200 dollars, differs from place to place obviously), and this is where the coercion begins before a john steps through the door. If its a slow night, and you're just getting guys who give you the creeps, but you'll be out a lot of money if you don't start taking customers. I don't think under capitalism and patriarchy that it'll ever be safe to work in a brothel.

There are plans in the works for a brothel run by a collective in Vancouver, I do believe, where they only have to pay a dollar or so a night, and there's a lot of resources there and exit programs. I'm interested to see how that's going to work out, I heard about it last year in an issue of Herizons and then they were still determining the legality of it, I assume with this ruling it gives them a lot more room to do it.
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