by Adele

One of the authors of When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays? Canadian Stories of Exploitation, Survival, and Advocacy, Andrea Heinz, is a scholar of commercial sexual exploitation who survived seven years of prostitution, and the other, Kathy King, is a retired social worker whose daughter lost her life to the sex industry. Along with numerous contributors with histories of, involvement in, or contact with the sex industry, they have written Canada’s most comprehensive book on the struggle to abolish it.

DECRIMINALIZING PROSTITUTED PEOPLE

They describe the recent history of the worldwide movement decriminalizing prostituted people, who are most often women, and criminalizing pimps and customers. This is the Nordic Model, now called the Equality Model, developed in Sweden in 1999. In 2016, the radical feminist, secular, grassroots, UK-based organization Nordic Model Now! began raising awareness for legal and cultural strategies. In Canada, similar groups like the Centre to Empower All Survivors of Exploitation and Trafficking hold summits online and in person focusing on testimonies of survivors.

This movement faces opposition from the “Sex Workers Rights Movement” to decriminalize or legalize prostitution. Its followers claim some victims make a voluntary choice to enter the sex industry. The book includes numerous survivors’ stories showing the inherently traumatic nature of prostitution and disproving these choices are made without coercion or grooming. The authors state that “countless survivors” told them, “…while I was in the sex industry, I would have defended it to the death because that is what I had to do to justify in my own mind the victimization I was experiencing.”

“Sex Worker” organizations groom society and lobby governments. Portraying prostitution as part of liberal feminism, they provide “Student Sex Work Toolkits” to university students. Protesters made schools replace it with a handbook by Nordic Model Now!, but pro-prostitution influence has taken hold in academia. Anna Slatz describes being forced to leave graduate school for her “intolerance” in challenging a classroom speaker promoting this view.

RECOGNIZING AND ENDING ‘NON-STATE TORTURE’

In their chapter, Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald, authors of Women Unsilenced: Our Refusal to Let Torturer-Traffickers Win, explain that pimps and customers inflict the exact same tortures on prostituted women as State authorities inflict on State torture victims. This is “never ‘sex’ or ‘work’.” The patriarchal mindset protects perpetrators by defining torture as only enacted by the State and the human and legal right to protection from it as only belonging to men. Non-state torture (NST) must be recognized as a crime if women are to be recognized as human.

In 2014, Canada made the Equality Model into federal law as the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. The authors explain the legal process to hold the federal government accountable for prosecuting NST and local governments to follow the Equality Model. They list organizations helping survivors exit, since “the only avenue of escape is a real job.” Youth exposed to online porn as children described its trauma and damage to their view of relationships. Movements like #Traffickinghub and Fight the New Drug combat online porn through lawsuits and teaching consent and equality to youth.

In 2015, the Canadian government launched the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, taking public testimonies from families of victims and from women exploited in prostitution. It was inspired by years of research, activism, awareness walks, and art projects by Indigenous women’s organizations.

Abolition of prostitution has always been achieved by mass movements of women, but progress is faster with male allies and addressing demand. Men sentenced to the Sex Trade Offender Program (STOP) or “John School” learn about prostitution’s effect on survivors and communities. They rarely re-offend and discuss traumas that led them to depersonalized sex. Male allies created Next Gen Men, the Moose Hide Campaign, and the White Ribbon Campaign to “end violence against women and girls by transforming social norms to promote gender equality, healthy relationships, and a new vision of masculinity.”

The authors show everyone “pays” for the increasing harm of prostitution, including future generations. They list numerous organizations and ways readers can get involved, and are optimistic we can end it.