A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

I'm fresh from MC'ing a great opening event today for Peers Victoria's speaker series on the toxic drug crisis, and wanting to share some facts on the crisis here that I gathered as part of my work helping to organize the series. It really is so critically important that we shake off this paralyzed shock state we seem to be in, and do something.  But first, watch this video of people lost to the toxic drug crisis. (Thank you to Moms Stop the Harm for the use of families' photos.) It takes 18 minutes to watch all 300 of the beautiful faces here pass by. If we made a video of everyone who has died in BC since a state of emergency was declared in 2016, it would take 16 hours to play.  And here's a good fact sheet/backgrounder for a hot-button issue like this one, where everybody's going off about this "fact" or that to the point that nobody knows what's actually going on. These are some well-sourced, categorized facts to bring clarity, gathered with c...

  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...

I wrote a while ago about a media report that really got it wrong about rates of HIV infection among Vancouver sex workers. I alerted University of Victoria professor Cecilia Benoit to the error, as she has done considerable competent research work around sex workers, and she in turn wrote a great piece for Harm Reduction magazine (where the original piece appeared) that sets things straight. Follow this link to find her response, which serves as a fine reminder that we can't be too careful when reading any research document, not to mention the media's interpretation of it.