Worlds Oldest Profession: " May go Co-op" in BC.

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Worlds Oldeat Profession: " May go Co-op"

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Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor

They say selling oneself for money is the  world's oldest profession. If some in British Columbia have their way, prostitution for those by choice may establish a Coop Brothel.

Though many opponents fear this may result in a trend in selling oneself for monetary gain, Politicians and Moral Religious Leaders have been doing this for a millenia or more.  Both are morally wrong, it is just that Politicians and Moral Religious Leaders who make our laws are better at it and more discreet. 

Story below.

 I've been trying to pin down the moment when I got so caught up in the issues of the sex trade.

The kick in the butt that got me moving was an interview 10 years ago with former sex worker Cherry Kingsley, when I was working full-time at the Times Colonist. She blew me away with stories from her tough, sad life.

But even in my fledgling newspaper days I was prowling the streets of Kamloops trying to find sex workers to talk to. So maybe it's just always been my particular fascination.

In those days, I was adamantly against the sex trade, and for all the reasons you hear in any discussion of it -- exploitation, victimization, terrible violence, suffering.

A lifetime of movies, news stories and documentaries about desperate, drugged-out women eking out a mean living on the streets had left their mark on me. I'd heard countless stories from women whose abusive childhoods had primed them to fall into the trade as adolescents, and assumed that all sex workers were victims in need of rescue.

But my views changed over my three years heading up Victoria's Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society.

Given the rare opportunity to learn about the industry directly from women in the trade -- including those who chose to work in it -- I came to see that our need to take a moral position against prostitution is in fact a major reason for why aspects of the trade are so dangerous and exploitive.

And now I find myself launching into the planning of a co-op brothel. Who'd have thought?

I'm working on the social enterprise with another former director of PEERS, Lauren Casey. She and I made it relatively unscathed through our intense 15 minutes of fame this week after news broke of our plans.

I think the media were all a little disappointed to discover there's nothing concrete to talk about yet, other than that the time has come. But planning for any successful business -- let alone one centred on the rather incendiary proposition that there are happy, healthy, adult sex workers out there -- simply has to proceed at a slow and painstaking pace.

What's the dream? A terrific work place for sex workers who are in the industry by choice, in which all profits beyond the cost of running the business are mandated to go to social causes.

We want the money to help fund the work PEERS does supporting disadvantaged sex workers wanting to leave the street trade. Street prostitution makes up just 10 to 20 per cent of the total trade, but that group of people are in desperate need of housing, drug detox and treatment, mental-health support, and any number of other services.

What the workplace will look like will depend on what we hear from sex workers when we get to that stage of the plan, but we've got a few ideas we'd like to test.

Like salaries instead of 100 per cent commission work. Vacation pay. Medical leave. Employment Insurance benefits. Workers' compensation coverage. Fair shifts, and regular time off.

A letter in the TC this week from a woman I greatly admire condemned our plan as a dangerous "normalization" of prostitution that could attract even more people into the business. I understand that concern.