The three women involved in the case are calling for prostitution to be decriminalized.This is an important distinction -- legalization often ends up bringing with it restrictive and invasive government involvement in the industry.
Scott told CBC News in interview there's a distinction between legalization and decriminalization.
"Legalization views prostitution as a vice that needs to be heavily contained and controlled whereas decriminalization sees prostitution as a legitimate and necessary business," she said.
The morality argument from REAL Women of Canada is such a joke that I almost hesitate to address it. Aside from the obvious contentions about legislating morality in cases of private transactions between consenting adults, here's another big problem with it: sex work is already legal.
I mean, from the brief quote in the article, it doesn't even sound like the organization is going for the popular anti-sex work approach of focusing moral disapproval on buyers while wanting to "rescue" workers. Instead, it seems like they're arguing for a maintenance of the status quo -- one that hurts workers and particularly women.
Then again, if this is the best that the opposition can muster, then maybe this thing has a pretty good shot.
Well, I guess at least Canada is a step ahead of the US (which they generally are). Of course I guess Canada also has the crazies that the US has, those who will fight tooth and nail to deny women anything that protects them. We're not gonna focus on the men who are patrons of sex workers, just the women. They should know better. This is all their fault. -_-
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the vocabulary lesson on the difference between decriminalizing and legalizing. :) I feel much more informed now. But if one fights for decriminalization does that automatically include legalization? Or is it more of a process, legalizing comes before decriminalizing? And I think government involvement would be a good thing, more regulations would, I feel, bring more secutiry for the sex workers. Health care for workers, regulation on trafficing, regulations on working situations, and maybe even prosecution for johns who rape or beat workers. At least that's my thinking on the whole thing. Generally letting the private sector run ANY business tends to be bad for workers and I generally approve of at least some government regulation. But maybe the private business sector is more responsible up in Canada that it is in the US. *shrug*
I think the idea is that decriminalization means striking the anti-sex work laws from the books and then treating sex work like any other work. Legalization usually refers to a controlled system where workers are only allowed in certain areas, are differentiated amongst themselves, have to go in for required health checks, that sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, having health care and regulations available for workers is an excellent thing to do -- but we have existing workplace safety laws which could more or less be applied to sex workers, too. The idea is that legalization creates divisions between workers and doesn't necessarily help those who need it the most, hence decriminalization being a more appealing tack.
Yes, I guess kinda in my weird round about way I meant extending existing work place safety laws to sex workers. They are laws stated by a government and in my brain that goes with regulations but I guess my terminology isn't as exact as it could be. I know what I think should happen and words come out and yeah. Aren't always the best words I guess, lol.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I still don't get the difference between decriminalizing and legalization. I would think legalization would take laws off the books regarding the work. I would think decriminalizing would be more of a changing the way society views it than changing the actual laws about it. At least that's kind of the way it looks to me. I don't know of too many legalized activities that are forced into certain areas because of the law. I guess as example, any doctor can practice abortion because it is legal, but because it is criminalized by some of the public they choose not to to stay in business. So doctors that do practice abortion are usually separated from larger medical centers because the larger medical center doesn't want to lose patients. But that is not because laws or regulations say they have to be separate, it's because people criminalize abortion (a legal procedure) and medical facilities do not want to lose that money. Like if prostitution is legalized then it can be practiced anywhere that is properly zoned (but that's for any business) but even some place that is zoned for it may be picketed and boycotted by the public because it is criminalized and therefore the business would probably be forced to move, but that would be by the public's actions and not any action on part of the government. The public has far more influence on the way business are allowed to run even if the laws say it is perfectly legal. Least that's how it looks to me. But I am not an expert on abortion law nor prostitution laws so I am running on my general knowledge and assumptions of how things should work (but things normally never work the way they should, do they?).