For 7 months we met, discovered, discussed and investigated links between the international trafficking of women and the Vancouver demand for prostitution. We settled on bed sheets as an artistic unit, a canvas and a bed as our uniting display. The artists worked with us to facilitate the transfer of thoughts and ideas onto the 50 sheets.
Starting from our position that prostitution is neither necessary nor desired by women and represents at best the “constrained choices” of women, we explore what are the links between the local demand of men for prostitution and the global traffic in girls and women.
Prostitution is intimately associated with sex inequality, poverty, racism and colonialism. Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest areas in North America, is referred to as the “urban reserve” by its First Nations residents.
On paper, women may have achieved formal have equality. Feminists won laws on violence, affirmative action, and charter protection for equality. A government approved red light district will reverse that legal ground. Anti-Sexual harassment policies are impossible to apply when the woman’s job is to be nude and available to any man in the establishment.
