Terri Jean Bedford case at the Supreme Court of Canada

look jas changed her post it's immediately above mine the "dirty" still remains but she took "sickos" out and replaced it.

stop attacking because i was quoting someone else.

In Toronto we have been pushing for a don't ask policy for good Samaritans or others asking for safety or health request from municipal services so that undocumented residents will seek help.

This is a pretty good article that covers a lot of things.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/12/02/maggie-mcneill/treating-sex-work-...

The immediate result of turning (pseudo-)scientific inquiry upon sex was that taking money for it was no longer considered merely something that “unladylike” or “sinful” women did for a living or extra income; instead, the “prostitute” was defined into existence as a specific type of woman, separate and distinct from other women.2  For most of the century the prevailing view was that women who took money for sex were congenitally defective, but in the 1880s the idea arose that most or even all were forced into the profession by evil men.3  It was about this time that “avails” laws started to appear, under the rationale of “protecting” women from exploitation by such men. 

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the “white slavery” hysteria was in full swing.  Progressives were determined to “rescue” women from the clutches of the “pimps” who were abducting them by the thousands from homes, railway stations, and dance halls, and for the first time in history the act of taking money for sex was itself criminalized on a large scale.  In the United States, it was illegal almost nowhere in 1909, but almost everywhere by the end of 1914.  The sociological reasons for this hysteria are outside the scope of this essay,4 but the reader may wish to compare the current moral panic over sex work with the one of a century ago, and recognize that both eras were characterized by widespread fears over immigration and the sexual behavior of young women.  Laws which had never been considered even advisable were now considered indispensable, and that opinion is still the prevailing one in most of the world today.

The common belief in criminalization and legalization regimes is that sex work is unique among all forms of work; this view is solidly rooted in an archaic and sexist view of women as particularly fragile and vulnerable, and the “Swedish model” posits that paying for sex is a form of male violence against women.  This is why only the act of payment is de jure prohibited: the woman is legally defined as being unable to give valid consent, just as an adolescent girl is in the crime of statutory rape.  The man is thus defined as morally superior to the woman; he is criminally culpable for his decisions, but she is not.  In one case, a 17-year-old boy (a legal minor in Sweden) was convicted under the law, thus establishing that in the area of sex, adult women are less competent than male children. 

One would expect that feminists would be vehemently opposed to a law that so thoroughly infantilizes women, but it was first enacted in 1999 under pressure from state feminists; its radical feminist supporters in Sweden and other countries seem wholly oblivious to its insulting and demeaning assumptions about women’s agency.  Nor is the damage caused by this remarkably bad legislation limited to dangerous precedent; despite unsupported claims by the Swedish government to the contrary, the law has been demonstrated to increase both violence and stigma against sex workers, to make it more difficult for public health workers to contact them, to subject them to increased police harassment and surveillance, to shut them out of the country’s much-vaunted social welfare system, and to dramatically decrease the number of clients willing to report suspected exploitation to the police (due to informants’ justified fear of prosecution).  Furthermore, these laws don’t even do what they were supposed to do; neither the incidence of sex work (voluntary or coerced) nor the attitude of the public toward it has changed measurably in any country (Sweden, Norway and Iceland) where they have been enacted.

 

 

http://feministire.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/more-on-those-non-existent-s...

I questioned the bald assertion by Stockholm Police Department Detective Inspector Jonas Trolle that it is “impossible to run a brothel in Sweden” thanks to the country’s sex purchase ban.

Now we have this article in which no less than the head of the anti-trafficking section in the very same police department laments that there may, in fact, be a brothel on every Stockholm corner:

Police and the tax authorities have launched closer surveillance of Thai massage parlours in the country, suspecting that the sharp increase in their number indicates sex trafficking and tax evasion…

“We also hear of and witness other, more advanced sexual services, which means that you may soon wonder if we have a brothel on every or every other street corner,” said Ewa Carlenfors, head of the section against trafficking at Stockholm police

 

 

This article may be more appropriate in the police state topic on a different section:

http://feministire.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/norwegian-sex-workers-views-...

It is difficult to estimate whether the law has helped to reduce the amount of sale of sexual services in Norway, but there is little doubt that the law has contributed to a significant weakening of prostitutes’ rights. The law has led to women in prostitution now experiencing a major invasion of privacy. This happens for example when the police reveal sensitive information to homeowners and hotels, or when the police deliberately carry out their operations with the press in tow so that the woman’s identity will be published in the media (pion Annual Report 2010).

Previous research and current surveying shows that women in prostitution are highly vulnerable to various forms of violence and abuse (Bjorn Dahl and Nordli 2008). The sex-purchase law has helped to raise the threshold to report violence and abuse, so abuse now increasingly remains unannounced and with impunity. There are also clear indications that the extent of violence has increased (PION Annual Report 2010).

Despite the fact that there is no prohibition against the sale of sexual services in Norway, women in street prostitution are chased away from the street by the police with the message that they encourage criminal activity. The health situation of many women in prostitution is exacerbated, in part because many are now reluctant to have contact with service providers. The buying-sex act seems to have contributed to the development of a service with significant health risks for women in prostitution, including sex without using condoms. There are reports of an increase in the number of pregnant women and STD, especially chlamydia and gonorrhea (Pro Centre Annual Report 2010).

A vulnerable group that has been further marginalized by the introduction of the sex-purchase law is female migrants, with and without legal residence status, who often lack basic knowledge of Norwegian, networks and relevant education. This is also the group that has experienced the biggest obstacles to getting out of prostitution and into regular employment.

 

http://feministire.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/what-happens-to-the-victims/

The simple fact is that even if the sex purchase ban worked to prevent sex trafficking to Sweden, there is no reason to believe it has prevented a single person from being trafficked. None whatsoever. It is not, in any sense of the matter, a solution to the trafficking problem. And it is diverting people’s energies from looking for real solutions. Trafficked persons, and persons at risk of being trafficked, deserve better than being told we’re “helping” them by trying only to keep them out of our country