A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

    While I keep my distance from politics, I've somehow ended up on the federal Liberal email list and have been receiving messages urging me to donate to Justin Trudeau and seeking my thoughts. With the heartbreak of Bill C-36 and the further criminalizing of sex work hanging over me, I seized the opportunity to respond to one of the messages to feel out Trudeau's position on decriminalization. Here is our exchange so far. My response to the Liberals' email asking for my thoughts: I would like to see Justin Trudeau come out with a clear statement around decriminalizing the work of adult, consensual sex workers. I am a passionate activist on this issue of human and civil rights, and will support the candidate who supports an end to C36 and understands that decriminalization is the best way to reduce risk to sex workers, decrease stigma, and ensure civil equality to a population of workers who are discriminated against and silenced.  Their response to me ...

     Having a Twitter feed during the Senate's meetings on sex work is both a blessing and a curse. I got so much minute-by-minute info yesterday on the opening day of the meetings that I practically felt I was there, but at the same time I spent the day fuming at all the inane, hurtful and poorly informed comments being made by some of the senators and that infuriating justice minister of ours, Peter MacKay.      Sex workers and sex-worker organizations that support decriminalization have a huge presence on Twitter. The feed coming out of Ottawa was frenzied from the moment I staggered out of bed yesterday morning, as that three-hour time difference meant that my 7 a.m. rising came a good hour into the meeting. And man, my fellow tweeters were incensed, mostly by MacKay and his continuing assertions that the "vast majority" of sex workers are victims in need of rescue, not workers in need of legal workplaces.     That statement alone set the...

  And yet another revision as of Sept. 10: Yes, the speaker lineup had more balance than I initially thought, but sex-worker organizations note that even so, the ratio was 2:1 in favour of further criminalization of the industry. A wise media scribe also noted that media tend to cover the first day and the last of a meeting, and that it had to be more than coincidence that the first day was almost exclusively anti-decriminalization.  Mea culpa: Turns out I was looking at only the first day of the Senate meetings when I wrote this, in which the lineup is very much abolitionist. But here's the full list for the 3 days of meetings , and I see many more sex-work groups have been invited to speak. Sorry, Senators! Carry on. Looks like the Conservative-controlled Canadian Senate is taking extreme measures to avoid hearing anything that might shake up their conviction that all sex workers are exploited victims when the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee consid...

    Draw close to the debate about decriminalizing the sex industry in Canada and you will quickly learn that while sex workers' organizations are working hard to move this issue forward, they don't enjoy much support from most women's groups.     At least on the surface, the problem seems to boil down to a fundamental divide between those who see all sex work as exploitation and victimization, and those who support Canada's adult sex workers in making a free choice to work in the industry and in safe circumstance. Many women's groups have tended to align themselves with the exploitation side of the debate, which has left sex-worker-led organizations largely on their own to fight for safer working conditions, equality and basic human rights.     Given what a hot-button topic this is among women's groups,  it's a powerful thing that the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre has done in stepping up to the plate this week to announce its solidarity with C...

     I wrote this response to a couple of my Facebook friends just now on a great comment thread that has developed on my Facebook site . The comments came after I posted a rather pleading message to people to get past the knee-jerk stuff around the Canadian sex industry and get informed before Bill C-36 becomes law. Figured I'd put it out to my blogger audience, too, because damn it, all of us who feel this way need to be shouting from the rooftops right now before this country goes and does something that is shameful, regressive, poorly considered, potentially harmful, discriminatory and mean.      For Lisa and Darlene, you are both my friends and I have MUCH time for both of you, and I do understand that this is a divisive subject. But this is a time for getting together to understand why each of us feels the way we do. I know that both your viewpoints come from your own life experiences. But we can't just stay here like this, in a standoff where...

    It appears that I may have developed an idealistic sense of Canada while I was off living in Honduras these last two years. I was thinking of it as a great country with a few problems it needed to pay attention to at the time I left Canada in early 2012, but perhaps the distance - and the contrast with super-troubled Honduras - led me to forget about the "pay attention" part and just remember it as a country that largely had its act together.     At any rate, coming home and learning about some of the messed-up stuff that's actually going on in my homeland has been pretty discouraging..       The stuff around sex work has been particularly unsettling, given my affinity for the people who the rest of us leave without rights, dignity or safe workplaces just because we wrinkle our noses at what they do for a living. It is so, so sad that we're preparing to go backwards with a law that will only make things worse for sex workers.   ...

  So many untruths are being bandied about as the Tories try to railroad uncertain Canadians into accepting new prostitution laws that will criminalize even more of the industry.     I know from my own circle of friends - at least the ones who aren't sex workers themselves - that it's almost like people are frightened to rethink what they think they know about the sex industry. Yet there is so much exceptional research out there that challenges this fuzzy belief that to be a sex worker is to be a helpless, trafficked victim dragged into the business by a man who will beat you if you don't comply.     But surely the public's instinct to want to avoid thinking about an industry they find unpleasant hardly outweighs the rights of tens of thousands of other Canadians to a safer workplace and some respect and dignity. In other words, get informed, people.     And here are some excellent research papers and relevant info to help get you started: Lo...

    CUPE is my new favourite union now that CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn has written a piece in the National Post saying the thing Canadians should be aiming for in laws and regulations around the adult, consensual sex industry is a safer workplace for sex workers.     So true. The violence and vulnerability that Justice Minister Peter McKay keeps going on about as he tries to push through the flawed and dangerous Bill C-36 exists primarily because sex workers don't enjoy any of the standard workplace protections that the rest of the country's workers rely on. When you're a sex worker, there is no workers' compensation board, no contract law, no employment standards. You can't even go to the police with a complaint without wondering if you might end up getting charged yourself, and that will be doubly true if Bill C-36 is passed.     Were the bill to become law, sex workers will have to be even more secretive in their work to protect their clients...

    While I'm offended as a Canadian that the future of my country is in the hands of people as uninformed, close-minded and unworldly as Justice Minister Peter MacKay, it's a wonderful thing to see Canada's sex workers stepping up to speak their own truths to combat all the lies that are being told about them right now.      I saw footage from the justice committee meetings in Ottawa this week as the debate around Bill C-36 gets underway. I totally love seeing empowered and passionate sex workers putting it all on the line to challenge the Conservatives' proposed new anti-prostitution law, which would take the ineffective and damaging laws that we've had for the last 147 years and make them considerably worse .     Based on the untruth that all sex work is violent, coercive and sick and that all sex workers are victims, Bill C-36 is so far from so many sex workers' realities that the generally low-profile community just can't take it anymore. ...

Could this be Peter MacKay? How timely to have University of Victoria researcher Cecilia Benoit and her team looking into the realities of the Canadian sex industry right now. Cecilia and other key researchers connected to the multi-project research have been gathering really meaningful information about the sex industry for many years, and with this project are investigating all aspects of the industry, from working conditions to management structures and clients.     Such research will mean little to the Conservative government, which has already proven on a number of occasions that evidence-based research plays little role in its decision-making. But it's at least a branch to cling to for the rest of us in the coming storm around Bill C-36, which will set Canada back to the dark ages around sex work if it becomes law by criminalizing even more aspects of the work despite all evidence that criminalization doesn't work for anyone.     I know how emotional ...