SEX WORK TOOLKIT

Vancouver

Sex work is intertwined with Vancouver’s history, shaped by legal, economic, political and social conditions. Birdie Stewart opened Vancouver’s first brothel in 1873 at the corner of Water and Abbott streets in Gastown. At the time, a significant population of Chinese and Japanese women worked in the area.

A brothel-style red light district thrived on Dupont Street (now East Pender between Cambie and Main) and in the area around Chinatown until after World War II. Then the brothel style of sex work was replaced by a more decentralized model in which sex workers met their clients at clubs and hotels.(1) The only stroll, an outside area where sex workers work, was in the Downtown Eastside.

The raid of the Penthouse Night Club in 1975 was pivotal in the history of sex work in Vancouver. At the time, 30 to 150 sex workers worked from the Penthouse on Seymour Street each night. When enforcement of the laws against indoor sex work increased, sex workers needed to find new locations to work and street-based sex work increased dramatically. The women who had worked at the Penthouse moved to the streets of the West End until residents’ protests there led to a court injunction banning soliciting west of Granville Street.

Since then, sex workers have worked throughout the city, frequently moving to different neighbourhoods in response to pressure from police, residents and businesses. Escort services and massage parlours have continued to operate in less visible locations and have accessed greater success due to their low profile. Cis men sex workers have had a stroll in Yaletown since the early 1980s when sex work was moved out of the West End. Although this stroll still exists, male sex workers, like many other sex workers, now work indoors and online. The online sex industry has expanded with the rise of Internet and social media use by many sex workers.

Trans sex workers have and continue to face binary discrimination in the sex industry, and for that reason have had far less access to outdoor and indoor working spaces. Trans sex workers have worked in and around the industrial area by the Hastings overpass, online, and – depending on how they are read and responded to by clients and other sex workers –  in cis mens’ and womens’ spaces. 

Starting in the mid-1990s, sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside began to disappear. Many family members, friends and community social service agencies pressured the Vancouver Police Department to launch an investigation into these cases and, ultimately, serial killer Robert Pickton was arrested for 31 murder charges and convicted of 6 counts of second degree murder. The Missing Women case, as it came to be known, was the catalyst for many new approaches aimed at improving sex workers’ health and safety. 

This included the establishment of The Vivian, a supportive housing project run by RainCity Vancouver, which still operates as a supportive housing site dedicated to the health and safety of sex workers previously targeted by violence on the Downtown Eastside stroll. Also during this time, a group of concerned business owners, sex workers, community policing organizations and other community members came together to collaborate on responding to the violence against sex workers, and educate each other on what sex workers really needed. This group later became known as Living in Community.

 

Beyond Vancouver

While sex work is sometimes thought of as a ‘big city’ or ‘urban’ industry, sex work exists in every community, city, town, and region. Whether it is online, indoor, outdoor, or in another space, sex work is a diverse industry encompassing many different workspaces and locations. We encourage readers to learn more about the history and current realities of sex work in your community, which you can sometimes find through sex worker-serving organizations in your region, or at your local library.

 

 

(1) Lowman, J. (2005), Submission to the Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws of the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/381/SSLR/Evidence/EV1654039/SSLREV09-E.PDF