Brothels have been legalized in Ontario in the hopes of making prostitution safer for sex workers. There are arguments on both sides, with some celebrating this decision and others warning it will increase demand and therefore danger for sex workers in addition to not helping the majority of prostitutes who work on the street. This ruling won’t take effect for a year in order to give lawmakers time to prepare the legislation brothels will be held to, and it may be appealed in the Supreme Court, but in the meantime arguments are yet again flying back and forth in the papers and online whether these decisions make any sense.
One of the last papers I wrote for my BA was on this topic, just after a number of laws against prostitution were first struck down (on appeal, the law forbidding publicly communicating for the purpose of prostitution was upheld). I was surprised to see women on both sides of the debate arguing passionately, and I wanted my own opinion to be based on more than a knee-jerk reflex. I wasn’t sure what to expect: I was confident that lower-class prostitution would be demonstrably harmful and exploitative, but I also looked for evidence to support exceptions when prostitution is not a last resort fuelled by poverty or drug addiction.
This is the paper. After spending days reading articles and studies and stories, I was emotionally exhausted and convinced that no matter how prostitution is packaged, it’s always dangerous. Continue reading “Making Prostitution Safer?”