Here is an interesting comment posted below my column last week, with my response.
Sorry for going completely off-topic, but I hope Sasha or someone somewhere in the Toronto media can point out what a complete joke that “report” on the local CTV News Monday was Inside the Sex trade. It featured (not surprisingly) Tamara Cherry and Detective Constable Leanne Marchen telling us that 10 out of 10 escorts have pimps forcing them into the business – despite their undercover-hotel-room effort failing to find any evidence to back their claim and some of the escorts they talked to being in their 40s.
Does Marchen think everyone is as naive and gullible as Tamara Cherry? She’s concerned that one escort works completely alone, yet she attempts to portray the driver for another as a pimp? Sorry, Ms. Marchen, but even you seem to be acknowledging that the only thing you’re really trying to do is preserve your job handing out pamphlets. Sub Mariner
Imagine this situation: A CTV reporter goes on a stakeout with a pair of health inspectors to check out conditions in a couple of restaurants that are alleged to have rodent droppings.
Despite the absence of hard evidence corroborating these claims, the reporter is assured by the health inspectors that virtually every restaurant they visit contains rodent droppings. Suddenly, they all chase something down a hallway that may or may not be a rodent, but it’s impossible to confirm.
Then the health inspectors push a pamphlet warning of the dangers of rodents into the hands of one perplexed and nervous restaurant owner (luckily written in his native tongue so he can read it). CTV airs the report as though a serious rat shit crisis is afoot, though the story itself does nothing to prove this.
Honestly, where is the Rick Mercer Report when you need it?
When facts about the perils of sex work are garnered via state authorities, it is an unmitigated insult to all sex workers – trafficked, pimped or independent. People with precarious legal status confronted by the same forces used to investigate, detain and arrest them (with an ambitious young reporter tagging along faithfully documenting their hollow actions) will likely feel powerless to offer any accurate insights into their situation.
Imagine what’s going through these women’s minds as they’re seated on a bed with a camera shoved in their face, two undercover cops hovering about and Tamara Cherry mentally rehearsing her Excellence in Journalism Award speech: please do not arrest me/send me back to…/send me to jail/rape me/steal my money/put me on television/treat me like a victim/treat me like an idiot who doesn’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
The very authorities that arranged this stakeout are also notorious for disregarding and abusing the welfare and rights of the people they claim to want to rescue. As to migration, trafficking and sex work, it is not for people who know little about the social structure, background, sexual history, aspirations and cultural differences these women internalize to be involved in their lives – at all. Though Cherry undoubtedly has these women’s best interests at heart, in many ways she is participating in the entrapment and victimization of these women by colluding with authorities that have the temerity to call themselves the Special Victims Unit.
As Laura Agustin writes, “Successful migration requires some sophistication and access to social networks providing knowledge, contacts and expertise. Migrants find them amongst friends, families and small-time entrepreneurs, most of whom would not qualify as organized crime, with its demonic overtones, or even as gangsters.
“This helps account for the failure of the police to locate large numbers of traffickers: migrants are not eager to denounce people who have helped them, even when they didn’t get the deal they hoped for. Successful migrants need to be adventurous, flexible risk-takers they are often proud of the trials and tribulations they have survived.”
The same logic can be applied to non-migrants doing or forced into sex work. There’s a reason why many sex worker organizations don’t align themselves with the police and other law enforcement. These institutions are simply not trained to deal with the complexities involved in migration, trafficking, sex work, colonialism and choice.
This is not to say that there aren’t women, young and old, doing sex work unwillingly. But there’s a continuum of willingness, and many complicated mitigating circumstances. Still, as Agustin writes, “It shouldn’t be so difficult to maintain two ideas at the same time: some people prefer selling sex to their other options, no matter where they were born, while other people find it unbearable. Some migrants get a raw deal from intermediaries or do not want to migrate at all, while other migrants get more or less what they want by paying people to help them.
“The greater issue is the near-impossibility of getting legal permits and visas based on informal-sector work. If that problem were ameliorated, those who don’t want to sell sex could move into other jobs, and those who do would not be worried about police persecution – or, indeed, being rescued when they don’t want to be.” If we broaden our understanding of what trafficking can entail, then maybe we will be able to understand that those forced into sex labour with no choice or financial compensation are better qualified as kidnapped and raped.
When Cherry was interviewed in October, the subject was a trafficking scandal unrelated to sex work but involving international borders.
The reporter, galvanized by Cherry’s prurient sound bites about Craigslist Erotic Services, asked if “we” were complicit in this happening by turning a blind eye. No, “we” are complicit when we don’t acknowledge the complexities involved in sex work, migration and trafficking. “We” are complicit when we turn privileged moral crusaders into authorities on the subject of choice. At the end of this interview, the reporter declared in reference to the three sections of the Criminal Code relating to sex work currently being challenged, that striking these laws down would make it even harder for the police to prosecute people who are trafficking people into sex. This is an absolute fabrication. Striking these laws down helps protect sex workers, not endanger them.
We already have a law (C-22, not without its own problems) protecting minors against sexual exploitation. As for the exploitation of people with precarious immigration status, have a look at this shit and then this.
And speaking of helping out for real, have a look here. Awesome, right?
