Letters

p. 8.

Sex work is not exploitation

NOW HAS CONTINUALLY FAILED TO provide comprehensive coverage of the sex trade and its workers, limiting reports to disparaging commentary and the occasional prurient article.

As a long-time sex workers' rights activist, I am therefore not surprised that my position on prostitution was misrepresented in Sweep the Street (NOW, May 31-June 6). I was misquoted as stating, "Prostitution isn't just (sic) a form of exploitation, where there's a pimp with a big, floppy hat and a predator seeking fresh flesh."

You managed to bungle the basic tenet of the prostitutes' rights movement, which I must now restate: prostitution is not sexual exploitation, but a job. Unfortunately, this does not mean that sex workers are entirely free from exploitative practices — an obvious example is NOW's policy of charging us almost three times your standard classified rate.

— Kara Gillies
Maggie's