A movement aimed at disrupting demand for paid sex during the Olympics has landed on the doorsteps of Vancouver’s exotic show lounges.
Supporters of the “Buying Sex Is Not A Sport” campaign have staged silent protests outside three strip clubs and Canada Hockey Place this past week to deflate some men’s desire for paid sex.
“When you have a demand for paid sex a supply has to be created,” explained Michelle Miller, Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity executive director. “You don’t have hundreds of women out there just waiting to suck some stranger’s dirty penis multiple times a day.
“The supply is created from women living in poverty, women who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and often women of colour.”
Miller added the demonstrations have had mixed results with some people offering words of support while others simply listened.
“We’ve had some good engagement with men outside of clubs and then they head back inside. That’s fine.”
But the campaign based on goodwill, as Miller claims, has drawn ire from those working inside the clubs.
Trina Ricketts, an exotic dancer who recently came out of retirement, said the silent protests employed shame tactics that scared away customers and in turn, took much-needed income away from women working inside.
“If a dancer doesn’t make any money on one night she has to come in another night,” said the mother of two.
Ricketts believes if the protests are successful in keeping customers away dancers could be cornered into sex work to earn a living instead of keeping a job in a safe working environment.
“I recently came into a situation where I’m financially at the low end of the scale and I was looking at all my options,” she told 24 hours. “If the non-contact options don’t exist or if money can’t be made using those options where do I turn?”
Sex worker Susan Davis with the West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals, witnessed exotic dancers turn to escorting, an activity once well beyond their physical boundaries, to make ends meet.
“If they can’t work from home or independently they end up on the street,” she said. “And we’ve seen, in some extreme cases, former feature dancers ending up on the corners of the Downtown Eastside, spun out into addiction because they’re forced to do something they didn’t want to do.”
Davis said the protests go beyond REED’s objective of slowing the sex trade.
“I question the credibility of any person who would harm a woman to save a woman,” she said. “It just makes no sense.”
Further demonstrations have been planned throughout the Olympic Games.