How Brilliant!

In such a world of complacency I was thrilled to see these elderly women tackling the age old dilemma of prostitution. Despite whether one believes or not in the legalization of prostitution, who IS protecting these women?

The documentary was entertaining, enlightening and certainly worth discussion.

My hopes are for these ladies in their quest and may they find success in June 09.

I applaud these two women and the Hampshire WI for taking steps to deciminalize and regulate brothels. The sex trade isn't going to go away. If properly regulated, brothels will provide a safer and healthier working environment for the men and women involved with the sex trade as well as the patrons.

Great documentary. The women were so charming and there was a great sense of humour throughout the piece, while still dealing with the important subject matter in a thoughful way.

We should be looking at this issue in Canada. The Documentary reminded me how many young girls are put in harms way daily in Canada. Isn't the safety of the girls more impoartant than some people's squeemishness about legalizing brothels? Besides, think of the tourist trade.

Delightful informative program. We need to have a discussion about legalizing brothels in Canada.

We will never stop 'the oldest profession in the world' - so legalizing, protecting and making more healthy this age old profession is the most practical thing to do. I cannot imagine how it would feel to be out on the street, freezing in winter and never knowing whether or not you would be alive in the morning. Legalization - YES!

Legalizing the sex trade only excourages it to grow, same as legalizing the drug trade. As in Amsterdam, even legalized brothels tend to be controlled by organized crime, to the further destruction of the family and other dimensions of a nation's social fabric, no matter how clean and "safe" they are made to appear.

Legalizing the sex trade and the drug trade generates certain advantages but these are far out-weighed by their destructive effects.

Humans tend not to be rational about dealing with such immoralities, just rationalizing; they wish to appear rational to themselves and their fellows.

Canada needs the safety and healthiness of the legalized brothel, perhaps especially the style of the small co-op that New Zealand epitomizes. With the unneccessary deaths of the Eastside Women, there can be no excuse for not examining every avenue for granting sex workers the same human rights enjoyed by every other Canadian. We must never again let what happened to these women, our sisters, happen to even one more woman. Here we have a means to stop such tragedy. We must do something practical rather than sit around smelling the roses and bewailing their fate. We need to be practical about what is needed and committed to changing our laws and our practices till sex workers are as safe as Canadians in other line of work.

Intelligent and witty commentary on a very serious issue. I am in favour of legalizing prostitituon (although I totally do not like the inference that word denotes). Make the environment healthy and safe for the women - and for the men who are their clients. Become a professional ... in a professional environment. Professional is an attitude not a designation. Help women to become the best at what they do best. I salute the British WI in standing behind this amazing and ground breaking resolution.

I watched this documentary, and it did nothing except convince me that prostitution is such a hurtful trade, one that says its okay to sell and trade women's bodies.
Like someone said up here, many of these brothels are ran by organized crime, all it's really doing is making these pimps into legitimate businessmen where they profit from the sale of women's bodies.

How many of you would choose prostitution? How many of you would be excited about your wife or daughter, or sister being a prostitute?

It is the oldest profession because women were historically denied opportunities to earn an income, and this is the case today as well. What will these women do once they realize that in this society, we unfortunately do have expiry dates, what will they do once they're too old to do sex work? What will they put on a resume? Society will never tolerate it as long as religious morality exists. Religious ideology ensures that there are good and bad kinds of women, the honourable virgins and obedient wives, and the 'dirty' whores that are not worthy of anything.

So rather than making these sexist pimps profit even more from this trade, why don't we focus on creating programs which will give women opportunities for work? What about supporting the pay equity legislation, how many of you will write to your MP? Probably not very many.

Just as prostitution existed as the earliest profession, well so did slavery - and it was abolished. That was a huge business, actually it still is but it isn't as mainstream. Both happen because society allows it to happen. We're too concerned with our individualistic lives to notice that access to some of the basic things is denied to people even here in Canada, or anywhere else in the world.

I agree with Anita. Her post is very well written and thought out. Prositution is the oldest demeaning trade and sadly it still goes on this day in age. Instead of encouraging it and making it even easier for organized crime bosses and pimps why don't we focus on getting them off the street all together. because after all when you're young everyone wants you. 30 is old for a prostitue. and we all know that in the end you a labelled a dirty whore thats not worth a dime... sad but true. I think we should re-focus our energy on safe houses for the street girls with a means for safety and education... sooner or later they will want to help themselves; its the young ones that think the glory is gonna last forever.

While I respect Heather and Anita's points of view, I think they are missing the point of the documentary.

Given the dynamics of human sexuality, you will never, ever stop the sex trade. It's called the 'oldest profession' for a reason. Making it illegal has done absolutely nothing to resolve the issue.

That said, the women who work in the trade, whatever their reasons, need safety and security.

Project KARE here in Alberta has been trying to solve the many murders of women who are engaged in high-risk lifestyles (many Aboriginal).

Would they be dead today if there was something like the New Zealand model here in Canada? Methinks not.

Based on some comments here I don't know if it will be worth my time to watch this program. I'm tired of moral idiots who can't understand why reality doesn't behave the way they imperially decree. People need help understanding reality, but all you see in the media is the opposite. We need to license sex workers, and control the way they choose to operate. If you make them operate out of a brothel with a bouncer then you get them out of my back alley and you protect them at the same time! Canada exports thousands of sex workers a year for slavery, hundreds get killed here and abroad, thousands work in abysmal conditions, and most people hope if they look away for long enough all of them will be slaughtered one way or the other and then they can laugh and throw a party! The thing is we just get a new crop and the problem never kills itself off. It needs to be controlled, just like alcohol and tobacco. Just like prohibition never helped anyone but the gangsters, the current laws only help the pimps. I hope this show doesn't disappoint me.

Frank Meyer

The usual array of views in comments so far... Prostitution is demeaning so let's try to abolish it. Or, legalize and control.

How about, I don't know... ask sex workers themselves, many of whom will tell you "neither"? Is it such a novel idea, to actually listen to the people directly involved?

1. Decriminalize and remove the stigma through education and awareness.
2. Provide job and training opportunities for the disadvantaged who want to leave the business,
3. Let us have agency over own lives. Those of us who are smart pay income taxes - so why impose more controls? What's the logic? Sex work is work. As for STDs, most studies done on indoor workers show STD rates are either the same - or often lower than in general population.

I have a day career - as do many others I know - do you really think many of us want to work in ANY brothel? Thank you, no. I'd rather rent an apartment with one other woman I trust and we'd do our own screening and make our own schedule. Entrepreneurship and self-employment are equally valid concept in sex work as in any other business.

If you want to listen to our voices, there are a lot of resources, but you could start here:
http://www.chezstella.org/stella/?q=en/stella
http://www.sexworkawareness.org/category/sex-work-101/
http://www.swopusa.org/en/node/24