WUNRN
Aboriginal Women's Action Network -
AWAN - Canada
Aboriginal Women's Action Network Statement Opposing Legalized
Prostitution & Decriminalization of Prostitution
As Aboriginal women on occupied Coast Salish Territory, we, the Aboriginal
Women's Action Network (AWAN) implore you to pay attention to the voices
of Aboriginal women and women's groups who are speaking out in the interest of
our sisters, our daughters, our friends and all women whose voices have not
been heard in the recent media discussion on prostitution and legalized
brothels for the 2010 Olympics.
We, the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, speak especially in the
interests of the most vulnerable women - street prostitutes, of which
a significant number are young Aboriginal women and girls. We
have a long, multi-generational history of colonization,
marginalization, and displacement from our Homelands, and rampant abuses that
has forced many of our sisters into prostitution. Aboriginal women
are often either forced into prostitution, trafficked into
prostitution or are facing that possibility. Given that the average age at
which girls enter prostitution is fourteen, the majority with a history of
unspeakable abuses, we are also speaking out for the Aboriginal children who
are targeted by johns and pimps. Aboriginal girls are hunted down and
prostituted, and the perpetrators go uncharged with child sexual assault and
child rape. These predators, pervasive in our society, roam with impunity in
our streets and take advantage of those Aboriginal children with the least
protection. While we are speaking out for the women in the downtown
eastside of Vancouver, we include women from First Nations Reserves,
and other Aboriginal communities, most of whom have few resources and limited
choices.
We include them because AWAN members also originate from those
communities, and AWAN members interact regularly with Native women from these
communities.
The Aboriginal Women's Action Network opposes the legalization of prostitution,
and any state regulation of prostitution that entrenches Aboriginal women and
children in the so-called "sex trade." We hold that legalizing
prostitution in Vancouver will not make it safer for those prostituted, but
will merely increase their numbers. Contrary to current media coverage of the
issue, the available evidence suggests that it would in fact be harmful, would
expand prostitution and would promote trafficking, and would only serve to make
prostitution safer and more profitable for the men who exploit and harm
prostituted women and children. Although many well-meaning people think that
decriminalization simply means protecting prostituted women from arrest, it
also refers, dangerously, to the decriminalization of johns and pimps. In this
way prostitution is normalized, johns multiply, and pimps and traffickers
become legitimated entrepreneurs. Say "No" to this lack of
concern for marginalized women and children, who in this industry are expected
to serve simply as objects of consumption! The Aboriginal Women's Action
Network opposes the legalization of brothels for the 2010 Olympics. We refuse
to be commodities in the so-called "sex industry" or offer up our
sisters and daughters to be used as disposable objects for sex tourists.
A harm-reduction model that claims to help prostituted women by moving them
indoors to legal brothels, not only would not reduce the harm to them, but
would disguise the real issues. There is no evidence that indoor prostitution
is safer for the women involved. Rather, it is just as violent and traumatic.
Prostitution is inherently violent, merely an extension of the violence that most
prostituted women experience as children. We should aim not merely to reduce
this harm, as if it is a necessary evil and/or inescapable, but strive to
eliminate it altogether. Those promoting prostitution rarely address class,
race, or ethnicity as factors that make women even more vulnerable. A treatise
can be written about Aboriginal women’s vulnerability based on race,
socio-economic status and gender but suffice it to say that we are very
over-represented in street-level prostitution. There may even be a class bias
behind the belief that street prostitution is far worse than indoor forms. It
is not the street per se or the laws for that matter, which are the source of
the problem, but prostitution itself which depends on a sub-class of women or a
degraded caste to be exploited. A major factor contributing to the absence of
attention given to the women who have gone missing women in Vancouver is the
lack of police response, and the insidious societal belief that these women
were not worthy of protection, a message that is explicitly conveyed to the
johns, giving them the go-ahead to act toward these women with impunity. If we
want to protect the most vulnerable women, we could start by decriminalizing
prostituted women, not the men who harm them. Although it is not mentioned in
the local news, the Swedish model of dealing with prostitution provides an
example we should seriously consider. It criminalizes only the buying of sex,
not the selling, targeting the customer, pimp, procurer, and trafficker, rather
than the prostituted woman, and provides an array of social services to aid
women to leave prostitution. Given that the vast majority of prostituted women
wish to leave prostitution, we should focus on finding ways to help them to do
that rather than entrenching them further into prostitution by legalizing and
institutionalizing it. Here in Vancouver, if we are to help those most in need,
young Aboriginal women, it would help to think more long-term, to focus on
healing and prevention. Let's not get tricked into a supposed fix which is not
even a band-aid, but only deepens the wounds.
AWAN demands that Aboriginal women have the opportunity to raise our families
within our Traditional values of having a respected position for women and
children in our societies. The single-most effective way of achieving that goal
is empowering and resourcing Aboriginal women’s groups, such as AWAN, so that
we can organize, engage with other sectors of society and speak with our own
voices. We have a great deal of certainty that organized Aboriginal women’s
voices would be calling for "Exiting" programs and services, support
for Aboriginal women and children, and an end to forced prostitution. Let
Vancouver enter into the 2010 Olympics without wearing the black-eye of decriminalized
prostitution and legalized brothels that drive Aboriginal women further down
the Human Rights ladder of Canadian and Vancouver society.