Regulation of prostitution in Canada

2020

Since the first iteration of prostitution legislation in 1759, the language and discourses used to refer to ???prostitution??? has undergone many changes. The constitutional challenge of Bedford v. Canada (2010 ONSC 4264) resulted in legislative amendments of prostitution laws (Bill C-36). Bill C-36, implemented in 2014, resulted in several significant changes, including the eradication of the word ???prostitution??? from the Criminal Code, and the criminalization of buying, but not selling, sexual services. Given Bill C-36, this research inquires: How has prostitution discourse changed in Canadian common law from 2010 to 2018? A discourse analysis of 58 court decisions compared the language used before and after 2014; this revealed courts??? frameworks for understanding sex work have not changed significantly despite the Bedford ruling, since exploitation remains the major discursive underpinning. The theoretical framework integrates anti-carceral feminist theory and governmentalit...

Sociological Review, 2006

The Sociological Review, 2005

Canadian Journal of Human Rights

This article develops a principle of 'discursive justice' that combines Jürgen Habermas' theory of the public sphere, with the understanding of epistemic violence developed by Jean Francois Lyotard and Gayatri Spivak. This concept is considered in relation to Bedford v Canada, a Charter challenge to Canadian prostitution laws. The Bedford hearings provide the setting for lively public debate about the criminalization of prostitution, with interventions by sex worker-led organizations, Christian groups, abolitionist and non-abolitionist feminists, HIV activists, civil libertarians, Indigenous organizations and others. But there also emerged the troubling spectre of epistemic violence when sex work activists' credibility and status as 'knowers' came under question. Discursive justice is proposed as a principle that might help preclude epistemic violence and strengthen participatory democracy in the public sphere. 40 n Canadian Journal of Human Rights (2014) 3:1 Can J Hum Rts Cet article développe un principe de « justice discursive » qui combine la théorie de la sphère publique de Jürgen Habermas avec la compréhension de la violence épistémique formulée par Jean-Francois Lyotard et Gayatri Spivak. Ce concept est examiné en relation avec l'affaire Bedford c Canada, une contestation, fondée sur la Charte, des lois canadiennes en matière de prostitution. Les audiences en appel dans l'affaire Bedford créent un cadre pour un débat public animé sur la criminalisation de la prostitution, avec entre autres des interventions d'organismes dirigés par des travailleuses du sexe, de groupes chrétiens, de féministes abolitionnistes et non abolitionnistes, de militants de la lutte contre le VIH, de groupes de défense des libertés civiles et d'organismes autochtones. Cependant, on y a également vu s'y profiler le spectre troublant de la violence épistémique lorsque la crédibilité et le statut de « connaisseurs » des activistes du travail du sexe ont été remis en question. La justice discursive est proposée ici comme un principe qui pourrait aider à empêcher la violence épistémique et à renforcer la démocratie participative dans la sphère publique.

Labour / Le Travail, 2014

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously agreed, on 20 December 2013, to strike down as unconstitutional the Criminal Code of Canada’s three statutes regulating adult prostitution: keeping, transporting someone to, or being an inmate of a common bawdy house (sections 210 and 211); procuring or living on the avails of prostitution (section 212); and communicating in a public place or a place open to public view for the purposes of prostitution (section 213).1 The court rendered this landmark decision because all nine justices on Canada’s highest court were convinced that the legislation, singly and together, created an intolerable situation for those providing sexual services by making it nearly impossible for sex workers to carry out their legal occupation safely. The legislation therefore violated Section 7 guarantees of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Canadian journal of law and society, 1994

There are three types of sexual moralism in evidence in the discussions regarding the regulation of prostitution: the overt moral fervour of the Victorian crusaders, the more covert moralism of contemporary crusaders (residents) and legislators, and the principled moralism of contemporary radical feminism. It is maintained—using arguments and evidence from the author's own and other Canadian research—that each type has contributed heavily to the failure to adequately evaluate the nature of sex work. As a consequence, our ability to develop appropriate social and legal policies has been severely restricted. It is argued that the key to appropriate social and legal reform lies in recognizing four points: prostitution per se is not different from other work; prostitution as currently practised is different; the evaluation of commercial sex must be conducted in the broader context of human sexuality; and it is essential to focus on the specificity of women, rather than the specifici...

Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, 1988

The feminisi support of the decriminalization of prostitution is limited to the support of prostitute women-it does not incorporate a defense of the business of prostitution. The reluctance to defend the business is grounded in the belief that the commercialization of human sexuality is immoral, degrading, and dangerous. These charges are evaluated in the light of available evidence. The hazards and degradation involved are linked, not to the buying and selling of sexual services but, to the broader social problems which create and maintain the current market conditions. RESUME L'appui donne par les feministes a la decriminalization de la prostitution se limite a la defense des prostituees; il ne s'etend pas a la defense du dommerce de la prostitution. La reticence a prendre la defense de ce commerce est fondee sur la conviction que la commmercialisation de la sexualite humaineest immorale, degradanteetdangereuse. Ces griefs sont evalues a la lumierede fails presentesailleurs. Les dangers et ladegrationqu'implique la prostitution sont relies, non pas a l'achat et a la vente des services sexuels, mais sur une plus large echelle aux problemes sociaux qui creent et maintiennent les conditions actuelles du marche.

Introduction Prostitution is defined as a form of non-marital sexual activity characterized by financial reward and absence of long-term fidelity between two parties (Tierney, H.1999). Prostitution has been widely debated, condemned for its immoral and degrading nature. On the other hand, there are liberal feminists who have counter argued saying that prostitution is very empowering. The controversy surrounding prostitution has divided feminists worldwide. Radical feminists are of the opinion that prostitution is an institution of male dominance that exploits economically vulnerable and emotionally damaged women for the sake of male pleasure. In this regard, prostitutes become involuntary victims of patriarchy or conscious participants in the degradation of women. This therefore has impacts on all women as a group as prostitution continually affirms and reinforces patriarchal definitions of women as having a primary function to serve men sexually. Conversely, liberal feminists find in prostitution a practice of women‘s resistance to and sexual liberation from norms and traditional moral precepts of sexuality that have long served to control and subordinate women. Others see prostitution as a means of wrestling patriarchal control over women‘s sexuality that women should be at liberty to do (Tamale, S, 2008). Prostitution therefore raises moral and legal questions. The legal question is should the practice be criminalized? In addition, the moral question is, is it wrong to sell or buy sex? These are questions I will endeavor to answer which are informed by the lived realities of women who make their living through prostitution. Prostitution or the selling of sex is, as some would call it, one of the oldest professions in the world as it has been there since time immemorial. What is of interest is the way the law has decided to make it its business who and how people have sex by criminalizing prostitution. As criminal law is meant to regulate social harms, what harm is caused by prostitution? The law seems to be a toothless bulldog in light of the fact that regardless of the criminalization of prostitution many women still engage in the trade and make a living out of it. Criminalizing prostitution seems to be a futile exercise as it is failing to achieve the intended results that of deterring other possible perpetrators; instead. it just frustrates the women who engage in it as they are essentially constantly harassed by the police without any prosecution. Why are there double standards as regards prostitution; why is it that it is only the sellers and not the buyers who are penalized? Is it not a case for patriarchy to further want to domesticate women and ensure that their sexuality is controlled and tamed within marriage? Considering that women in Africa are the least educated and when they are employed it is usually an extension of work done in the domestic arena which is the least paid; is prostitution not one of the better choices from the pool of work that they have to choose from? (Tamale, S, 2008). It is therefore a need to look at prostitution as work and not on the sex as it were so that prostitutes not further driven underground which makes them vulnerable and susceptible to violence. Criminalization creates a culture permitting violence against sex workers and sanctions violence and discrimination against them. Sex workers are also afraid to report crimes against them, knowing that police may arrest them or may not take their claims seriously. If criminalization has failed to reduce prostitution or protect the most vulnerable, what alternative model should take its place? It is this research case that prostitution should be viewed as a legitimate option of work for women that identifies with bodily autonomy, financial independence and the notion of choice (Sanders et al 2009, 23).

Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance., 2018

The socio-legal significance of sex trade clients in Canada has been unstable and contested over the past century and a half, but different discourses have dominated at different times. In the early Victorian era, for example, clients were generally tolerated, understood as ordinary men who were simply satiating their naturally robust libido (Backhouse, 1985). In the late nineteenth century, clients’ vulnerability to acquiring sexually transmitted infections became a social concern (McLaren, 1986). Later, in the second half of the 1900s, the male client started to become more visible as an object of inquiry and social control, with this problematization intensifying over the past few decades. The recent criminalization of purchasing sexual services in Canada in 2014, along with the proliferating anti-prostitution discourse found in ideologically driven studies, the media, and pop culture, has constructed the man who buys sex as a veritable sexual deviant – a danger to women and to society in general. Author Copy. To cite, please refer to published chapter in: Durisin, Elya M., Emily van der Meulen, and Chris Bruckert, eds. Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance. UBC Press, 2018 [chapter 5 pp 67-81].