Pros and Johns: Weighing the Advantages and Disadvantages of Legalized Prostitution

The debate over whether to legalize prostitution is back in the headlines across the province of Ontario, where sex workers/sex work advocates, Valerie Scott, Amy Lebovitch and Terri-Jean Bedford have initiated an application to the Ontario Supreme Court of Justice to repeal a set of laws that effectively criminalize prostitution in the province.  Lawyers for the three women argued before the court on Tuesday that the sections of the criminal code that prohibit ‘communicating’ (i.e. soliciting) or operating a ‘bawdy house’ (i.e. brothel) for the purpose of prostitution, as well as a prohibition against ‘living off the avails’ of prostitution (i.e. pimping), all serve to make prostitution dangerous and therefore these sections violate the constitutional rights of sex workers.

In Ontario there is actually no law prohibiting the exchange of money for sex, and as in all jurisdictions, prostitution is rampant in both legal and illegal forms.  Intercourse and other sex acts can be purchased at massage parlours, strip clubs, on street corners, or though the vast selection of escort agencies that advertise openly in mainstream newspapers throughout the province’s big cities.

The current laws have been in place since 1985 but they derive from statutes enacted back in 1892 with the passage of Canada’s first criminal code.  In the period before this date, Victorian-era vagrancy laws were in place to prevent prostitution (as well as other forms of street work including busking).  By 1892 this was considered discriminatory so prostitution was made legal but soliciting remained against the law so as to protect the public from the nuisance and moral decay associated with having streetwalking jezebels roam freely.

The arguments for decriminalizing prostitution are well-known and well-founded.  The main argument is that sex workers would have the option to work in state sanctioned venues that could ensure their safety.  As it stands now in Ontario, women are forced to enter a john’s car in order to negotiate their transactions lest they get nabbed by law enforcement, and this places them in an extremely vulnerable position.  Also women who fall victim to violence on the job may be reluctant to report the incident out of fear that they could be arrested for soliciting sex.  There is a wealth of empirical data to support this argument as states that have decriminalized prostitution, such as New Zealand and the Australian Province of New South Wales have experienced a decrease in violence against sex workers.

In addition to the safety factor, there is the fact that if the government made prostitution legal and regulated the industry, they could implement mandatory testing for sexually transmitted infections, thereby protecting the consumers as well as the sex workers.  One could also argue that decriminalization would provide an additional revenue stream that could stimulate Ontario’s otherwise flaccid economy.

Based on these facts, any progressive reader is likely to conclude that decriminalization should be a no-brainer, and I would agree with them in theory.  However, in practice, it’s not clear that decriminalization actually makes the sex workers better off.

The first thing to consider is that in almost all industrialized states where prostitution is legal, including Holland, New Zealand and Nevada, so-called streetwalking remains against the law.  This means that in Nevada, for example, women must work in one of the state’s 28 licensed brothels.  Once there, the woman must adhere to the strict protocol of the brothel, which is extremely exploitative and tends to be the same for all brothels in the state.  Bob Herbert of the New York Times had this to say about one of the state’s most popular and most expensive brothels. "A grotesque exercise in the dehumanization of women is carried out routinely at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas. There the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to an electronic bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. At the sound of the bell, the prostitutes have five minutes to get to an assembly area where they line up, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who has happened to drop by".

Yet this endictment only scratches the surface.  Once a woman is selected, she negotiates he prices with the customer, often while management listens in over a speaker connected to the front desk.  The brothel takes 50% of what the woman earns for her services and if the customer has travelled by taxi, the cab driver gets 20% of whatever the customer spends, which also gets dedcuted from the woman’s earnings.  And this is all before tax.  According to Nevada state law, prostitution is illegal in all couties with populations over 400 000.  Therefore the brothels are located in secluded, rural areas where the women are forced to live for weeks at a time, unable to leave the premises whether due to practical reasons or by edict from the brothel owner.

What’s worse, many of the women are connected to outside pimps in addition to the state sanctioned pimps who own and operate thse establishments.  Also, many of the girls are victims of human trafficking.  This reality has prompted some observers to refer to the legalized sex trade in Nevada as modern-day slavery.  Even in a seemingly progressive country like Holland, studies show that prostitution, dispite extensive efforts to regulate it, remains intimately tied to organized crime and many of the women are forced to remain in the business against their will.

To me there is something intrinsically problematic about the fact that women who choose to earn a living selling their bodies, must do so only under the terms set out by a male-dominated government.  That the vast majority of licensed proprietors in Nevada are men (extremely mysoginistic ones at that) only serves to reproduce the power dynamic in which women’s sexuality is repressed, exploited, controlled, and commodified by males.  So while I commend women like Valerie Scott, Amy Lebovitch, and Terri-Jean Bedford, it’s important to keep in mind that decriminalization is only the beginning.