Vancouver elections: Politicians and Prostitution

In one of his last news conferences as mayor of Vancouver, Larry Campbell announced a publicly funded community-based program to study sex work in Vancouver and said red light districts should be an option. The next day an editorial in the Vancouver Sun endorsed the idea.

A similar community project in 1997 on drug use led to the adoption of the four pillars plan and a safe injection site. If the sex work project follows the same route, Vancouver could again lead North America in innovative policies to assist sex workers.

But first the City needs to examine its own law against prostitutes. Known as the "body-rub" law, it requires any non-therapeutic body worker (that is, a prostitute) to wear "clean, washable, non-transparent outer garments covering his or her body between the neck and the top of the knee" while performing the job. No joke: a prostitute is supposed to work fully clothed!

Obviously, no sex worker could comply with that regulation. In any event, a "body-rub" license is available only after payment of a prohibitive fee: $7900. A therapeutic massage business pays only $240.

Only one business currently holds a body-rub license: The Swedish Touch on Hornby. Featured on American news networks, and with an international clientele, it is a legendary Vancouver erotic business. Its high-priced staff are certainly not garbed like nuns. The City does not enforce the fully-clothed rule.

In fact, city officials are relatively lenient towards indoor sex businesses as long as they pretend to be something else. Thanks to this permissiveness, Vancouver has a brothel in every neighbourhood. Sex workers get city licenses as "health enhancement" professionals, which are normally issued to qualified shiatsu or reiki practitioners or other bodyworker pros. Savvy prostitutes simply pretend to provide such services; actually they perform sex.

For example, the website of one downtown establishment states: "Our entire staff of attendants are certified in the bodywork techniques of their choice. Consequently the lady you choose may perform shiatsu, swedish, aromatherapy, acupressure, reiki or reflexology on you, to name just a few."

Vancouver politicians, police and inspectors know that many "health enhancement centres" are in fact brothels. They allow them to operate as long as the sex workers are adults, are legally capable of working in Canada, and generally keep the peace.

So while Vancouver law formally prohibits indoor sex work, city politicians unofficially allow it. While this bizarre situation is preferable to the aggressive enforcement of prostitution laws common in many cities in Canada and the Untied States, it still requires sex workers to lie, and to navigate a bureaucratic maze that many are unwilling or unable to do. The Vancouver system thus helps keep some sex workers on the street.

The simple solution is to repeal the body-rub bylaw and allow any professional body-worker to get a license to work in the zone currently designated for "health enhancement centers." If a shiatsu therapist can legally rub and stroke a shoulder or thigh, a sex worker should be able to rub and stroke a genital. Other than the part of the body touched, the two businesses are very similar. Only a sex-negative system would allow one and prohibit the other.

Sadly most politicians seek to avoid the issue. Suggesting that sex work be normalized always provokes outrage from sex-negative constituencies as diverse as the Catholic Church and Rape Relief. Not wanting to irk these organized groups, politicians never repeal the sex-negative law, and sex workers remain legally marginalized.

The tide is turning however. The mass murders of Vancouver street prostitutes has revealed the inhumanity of a system that prevents legal indoor sex work. The winds of real change on this issue are blowing through the city.

But Vancouver politicians are mighty reluctant to take the lead. The Tattler has learned that a group of Vancouver voters approached every candidate in the civic election asking them to take a position on repealing the Vancouver laws that prevent sex workers from working in commercial establishments where other touch-professionals can legally work.

The first request was sent out over two weeks before the election. Most independent candidates immediately responded and all supported the repeal. They included high-profile independents such as Jamie Lee Hamilton and Kevin Potvin, and the Green Party's Ann Livingston.

The first responses from the three main parties came from Tim Louis and Ellen Woodsworth from COPE, and from Heather Harrison from Vision, who also supported the repeal. B.C. Lee, from the NPA, said he would study the matter further.

Ten days before the election, the candidates who had not responded to the first request - including almost all the candidates from the three major parties, were again asked to commit to a position on the issue.

Peter Ladner responded negatively at first, saying Council had already rejected a similar proposal in 2003. But when it was pointed out to him that that rejection involved allowing sex work in residential premises, not commercial premises, he recanted and said he would check into the matter. David Cadman said he would consult with his fellow COPE candidates and "give a party position." Neither Lee, Ladner, nor Cadman responded again.

So of the 22 candidates for mayor and Council from the main parties, only three took a position on the sex work bylaws.

The Vancouver civic elections show the extraordinary difficulty of discussing sexual issues in the political domain. The majority of mainstream politicians simply refuse to take a stand, or plead for time and then fail to follow up.

Bizarrely, sex work was an issue in the election, even making the front page lead headline in the Vancouver Sun. This arose when Tim Louis commented in a Sun editorial meeting that perhaps the City should run a brothel. Louis was reckless in making such an offhand proposal about such an important and complex issue, and the Sun was sensationalist in giving such a comment the prominence it did not deserve.

So political discourse about sex typically involves ill-considered sensationalism. Outrageous comments grab headlines, yet the media and the politicians ignore the guts of the story - that Vancouver bylaws deny sex workers the indoor safety that all other body workers enjoy.

Mainstream political culture's aversion to real discourse about even life and death sexual issues, is the key reason those of us at The Sex Party feel compelled to enter the political arena.

See an insightful Vancouver Sun December 06, 2005 commentary by a Vancouver indoor sexworker.