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ANSWER
TO IRENE DEMCZUK - SOME PRECISIONS
Stella/UQAM’s
"course" to be classified as propaganda
26
novembre 2006
par
Micheline Carrier
Here is my answer to some points
raised by Irene
Demczuk’s message on NetFemmes, in response to Ana
Popovic’s and the Laval Women Center’s article called
"Is UQAM an Accomplice to the Sex Industry ?" (http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2467).
1. Before anything else, I
believe that it is a legitimate thing to express doubt, as Ana
Popovic and the Laval Women Center do, as to the impartiality of
a course that is being provided by a group which stands up for
the recognition of prostitution as a job as well as for the
complete decriminalization of prostitution (i.e. including the
decriminalization of pimps and johns). It is also legitimate to
question the involvement of a university in such a project.
I can hardly imagine this group
providing a course on the negative consequences that
prostitution has on prostituted women, young women, women in
general and the whole community, in the short term, medium or
long term ; nor can I imagine this group providing a course
about the links between local prostitution and the global rise
the trade of women, about what must be done to prevent young
women from being swallowed by the sex industry or from being
alienated and so on. Are we considering these aspects when we
view prostitution as a job like any other job ? Ana Popovic
stresses the fact that she has (and she is not the only one who
has), participated, some time ago, in a course of this kind
where she witnessed the way it was being provided. I, for my
part, believe her and I am sure that she knows what she is
talking about. I suggest that the readers re-read on the
NetFemmes website
(http://netfemmes.cdeacf.ca/les_actualites/lire.php?article=6360)
or on the Sisyphe site (http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2444),
the text written on behalf of the Laval Women Center.
2. Irene writes :
"Because the forum was aimed at sharing how, in a
perspective of empowerment, stigmatization had been actually
lived through within various social and legal contexts and
various working, living and health conditions, I have never
understood the reason why the criteria for taking part in it
were so important to the feminist movement."
As I am one of the few with Élaine
Audet - and this I deeply regretted at the time - to have
publicly "attached great importance" to the criteria
needed to participate to this forum and to be awarded this
considerable grant, my answer is as follows : First of all,
the criteria for participation in this forum did not allow all
prostituted women to "share their actual experience of
being stigmatized", but only welcomed those women who were
committed into acting for the recognition of prostitution as a
job and the complete decriminalization of prostitution (i.e.
including the decriminalization of pimps and johns). As a matter
of fact, in order to take part in this forum, one had to
"understand the diverse reality of sex work, recognize sex
work as a form of work, be involved or would like to be involved
in the fight for and recognition of sex workers’ rights and be
involved or would like to be involved in the fight for the
decriminalization of sex work".
In other words, those women who
do not view prostitution as a job and do not want to be active
in this sense but would rather leave prostitution, did not
correspond to the criteria. No more than did the activists who,
as opposed to working with prostituted persons in order to
improve their working conditions, work with them in order to
help them get out of prostitution.
"... A perspective of
empowerment", I have nothing against that, but I believe
that we are talking about something else altogether when we talk
of "being more empowered" by becoming "a
"better sex worker". In a feminist perspective, for
the majority, I’d say that more power is acquired by becoming
something other that a sex worker.
3. Irene will no doubt remember
that, before I wrote an article about the criteria for setting
the amount of the grant and the awarding of it, I made my own
investigation and called UQAM’s Department for the Services to
communities. Irene had provided me with all the necessary
information to contact the program called Federal Initiative
Program to fight against AIDS at the Public Health Agency of
Canada. She had also told me that the amount for the grant was
higher than what I had heard it was and I had that fact
confirmed by the agency’s civil servant. In the Forum XXX
program, the meeting was presented more as an activist,
political and social movement than as an event pertaining to the
fight against HIV. Amongst the goals the Forum had set for
itself, a brief mention was made regarding the development of
"our capacities around the HIV epidemics in Canada and
around the world." There was a lot about the strategies for
fighting the "prevailing discourse" (I wonder which
discourse that was as, at the time, the discourse that prevailed
was one in favor of prostitution), in pushing social attitudes
towards accepting the decriminalization of prostitution and
towards the fight against "repressive laws". Did these
political preoccupations justify the substantial grant which was
made available by the Federal Initiative Program to fight
against AIDS ? In answer to the argument that the Forum XXX
program did not so much aim at making people aware of HIV or at
the prevention of HIV, Mr Jean-Mathieu Dion, who was in
charge of the program, started by answering that he did not have
to take such argument into account. (Forum XXX: http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=1796
).
4. I want to say again that this
program called Federal Initiative Program to fight against AIDS
erred in granting such a big sum of money to an activist group
for the complete decriminalization of prostitution and on behalf
of which no action was taken regarding HIV throughout the full 4
days. That this money, was also used to make videos, luxurious
brochures, tools for propaganda and so on, was a total waste. I
deplore even more the fact that this money was used in such a
way (and this was not the only help granted to this group for
the forum and its connected activities), that there is
practically no money available to help prostituted women leave
prostitution or for women who want to be empowered outside the
world of prostitution, or for the groups supporting them. The
budget for those 4 days was equal to 4 or five times the yearly
budget of these (rare) groups that help women leave prostitution
and also act for the prevention of HIV, the prevention of
prostitution itself especially where youths are concerned.
5. " If lesbian women,
socially assisted or not, and all other categories of
marginalized women decided to organize an event that would allow
them to rally, to speak out, to develop a study of their
situation and of the ways to act for their future, would we
question ourselves in the same manner ?"
Being marginalized does not
automatically allow a group to refer to its being marginalized
and stigmatized in order to justify everything. As I have
already said above, this forum was not an event where ALL
prostituted women could rally, but was, according to the
registration criteria, only meant for those women who were
committed or were going to commit to the complete
decriminalization of prostitution and its being recognized as a
job. Also, during the telephone conversation I have already
mentioned, Irene compared this grant - which she herself thought
was huge - to the trifle amount granted to lesbian groups which,
for instance, create a program to help fight violence. If a
lesbian group was granted money for the fight against HIV but
actually used it to rally for a cause whose main object does not
include the fight against HIV, and if, let’s say the lesbians
who do not adhere to queer or to sado-masochism were excluded
from this forum and the group justified both the event and the
grant by saying that it allowed women to "share how their
stigmatization had been actually lived through", I would
have the same criticism about it and I would formulate it the
same way. Just as I would criticize some socially assisted
persons who were given a grant of 270.000 Canadian dollars for
the fight against HIV and who actually used this sum for a forum
concerning other activities to which those people who want to
stop being socially assisted were not admitted.
6. Personally, I do not see that
the Stella Group is a group of martyrs, perhaps
"victims" of questioning by some "nasty
feminists" like me, but not martyrs. The Stella Group does
not inspire pity, be it financially or as an entity that wants
public recognition. There are lots of groups whose leaflets have
been shredded to pieces and who underwent much worse than what
Irene has described to us. This is not a valid argument for this
debate, unless the goal is to make those who criticize feel
guilty and this, let me tell you right now, really does not
affect me. In the same way as Sisyphe, or the FFQ or other
groups like UQAM and its Services to communities can be
criticized, the Stella Group can be criticized and be faced with
dissidence. This does not mean of course that the group is not
useful to some people. But that is another issue.
I have not responded to
everything and my answer is already as long as Irene’s, but I
may have the occasion to respond more precisely somewhere else.
I think also that a university or any group that is committed to
educating people must not encourage the sex industry.
7. In conclusion, I would like
to ask Irene this : "Do you believe that the UQAM
Services to communities would give as unconditional and as
fervent a support to a group or persons if they organised a 2
year course for the health, justice and media professionals,
hand in hand with researchers such as Yolande Geadah, Richard
Poulin and Rose Dufour, and called that course
"Prostitution and the alienation of women - All you always
wanted to know and never dared ask about the links between local
prostitution, trafficking in women and children, and organized
crime" ? avowed aim “to demystify, in an era of
globalization of the sex industry, a discourse trivializing
prostitution and the part that pimps and johns play in the
degradation of women’s condition" ? While this
program would have a section about services provided to
prostituted persons and the many difficulties and
discriminations they are faced with, it would not try to
introduce prostitution as a job to the health, justice and media
professionals, or to university staff or any one else. Would the
UQAM services to communities give such a project their technical
and logistic support, the space and the setting as well as help
in obtaining the grant ? I am seriously asking that
question.
Translated for Sisyphe by Sylvie
Miller.
On Sisyphe, November 26, 2006.
Micheline
Carrier
source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=2483
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