*
I grew up in one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the world. My mother still lives in West Point Grey in the house where I was raised, just steps from Pacific Spirit Park (763 hectares of verdant temperate rainforest, formerly the UBC endowment lands), right outside the gates of the University of British Columbia’s gorgeous sprawling campus.
*
Despite the corpses of women that were found from time to time in the forest, and the women who were occasionally raped on the UBC grounds, steps from my house; despite the fact that I have never known what it feels like to be safe in the world (what woman has?), I experienced what I understand now to be a fairly idyllic childhood. A staggeringly privileged childhood, in fact.
*
When I was thirteen years old, my grandparents took my sister and me on a trip to Spain, Portugal and Morocco. My most striking memories of that trip, apart from the Alhambra and the endless orange Fanta, is the countless times the Spanish, Portuguese and Moroccan people I met would exclaim, “You are SO LUCKY” every time I would tell anyone where I was from. That, and the desperate poverty of the slums outside of Lisbon that I witnessed from the speeding cocoon of the tour bus window. This awakening engendered pain, guilt and inner conflict; a sense of inescapable shame when set up against the reality of the lives of the vast majority of people, all over the world. In Tangiers, I snuck out of our hotel room on my own one night, and slipped onto the street. In a few minutes, I was surrounded by three young men, one of whom started to touch my hair, and then grab at my breasts. They laughed as I pulled away. I raced back to the hotel, crying, and felt sick and dirty for the duration of the trip.
*
Just a few kilometres down the hill from my childhood home on the west side of Vancouver, through Kitsilano and across Burrard inlet, lies the downtown eastside, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in Canada. I was very small when I first noticed the women standing on the corner of Hastings and Cordova as we drove by. Why are those women just standing there, mum? Why are they wearing high heels and short skirts? I know I was only five or six years old when my mother and I first had that conversation. My mum always had a way of holding nothing back, of telling me everything, but of doing so with compassion and context, and opinion and authenticity. She explained that so many of those women are from first-nations communities, and that our own colonialist ancestors and the continuing legacy of racism and genocide is at the root of the situation those women are in now.
*
She also told me that I am *never* to look down on any woman who is forced to, or who chooses to, sell her body—that I am not better than those women, I am only lucky. She would tell me that the superior, condescending attitudes that I would undoubtably come across from others towards women who are prostituted, (then, in the 1980s) are vicious, and wrong, and that she hoped that in my lifetime those attitudes would change, and that poverty and prostitution will be abolished. She said that it was hideous and tragic that it is the women who are stopped and harassed by the police, rather than the men who buy them. She also asserted that anyone who buys sex from another person has lost their moral compass; that it is the buyers—the men who buy women–who are disgusting, wrong, criminal.
*
During one of these conversations, I remember saying to my mother, “What if I end up on drugs, living on the street, and forced into prostitution?” As clear as day, I remember my mother turning to me, and saying, “If that ever happens Yolande, I will go where you are, and I will not stop looking for you until I find you, and even if you are drug-addicted and confused and angry and stubborn, I will pick you up in my arms, and I will bring you home, no matter what. You will never sell your body, because I won’t let that happen. I love you too much to ever let that happen. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do, to rescue you.”
*
I know now, that my mother knows–and that she knew then–that life is not simple. She knows, and knew then, that the women standing on the corner of Hastings and Cordova on the downtown eastside of Vancouver, and in Tokyo brothels, and London clubs selling their bodies, are loved just as much as I am. She knew, because it’s true, that there are mothers everywhere who can do nothing for their beloved daughters caught in a vicious cycle of addiction, poverty, and exploitation, many of them kidnapped and made to disappear; others who have disappeared themselves from the reality of their situation. Circumstances intersect and erupt to create vortices of misfortune. Because of patriarchy and misogyny and racism, that misfortune falls on the shoulders of women, and women of colour, disproportionately.
*
My mother may not know, still, the degree of despair and self-destruction that I passed through, in my twenties. The drugs, alcohol and the nasty empty sex I reluctantly submitted to was often so depressing and soul-destroying that I did think to myself from time to time I should be getting paid for this shit. There were moments, when I found myself invoking my mother’s words, “I will find you, and I will bring you home”; a compass, of sorts. There were close calls, one involving two men, after the club closed, when I managed to (drunk) jump out of their moving car, and run, with the noise of their gendered expletives ringing in my head. And there was rape. I was very very lucky, and I am very privileged. Through my dark times, and my near misses, I somehow knew that I am, in fact, too good to be bought and sold—not because I’m special, but because every single woman is too special, too loved, too good to be a commodity.
*
There is no real reason why I didn’t end up pimped—again, luck– although the privilege I have enjoyed throughout my life could probably have been employed to set up my own successful sex-work business. After all, I’m white and well-educated—I could have been a high-end escort, blogging now about my exciting exploits, and the sexy sexy life of a happy hooker (probably with a larger audience and much greater “success” than raging against the misogynist machine, or discussing natural childbirth!) But here’s the thing: my mother’s “no daughter of mine” speech was *not* about how I would be an embarrassment to her, if I ended up like “those” women on the corner of East Hastings, or servicing clients in hotel rooms. It was not about shame, or class, or status. It was simply that she loved me too much to bear the thought of my being used and degraded. Sadly, because of structural misogyny, all female people are oppressed—even the most privileged among us. It’s ok to feel for the Stepford Wives, and the celebrities, and I do. They can’t win either. My mother’s love and support and my fortunate upbringing protected me from much, but not from the reality of being female in the world. It didn’t save me from becoming caught up, as a child (at first) in an abusive, destructive first marriage with someone who didn’t see me, or women, as human.
*
My mother’s hope that the narrative around the abuse and exploitation of prostituted women would change, has come true, but with a twist: Now, in countries like Canada (where our meek version of the “Nordic Model”, bill C-36, implemented by the previous Conservative government is not supported by the Liberals or the NDP), and Australia and the US, the dominant and “progressive” view is that prostitution is a job like any other, and that the degradation lies not in the act of giving money to a woman who does not want sex in order to purchase her so-called “consent” along with access to her orifices, but in naming this practice for the violence that it is. Through my involvement in radical feminism, I have become virtually acquainted with many incredibly brave and amazing women—many of them survivors of the sex trade. These incredible women and I are overjoyed by the recent decision on the part of the government of France to adopt the Nordic model, which amounts to criminalizing sex buyers, while decriminalizing the women who are forced to, or who choose to, sell access to their bodies, and providing exit services and support to those women.
*
I admit to not having a deeply developed understanding of political systems, and when it comes to many issues, I find myself agreeing with what might be described as a socialist libertarian or anarcho-syndicalist stance. There are so many branches of government and law that I think have far too much power—paramilitary organizations especially. But I also recognize that in certain instances, laws have a very important place not only in protecting the most vulnerable, but also in proclaiming the social mores of a culture. It isn’t possible for women to be equal to men if it is also legally permissible in that society for women to be bought and sold like objects.
*
It is so often (but of course not always) young women whose own mothers are survivors of trauma, who may not have the words to say to their daughters, “You will never be bought and sold, because you are too precious; no child of mine, no child of the universe deserves this”. And of course, often that isn’t enough. But the point, I think, of a functioning civil framework, is to create social structures that proclaim that message to everyone. In adopting the Nordic model, France has done this, and I’m grateful for another step towards the public acknowledgement, in that country, of the personhood of women and girls.
Get the Newsletter
Bauhauswife ideas & insight, weekly.
Martin Dufresne says
Dear Yolande,
I do volunteer translation for an abolitionist website based in France, http://ressourcesprostitution.wordpress.com , and am writing to request your permission to translate into French (and ask the webmistress to post) your excellent essay about “sex work”, privilege, mothers and daughters.
A hyperlink will bring readers to your website for the original version and you will retain full copyright.
Awaiting your approval to proceed.
Thank you for your work.
Martin Dufresne
Montreal, Canada