“I wanted to be a saloon girl” – by Todd Klinck for fab magazine
fab’s Trade columnist sits down with Valerie Scott, the woman leading the fight to decriminalize the sex trade. This prostitutes’ rights activist started her career in a gay bathhouse and found early inspiration watching westerns
Prostitutes’ rights activist Valerie Scott claims to have opened the first massage parlour in a gay bathhouse in Halifax when she was “not quite old enough legally” but had ID that said she was. “I went to this place, and it was just beautiful, called the Apollo Sauna Bath on Barrington Street (it’s still open) and I didn’t know anything [about it being a gay bathhouse],” says Scott, a very petite woman with long, curly hair.
“I spoke with the owner and said I was from Toronto and [that] I used to work in a massage parlour called Relaxation Plus and would he be interested in hiring a masseuse,” continues Scott, who is wearing jeans and a sweater. “I hadn’t been to Toronto in my life. And he was [interested]. So he built me a little room, with a table and everything, and I had a nice little sign, very tastefully painted, in the front window that just said ‘Masseuse.’ And I did some pretty good business. Well, I didn’t know the reason he hired me [was that] it was a gay place. And they were getting heat from the cops. So he figured if he had a girl in there, then maybe the cops wouldn’t think it was so gay.” She laughs, “And it worked!” The fact that a lot of bisexual men frequented the sauna kept Scott in business for a year before she moved on to other forms of sex work.
Decades later, Scott is one of the most visible advocates for the decriminalization of prostitution in Canada. In the ’80s, she was involved with the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes, renamed Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC) in 2000 (www.sexprofessionalsofcanada.com). SPOC wasn’t very active until last August, but since then, Scott has been its most public face.
She’s not the stereotypical angry activist. She speaks slowly and methodically, but without hesitation. She lives in an unassuming apartment near the heart of the drug-infested intersection of Dundas and Sherbourne with her male partner of eight years and her massive German shepherd, Brodie. “I knew [I wanted to be a prostitute] when I was about four and a half,” she tells me, while her parrot Dorian repeatedly calls out the dog’s name. “I’d watch TV … they’d show old western movies, and I thought the part about the cowboys running around killing each other was boring, but every now and again, they showed these saloon girls… Oh, I wanted to be a saloon girl. They lived in the centre of town, they were beautifully dressed, they had their own money and no cowboy could pull the wool over their eyes.” When Scott later became a stripper, her first “professional” costume was that of a saloon girl.
Scott was confidently aware, even in high school, that she wanted to be a prostitute. Though she doesn’t disclose her age, she admits she was four years old sometime in the ’60s, and has a 29-year-old son. (I promise to describe her only as “mature”). When I was in high school, I had sex-worker activists like Annie Sprinkle to look to for inspiration. I ask Scott if she had any similar reference points, and she laughs, saying, “It was all in my mind. I thought it would be a great job.” While she didn’t tell her parents right away, they know about it now, and are supportive. “My father always says, ‘Well, whatever you do, try and be the best.’” Her mother is concerned about her safety, “because she doesn’t want me on the news with my head bashed in, dead,” but she still accepts that her daughter has chosen to be a sex worker.
SPOC’s goal is simple: the decriminalization of prostitution. Its most recent activities are related to a parliamentary subcommittee that’s asking Canadians what they think of prostitution laws. The subcommittee was formed in response to a motion by lesbian NDP MP Libby Davies, which followed the revelation that dozens of sex workers had been murdered in Davies’ downtown Vancouver riding. The subcommittee is holding hearings across the country, listening to the opinions of academics, law enforcement officers, social workers, people from organizations like SPOC and the general public. Scott recently addressed the subcommittee, which will prepare a report and submit it to the Justice Minister. In theory, the Department of Justice could approve the recommendations and propose changes to the law that would be voted on in parliament. Scott sees the whole thing as a charade: “This is a response to all the murders [of prostitutes] in Vancouver and elsewhere … in order [for the feds] to show the public that they are doing something.” Scott goes on to tell me that she’s spoken at many of these forums and public inquiries over the years, and when anything has come out of them, it’s been bad for sex workers.
In 1985, the Mulroney government added the “communicating” law to the already confusing and contradictory section of the Criminal Code dealing with prostitution. Today, prostitution laws basically boil down to this: it’s legal to be a prostitute. But it’s illegal to communicate in public for the purposes of prostitution. And if you sell sex in your apartment, you can be convicted of “keeping a common bawdy house.” The definition of a bawdy house is so vague (it’s a place where “indecent acts” occur) that owners of gay bathhouses have been charged with keeping a bawdy house when there were no prostitutes present. (There is no legal definition of “indecent acts,” so law enforcement officers can make a call based on their gut feeling.)
My appreciation for the concept of decriminalization came out of my first meeting with Scott, when we appeared together a couple of years ago on Brad Fraser’s TV show Jawbreaker. Like most liberal-minded people, and as a working prostitute, I thought that prostitution should be “legal.” But when Scott briefly explained the difference between the decriminalization and legalization of prostitution, I understood immediately why decriminalization is the only way to go. Listen and learn.
“Decriminalization sees prostitution as a legitimate and necessary business, whereas legalization sees prostitution as a vice that needs to be contained and controlled.” Scott explains to me that in Germany, Amsterdam, Nevada and the Australian state of Victoria, legalization has created a messy system of state-mandated pimping and bad brothel owners. The legal brothels charge 50% commission off the top, and then 25% goes towards taxes, leaving the worker with 25% if she’s lucky. “And there’s fines for every little thing – if you’re late for a ‘lineup,’ it’s a $100 fine. If it’s a 30-minute date and you’re in the room for 32 minutes, it’s usually a $10 fine. You ask yourself, ‘Who in their right mind would work under those conditions?’” Apparently, according to Scott, it’s impoverished Eastern European women in Amsterdam and Thai women in Australia. Scott tells me, “The women who have citizenship in those countries all work illegally and wouldn’t be caught dead in a legal brothel.” So legalization hasn’t eliminated illegal prostitution anyway.
The transcripts from the subcommittee hearings have been published online, and I’ve read most of them. Many of the presenters feel that the laws should not change. There is a lot of talk from social worker types of increased funding for “exit strategies” for those involved in the sex trade. Many of the speakers look at all prostitutes as exploited victims. Some feel prostitution should be decriminalized, but then regulated in various ways (which basically amounts to legalization). I don’t agree with any form of regulation when it comes to prostitution. I don’t understand why prostitution isn’t treated like any other service.
Computer consultants are allowed to see clients without regulation. They bill people for more than $100/hour, and are required to report their income and pay tax on it. Prostitution should be the same.
A common argument for regulating prostitution and treating it differently than other industries is the idea that prostitutes should be forced to undergo health tests. It baffles me that, even though we know you can infect someone with a sexually transmitted disease before it shows up in your own health records, people in support of legalization always bring up the need for strict health regulations. Scott tells me how it works in Germany: “Officially it’s condoms-only, but the girls aren’t permitted to use them if the client doesn’t want it. Typically the tests are done on a Thursday afternoon, so you get your little grade ‘A’ disease-free meat certificate, put it on the wall (where you must show it) and clients come in on Thursday nights, which are busy, look at your certificate, and say, ‘Great, I’m not using a condom.’” And then the girls spread whatever diseases they caught to the rest of the clients. “The reason we [prostitutes] were able to get guys to use condoms is that they were afraid we were going to give them something, not that they cared if they were going to give us something. And when that bargaining chip is taken away, we’re lost.”
I ask Scott if decriminalization has been successfully implemented anywhere, and she tells me that it’s been in effect in New South Wales, Australia, since the early ’80s. “I worked in a brothel [in Sydney] for a couple weeks, and it was entirely different, a whole new attitude. Women don’t need a licence. Brothel owners don’t need a special brothel licence.” She tells me that there are many types of brothels in Sydney, including boy brothels. “I worked in a not-for-profit, collectively owned brothel,” says Scott. This didn’t mean that the prices were low, but it meant the books were open and the women could see how much was being spent on advertising, rent, etc. Scott says everyone pitched in on the cleaning and the brothel commission was only 30%. There are apparently very few “bad dates” or murders in Sydney, and very few bad brothel owners because, notes Scott, “they don’t last long.” I ask Scott if she felt that Sydney society in general was more accepting of prostitution. She says yes, and has her own historical theory about it: “The first white women in Australia were prostitutes, so for a great majority of the population, their great-great-grandmom was a whore. And maybe, maybe they’re a little more used to it. I don’t know.”
Back in Toronto, the reality for prostitutes is not as good. While I knew there were regular street “sweeps” of prostitutes, I had never heard of independent escorts being busted, and wondered if maybe prostitution was already becoming unofficially decriminalized, like weed. SPOC keeps very up to date on what’s going on in the scene, so I ask Scott if independent escorts are free from the cops. After a long pause, she pops my idealistic bubble, saying, “Um… I’d love to say yes, but I can’t.” She tells me that escorts are all “sitting ducks,” depending on how busy a given police division is. She says it’s true that cops aren’t putting a lot of resources towards this, but there’s always the possibility of complaints, and that leaves prostitutes vulnerable to arrest. Most of the arrests are of street prostitutes, who after the first or second offence usually receive a jail sentence of six weeks to two months – notes Scott, “just enough time for them to lose their apartments, lose all their furniture. If they have children, they lose their children … provincial jails are full of prostitutes.”
When are people going to realize that prostitution is not immoral? Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno wrote an impressive pro-prostitute column recently, and said, “Face it. Prostitution will never be eradicated. Nor should it be, for a host of obvious reasons, the most central of which is the human desire for sex… There’s nothing inherently immoral about that.” While it is true that many people involved in prostitution, perhaps even the majority, are not happy in the trade, the stigma surrounding it cannot be helpful. Drug addiction, particularly crack, is a huge influence on the street scene. But arresting drug addicts for selling $20 blow jobs is not going to solve the “problem” of street prostitution.
SPOC’s work is vital, because it’s still necessary to educate people about the importance of decriminalization, and it’s necessary for prostitutes to organize and support each other.
But day-to-day, Valerie Scott is a realist. I’m used to activists who yell a lot, who rally people together with bullhorns. It becomes clear to me that Scott takes a quiet, confident approach to the issue because she doesn’t believe change will come anytime soon. When you talk to her about Sydney, you see a passion light up on her face. It’s because she’s witnessed a system that proves decriminalization works. But it’s probably just too complicated for Canadians to deal with the moral issues surrounding sex work. Society is too fucked up about sex, and there are no federal politicians with the intelligence, courage and vision to move this issue forward, which is what Scott tells me is needed before any real change can happen.
She speaks wistfully of the late Pierre Trudeau and her belief that he was going to, at least partially, decriminalize prostitution in the early ’80s. “Trudeau understood the difference [between legalization and decriminalization]. He decriminalized gay and lesbian sex when he was justice minister in the Pearson government.” She laments the “fateful walk in the snow” when Trudeau decided to retire, and points out that all we’ve had since then was Mulroney, whose government introduced the current communicating law. She says, “The NDP sees prostitutes as victims, the Conservatives see us as villains and the Liberals try and ignore us as much as possible. And so when a whole whack of us show up dead, then they have to have a little travelling road show.”
• Todd Klinck is fab’s Trade columnist.