MYTH:
Arresting sex workers prevents sex work from occurring in our community.
REALITY: Arresting sex workers usually only keeps them out of the business temporarily. It also pushes the industry further underground, making sex workers more vulnerable to violence. Crackdowns (sweeps, arrests of sex workers) results in the growth and expansion of sex workers throughout the city as they flee police from fear of arrest.
MYTH: Focusing law enforcement efforts on the customers of sex workers will stop the commercial sex trade.
REALITY: It is not the number of customers but economic trends and social conditions such as unemployment and a shortage of living wage opportunities that determine the number of sex workers at any given time. Studies of laws in Sweden that criminalize customers found that these practices push sex workers underground and subject sex workers to more violent situations.
MYTH: Sex workers were abused or assaulted as children.
REALITY: One out of three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Like many individuals, some sex workers have been the victims of a sexual assault during childhood. However, there are other sex workers who have never been sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
The majority of sexual assault victims do not work in the sex industry.
MYTH: Most sex workers are forced or coerced into street based sex work.
REALITY: Individuals enter into sex work for a variety of reasons. The number one reason for entering sex work is economic, not by trickery or coercion of an outside party. According to common stereotypes, a pimp is a man who controls a sex workers work and income. The reality is that many sex workers (including street based) work independently. Sex work may require maintaining professional relationships with third parties such as drivers, receptionists, and managers. The criminalisation of employers makes it difficult to perform sex work in safety. Sex workers who are under the control of another person are most often in a situation of conjugal violence within their working context. When sex workers want to file a complaint and break the cycle of conjugal violence, their efforts are difficult because of the criminalization of sex work.
MYTH: Sex workers are dangerous to the general population because most have diseases they transmit HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.
REALITY: Sex workers are often more knowledgeable about sexual health – and practice safe sex more often – than the general population.Sex workers often act as sexual health educators for their clients and should be mobilized, not demonized, in the struggle to control HIV/AIDS. The ability to negotiate various sexual services depends on a sex worker’s working conditions. Criminalization and regressive policies create stressful environments that can hinder the ability to negotiate safer practices. This illicit context also limits sex workers access to services and health care because they fear being discriminated against. Where sex workers are not treated as outsiders or criminals, they are able to pursue health care that does not stigmatize them or violate their human rights. When sex workers know their human rights will be enforced and respected, they can - and do - seek health care and promote condom use by clients, safer working conditions and protection against violence.
When sex workers are stigmatized, denigrated, jailed and forced underground, they live in the shadows without health care or legal protection.
Myth: Raids of brothels are the best way to help sex workers and stop sex work from happening.
Reality: Raids of brothels typically lead to the arrest, detention, incarceration and even the deportation of sex workers. Empowering sex workers to identify and assist those people who have been coerced is the most effective way to support sex workers. Pulling people out of brothels neither “saves” nor “rescues” them. Sex workers who work in the open continue to be preyed upon by violent clients and the incidence of violence against sex workers is greatly reduced (though not eliminated) when sex workers work indoors such as in massage parlours or through escort services.
MYTH: Sexual assault is just part of the job.
REALITY: No one ever deserves to be sexually assaulted. Whether there is payment or not, any sex act performed without consent is an act of violence. In addition, many sex workers are intimidated by the police and will not communicate violent attacks against them for fear of arrest. As a result, this makes sex workers an easy target. Sexually assaulted sex workers, whether at work, in their love life, or in their social life, fear not being believed by authorities or fear being categorized as sexually depraved, as if forcing a sex worker to perform a sex act was a normal situation and not an assault.
MYTH: All sex workers are drug addicts.
REALITY: For many people, sex work and drugs go hand in hand, so they assume all sex workers are drug users. Because of considerable stigmatization, many believe it is difficult or even impossible to perform sex work without using drugs. However, the reality is more complex. Some sex workers use alcohol or drugs recreationally, on an occasional or a regular basis, but some never use them at all. Those who use drugs while working or overuse them become much more vulnerable to abuse and risk having great difficulty setting their limits in regards to acts, prices and duration of services they offer. Drug addiction can put their health and security at risk, and more supports are needed in Nova Scotia (detox beds, education and public awareness) for sex workers who are harmfully involved with drugs.
Thank you to the program participants at Stepping Stone and to Stella (chezstella.org, 14 answers to your questions) for their contributions to Sex Work Myth. Sex Work Reality)
“We have feelings too. We are someone’s kids. We’re
someone’s mother, someone’s sister. Don’t just look at us and say “Oh, that’s a whore.”
- Joan
