There Are Some Happy Hookers

It is unfortunate that the stereotype of sex workers is so pervasive that I have to define myself not by who I am but by who I am not:  I am not a victim of sexual abuse, I am not from a broken home, I am not a drug addict, I am not somebody with low self esteem.   Nikki Thomas

Not that it's any secret that not all women who work as prostitutes are drug-addicted, under-educated, unwilling but tied to the trade because of their dire need of money.  Their sad, squalid and dangerous lives are those referred to most often when prostitution and the problems surrounding it are being discussed in public. 

The dreadful fact is that women who ply their trade on the street, in the dark hours of the night, are often the victims of psychopathic men who thrive on the violent abuse of the vulnerable.  And few are as vulnerable as women who rent out their bodies.

On the other hand, there are women who live perfectly respectable lives who become the objects of misanthropic harm, either at the hands of strangers who attack women through violent rapes, abducting them from a street scene, or entering their homes at night to wreak terror and viciousness. 

Or, living lives of quietly abusive domesticity with controlling, physically abusive partners.  There are, often enough, young girls who are abused by those in positions of trust over them.

And there are those women who of their free will and because the trade appeals to them for reasons of their own, who make their transactions in places which are safer and which they are able to control, after having screened those seeking their services.  Women, for example, working their way through college or university, and finding prostitution as good a way as any to pay their bills. 

Mostly because they feel they have more flexibility in the process.

While, as a way of earning a living, it is not attractive to most women, to some it most definitely is.  Take, as an example, Nikki Thomas, who fell into prostitution by chance, and thereafter by inclination, and not intentionally.  She is known now as the executive director of the Sex Professionals of Canada, and has deliberately made herself a public figure, unashamed of her profession, and quite comfortable about it, and with it personally.

She sees what she does as no different than the work engaged in by anyone else.  She is good at what she does, finds it liberating in her own way, and enabling as well, as she continues to pursue her university education, having already acquired a few degrees.  She is content with her life, has no plans to revisit her decision, and feels an obligation to be useful to other women in the trade, less capable of looking after themselves and of expressing their needs.

She feels the new Ontario Appeal Court ruling legalizing brothels is a step in the right direction in affirming the rights and entitlements of women who work in the sex trade, and that it is past time that government took on its protective obligations for such women.

Farley Tarn/www.farleytarn.com

Nikki Thomas, executive director of the Sex Professionals of Canada, says, “We are pretty much just like any other Canadian — we work regular hours, we have families.”