Celine Bisette: The real life of a sex worker
Celine Bisette, National Post | April 28, 2014 | Last Updated: Apr 24 5:06 PM ET
I have been working in the sex industry for nine years. The vast majority of my clients have been good people who never caused me any harm, but I have had a few bad experiences. I’ve had encounters where clients performed sexual acts on me after I had pushed them away and said “no.” I have had clients avail themselves of my services and then not pay afterwards. Once a client managed to remove the condom during intercourse without my knowledge. I estimate that I’ve had thousands of clients, and out of that many, I’ve been assaulted or exploited in these ways by six different men.
I never reported these experiences to the police. I was too afraid that I would get arrested. At the time of every single incident, I was breaking at least one of the prostitution laws. Most of the sex workers I know have had something similar happen to them at least once, and most have not reported their experiences either for the same reasons.
Over the years, I’ve brushed these memories aside. I usually tell people that “I’ve never really had anything bad happen to me at work.” These experiences don’t haunt me, and I don’t feel like I’m damaged as a person. I do feel angry, though. I feel hurt, and I feel sad that those things happened to me and that I didn’t feel like I could turn to the police for help.
After reading through all this, I can understand how someone might want to support the “Nordic” approach to dealing with prostitution. I might come across as someone in need of help, and criminalizing the purchase of sex but not the sale could be seen as a way to help me. But here’s the thing — it’s not the sex part of my job that hurts me. It’s not the buying or selling of sexual services that causes me any harm. What hurts me is violence and exploitation, and those problems are not inherent in commercial sex transactions. When they do occur, however, they should be dealt with in an appropriate manner.
We already have laws against rape and assault in this country. I don’t need a law against the purchase of sex to help me. What I need is to feel like the same laws that protect everyone else also protect me. If I am assaulted at work, I want to be able to go to the police and report the crime. Treating the purchase of sex as the problem undermines my experiences as a victim of sexual assault.
Criminalizing the purchase of sex frames all clients as abusers, when the reality is that they are not. Characterizing all of my clients as people who have exploited me completely discounts all of my experiences of actually being sexually assaulted at work.
When anti-prostitution crusaders like member of Parliament Joy Smith argue that buying sex is “inherently harmful,” they are effectively denying me the chance to give voice to which experiences hurt me and which didn’t. Ignoring the realities of people who have actual experience working in the sex trade in favour of adopting a position that is rooted in ideology and based on widely discredited research is grossly dehumanizing.
I urge Ms. Smith to consider the evidence that demonstrates that criminalizing the purchase of sex makes sex workers more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Last month, over 300 academics signed a document outlining the harms caused by the Nordic model. Drawing on sound scientific research, they explained that criminalizing the purchase of sex drives the sex trade underground. Adopting the Nordic model would recreate many of the harms that the Supreme Court sought to eradicate when they struck down the existing laws.
Pushing sex workers into the shadows is the wrong approach. Forcing us to navigate a criminalized working environment will not help us — it will put us at risk of harm. Ms. Smith would do well to read that document and seriously consider the future wellbeing of all sex workers in Canada, including me.
National Post
