Let's Talk About (Selling) Sex!

Give it up for the judicial system, thanklessly tackling subjects politicians have been too frightened to even mention since 1867.

The Ontario Court of Appeal is hearing arguments for and against striking down laws that make much of the sex trade illegal. The Sun chain's Brian Lilley recognizes that we can never get rid of prostitution, but figures decriminalizing it would turn Canada into a destination for human traffickers. “Do we want more women lured from rural Canada into the big cities to work in brothels or more women brought from overseas to serve the needs of johns in Canada?” asks Lilley. A fair question, perhaps, if the courts legalized it de facto and the government decided there wasn't any need to license or regulate the profession - a prospect that seems highly unlikely. Plus, Lilley throws in some unnecessary fear-mongering about your neighbours turning their homes into “whorehouses” and “domination dungeons,” undermining any salient points he might have made.

The Hamilton Spectator's Howard Elliott poses a question by which he figures all prostitution discussions should be framed: “Acknowledging the sex trade is with us to stay, what social and legal policy decisions do we need to make to strike the best possible balance between the protection of the general population, sex-trade workers and their clients?” It's a question that Australia, New Zealand, and Germany have all answered over the past decade with decriminalization, with little ill effect, notes Elliott, writing that “we don’t need to reinvent the wheel because there are plenty of jurisdictions to learn from.” Such are the benefits of being a laggard on justice policy.

For her first column for the Postmedia chain, Christie Blatchford speaks with a friend who works as an “ethical escort," who is “one of the quiet majority, a smart, funny, functional woman who lives in a nice apartment tower in a major Canadian city and earns her living from the sex trade.” Blatchford's friend says most women in the sex trade in Canada mirror her experience, with the 15 per cent of prostitutes who work the streets accounting for nearly all the victims of violence upon which arguments for and against decriminalization are typically centred. It's a point often overlooked in discussing prostitution, but Canadian society – or at least its political class – is either too puritanical or spineless to have a candid, mature conversation about sex, particularly when women are willingly making a living off of it.