Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism

5. Criminalized and Licensed: Local Politics, the Regulation of Sex Work, and the Construction of “Ugly Bodies”

· 99 ·· CHAPTER 5 · Criminalized and Licensed Local Politics, the Regulation of Sex Work, and the Construction of “Ugly Bodies” Cheryl Auger Just months after the Ontario Superior Court ruled that a number of provisions in Canada’s Criminal Code violate sex workers’ constitutionally protected rights to security of person and freedom of association (Bedford v. Canada 2010), a Toronto city councilor suggested creating a red-light district on Toronto Island, located just off the city shore and accessible by ferry.1 Giorgio Mammoliti said, “I’ve always suggested that the best way to deal with this is to create one area that is away from the rest of the city and residential community for the most part,” adding that a staterunred -lightdistrictwouldtakesexworkoutofthehandsoforganizedcrime and would generate “a couple hundred million” dollars over time for the city (quoted in Alcoba 2011). Mammoliti’s suggestion was written off byToronto Island’s councilor as “ludicrous” and it seems unlikely to gain political traction . Yet it reveals how some politicians understand sex work as deviant and undesirable,whichinturnjustifieslaws,policies,andregulationsintendedto control where and how sexual commerce takes place. His desire to segregate sex workers in a special red-light zone highlights a contradiction in law and order approaches, which seek to simultaneously exclude and include criminalized groups in order to implement various sociomoral priorities. While the Ontario Superior court case raised the tricky issue of how to govern and regulate sex work and launched a debate about how municipal governments and cities should govern sex businesses, many cities already regulate sex industries through zoning provisions and licensing schemes written into business licensing bylaws.2 In this chapter I pose two questions: first, how and to what extent do Canadian municipalities 100 CHERYL AUGER regulate sex work through business licensing bylaws? And second, how do these licensing bylaws socially construct sex workers? I show that Canadian municipalities employ a wide variety of licensing practices to regulate and control some of the commercial sexual relations in strip clubs, erotic massage parlors, and escort services. Many of these policies are intended to minimize nuisances associated with sex work and offer consumers some form of protection; however, several of the bylaws place onerous burdens on sex workers while failing to offer them more than the most basic workplace health and safety provisions. I therefore argue that many of these licensing bylaws found across Canada construct sex workers as deviant outsiders. Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s (1990) exploration of the construction of “ugly bodies,” I demonstrate how Canada’s municipal bylaws governing different sectors of the sex trade establish the sex worker’s body as an important site of surveillance and regulation intended to maintain moral and social order. By working with the federal Criminal Code, these bylaws construct sex workers as unnatural, abnormal, and abject, and this is evident in how these bylaws reinforce stereotypes about “the prostitute” as a threatening sexual deviant, while upholding dichotomous notions of good and bad femininity , moral and immoral sex and sexualities, and public and private spheres. As a result, the concurrent processes of criminalization and regulation have both exclusionary and inclusionary tendencies: on the one hand, they seek to eliminate or eradicate commercial sex, but on the other hand, they also must recognize sex work—even if it is considered undesirable—in order to control and police it. All of this reinforces the idea that sex workers are not full citizens or members of the community and justifies the denial of their human rights, including the right to security of person. Sex Trade Policies in Canada Laws, policies, and regulations governing the sex industries are influenced by Canada’s division of powers. Canada’s Constitution Act specifies the legislative powers of the federal and provincial governments. The federal government has a range of responsibilities, including trade and commerce, raising money and taxation, currency, banking, defense, and the criminal law. The act also grants the federal government power over the provinces andlimitstheprovinces’abilitytoraisemoneythroughtaxation.However, provinces are responsible for the municipal level of government. They CRIMINALIZED AND LICENSED 101 decide the structures, responsibilities, and financial system of local governments . Local governments are not part of the federal system because they are subordinate to provincial and territorial governments, but they have a range of responsibilities, including police and fire protection and providing services related to health and welfare, like housing and education . The constitutional division of powers both limits cities’ options to...