from www.uptownmag.com – Carol’s small living room is cozy and welcoming, if slightly cluttered. Several books and reports are spread out on the coffee table. A large whiteboard, covered in handwritten notes, hangs on one wall, framed by a collection of newspaper clippings and a picture of Pierre Trudeau – the Canadian prime minister who once said, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

She says the picture is up for inspiration.

I’m sitting with Carol and her husband, Sam (both of their names have been changed to protect their identities), drinking coffee and chatting about sex work.

Carol has been a sex worker for about five years, although she is currently “unemployed” – the result of a recent encounter with members of the Winnipeg Police Service’s vice squad. She’s also the driving force behind WeSWEAR, which stands for Winnipeg Sex Worker Education, Advocacy & Rights. The group is barely two months old and has about 12 members, some more active than others. Carol’s plan is to grow it into an incorporated organization that will lobby for the decriminalization of prostitution.

Currently, WeSWEAR is establishing its structure and terms of reference, which are modelled after those of the Canadian Adult Entertainment Commission, a Vancouver-based organization created in May to explore the possibility of creating a national industry association. (WeSWEAR is one of six member groups and the only one from outside B.C.)

Its stated vision is to “come together as an industry for the purpose of increased safety…, empower and unify sex industry communities…, build relationships… and create a community where all sex industry stakeholders are respected and honoured for their experiences.”

“I’ve always had this penchant for getting involved and making change,” Carol says. “And at this point in time, the bottom line is I feel that I am in a position to do that.”

She says she feels compelled.

Our interview is taking place the day after the RCMP and the WPS announced the establishment of a provincially funded joint task force that will review cases involving missing or murdered women – many of whom were involved in Winnipeg’s street-level sex trade.

We have a lot to talk about.

. . .

“I had no intention of working in the sex industry,” Carol says. “However, I must say that I have been fascinated with it from the time I was in elementary school.”

Carol grew up in an upper-middle class family. In the ’80s, she moved to Toronto, where she met and married Sam (they’re celebrating their 20th anniversary this year) and began a career in the non-profit sector. The two eventually returned to Winnipeg, bought a house and raised two children together.

Then Carol got sick with a disease that prevented her from working prescribed hours. Bored and broke, she decided to take a job in a massage parlour. She was in her early 40s by this point and had, as she puts it, “wrinkly eyes and wrinkly thighs.” She didn’t think anyone would want to have a session with her. She was wrong.

“I got fairly busy and it was like, ‘Whoa, I can do this. I’m actually really good at doing this. People are actually paying me to do this.’ It turned out to be this really interesting introduction into the whole world of sex work.”

Carol stayed eight months before branching out on her own.

. . .

Street-level prostitution makes up only a small fraction of the sex trade as a whole. A 2006 parliamentary report (The Challenge of Change: A Study of Canada’s Criminal Prostitution Laws) found street work accounted for just 5% to 20% of all activity in the country.

The vast majority of sex workers, including Carol, work in the indoor trade, providing services in hotel rooms or private residences.

I ask Carol what she thinks are the most common misconceptions about sex work.

“That all sex work is street work. That all sex workers are drug-addicted and exploited, and have pimps and are involved with gangs and organized crime. And are victims. That’s huge – that’s really huge, because feminist groups will look at sex work and say, ‘Sex workers, regardless of whether they say they choose to be there or not, are victims and being exploited by men.’ Well you know what? That’s a crock.”

Carol specializes in domination and fetish activities.

“In the area that I work in, personally, I don’t even have sex with a lot of my clients. There is no sex. It’s strictly a power exchange,” she says.

“And I gotta be honest, I get off on it. I love it. I love the whole power thing. I don’t think I’m brainwashed but, I mean, I know that argument is going to come up – and has come up as long as there has been feminism, and it will continue to come up as long as there is feminism.”

. . .

Street prostitution is by far the most dangerous type of sex work.

“Girls who work indoors, in their homes, are also getting beat up and having violent encounters – on a far less public basis, and particularly because they won’t report them to the police,” Carol says.

“However, the things that we hear about the girls who are on the street, who are being abused and victimized and beaten and raped – those are daily occurrences.”

Her reaction to the Aug. 26 announcement of a nine-member joint task force to investigate Manitoba’s growing list of missing and murdered women echoes that of many other community groups: “It’s about time.”

Many of the cases that will be reviewed – officials are being tight-lipped about the exact number – involve women who had lived “high-risk lifestyles.” The description is an accurate one, but one that also seems to have become a euphemism for women who sell sex, whether by choice, by coercion or out of desperation.

Carol makes a very clear distinction between the work she does and survival sex or exploitation.

“Sexual exploitation of anybody at any time in their life is unacceptable. Trafficking in human bodies is unacceptable – is never, ever, ever acceptable,” she says.

“However, people who choose to work in sex work should be allowed to work.”

. . .

Safety is something Carol takes very seriously. When she was working, her screening policy was extremely thorough – she required a referral from a current client or a reference from a current service provider, as well as a name, address and a phone number that’s published in a phone book.

The trade-off for staying safe was that Carol turned down about 60% of potential clients.

. . .

“Prostitution is not illegal. However, anything that gives you the ability to do it safely, or run it like any business – all of those things are illegal,” Carol says.

Prostitution-related offenses are outlined in sections 210 to 213 of the Canadian Criminal Code. It’s against the law to operate a “bawdy house,” or live off the avails of prostitution, which means sex workers can’t work in the safety of their own homes or live with their partners or children. At least, not legally.

Carol says prostitution should be decriminalized. She thinks the industry can regulate itself, and she thinks repealing sections 210 to 213 of the Criminal Code would, quite literally, save lives.

In fact, she founded WeSWEAR in part because of the growing number of local disappearances and murders – the most recent being the deaths of 17-year-old Cherisse Houle and 18-year-old Hillary Wilson, young women whose bodies were found six weeks apart, dumped on the outskirts of Winnipeg this summer. It’s unclear if either girl was involved in the sex trade but recent news reports have linked the deaths to a sex-for-drugs ring that operated several years ago.

“These poor girls – I mean, my heart just breaks whenever I think about it,” Carol says.

“Yes, they’re Aboriginal. Yes, they came from a vulnerable place where they were easy exploited – but I mean, if that happens to that segment of society, the marginalized segment of society, it is not long before it starts happening in my segment of society.”

She thinks police should concentrate their efforts on stopping sexual exploitation instead of arresting adults who are engaging in consensual sex acts for money, and she thinks there needs to be more exit strategies offered to those who want to get out of sex work.

She also thinks sex workers need to be treated with respect and dignity – noting that serial killers such as Robert Pickton and Gary Ridgway (the infamous “Green River Killer”) preyed on prostitutes because they knew they were easy targets, and that nobody would care if they went missing.

“To me, that was like this huge, screaming neon sign that said you need to deal with this – and the only way to deal with this is to establish an advocacy and educational and awareness program that will deal with changing the laws,” Carol says.

“Those laws are harmful. They’re driving the whole thing underground and they’re creating an unsafe environment.”