The whole illegality of prostitution hinges on perceived moral values and forcing others to comply with them. This is really the business of the two people involved for better or worse and the best that the government can do for the safety of all concerned is to regulate the industry.
The misconception is of violent men who can't get "regular" sex. Just what the fuck is regular sex? How is lying to someone whom you have been plying with alcohol to impair their judgment, drunk in a bar to get laid, any different than hiring someone on a strict contract to an agreed upon act for 20 minutes?
I am tired with the true idiocy that pervades every sector of our society. I had a chance to hear in person a busybody who thinks it her duty to promote untrue stereotypes and make moral judgments for everyone else on this subject, when I appeared before the justice committee. Her words appear just before ours
in the Parliamentary record.Mrs. Michelle Miller (Executive Director, Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity (REED)): Good morning. My name is Michelle Miller and I have the privilege of being the executive director of Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity, or REED, a self-funded organization that works for long-term change for women who have been sexually exploited.
For the last 10 years I've been fighting to end sexual slavery of women and children, both in Vancouver's downtown east side and in the slums of Manila. I also live on the east side in solidarity with marginalized women.
Not once have I met a woman who is prostituting by choice. Prostitution is one of the simplest activities motivating organized crime, and it's one of the simplest to stop by ending the demand for sexual access to the bodies of women and children. Placing full responsibility on the johns, users, buyers, and consumers of women and children can and will stop the demand.
With the Olympics coming, we decided to study events in other countries to see how they would affect prostituted women. What we have seen is a spectacular rise in the demand for sexual access to women and children's bodies during large sporting events. In crass economic terms, this turns Metro Vancouver and Whistler into a market for which a product must be supplied. The market is the sex industry and the product is marginalized women and children, who are already vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
We already know that Vancouver has a gnawing problem with sex trafficking that reflects the larger global reality. It is estimated that 27 million people are living in slavery worldwide, largely in sexual exploitation, which makes about $32 billion for organized crime.
Human trafficking is the fastest growing industry worldwide and ranks only second to the drug trade in profit. Prostitution is one of the simplest activities motivating and supporting organized crime, and one of the simplest to stop through ending the demand. Women and children are recruited, deceived, coerced, and exploited, then controlled through rapes, beatings, addiction, and psychological torture to keep them from running away.
The average age of recruitment into prostitution is 14. A lot of this may sound shocking. It's an everyday reality in Metro Vancouver. We see gangs routinely coercing girls into the sex industry through posing as boyfriends. Women are brought by force or deception from other countries and forced into sexual slavery, and aboriginal women and girls are so-called “recruited” off reserves in extreme poverty and prostituted on the streets.
Of course, you know about prostituted women. They have been studied pretty much ad nauseam. But how often do you hear about the buyers, the ones who are driving the market? It was 8 a.m. on a rainy Vancouver morning, and I'm walking on the downtown east side to a friend's house for breakfast. Pulling down the alley, shrouded in secrecy, is a lone male in a maroon minivan, complete with a car seat in the back, dropping off a destitute young native girl who was paid to give him a blow job on his way to work. This so-called family man has simply put money into the pockets of a pimp.
I think of my friend Courtney, who was prostituted as a little girl in a Vancouver hotel. A gang made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling her to men eager to sexually abuse her. These perpetrators enjoy complete anonymity, all the while ruining the lives of women and children and making piles of money for organized crime.
Whether discussing international or domestic trafficking of women, the consumer driving the market is the same. Be it an immediate side street purchase, an escort, Internet pornography, it's all the same. It fuels trafficking and makes money for organized crime.
Why don't we create dialogue about bringing about solutions that would stop the demand? Why don't we ask, what's wrong with our society that the demand for exploited sex is growing? People are often paying for the women's misery. What's going on, that the demand for exploitive sexual experiences is ten times what it was five years ago? We're not counting the users and buyers of sex. We're not asking them--and believe me, they're visible if you look--why they buy sex. We don't study them to find out if it's poverty, boredom, or alcoholism. We don't seek answers that will tell us why a person would purchase a sex partner if he can beat her, rape her, and even kill her. Human trafficking operates as organized crime. It's silent, hidden, secretive, and controlled by the threat of death and the experiences of murder.
Drawing on the collective public guilt of the missing women of the downtown east side, some are seeking to legalize prostitution. That would be an absolute mistake. We're adamantly opposed to that, so please hear that. They are grossly misled in their logic, tactics, and solutions. So think about it.
First of all, in order to work in a brothel, a woman would have to be clean from drugs. It's not going to happen. Addiction is part and parcel of their situation; it's often how they're kept there.
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Second, they would have to register with the government and pay taxes. No one wants a record of this time in their life.
Third, they would have to undergo health checks. Most I know wouldn't pass. And note that the health checks are put in place to protect the health and safety of the johns, not the women.
We've also seen that normalized violence such as prostitution jeopardizes the safety of all women.
So who would benefit? Organized crime. Operating with impunity, they would simply be businessmen--join the local business association, recruit your daughters at local college job fairs. It would also be a gift to johns. Any country that has legalized prostitution has seen a rise in demand, a diversification of the industry, and a proliferation of underground brothels.
Though some link the legalization of drugs with prostitution, it is important to realize that with drugs a person is asserting their agency over an inert substance, but in prostitution you're using an actual person who does not want to be there--forced slavery; it's a person.
I realize that I'm almost out of time.
What we would promote is the Swedish legislation, where they've decriminalized the selling of sex and criminalized the buying of sex. They've seen amazing results. It was recently adopted in Norway and Iceland, and Britain has adopted something similar.
We've changed attitudes around drunk driving, smoking, and domestic violence. We can do it. Prostitution is not the world's oldest profession, it's the world's oldest oppression.
'Not once have I met a woman who is prostituting by choice."This can not be a true statement. It is outlandish to think that every woman has been forced against her will to enter this occupation, this is simply not true. that she has couched it with a resume claiming expansive experience in order to give it weight in the previous paragraph shows how outlandish a lie this really is.
"Prostitution is one of the simplest activities motivating organized crime"Just what is being said here? That prostitution is behind organized crime because it is so simple? There has been prostitution long before organized crime. Sex is a mutual contract between individuals and does not require a distribution system, a production system and a retail outlet. Organized crime is involved because of the law.
"simplest to stop by ending the demand for sexual access to the bodies of women and children"If it were so simple to stop it would have been stopped by now. How ridiculous can someone be in such an assessment. Does this person have any roots in reality or she all about hyperbole and stereotyping?
"What we have seen is a spectacular rise in the demand for sexual access to women and childrens' bodies during large sporting events."Could this be the fault of larger concentration of men who regularly visit prostitutes? Isn't this just saying that business is good? Something that all self employed people are hoping for during the Olympics? Why the sinister connotations?
"We already know that Vancouver has a gnawing problem with sex trafficking that reflects the larger global reality. It is estimated that 27 million people are living in slavery worldwide, largely in sexual exploitation, which makes about $32 billion for organized crime."Classic bait and switch! She starts out with a Vancouver "gnawing problem," fails to explain what it is and then tries to magnify it by linking it to the global "crisis" conceived in her mind. There is crime and slavery of children precisely because it is made illegal and it is not controlled and regulated.
"Human trafficking is the fastest growing industry worldwide and ranks only second to the drug trade in profit. Prostitution is one of the simplest activities motivating and supporting organized crime, and one of the simplest to stop through ending the demand. Women and children are recruited, deceived, coerced, and exploited, then controlled through rapes, beatings, addiction, and psychological torture to keep them from running away." This is the same manufactured problem all throughout the world, because morally insecure persons like this do-good liar, stereotyper/ppropagandist, are behind keeping these women unprotected as they would be if it were a regular industry. It is a regular industry if these busy bodies would allow everyone their own value system under the law. This woman wants to blame it all on the Johns. She feels it is her view of things without evidence to support it that needs to be implemented on others. Isn't this the same idiocy behind prohibition?
"Of course, you know about prostituted women. They have been studied pretty much ad nauseam. But how often do you hear about the buyers, the ones who are driving the market? It was 8 a.m. on a rainy Vancouver morning, and I'm walking on the downtown east side to a friend's house for breakfast. Pulling down the alley, shrouded in secrecy, is a lone male in a maroon minivan, complete with a car seat in the back, dropping off a destitute young native girl who was paid to give him a blow job on his way to work. This so-called family man has simply put money into the pockets of a pimp."This sounds like an above board business deal between three adults and the pimp wouldn't be necessary if the industry were controlled if People like Michelle Miller were not trying to inject their personal lies into the mix of other people's free choices.
"We don't study them to find out if it's poverty, boredom, or alcoholism. We don't seek answers that will tell us why a person would purchase a sex partner if he can beat her, rape her, and even kill her. Human trafficking operates as organized crime. It's silent, hidden, secretive, and controlled by the threat of death and the experiences of murder."Compared with the real facts "only 2% are violent encounters" This woman, Michelle Miller, had the gall to outright lie to the government of Canada. I guess this is the type that government caters to, the liars. Birds of a feather flock together.
"Drawing on the collective public guilt of the missing women of the downtown east side, some are seeking to legalize prostitution. That would be an absolute mistake. We're adamantly opposed to that, so please hear that. They are grossly misled in their logic, tactics, and solutions. So think about it."What is her reasoning behind drawing her "correct" conclusion? This woman obfuscates with absurd conclusions not logically reached with any coherent
FACTUAL evidence. The reason for clamor of legalization was not "public guilt," but concern that this industry should be controlled and regulated for the safety of all. What a liar Michelle Miller is. It is these kind of lies that moralists have for drug users as well.
"First of all, in order to work in a brothel, a woman would have to be clean from drugs. It's not going to happen. Addiction is part and parcel of their situation; it's often how they're kept there"Another blatant stereotypical lie. Many women are not addicted to anything and live coherent productive lifestyles. It is the less intelligent ones who need to be protected from exploitation through regulation. We all need to be protected from the likes of this liar Michelle Miller.
"Second, they would have to register with the government and pay taxes. No one wants a record of this time in their life."In the FACE OF MANY SUCCESSFUL BIOGRAPHIES WRITTEN BY PEOPLE IN THE TRADE SUCH AS "THE HAPPY HOOKER,"
ANOTHER BLATANT LIE. HOW DARE SHE LIE TO PARLIAMENT?
"Third, they would have to undergo health checks. Most I know wouldn't pass. And note that the health checks are put in place to protect the health and safety of the johns, not the women."She claims to know everything except she doesn't have a shred of evidence to support anything.
"So who would benefit? Organized crime. Operating with impunity, they would simply be businessmen--join the local business association, recruit your daughters at local college job fairs. It would also be a gift to johns. Any country that has legalized prostitution has seen a rise in demand, a diversification of the industry, and a proliferation of underground brothels."It is precisely because of self fulfilling attitudes like hers that we have the problem.
Thanks to you, Aziz Sindhu, for some truth in this area. This is an exposure of the same catering to the controllers like Michelle Miller, because of political considerations, which plagues society in the area of drug law reform. People who blatantly promote propaganda and lies to achieve the imposition of their moral standards are the real danger to prostitutes and society at large.
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