Violence and the Outlaw Status of (Street) Prostitution in Canada

Lowman, John

doi:10.1177/10778010022182245

Cited by 199 publications

(210 citation statements)

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“…Clearly, not only are areas such as the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver created as degenerate zones that can be frequented with impunity by men, but such zones are also designed to demarcate degenerate bodies-those that society deems as being unwanted, unmissed, and ultimately disposable (Lowman, 2000).…”

Section: On Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse

Jiwani¹,

Young

2006

Canadian Journal of Communication

154

114

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While current mainstream media stories oscillate between Canadian troops in Afghanistan attempting to restore safety and democracy and the imminent threat of a war on terror on domestic soil, a sorely neglected story concerns the continued war on women in Canada. In this paper, we look at one site of this war-the case of missing and murdered women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Employing a frame analysis, we analyze 128 articles from The Vancouver Sun published between 2001 and 2006. We argue that prevailing and historically entrenched stereotypes about women, Aboriginality, and sex-trade work continue to demarcate the boundaries of 'respectability' and degeneracy, interlocking in ways that situate these women's lives, even after death, in the margins.Résumé : Les reportages qui font la une présentent soit les troupes canadiennes postées en Afghanistan tentant de rétablir la sécurité et la décromatie, soit la menace imminente d'une guerre contre la terreur en sol domestique. Il est pourtant une histoire délibérément occultée : la guerre sans fin que subissent les femmes au Canada. Cet article explore une facette de cette guerre-celle des femmes disparues et assassinées du When the terrain is sexual violence, racism and sexism interlock in particularly nasty ways. These two systems operate through each other so that sexual violence, as well as women's narratives of resistance to sexual violence, cannot be understood outside of colonialism and today's ongoing racism and genocide. When women from marginalized communities speak out about sexual violence, we are naming something infinitely broader than what men do to women within our communities, an interlocking analysis that has most often been articulated by Aboriginal women.-Sherene Razack, Looking White People in the Eye (1998a, p. 59) A recent news article in The Vancouver Sun announced that one of Vancouver's "missing" women had been found (Culbert, 2006). That brought the count down to 67 women who have disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Over the past 30 years, approximately 100 women in British Columbia alone have gone missing. In the Hazelton-Houston-Burns Lake corridor-or the "Highway of Tears," as the Aboriginal women of the region have called it-police say nine young women and girls have disappeared, while a citizens' report suggests that the number may be as high as 30 (Hume, 2006). If we count women missing across the country, the numbers skyrocket. Yet, in comparison with the events "out there" dominating the international scene and their links here in the homeland, little attention has been paid to the phenomenon of missing women in the mainstream media.Our location informing this paper draws from our position as feminist researchers investigating the terrain of racialized and sexualized violence and its mediations. Our point of departure is that violence against women constitutes a gendered war that remains peripheral to the public sphere constructed by the mass media. In using the war metaphor, we borrow from anti-violence ...

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Section: On Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse

Jiwani¹,

Young

2006

Canadian Journal of Communication

154

114

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“…Yet in the context of wider 'discourses of disposability' (Lowman, 2000), national policy frameworks which criminalise the sale of sex, and a broader austerity and responsibilisation agenda, progressive local initiatives can only achieve so much. Addressing sex worker vulnerability at local level seemed in many ways to be a strategy which centred on acknowledging and prosecuting violence.…”

Section: Concluding Comments: Vulnerability and Social Justice For Sementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Discourses are widely recognised as playing an important role in processes which marginalise and endanger those who sell sex (Lowman, 2000) and whilst the rise of vulnerability narratives might at first appear a progressive development, beyond the surface it is more contentious. Concerns about vulnerability appear frequently alongside notions of 'exploitation', 'victimhood' and 'coercion' in the governance of the sex industry; controversial ideas in long-running debates Gubbay, 1999;Butler, 2004) are also evident within this discursive scheme.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pragmatic, Progressive, Problematic: Addressing Vulnerability through a Local Street Sex Work Partnership Initiative

Brown

Sanders

2017

Social Policy & Society

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Whilst it remains a criminal activity to solicit sex publicly in the UK, it has become increasingly popular to configure sex workers as ‘vulnerable’, often as a means of foregrounding the significant levels of violence faced by female street sex workers. Sex work scholars have highlighted that this discourse can play an enabling role in a moralistic national policy agenda which criminalises and marginalises those who sell sex. Yet multiple and overlapping narratives of vulnerability circulate in this policy arena, raising questions about how these might operate at ground level. Drawing on empirical data gathered in the development of an innovative local street sex work multi-agency partnership in Leeds, this article explores debates, discourses and realities of sex worker vulnerability. Setting applied insights within more theoretically inclined analysis, we suggest how vulnerability might usefully be understood in relation to sex work, but also highlight how social justice for sex workers requires more than progressive discourses and local initiatives. Empirical findings highlight that whilst addressing vulnerability through a local street sex work multi-agency partnership initiative, a valuable platform for shared action on violence in particular can be created. However, an increase in fundamental legal and social reform is required in order to address the differentiated and diverse lived experiences of sex worker vulnerability.

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“…59 As John Lowman argues, the media perpetuates a "discourse of disposal" with regard to sex workers and their clients. 60 Th e term "sweep" objectifi es participants in the sex trade as garbage that needs to be removed to "clean up" the streets. Moreover, as sex workers have been recently recast as "victims" in the social imaginary, the police "sweeps" have shift ed pointedly toward the "johns" as contaminants.…”

Section: Media Releasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Johns” in the Spotlight: Anti-prostitution Efforts and the Surveillance of Clients

Khan¹

2015

Can. j. law soc.

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Th is essay examines surveillant practices that subject sex trade clients ("clients") to socio-legal control. In particular, I employ the concepts of the gaze, voyeurism, and exhibitionism to unpack the surveillant dynamics, and consider how power and pleasure are harnessed, produced, and thwarted in the increasing scrutiny of the sex trade's demand side. I further examine my own research of the regulation of clients within this analytical framework. Following David Lyon's insights on the scopophilic dimensions of surveillance (2006), I argue that the instrumental goals of surveillance are interconnected with a voyeurism that gratifi es the pleasures of looking at, categorizing, defi ning and making sense of, clients. Yet, bearing in mind the multi-directionality of the gaze, I also analyze the controlled exhibition of sex work signifi ers, as information is not just gathered, but also displayed and performed.Keywords : sex work , prostitution , clients or "johns," surveillance , panoptic , synoptic , social control , voyeurism , exhibitionism , the gaze , criminal law and regulation , media studies Résumé Cet article examine les pratiques de surveillance qui assujettissent les clients de l'industrie du sexe (les « clients ») à un contrôle sociojuridique. En particulier, j' emplois les concepts du regard, du voyeurisme et de l'exhibitionnisme afi n de révéler les dynamiques de surveillance, et d' examiner comment le pouvoir et le plaisir sont canalisés, produits et entravés par l' examen de plus en plus minutieux de la demande dans le commerce du sexe. Dans ce cadre analytique, j'approfondie ma propre recherche sur la réglementation des clients. En m'appuyant sur les idées de David Lyon portant sur les dimensions scopophiliques de la surveillance (2006), je soutiens que les objectifs fondamentaux de la surveillance sont liés au voyeurisme, donnant ainsi plaisir à regarder, classer, définir et donner un sens aux clients. Toutefois, compte tenu du caractère multidirectionnel du regard, j'analyse égale-ment l'exhibition contrôlée des signifiants propres au travail du sexe, puisque l'information n' est pas seulement recueillie mais aussi exposée et représentée. Apparently, he has already staked out the place. As we walk, he jokes about the mazelike corridors so I don't feel bad about being lost. I smile in agreement, but when I realize why he's there, I have to stop myself from getting chatty. I did not receive research ethics approval to talk with him. I'm only allowed to observe. He's been designated a "john"-that is, someone who pays for sex-and he has been sent to rehab to learn the error of his libido. I'm here to study the court diversion program designed for him and other men who were caught attempting to buy sex from undercover police offi cers.Th e john school I am observing that day is run by current and retired male police offi cers. When I introduce myself, I am greeted warmly. Th ey consider me one of them. I guess they fi gure as a professor, but perhaps more important, as a woman, I will undou...

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Violence and the Outlaw Status of (Street) Prostitution in Canada

Cited by 199 publications

References 5 publications

Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse

Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse

Pragmatic, Progressive, Problematic: Addressing Vulnerability through a Local Street Sex Work Partnership Initiative

“Johns” in the Spotlight: Anti-prostitution Efforts and the Surveillance of Clients

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