Open AccessSex Work and the City
Author(s) -
Helen Roitberg
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
political science undergraduate review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2562-1289
pISSN - 2562-1270
DOI - 10.29173/psur190
Subject(s) - indigenous , premise , colonialism , sex work , conversation , sexual violence , criminology , devaluation , work (physics) , state (computer science) , compensation (psychology) , white (mutation) , political science , sociology , gender studies , law , business , psychology , social psychology , medicine , engineering , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , philosophy , family medicine , algorithm , exchange rate , ecology , linguistics , chemistry , computer science , biology , biochemistry , communication , mechanical engineering , finance , gene
Bill C-36, or the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which was introduced in Canada in 2014, made the purchase of sexual services illegal. To the end of eliminating sex work, Bill C-36 rests on the premise that sex work is inherently exploitative, and that sex workers and their communities are harmed by the exchange of sexual services. Considering that Indigenous women are overrepresented among sex workers and disproportionately victims of severe violence, this paper examines the goals of Bill C-36 in conversation with Canada’s ongoing project of colonialism. This paper demonstrates that Bill C-36 upholds the systemic devaluation of Indigeneity by which Indigenous women’s bodies are rendered deserving of violence, and by which this violence is normalized and invisibilized. Rather than protect ‘victims’ of sexual exploitation, Bill C-36 relies on the colonial stereotypes of the Indigenous prostitute to reimagine sexually autonomous Indigenous women as inherent threats to (white) Canadian society and themselves, and thereby justify state regulation in both public and private spaces.