for more general community resources in Toronto there is a book called the 'Blue Pages' or you can dial 211, I found this out recently

best

sarah

hey try this

http://www.bayswan.org/traffick/

This is a questionnaire I have been working on. The idea of posting it here is just to give people who are reading it something to think about. If you have any suggestions for me please to not hesitate to comment. If there is something in this questionnaire that makes you think you would like further information or assistance, my recommendation might be to contact one of the organizations I've linked to, unless you can think of another organization or place to get help/information (and it would be great if you felt comfortable letting me know so I can put the link to that org. on this blog)

thanks! be well!

sarah

okay, here goes...obviously you are not going to be writing so ignore that part

Please answer as fully as you feel comfortable, using extra writing space if needed. Please feel free to leave out details or leave questions blank that you are uncomfortable answering. If you feel comfortable doing so, it will be of help if you specify whether these are circumstances you have personally experienced, personally witnessed, or perhaps not personally experienced or witnessed but been made aware of through other means, and what those means were/are.

Every situation is different, yet relevant. If the questions are not appropriate to the circumstances you wish to write about, please also feel free to ignore the questions and write whatever you want in the extra space.

these questions may seem slightly redundant (apologies)…if you feel your answer to any given question will be exactly the same as your answer to another question, please feel free to just write the number of the other question.

1.have you had a job/do you know anyone who has had a job where it could not be taken for granted that

a)you/they were allowed any time off? allowed to rest if sick?

b)you/they were allowed to quit working for the same person/place and get a job somewhere else?

c)you/they were allowed to communicate with family members,friends,significant others? other workers? people outside of the organization? essentially whomever you/they wanted to communicate with?

d)you/they had access to the money you/they earned and could buy your/their own belongings?

2.Have you had a job/do you know anyone who has had a job where;

a)you/they were coerced into signing any forms (leases, contracts, etc.)? how?

b)your/their movement was restricted? how? (eg do you/they have a key to your/their house?) were you/they were living and working at the same place?

c)you/they were decieved about your/their living conditions

d)you/they were chaperoned/guarded/incarcerated?

e)anything ever happened to any of your/their ID, what and by whom?were you/they ever threatened on the grounds that you/they no longer had your/their ID?

f)you/they were subject to any form of “debt bondage” (ie providing services to anyone or pledging someone else’s services as a security for debt)

g)you/they were forcibly transported from one town/city/province to another?

h)you/they were threatened with violence, harm, or retaliation against you/them or friends/family?

i)there were threats to report you/them to authorities?

j)you/they were forced into a relationship?

k)you/they were threatened with confinement or isolation?

3.And in this situation, was it ever the case that;

a)you/they were subject to physical assaults or torture? (pinching, hitting, slapping, punching, kicking, shaking, burning, etc.)

b)you/they were subject to sexual assault?

c)you/they were forcibly confined or isolated?

d)you/they were denied essential medical care?

e)you/they were denied food/clothes and other basic necessities including ability to maintain basic hygeine?

f)you/they viewed or heard others being physically or sexually assaulted?

g)you/they were subject to verbal abuse, name calling, degrading remarks?

h)you/they were photographed or filmed while being physically or sexually assaulted, humiliated, or degraded? if so, have there ever been threats to use the images against you/them?

4.how did you/they initially become involved in the situation in question (eg advertising, acquiantance, family)

If you answered any of the above questions regarding someone other than you, it may be more appropriate to skip these next questions as you may not know the answers or feel comfortable providing the information that will be asked for on behalf of a third party, or to answer some and not others (obviously substituting ‘they’ for ‘you’), as you see fit.

arrival and/or initial circumstances

5.If relevant, when did you arrive in Toronto? (date, time, place of entry)

6.what was the first address you were taken to? who took you there? how did you get there?

7.did you know where you were at the time?

8.were you subsequently moved?

9.was money promised, how much, and by whom?

10.where have you resided and for how long/at what ages did you reside in these locations?

11.does your family know your whereabouts (in this case family could refer to anyone you feel should know…)?

12.have you ever been transported across an international border? was there ever talk of this?

13.have you ever been transported at all (whether or not it involved crossing a border) ?

14.what means of transportation was used?

15.did the people you were travelling with change at any time during transit?

16.did you spend any time in transit locations, safe houses...where? how long? with whom and under what conditions?

17.were you physically or sexually threatened or assaulted or confined in the transit locations?

18.were there any circumstances of forced labour in transit locations?

19.were you ever decieved about your living conditions in Toronto?

terms of involvement

20.have you signed any forms/contracts/leases?

21.if so what are the terms?

22.were these contracts you felt coerced into signing?

23.do you posess a copy/copies of the form(s)?

24.was anyone paid a fee for your recruitment?

25.have you been paid for any work you have done and at what rate?

26.do/did you owe money to anyone?

27.have you ever been coached about what to say to officials?

28.have you ever been given clothing/jewellry and instructed to wear it?

life circumstances

29.do others involved in this situation (please specify how they were involved/connected to you) know your home/work address or telephone number?

30.do these others have any details about your family/loved ones?

31.do they claim to know these things?

here are some Canadian govt. sites that may be of interest;

http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/fs/ht/index.html

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/imm_pass/q_a_human_e.htm

for the second site, just scroll down until you get to the link

http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Site%20Map/Programs/Human_Trafficking.htm

and then
Human Trafficking - Reference Guide for Canadian Law Enforcement

it was from there that I got the template for my questionnaire

i tried to put these links in an earlier blog but they would not work...it would seem that some of them are working here...if not...google...

also i have been looking into CHCs and CLCs, this is Community Legal Clinics and Community Health Centres, which may be of interest

http://www.legalaid.on.ca/en/locate/pages/046.asp

kensington-bellwoods community legal services which is on college st. just west of bathurst seems pretty interesting, and they have an interesting links section

http://www.kbcls.org/

the central toronto community health centres are also interesting- Queen West is on bathurst just south of Queen and Shout is in the Carlton/Jarvis area

http://www.ctchc.com/

locate a chc near you...

http://www.aohc.org

chcs and clcs are all over Ontario, and there are other similar programs in other regions, if you happen to contact a place that does not serve the area you live, they will certainly direct you to one that does.

i decided on my case study for one of my art classes it will be this

http://www.sexworkerfest.com

it looked pretty cool, check it out

the organizer of this festival is also in charge of bayswan at http://www.bayswan.org

they are san fancisco based, there seems to be lots of interesting things in that neck of the woods

this is an interesting site from LA

http://www.iswface.org

and look up http://www.nswp.org, and both san fran and LA have COYOTE chapters

on the nswp (Network of Sex Work Projects) site, have a look at the Mobility section on the sidebar (no actually i just got it by scrolling to the bottom of the front page...) it may not only be relevant to people who have moved from one country to another, it looks like there are lots of resources, especially under the section of human rights groups on the web.

aaahh editing...

Blah, here is the essay that was making me insane...and I am still insane but I finally wrote the essay- this is the first few paragraphs only, I think I am compelled to post it just so that I look like less of a whack-job (although reading this over I am not so sure...) had to narrow my focus so I mainly zoomed in on orientalism and post-coloniality as it pertains to art in Canada

for some reason quotations are showing up as question marks which i think might actually be fitting

well, here it goes...

In this essay I am going to suggest that, in Canadian society orientalism and art are diametrically opposed. I will discuss what orientalism means in a Canadian context.Edward Said greatly elucidated our knowledge of how different societies are judged by using the example of how Europe and its derivatives viewed the Palestinians. I believe these ideas are valid in understanding how Canadian society views the First Nations people. In Canada there has not been a mass physical genocide of First Nations people like that seen in the United States and yet there has been a mass cultural genocide that was still quite devastating and I believe that the use of orientalism made this genocide possible. I will then discuss the difference between explicit forms of communication like news media and history textbooks versus less explicit forms of communication which would certainly include art. Aspects of experience like personal memory and identity, the very aspects which cultural genocide seeks to destroy, are often difficult to communicate explicitly and tend to be communicated more powerfully through art than the written word. Additionally, art is always somewhat open to the interpretation of the beholder and it is therefore not easy to make people question their own identities and experiences using art. For these reasons, the personal memories and identities that run counter to the those put forth by history books are often more easily communicated by art. Finally, I will discuss how, since orientalism plays such a powerful role in the control of Canadian society, not just in terms of devaluing other ideas and people but also devaluing its own ideas and people while continuing to hold a conception of its own society that does not include these people, art and orientalism in Canada are diametrically opposed. Canada is seen as a European and predominantly Anglo-Saxon society and yet many Canadians have always had cultural influences that were not Anglo-Saxon , perhaps not even French, and maybe not even European. Canada never experienced the sort of mass physical genocide of First Nations people like that seen in the United States. However, there was a mass cultural genocide that was perhaps as violent only in different ways. For individuals to rise to positions of power, or to be heard at all, they had to assimilate into the dominant society (i.e. European society) as best they could and not remember, or at least not claim to remember, anything they may have known about any other societal affiliations, as this association would threaten their credibility. However, this would mean that they were, paradoxically, forced to forget aspects of their own experiences in order to be regarded as knowledgeable. Joanne Arnott says, ? The language of media reports on current events constantly others ?the Natives? from the audience addressed, and this use of language, layered upon the massive ignorance of historical repression, aggravates the dissociation.? (Arnott, 1995:60). The treatment of ?The Natives? within Canada is, in other words, very similar to Edward Said?s conception of the treatment of the Palestinians by Western society. How could something as impersonal as a media report have an impact on an individual?s self-perception? Michel Foucault says ?Nothing in man- not even his body- is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men...Knowledge, even under the banner of history, does not depend on ?rediscovery,? and it emphatically excludes the rediscovery of ourselves. History becomes ?effective? to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very being- as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself.? (Foucault, 1977: 153-154). In this manner crucial elements of Canadian history and present-day society have been erased, even when they would seem to be observable and obvious. What is more, people lose contact with not only the story of the nation in which they reside but with the story of their lives, families, and personalhistories.L.M. Findlay says, ?Memory?s estate remains under dispute in Canada today...The rebirth of memory as history ? and its appropriate narration- occurs only when politics give rise to the Hegelian state, so that serious memory and serious politics are coeval:historical memory properly understood is, from its inception and throughout its course,an effect of the state expressed in the prose of self-administration andself-representation.? (Findlay, 2003: 217-219). While it may often seem that memory tellsan objective truth, this is not actually the case.Important, perhaps, is the difference between the way that personal memory and identityare communicated versus the way that a nation communicates what it wants its members to believe. News periodicals and history books communicate ?facts? in an explicit andlinear manner that can be difficult to counter with things like personal memory andidentity which are difficult to communicate in this manner. Joanne Arnott spoke of themedia and representation of First Nations people and of Canadian society as a whole. L.M.Findlay talks about the manipulation of memory by a conception of history imposed by the state. Trinh T. Minh-Ha talks about the meaning of words and how a means of communication can function to hide the truth "To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguousmessage...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh, 1989:pp16-17) For a population to be controlled, the means of available communication must be "pruned, eliminated, forbidden, purged, purified," hence the view of words as the most reliable form of communication, which is less of a phenomenon in many societies than in Western society, may actually be a component of this control. Since forms of knowledge like personal memory and identity are often not easy to communicate explicitly, they are often obscured by other forms of communication. As a result, personal memory and history which are not often communicated explicitly are obscured by views imposed by the state. Does orientalism always involve language? Can art be part of this orientalizing force? James Clifford talks about the difference between the ?masterpiece? as represented by ?connoisseurship, the art museum, and the art market? from the ?artifact? as represented by ?history and folklore, the ethnographic museum, material culture, and art.? This system has often served to orientalize non-European art by classifying it as ?artifact? rather than ?masterpiece.? So, it would seem apparent that art can serve as a part of this orientalizing force. However, this classification system does not dictate all of what any given work of art can communicate. The ?artifact? can resist colonization by both presenting how colonization looks from the ?other? side as well as communicating the humanness of the ?other?. Trin-Minh-Ha might say that art certainly can have meaning, but not like a train obscuring all other trains. Even if what is being shown is left up to interpretation, no observer can ever be absolutely certain of why it is being shown
without a more explicit context to place the work in. In this way it is often difficult to discern whether art is orientalizing or whether it is showing the absurdity of orientalist views. Sometimes what a work was supposed to mean as proscribed by the dominant institutions and what it actually ends up meaning are two different matters. In
this way art can be both an orientalizing force and a force that resists orientalism, and sometimes the difference is in the hands of the viewer. In this manner, also, art can be a form of resistance that often passes by the powers that exist to eliminate this resistance; colonial powers will likely only see art by colonized populations as?artifact? and use this classification system to use art as an orientalist tool rather than recognizing it as a tool in resistance of colonization. And the colonial?masterpieces? can be very insidious about how they communicate their own form of resistance. Yes, art can communicate what language communicates, but in a rather different way and this difference is important in the instance of orientalism.

Here is something I wrote a little while ago

...you see, I sort of think that in Christian theology the trickster is Christ. He takes on earthly form, just like the raven, and the coyote, in various western-hemispheric religions, then he plays the funniest trick of all where he "dies" and really has everyone there but they go to visit his corpse (forgive me, I don't know the story all that well) and it is gone...this is where he discloses that his "life" has been a trick, albeit a meaningful one intended to teach those on earth.

and humans get stronger by being able to laugh at their own mortality

Well here is what playwrite Tomson Highway says about the Trickster in the notes leading up to his play "The Rez"
"A Note on Nanabush

The dream world of North American Indian mythology is inhabited by the most fantastic creatures, beings, and events. Foremost among these beings is the 'Trickster' as pivotal and important a figure in the Native world as Christ is in the realm of Christian mythology. 'Weesageechack' in Cree, 'Nanabush' in Ojibway, 'Raven' in others, 'Coyote' in still others, this Trickster goes by many names and many guises. In fact, he can assume any guise he chooses. Essentially a comic, clownish sort of character, he teaches us about the nature and meaning of existence on the planet earth; he straddles the consciousness of man and that of God, the Great Spirit." (HighwayXII:1988)

Christ's resurrection happens at easter, ayostar, ostara...the spring equinox...symbolizing rebirth, or passover which symbolizes freedom in the Jewish religion
freedom from slavery, freedom from earthly existence, freedom from winter

I have a better chart I think than the one I did before

in the beggining
water/river
dragon

then this separates into

unknown/known
nature/ancestors
earth,moon/ sun,stars, sky,air
emotion/ reason
body/ mind

and then reconnects at

trickster
sexuality
art
fire

yaaaaahhhh...my second-most recent post, one I wrote earlier this evening, has ended up underneath the one I wrote yesterday and is marked as 'February 11'

don't ask me how I managed to post them like this

I guess this is what happens when you are going insane

interesting, somehow my feb 15 post ended up as more recent than my feb 16 post that I just wrote a little while ago

this, like everything else, makes absolutely no sense

this was one interesting psychology course I took...I only took the intro to Maps of Meaning, though, his second-year course

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~peterson/mom.htm

but I read the book
and my disclaimer will say that there is a good chance that I have completely misunderstood Dr. Peterson, if you want to know what he really thinks, go to his website...

it seemed to me that his approach to religion had some important cornerstones

one; the feminine aspects of god are as important as the masculine

two; the "evil" aspects of existence are just as godly as the "good"...

I came up with my own chart...it's a bad use of the four elements, I know...

in the beginning
air and water
chaos


earth /sun
mother/ father
nature/ ancestors
body / mind
emotion /reason
unknown /known

fire
child
sexuality
trickster
life
christ/devil..."twins"

of course not all sexuality is procreative- (that would get kind of ridiculous, don't you think?)
to take this literally would be fairly sexist and heterosexist indeed


BUT it may have some mythological significance


nature and ancestry give birth to procreation

the physical and the psychological give birth to the sexual

a mind connected to a body is life


Peterson talks about the importance of the "father" as a guiding figure but also the importance of his not becoming over-rigid and forbidding the influence of the "mother" as a regenerative figure

(if the "father/mother" element is bothersome feel more than free to substitute non-gendered terms, I just can't think of any right now)

in a sense, it is important that old kings die and make way for new kings
and that the mother continue to bear new kings

Peterson also talks about how Christ and the Devil are necessarily intimately connected- they are not really antagonists, they are more like brothers...however the first is willing to admit his weaknesses and learn from them while the other is not, and hence becomes not just flawed but intentionally evil

it seems to me that Christ/Devil is one manifestation of the Trickster, like Anansi or Coyote...

and Peterson's main claim seems to be that this is how monotheism was intended to be practised

wow

what happened?

Somewhere it seems that the feminine aspects of god were at the very least disregarded...Mary plays a role in the New Testament but it is limited, and the Old Testament is not necessarily better in this regard

and sometimes they were even outright persecuted, look at the way witchcraft was treated after patriarchial monotheism took hold in Europe

Also, the Devil was banished from heaven, of course...and not only did HE ignore his weaknesses but large masses of people were instructed to ignore HIM...


Interestingly...one of the pagan gods was/is often represented as having horns...


According to Peterson, people who ignore the evil aspects of human experience are chosing to be themselves evil

or perhaps there were but few evil people controlling the society by taking from them the means with which to control themselves...this gets a little Foucault's Power/Knowledge, I know...I have very few original thoughts

this is interesting to me after taking classes in post-colonial theory and also sexual diversity theory

why do heterosexual european men have such a history of doing horrible things to others?
(it may be good to note that the vast majority of people I have met in the above categories are actually wonderful people...)

...European "myth" did not stop having evil and unknown elements, just that these were transposed onto other people...women, the colonized- how convenient then that it was the feminine aspects of god being ignored...and these HUMANS were treated in the same way that European myth had come to dictate that these ELEMENTS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE should be treated

and sexuality, with its necessary influence of nature, became evil

whatever, I am still trying to figure out what art has to do with all of this

it may be that art stands in the midpoint between emotion and reason- sort of like sexuality
and is a way to regenerate the known with the unknown, essentially, making it a little bit evil, like sexuality...

I am trying to write an essay about art, and why it is often either trivialized or viewed with suspicion

At the end of madness and civilization Foucault comes to a few interesting conclusions, on eof them seems to me to be that the difference between a mad person and an artist is simply whether or not he or she produces art

so, the artist channels madness into something we all can use...this is both a very important and very dangerous position to be in, especially when a society does not view this regenerative process in a particularly positive light...

aaaahhh it's not pacific time over here and for me in these past couple months this hour has become known as late at night....

Well, I am still trying to hammer this one out, I think there may still be some hope here

"Ruse and new triumph of madness: the world that thought to measure and justify madness through psychology must justify itself before madness, since in its struggles and agonies it measures itself by the excess of works like those of Nietzche, of Van Gogh, of Artaud." Foucault Madness and Civilization p289

"Nietzche's last cry, proclaiming himself both Christ and Dionysos, is not on the border of reason and unreason, in the perspective of the work of art...it is the very annihlation of the work of art, the point where it becomes impossible and where it must fall silent; the hammer has just fallen from the philosopher's hands." Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p.287

"To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguous message...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman Native Other, pp16-17)


Who, then, communicates what we don't have words for? The artists, of course...

I am interested in Foucault's connection between art and madness and then madness and civiliztion

often a binary is drawn to include wilderness along with the feminine and civilization with the masculine but I believe this to be a misuse of that binary...

for a civilization to work it must be constanly drawing new knowledge from the unknown and getting rid of ideas that are no longer useful

and perhaps there is no such thing as wilderness really, because even the forest and the jungle have a very clear order

but for a population to be controlled, the means of available communication must be "pruned, eliminated, forbidden, purged, purified,"

what is Foucault's connection between madness and disease, anyway...at the beginning he talks about how in the middle ages insanity came to replace leprosy in the minds of Europeans

a powerful way to control people is by fear of disease...if insanity is seen as a disease...

but I am still sort of spinning in binaries...fear of the unknown leading to fear of disease

this is where I found the existence of groups like Pivot (try googling PivotLegal) in terms of all the groups covered under its umbrella

is there an "other" really or are all these people just unified by a common enemy?

that shows what state my brain was in after staring at the computer for so long

it's redefining prostitution as sex work

does not define sex work as slavery, that's the whole point

blah

well if anyone's reading this and I just perplexed you, sorry

but jo bindman seems pretty interesting

Caught in Traffick

oh why oh why won't my links work?

jo bindman wrote an article called "redefining sex work as slavery on the international agenda" which should be available either by googling her name or the title of the article, (sorry, I just could not get any links to work so google it'll have to be)

this also somehow links to walnet and was written in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International and the Network of Sex Work Projects, both of these organizations have websites that I think are worth a look)

oh, I first heard of Jo Bindman when I was reading Global Sex Workers: Rights Resistance and Redefinition which is a compilation edited by Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. An interesting point is that Kamala Kempadoo, though she was teaching in Colorado when she wrote this, is now a Women's Studies professor at York University, right here in Toronto.

on the issue of trafficking, I had usually thought of it as something that happens across borders but I have just learned that it can happen within borders, too

try googling

department of justice canada human trafficking

and

rcmp frequently asked questions on human trafficking

try this

http://www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/Publications/Reports/human_trafficking_2005.pdf

or google the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, once there, the sidebar has a what's new section, click on it, then scroll to where it says 7/28/2005- Human Trafficking, A Reference Guide for Canadian Law Enforcement, click on it then scroll to the bottom where again it says Human Trafficking, A Reference Guide for Canadian Law Enforcement, click on this and you will be in a 72-pg report. Pgs 8-10 has some intro and definitions and pgs 64-68 has a questionnaire which seems to outline the issues well as most people probably don't have time to read the whole thing.

posting links on my myspace blog has not been working for me so I am going to try it here

http://sec.sa.utoronto.ca

I have not worked there for a few years, but this led to where I am now working, Guelph-Wellington Women In Crisis

http://www.gwwomenincrisis.org/

I also found some organizations that seem to share a similar ideology

I will apologize if the links don't work, try googling the title of the organization, which unless otherwise specified is the main part of the url

Here's Toronto Public Health's sexual health section

http://www.toronto.ca/health/sexualhealth/index.htm
and for more resources here, try "more info"

the community centre at 519 church st.

http://www.the519.org/

Planned Parenthood Toronto

http://www.ppt.on.ca/
Sadly I am too old for The House, but I always found it useful when I wasn't too old, try 'programs and services'

also try

http://www.hasslefreeclinic.org/

http://www.ontarioearlyyears.org

this organization is called Education Wife Assault;

http://www.womanabuseprevention.com/html/
they have some interesting links in the 'links' section that don't seem limited to wife assault

here is a legal activism site in Vancouver
http://www.pivotlegal.org/

and finally

http://www.walnet.org/

http://spoc.ca

If my work is to be successful it will draw from a diversity of sources to reach the conclusion that the sex industry has played a critical part in the development of society in Toronto. I have gathered information from a wide variety of theorists as well as those whose approach is more practical. Most importantly perhaps is that I draw from the work of Phillipa Levine, Kamala Kempadoo, Jo Doezema, Dan Allman, Gloria Lockett, Julian Marlowe, Gail Pheterson, and others and will be operating on the assumption that discrimination against sex workers as a group is grounded in racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. While there are certainly concerns, such as physical exploitation and transmission of infection, that are connected to the sex industry, it is my standpoint that these concerns are not peculiar to the sex industry and furthermore, that procedures to abolish the sex industry will make those involved less likely to seek outside help, and will hence worsen the problems associated with it. One factor shared by all instruments intended to abolish the sex industry is that they have all been ineffective. Approaches ranging from patriarchal-monotheistic anti-sex doctrines, outright criminalization of those involved in the sex industry, and certain factions of the feminist movement that view the sex industry’s existence as inherently oppressive to women, have at this time not succeeded in eliminating the sex industry. If these approaches have been successful at all it has been in pushing those involved in the sex industry outside of critical factions of society such as the legal system, spiritual communities, and the feminist movement, hence, causing them to be more oppressed.

There is a feminist stream, headed by theorists such as Kathleen Barry (see Kempadoo 1998, pp. 11-12), that views the commercial sex as a paradigm of women’s oppression via sexual subordination and economic marginalization. Proponents of this form of thinking believe that women will not fully be emancipated until the sex industry is abolished. I intend to challenge this viewpoint, as I believe, conversely, that it is the oppression of women that makes people concerned about the existence of the sex industry. Women in European society are, traditionally, not supposed to earn their own money or be agents of their own sexuality. Participation in the sex industry necessarily entails these two aspects, which is why I believe that it is the patriarchy that seeks to abolish it. While there is certainly much work to be done by feminists in terms of improving the working conditions of women, I feel that when this work takes the direction of abolishing the sex industry, it is misguided.

Additionally, there is a stream of thought that came heavily into play during the colonial era in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century and saw a resurgence in the 1990s that states that while women of European descent who are citizens of wealthy countries might be able to make the choice to participate in the sex industry as a way to further their emancipation as women, all other women throughout the world cannot. In this view, women who travel from countries formerly known as ‘second,’ and ‘third’ world countries to ‘first’ world countries to work as sex workers as well as many women from various sub-populations living within ‘first’ world countries who work as sex workers are seen as inherently exploited. While I am certainly not saying that I do not advocate greater economic oppourtunities for women throughout the world that would cease to cause women to work as sex workers for lack of other options, I also would like to challenge the racist assumption that some women lack agency. I believe that the separation of ‘first,’ ‘second,’ and ‘third’ world women in this regard is part of the same thinking that caused the feminist movement to initially exclude women who were not white.

One important element of my approach is that I will be utilizing some degree of a linear, historical approach (alongside other approaches, of course). I intend to trace the history of the fur-trade in Canada as well as other aspects of Canada’s colonial history as regards how these aspects caused the development of a lucrative sex industry in Canada. t industry in Canada and how its development was intensely connected to the sex industry.

Unfortunately, Much literature on the sex industry in Canada states that not much is known about the Canadian sex industry save that it has historically and continues to play a major role in the society and economy of Canada.I believe that my approach will be unique because it will look at the colonial history of Canada, specifically, and will recognize that Canada has a unique colonial history that has resulted in a unique situation with regard to the global sex industry.

References

Allman, Dan. M is For Mutual, A is For ACTS: Male Sex Work and HIV/AIDS in Canada. Vancouver: Sex Workers’ Alliance of Vancouver along with Health Canada, AIDS Vancouver, and the HIV Social, Behavioural and Epidemiological Studies Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 1999.

Allman, Dan, and Myers, Ted. “Male Sex Work and HIV/AIDS in Canada,” In Men Who Sell Sex: International Perspectives on Male Prostitution and AIDS.

Aldrich, Robert. Colonialism and Homosexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

Arens, Blake, Hima B., Gina Gold, Jade Irie, Madeleine Lawson, and Gloria Lockett. “Showing Up Fully: Women of Colour Discuss Sex Work,” moderated By Jill Nagle in Whores and Other Feminists. ed. Jill Nagle. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Bidini, Dave. On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock. Toronto: McClelland and Stweart, 1998.

Doezema, Jo. “Forced to Chose: Beyond the Voluntary vs. Forced Dichotomy,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. London and New York: Routledge: 1998. pp. 34-47.

Goddard, Peter, and Ronnie Hawkins. Ronnie Hawkins: The Last of the Good Ol’ Boys. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., 1989.

Kempadoo, Kamala “Introduction: Globalizing Sex Worker’s Rights,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. pp.1-24

Kempadoo, Kamala. “The Migrant Tightrope: Experiences from the Caribbean,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema. London and New York: 1998. pp.124-138.

Kempadoo, Kamala. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labour. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Levine, Phillipa. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

Marlowe, Julian. “It’s Different for Boys,” In Whores and Other Feminists. ed. Jill Nagle. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Pheterson, Gail (ed.). A Vindication of the Rights of Whores. Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1989.

Sex, Politics, Rock and Roll

It is difficult to separate sexuality and the performing arts. Indeed, in many times and places the distinction has not been made. In my essay I will trace the story of the development of the performing arts as a major industry in the twentieth century Western world and explore the difficulties posed in this instance by the illegality of sex as an industry. I will posit that this problem did not cause the separation of sexuality from every other aspect of the performing arts, rather it created a major economic force with both licit and illicit elements. The binaries between acceptable and unacceptable people and acceptable and unacceptable activites, and the necessary existence of both sides of the binary, would have very strong effects on the arts and culture of the Western world. Forms of art would develop that were equally influenced by the cultures of unacceptable people and the circumstances of unacceptable activities, neither ever completely separate from the acceptable. Another element of my hypothesis is that global social, political, and economic upheaval in the decades following World War Two would lead to the failure of Western society to adequately separate the acceptable from the unacceptable, as evident in the arts and culture of the time. This, in turn, would lead to a large-scale and pervasive questioning of Western societal values

Much of the popular music listened to in the world today has been somehow influenced by jazz. And jazz has been influenced by the particular set of social and political circumstances in which it appeared. Jazz came from New Orleans, a city in which many different cultural groups of European, African, and Western Hemispheric ancestry would intermingle, though not without animosity. Many different groups in the United States would be relegated to culturally or otherwise automatically inscribed positions in the sexual-economic hierarchy. “Considered ‘less than white’ by fairer-skinned Northern Europeans, the Italian experience most closely resembled the racism experienced by African-Americans.”(Russo) Feminist writers Phillipa Levine and Jo Doezema question whether men involved in the sex industry in positions other than as the actual sellers of sex were really such greedy and ruthless tyrants while the women they worked with were helpless victims. In doing so, they outline the racist and sexist stereotypes that these assumptions are based on: “The Jewishness of pimps was not routinely left as a hint or a suggestion: it was a central fact that separated the pimp from the Englishman” (Levine) “By 1910 the images of the white slave trade conjured up by London purity groups had taken full hold of the American imagination…The vision of a vast network of Jewish and French procurers kidnapping and luring white women from Europe and America to service lowly natives and “eastern rich potentates” was captivating, combining as it did racial anxieties, colonial debates, immigration politics, and public morality issues…” (Scully) But, “research indicates most of the ‘trafficking victims’ were actually prostitutes migrating, like thousands of others, in hopes of finding a better life…when subject to scruitiny, the image of the “trafficking victim” turns out to be a figment of neo-Victorian imaginations” (Doezema) This racialization of the illicit economy and the politics surrounding the changes to the American landscape in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries would prove to be very instrumental in the development of jazz: “Whereas New Orleans invented jazz, Chicago legitimized it by introducing many soon-to-be legendary black musicians into the white attended clubs- and this seminal occurrence was largely due to the efforts of (Torrio’s business partner, and both men were known to be heavily involved in the sex trade) Al Capone…Al had always insisted that his speakeasies (i.e.prohibition-era illegal drinking houses) employ live musicians…the gangster without a racist bone in his body made a momentous decision: he would bring Chicago the best jazz musicians in the country. The overwhelming majority of these were of African descent and were playing for spare change in the dives of New Orleans, forbidden from playing the white clubs.” (Russo). . Indeed the fact that many Americans have been barred or severely hindered from full participation in the licit economy has contributed to the country’s maintenance of a burgeoning illicit economy. The fact that some people, like African-Americans, have historically been barred from the licit economy outright while others, like Italians and Jews, have been permitted a foot in each camp, has meant that there is much fluidity between the licit and the illicit economies, in fact the two are rather inseparable. The illicit economy and the licit economy cannot possibly be protected from exposure to one another. The cultural element of discrimination that keeps certain people in the illicit economy, combined with the illicit economy’s interest in the arts and entertainment industry, has had some interesting effects arts and entertainment in America. Jazz is one observable instance of this phenomenon. Jazz would develop out of a combination of a mélange of cultural influences and a relegation of some of these influences to the netherworlds of society and would go on to have a major influence on the same society’s upper strata.

Wars have a tendency to change the sexual climates of the societies they affect. Of course, large numbers of people are forced to be separated from their partners for indefinite periods of time and this can certainly lead to an increase in the prevalence of commercial sex. In the instance of a World War, individual countries will be forced to contend with all kinds of influences, licit and otherwise, from other parts of the world affected by the fighting. “…military prostitution was regarded as inevitable wherever soldiers gathered. The military presence had a powerful hand in shaping local sexualities, especially paid sex. “ (Levine). The two World Wars that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century are of particular interest because they involved conflict not just between countries but between networks of countries established during colonization. “On closer inspection, however, the war was a truly global clash of empires…The first world war was a truly global conflagration…The reality was that German defeat was exogenous, not endogenous; it was the inevitable result of trying to fight a global conflict without being a global power. Considering the vast differential between the resources of the two empires, the only real puzzle is that it took the British Empire so long to win.” In Berlin, the changes in cultural climate stemming from WWI combined with economic upheaval meant that society hardly went back to the way it had been after the First World War was over “…there was no dearth of gangs. They would gather anywhere in the city, like the clustering streetwalkers- even in the fashionable West.” (Gillman and VonE kardt) “Dope- morphine, heroine, and cocaine, was not hard to find, according to police reports of that time (Gilman and Von Eckardt) and “Prostitution was rampant” (Gilman and Von Eckardt) It must be stated that there were some very positive changes to Berlin’s culture stemming from the First World War: “the greatest influence on the music of Berlin, on the very sound of Europe, came from across the ocean. ‘Duke’ Ellington hit Berlin in the summer of 1925 with his all-black revue Chocolate Kiddies…Ellington had a lot of young Berlin composers running for score paper…Kurt Weill was the most talented of those who called the new tune. In the fall of 1928 he presented two one-act operas, based on texts by George Kaiser, in the City Opera- as well as his Threepenny Opera performed in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Jazz Opera was established. Duke Ellington proved to have as much influence on the new music as Schonberg.” (Gilman and Von Eckardt) The connection of jazz with commercial sex in the United States combined with the migration of people connected with the commercial sex industry to Europe to service soldiers during WWI would have a great and lasting effect on European music.

While Berlin certainly developed its own unique forms of cultural expression in the years after the First World War, it far from the only region of the world to be affected by these changes. In fact, since the German situation was “exogenous, not endogenous,” (Ferguson) the roots of the turmoil were actually located elsewhere. The influence of the United States on German culture in the interwar period was likely rooted in cultural and economic upheaval in the United States. And all of this upheaval was probably rooted in what was still the global power of the time, the British Empire. “The creeping crisis in Empire had its roots in the crippling price Britain had paid for its victory over Germany in the First World War…it proved extremely difficult to restore the foundations of the pre-war era of globalization…The biggest economic change of all wrought by the war was in the international capital market. Superficially, this returned to normal in the 1920s…Britain resumed her role as the world’s banker, though now the US was investing almost as much overseas…Yet, the significant thing about the Depression in Britain was not that it was so severe but that, compared with its impact on Germany and the United States, it was so mild. What brought recovery was a redefinition of the economics of empire.” (Ferguson) A couple of years after WWI ended, the United States would enter a period of alcohol prohibition and “Chicago would become the hub of a national obsession with booze, blues, and big-money crime.” (McDougall). This was a critical time in the careers of MCA moguls Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman. “All the bands got their big boost in 1933 because of the Chicago World’s Fair” recalled former agent Chuck Suber, one of Stein’s youngest contemporaries in Depression-era Chicago. The Chicago World’s Fair, “A Century of Progress,” began as a boondoggle but wound up a bonanza, thanks to sex, booze, and big band music…Sally Rand, whose real name was Helen Gould Beck, had gone to Hollywood to become an actress in the early 1920s. But she landed only bit parts…At the Chicago World’s Fair, she hit her stride as Sally Rand, Queen of the Fan Dancers, who dared to dance au naturel, with only a pair of huge feather fans separating her from her audience…Sally worked for the Capone organization- a fact that Jules Stein and his agents learned only after MCA, too, was persuaded to work with, rather than against, the Mob…Outside of its bands, MCA’s premiere offering during the World’s Fair was the Folies-Bergere, second only to the Eiffel Tower as the most popular tourist attraction among Americans in Paris. But more important, the U.S. version featured topless showgirls for a Midwestern audience a full generation before nudity became the piece de resistance of Las Vegas showroom entertainment…They (MCA) earned a small fortune from the Follies Bergere. And Sally Rand became an MCA client…’I don’t know what arrangement Stein had with the Mob, but he did offer to deal with them,’ said Suber, who worked for MCA’s rival, General Artists Corporation in the late 1930s. ‘You had to if you were going to stay in business. We all did. ‘

“(Johnny) Torrio had made Ralph Capone’s dream of owning a piece of every element in the nightclub business come true. Naturally, entertainment was as integral to the package as an olive in every martini.” (McDougall)

MCA talent passed through many silent syndicate-controlled clubs and connections would lead Lew Wasserman to Chicago to meet Jules Stein, where the two would become business partners in the running of MCA. The upheaval of the period between the wars allowed for marginalized factions of society to gain more prestige than they were intended to given there social standing. This would create not simply different forms of cultural expression but also expression of the more shadow-laden elements of society.

The end of the Second World War would bring major changes to the structure of the World’s economy, and with it major changes to global politics and societies. The economic, political, and societal structures that had been set up as part of the British Empire was certainly no exception. “The bottom line was, of course, the economy. Exhausted by the costs of victory, denied the fresh start that followed defeat for Japan and Germany, Britain was simply no longer able to bear the costs of Empire…with the United States shifting from informal to formal empire much as late-Victorian Britain once did…As we have seen (British) empire began with as a network of coastal bases and informal spheres of influence, much like the post-1945 American ‘empire’…No one could deny the extent of American informal empire- the empire of mutinational corporations, of Hollywood movies and even of TV evangelists. Is this so very different from the early British Empire of monopoly trading companies and missionaries?…Yet…the process of ‘Anglobalization’ is different today. On close inspection, America’s strengths may not be the strengths of a natural imperial hegemon. For one thing, British imperial power relied on the massive export of capital and people. But… (America) remains the favoured destination of immigrants from around the world, not a producer of would-be colonial emigrants. ” (Ferguson) Although the United States had long since successfully fought for independence from Britain, much of the country’s inner working would still be based on initial history as a British colony. Nonetheless its economy would become the biggest in the world. Canada, still a member of the British Commonwealth, was the logical place to receive various forms of outflows of American wealth such as increased trade and outsourcing of American corporations. Simply glutting some economies relative to others would not change all of the societal networks, licit and otherwise, that had been in place for centuries. What the post-war economic upheaval, or post-war prosperity, when speaking from a Canadian or American perspective, would do would be to expose the more marginal elements of these networks.

Michel Foucault talks about how societies are often controlled by denying members access to their sexuality. “…a system of control of sexuality allied to corporal persecution, is established…” (Foucault). Sexuality and the arts cannot be separated; the sexual aspects of the arts can be hidden and only made apparent to marginalized members of society, but they will still be there. The influence on the Western world of music that evolved out of strip joints and brothels assisted its members in saying “make love, not war.” When the generation that was born after World War Two was drafted as the United States fought Vietnam, a very large portion of them refused, with Rock and Roll playing in the background. Additionally, because of the marginalization of sexuality in Western society and the relegation of marginalized members of that society to economic positions more closely associated with sexuality, the exposure of more privileged Westerners to this music with sexual roots and to the music of the less privileged cannot be separated. Art communicates what more explicit media might be afraid to. Middle-class white Americans would be exposed to the experiences of the poor and non-white in their own societies; they might understand that a war, to the marginalized, meant being relegated to the most dangerous positions, they might understand, from the British invasion, what a war would mean if it was fought on one’s home turf. Jewish voices would remind the world’s population that the stresses of war can lead to scapegoating of innocent civilians. The influence of Canada on the music of Britain would expose the empire from a slightly different perspective. When an entire society is influenced by art from marginalized factions of that society, they will likely question their society’s value-system, which is exactly what happened. When people have access to a diverse array of art forms accurately reflecting the global human experience, they will be in a position to accept the entire human condition.

Bibliography

Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Bidini, Dave. On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998.

Bowman, Rob. “Life is a Carnival,” In Goldmine Magazine. July 26, 1991. Volume 17, No. 15, Issue 287.

Brock, Deborah. Making Work, Making Trouble: Prostitution as a Social Problem. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Casanova, Jaques-Donat and Raymond Douville. Daily Life in Early Canada: From Champlain to Montcalm. New York: MacMillan, 1967.

Creighton, Donald. The Empire of the St. Lawrence Toronto: MacMillan, 1956.

Doezema, Jo. “Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary v. Forced Prostitution Dichotomy,” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, Redefinition. ed. Jo Doezema and Kamala Kempadoo. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and Lessons for a Global Power. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Foucault, Michel. “Body/Power,” in Power/Knowledge:Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Gilman, Sander L. and Wolf Von Eckardt. Bertold Brecht’s Berlin: A Scrapbook of the Twenties. New York: Archor Press/Doubleday, 1975.

Goddard, Peter, and Ronnie Hawkins. Ronnie Hawkins: The Last of the Good Ol’ Boys. Toronto: Stoddart, 1989.

Kempadoo, Kamala. Sexing the Carribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labour. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Levine, Phillipa. Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. New York: Routledge, 2003.

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Lussier, Antoine S. and D. Bruce Sealey. The Metis: Canada’s Forgotten People. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications Inc., 1975.

McDougall, Dennis. The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1998.

Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

Scully, Eileen. Pre-Cold War Traffic in Sexual Labour and Its Foies: Some Contemporary Lessons. In Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. ed David Kyle and Rey Koslowski. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Russo, Gus. The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2001.

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