A
Art Mann
Guest
How to fix the prostitution law
By BRUCE RYDER
Bruce Ryder is an associate professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
It doesn’t take long for the Conservative government’s bill on sex work to go off the rails: In the first sentence of the preamble it declares that “exploitation is inherent in prostitution.” In the context of the exchange of sexual services for consideration between consenting adults, this ex cathedra pronouncement is demonstrably false. It ignores mountains of social science evidence and the testimony of many sex workers. The bill perpetuates stereotypes that marginalize and stigmatize sex workers.
Bill C-36 and the government’s discourse about it draws to a remarkable degree on what the scholar Gayle Rubin identified as deep wells of “sex negativity” in our culture. Sex is neither redeemed nor corrupted by the presence or absence of economic exchange, any more than it is by the social approval or disapproval the relationship receives. Rather, the social value of any sexual activity is determined by the quality of respect and the quantity of pleasures that participants bring to each other.
The stereotype that sex work lacks social value is most commonly expressed by the question, “Would you want your daughter to be a sex worker?” Well, no, not in a society that disrespects her work and degrades the value of sexual pleasure. But if we direct our energies to dismantling the prejudices that undergird the question, the answer might be different.
The proposition that commercial exchange inevitably renders sex exploitative is a moralistic or ideological premise that will not stand scrutiny in the courts in the inevitable Charter challenge.
Full article HERE
By BRUCE RYDER
Bruce Ryder is an associate professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
It doesn’t take long for the Conservative government’s bill on sex work to go off the rails: In the first sentence of the preamble it declares that “exploitation is inherent in prostitution.” In the context of the exchange of sexual services for consideration between consenting adults, this ex cathedra pronouncement is demonstrably false. It ignores mountains of social science evidence and the testimony of many sex workers. The bill perpetuates stereotypes that marginalize and stigmatize sex workers.
Bill C-36 and the government’s discourse about it draws to a remarkable degree on what the scholar Gayle Rubin identified as deep wells of “sex negativity” in our culture. Sex is neither redeemed nor corrupted by the presence or absence of economic exchange, any more than it is by the social approval or disapproval the relationship receives. Rather, the social value of any sexual activity is determined by the quality of respect and the quantity of pleasures that participants bring to each other.
The stereotype that sex work lacks social value is most commonly expressed by the question, “Would you want your daughter to be a sex worker?” Well, no, not in a society that disrespects her work and degrades the value of sexual pleasure. But if we direct our energies to dismantling the prejudices that undergird the question, the answer might be different.
The proposition that commercial exchange inevitably renders sex exploitative is a moralistic or ideological premise that will not stand scrutiny in the courts in the inevitable Charter challenge.
Full article HERE
