Jim Hillyer is a religious zealot moron who wants nothing but people to see this industry the way he sees it - modern day slavery with the average age of entry at 13. This is what this idiot wrote on his facebook page yesterday.
If prostitutes were just chemical compounds like nicotine or alcohol to be abused, to which johns are addicted, your comparison might be more appropriate. But prostitutes are human beings. Their sense of feeling trapped in the sex trade, their sense of desperation and futility is not the same as being addicted to alcohol or drugs.
Sheldon Kennedy describes his years of being sexually abused by his hockey coach in his book 'Why I Didn't Say Anything.' He also describes his addiction to drugs and alcohol that resulted from his attempts to escape the horrors of his ordeal. His substance addictions were real but nowhere near being on the same plane as his sexual abuse. His advocacy today is about sexual abuse, not substance abuse.
His book is so titled because people asked him why he allowed himself to be abused for so long (from the age of 14 and 19) without ever telling anyone what was going on. He was never put in chains or locked up. He was never physically forced to return to be alone with his coach. Before you say, it's different because he wasn't an adult, consider that the average age people start to be prostitutes in Canada is 13 years old. In the case of Kennedy, no one in their right mind would say that when he turned 18 something magical happened, where he was no longer a victim but a willing participant in a relationship between consenting adults. The situation continued to be an abusive one. Even though he was legally allowed to leave and that there weren't any physical constraints, no one can reasonably say that means he wanted to be there.
Battered and abused wives are adults who often feel trapped, feel like they have no choice but to stay; even in cases where the husband doesn't threaten to hurt her worse if she leaves, we do not consider the battered wife a willing participant. I’m not saying these are the SAME as prostitution, (though I am saying prostitution is sexual and physical abuse) but offer these as examples of people who are not forced into terrible situations but are stuck there all the same. In the Bedford ruling, the Supreme Court refers to this as ‘constrained choice’ or ‘coerced choice’. (It said this in response to the federal lawyers who suggested if prostitutes didn’t feel safe being prostitutes they could just quit being prostitutes. It was their legalese way of saying, “Yeah, right.”)
The VAST majority of prostitutes have said they do not want to be prostitutes.
If the people polled believe the Hollywood image of prostitution (that it is nothing more than a free exchange among consenting adults) they are likely going to favour a different kind of legislation than people who have studied the issue - not from an armchair or a library - but on the streets, working with the people, many of them having been prostituted themselves. Public support for slavery was higher when they believed that slaves were happier, because their masters took care of them. When people like Wilberforce took people to slave ships and plantations, or when people like Stowe or Douglas published books about what slavery was really like, public opinion changed.
This Bill is based on real research and consultation with the people who know what prostitution really is. It has almost unanimous support from police officers who spend their careers trying to help people escape prostitution, and from numerous advocacy groups who exist to support society's most vulnerable. This model of legislation has been proven to improve the situation.
If there really is a small percentage of prostitutes who grew up in a well-adjusted life, with no physical, sexual or mental abuse, who after the age of 18, without coercion from anyone else who stood to benefit, freely decided to become a prostitute as a career choice (perhaps they even feel fulfilled by the service they provide), I do not believe that protecting prostitution as a legitimate career choice for this small percentage is worth the sacrifice necessary to do so - a sacrifice of at least 90% who do feel trapped, who want out, of the vast majority who begin before they are 18, of the vast majority who are coerced and often forced into prostitution. Society is told that it is okay to objectify a women in this way as long as you give her some money. Even if there is a small percentage who truly want to be there, we do not allow people to sell themselves into slavery or to sell their organs. Even if a person willingly sells himself into slavery, it is still slavery, it is still exploitation.
Panther
