what is a sex worker ?

Now that was quite the gender polarizing personal experience clarification, with barbed oblique aspersions too, good editorial job. :D

I stand corrected!

Anecdotal info is just that though, subjective to our human biases and indoctrinations.

As a nurse, I have met many a stupid Dr, and even stupider patients and family members, willing to jeapordize other lives, for their whims, in sometimes a criminal way.

For example, while I was nursing in one hospital, a mother had to be locked in with her daugter who had TB, because she refused to gown up, or refrain from visiting. She went in, undressed for quaratine, and then let her daughter stroll about the floor,  because quaratine was unfair to her daughter. 

We were furious with the stupidity of it all. And that we had to force her now to stay at the hospital for the good of society at large. That has slanted me a bit against the "everything is our right to do if we want",  civil liberty crowd, I must admit.

...usually they believe they should get their civil rights liberties, at the expense of those not in their class elite.

So...really, our personal experiences are not a measure of much , unless  they can be placed in  verifiable context, such as laws on human rights, labour codes, and public safety regulations, that we all know about, or should, and  exist within.

As one who raised that issue of compulsory safety measures associated with a pandemic (post #90), I would like to look into that case. Could you provide links to some of those places, skdadl?

remind wrote:

Now that was quite the gender polarizing personal experience clarification

Interesting assumptions. When I got clobbered by an SUV a couple of years back and had an extended stay at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, my favorite of the people whose acquaintance I made there was the day nurse in Ortho. His first name is Matthew. My second favorite was the attending physician whose first name is Lorraine (I still have her business card). And an honorable mention goes to the nurse I remember best from ICU (though admittedly memories of the first couple of days there are fuzzy). His name is Ron.

remind wrote:

Now that was quite the gender polarizing personal experience clarification, with barbed oblique aspersions too, good editorial job. :D

I stand corrected!

remind, I'm not sure why you keep posting comments like this aimed at skdadl, but it would be great if you could stop doing so.  I've noticed this a few times now, here and in other threads.

martin dufresne wrote:

Public health departments are at least accountable to elected officials. I see no justification for excepting from vital controls the patrons of a self-alleged "industry" that wishes to be as profitable as possible, damn the human lives being threatened. There ought to be some limits to "pragmatism" as a principle.

For instance,  I recently attended an awareness-raising workshop at Université du Québec à Montréal, given by the STELLA organization, the main proponent in Quebec of the full decriminalization hard line. Whan a woman asked the facilitator (a sex industry operative) "What if I tell the escort agency I won't do blow jobs without a condom?", her answer was a curt "You won't get many referrals."

This from an organization that gets public funding in hundreds of thousands of dollars to convey HIV prevention/safer sex messages...

i know stella very well and i believe you are quoting them out of context. stella, as all organizations i am in contact with- are alarmed at how un safe sex practices are becomig the norm. fear of being murdered on the street has driven workers to seek employement at any cost indoors.

some workers cannot operate as an independent from home(children-husband) and need places to work. but because of ever increasing enforcement, numbers of jobs indoors are limited and so highly competed for. it takes power from workers and puts it in the hands of business owners. workers are not given the facts about safe sex and unprotected contact and only know that workers offering such services are making more money.

thus our occupational health and safety training in order to give workers the facts.

in new zealand, condom use is law- customers asking for these services are reported by workers and fined $2000. people will now go crazy stating it will increase the consumers seeking services from youth on the street and i agree that is unacceptable.

but if we were to decriminalze adult consentual sex work we would free up maney and time/resources/man power for police departments to really go after these guys, predators....

a specialized section could emerge from what was formerly known as vice division and be specifically related to rescuing youth or people exploited in the sex industry.

clear policies and procedures for fair treatment of victims of exploitation could be implemented as opposed to the current throw everyone on the floor, point guns at them and arrest every one approach. supports could be provided, plain clothes on officers so as not to intimidate, guns concealed so as not to intimidate. gentle entry into suspect premises rather that the standard kicking down of doors....

stella is run by sex workers, they deserve to be funded just as any other organization doing this work. they have done amazing things pioneering the sex worker rights movement in canada and have inspired us all.