Bill C-36: Social Protection or Marketization

The following is derived from the research I did for a paper I presented at the Annual Meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association last week at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa. 

We can clearly see in looking at the testimony before the Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights (July 7 to 15, 2014) and the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (September 9, 10, 17, and October 29 and 30, 2014), that there is a clear divide between those who advocate for a "social protection" model versus a "marketization" model regarding sex work in Canada. 

Groups For Bill C-36

Groups Against C-36

What I have done here is compiled the testimony from the groups and individuals supporting Bill C-36 and the groups and individuals opposing C-36 converted it to rich text and uploaded it to TagCrowd (tagcrowd.com) to create word clouds. Screens were set to capture the most common 75 words, to combine associated words, and to give numeric word frequencies along with the cloud visualization.

Word clouds are particularly evocative in summarizing a given "brand," "doxa," or "commonsense" of a particular group. By quickly identifying key words emphasized and prioritized by each group, the word clouds give a quick view of the message  presented and provides a visualization of their primary and secondary focuses.

In the testimony to both committees there was a clear divide between organizations that advocate for abolition of prostitution who generally supported Bill C-36 and those who campaign for the decriminalization of prostitution and opposed Bill C-36.  There were a number of point son which most, if not all, the witnesses agreed: 1) that legal policy that criminalizes prostitutes is problematic as it victimizes those who offer sex in exchange for money, 2) authentic consent is an indispensable requirement of legitimate commercial and non-commercial sex, 3) sex workers are often subject to economic coercion and disproportionately the victims of violence, and 4) addressing prostitution must significantly and seriously lead to harm reduction. However, there was disagreement over what entailed a victim and victimizing, what comprised "authentic" consent, and fundamentally what is meant by "harm." For the abolitionists because prostitution is the sexual use and abuse of women by men it is part of a continuum of violence against women that runs from harassment to domestic violence to rape. It is by definition harmful; not about work of providing services but fundamentally about men's sexual pleasure and possession of human bodies. There can be no authentic consent because women come to sex work because of poverty, drug addiction, or coercion -- women are not prostitutes (noun) they are prostituted (verb). For those who advocate decriminalization, harm arises from the illegal and secretive nature of the work because prostitutes cannot come forward either to report customers or pimps who commit violence or to access programs for help with substance abuse and/or sexual health. It also means sex workers are precluded from organizing workplaces to enhance their safety. Sex work is a historical business enterprise which could be controlled through commercial oversight and regulation  which would help eradicate the associated harms.

The division is clearly seen in the word clouds derived from the presentation by the groups for and against Bill C-36. Groups against the legislation framed the issue in terms of the market and the commercial provision of services to clients, referring to the act of selling sex as work and those who sold sex as "workers." For groups that supported the legislation the focus was on exploitation, highlighting the violence and victimization. While services were mentioned rather than referring to clients, the preferred terms were "johns" or "pimps." The reference to pimps highlighted concerns with trafficking realizing a common feature expressed by groups for Bill C-36, that prostitution and trafficking were the same thing. Thus the argument was one of prostitutes having no agency in coming to sex work, but being trafficked or prostituted --  as I call it, the verbing of sex workers -- with a further focus on children, girls, and the young as the most vulnerable. it was the groups against the legislation that spoke of sex workers as adults making choices.