Legalize the Sex Trade to Keep Women on Streets Safe

People keep disappearing. Women, in particular, go missing all the time, never to be seen again. It seems inevitable. In Canada, over 1500 women are officially considered missing persons by the police, according to a recent article in the Edmonton Journal. But data tells us that a certain segment of the population goes missing more often than others. Sex trade workers, or “prostitutes,” as they are more vulgarly known, are at high risk for disappearing because they are one of society’s most vulnerable sectors. Edmonton is a prime example of what can go wrong when sex trade workers do not have advocates on their side looking out for those who have to live on the street and encounter strangers on a daily basis. For years, missing sex trade workers have later turned up dead, desecrated and forgotten in farmers’ fields outside the city. In British Columbia, the victims of Robert Pickton still remain on many people’s minds. It is a grim truth, what can happen to those people that have no one looking for them.

Changes need to be made to ensure that sex trade workers do not continue to go missing. A sex trade worker may only be a “hooker” to many people but to someone, she is family. She is a daughter, a mother, a sister, a friend. But the sad truth is it can be extremely difficult to keep track of someone who lives on the street. Women who work in the sex trade industry are often missing for a long time before anyone notices or thinks to report it to the police. Legalizing prostitution would allow sex trade workers to work in brothels without fear of police raids and jail time. By legalizing prostitution, the government could also regulate the sex trade, allowing for more protective measures to be taken to ensure the health, safety and well-being of all people involved in the sex trade. Legal brothels would give sex trade workers a place to check into every day, ensuring that someone would notice within a day or two if a sex trade worker went missing. Legalized prostitution would mean the government could implement a health check system that would send nurses to test sex trade workers in brothels for sexually transmitted infections and other health-related problems. This, in turn, would make working conditions not only safer for sex trade workers but also for their clientele. If prostitiution were legalized, sex trade workers would not have to hide from police. Instead, sex trade workers could feel more comfortable reporting any john who mistreated them or abused them.

Yes, legalizing prostitiution sounds crazy to some people. It’s a simple but extreme solution to a problem that is anything but simple. Sex trade workers often stay in the sex industry because they don’t know any other way of life. Last year I spent six weeks interviewing a sex trade worker in Halifax for a class project. I tried to learn every detail of her life; when I returned to my safe, warm home after every interview, I felt like crying. The women I interviewed dropped out of school in Grade 9 and had been arrested many times for solicitation. She had been beaten and broken and left for dead. She told me she could not leave the sex trade because she could not even get a job at Tim Hortons because of her criminal background. She had no options. The system had failed her, just like it has failed all women involved in the sex trade.

Relegating prostitution to a dirty, illegal realm has not made the sex trade disappear. Instead, it is the women who are involved in the sex trade that are disappearing. Sex trade workers are a marginalized group simply because society treats them as such. Sex trade workers are forced to remain separate from the very society that allows them to exist in the first place. The sex trade only remains alive because there are always customers willing to pay for sex. Ignoring the problem hasn’t made it go away. Ignoring the women in the sex trade has only made the problem worse. In order to keep sex trade workers safe, we must first begin to see them as people, not as outsiders. In order for that to happen, in order for sex trade workers to matter to society, the government needs to legalize prostitution. Too many women have gone missing; too little has been done to stop it. Legalize prostitution, regulate brothels and give sex trade workers a safe place to call home.