What's Legal, What's Not, and What It All Means

The Traded Sex - What’s Legal, What’s Not, and What It All Means

Like many Canadians, I learned about the legal system from my television set. Shows like Law and Order paved the way - the system represented was American, but the crimes, and their appeal, crossed the border with ease. Enough television shows and movies centre around our fascination with crime that viewers gain a plethora of knowledge worthy of a bachelor’s degree, at least, and I find myself knowing a far deal more about the justice system of New York than my own city’s bylaws - chickens are legal, you say? Exactly.

News media in Canada usually bridge the rest of the gap. Canadians are obsessed with our American neighbours and at the same time desire to be autonomous and independent without ever quite understanding what that means. This makes any noted difference between Canadians and Americans, no matter how small or anecdotal, incredibly newsworthy. Consequently, every Canadian knows that the drinking age in the States is 21 (but not the drinking age of New Brunswick), the laxity of American gun laws (but not those of their own province), and the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony (but not their Canadian equivalents, or if the system translates at all). I even know that conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor is a felony, thanks to Legally Blonde. Pop culture education, you have served me well.

Where this education system fails, miserably, is when the law system doesn’t make sense. It is in this unknown realm that Canadian prostitution laws lie. Pop culture doesn’t known what a bawdy house is or how it relates to procuring a sex act, and they don’t even know if trading sex for money is legal. Surprisingly, it is.

The following should summarize Canada’s laws.

1. If, in a non-public space (like a home or hotel bedroom), a person trades sex for money or money for sex, this is a perfectly legal transaction.

2. If in a public space (like a street corner, or often a car with an open window) a person “communicates for the purpose of prostitution,” or, say, asks a working girl how much she’s charging, that is illegal.

3. If in a non-public space (like the hotel bedroom used legally in Scenario 1) is used repeatedly by one or more prostitutes as a place of work, then that place is designated a Bawdy House. Just hanging out in a Bawdy House is illegal.

4. If you encourage a minor to work in the sex trade, that is illegal. If you ‘live off the avails’ of a sex trade worker, that is illegal - this is a law meant to criminalize bad boyfriends, or pimps, and madams. If you coerce anyone into working in the sex trade, that is illegal.

And those are Canada’s laws.

The convoluted language and outdated terms relates to the age of the documents, because these laws are really freaking old. The reason they haven’t been updated is because no one seems able to agree on a solution, and the messy nature of poverty, addiction, mental health, and women’s rights has no politician eager to touch these laws with anything but a disinfectant towelette.

Also of interest in the legal department is the fact that prostitutes can be beaten, raped, and robbed, just like anyone else, and that this is not okay.

I don’t want to dwell on this subject, so I will only say that a great many of the people who purchase sex (“johns”) view sex trade workers as a kind of disposable woman, like a plastic cup, or a latex condom. The ‘bad date sheets’ that are distributed to sex trade workers are filled with the acts of such men, which are incredibly violent and coloured by a sadism that is hard to grasp.

...Worker was sprayed with bear spray while man stood by, laughed…woman was held in apartment for three days and raped (vaginally and anally) repeatedly by men and their friends…woman was kicked in stomach, robbed of purse, and left on a strange road...

And on and on.