"Despite being dubbed "the world's oldest profession," prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it has been criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women's groups. Interest in and concern over sex work is not grounded in the lived realities of those who work in the industry, but rather in inflammatory ideas about who is participating, how they wound up in this line of work, and what form it takes. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices - including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors - to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as the social stigma of sex work, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book."--Publisher's website.

Does Canada need any more collections about legal regulation of sex and sexuality? Volumes exist dealing with sex work and pornographies. Certainly, volumes abound dealing with emerging sexualities in Canada and new sexual freedoms. This book seeks to do more than tell a story of broad generalities about the law. It forges the links between the history of law and modern iterations of judgments pertaining to that law. Hence the uncomfortable line between Victorian morality (often) and modern regulation, is thematically explored through the book. More modern iterations of sexual regulation in Canada are being deployed and, in this book, the authors explore the interplay between emerging digital technologies and legal regulation. Newer laws in Canada have been drafted to recognize that sexual expression can be a means of violence inherently, and thus an exploration of modern sexual digital expression and its emerging jurisprudence represent a new frontier in the regulation of sex and sexuality in Canada. We explore how legal regulation has responded to these new crimes.This collection is founded upon the editors? joint experiences in teaching in law and society programs in Canada. The authors have witnessed cobbled together curriculums which rely upon a potpourri of sources from law, criminology, criminal justice and law and society disciplines. There exists a growing interest from university students and legal scholars alike for a reader in the context of law reform and legal change in respect of sexual politics and movements in Canada, especially in the context of more modern iterations of crime and sexual politics. Furthermore, while this collection is intended to be educational in the main, it will foster broader discussions in the context of legal regulation of sex and sexuality in Canadian jurisprudence.?

What do we do in the bedroom? Do other people do the same? How often? Who with? Movies and the internet seem saturated in sex, but it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction, and real talk about our own sexual lives can feel uncomfortable. Sex in Canada pulls the covers off, breaking through myths with frank talk and hard facts. Tina Fetner delves into sex among singles and couples, marriage and monogamy, hooking up and committed relationships, guided by the results of her one-of-a-kind survey of adults aged eighteen to ninety. She shows us how the social forces that shape our lives also nudge our sexual behaviour into patterns that reflect the world around us. In applying the tools of social science to a formerly taboo topic, Sex in Canada offers the most accurate picture to date not just of Canadians’ sex lives but of why we act the way we do.

Sexual Assault in Canada is the first English-language book in almost two decades to assess the state of sexual assault law and legal practice in Canada. Gathering together feminist scholars, lawyers, activists and policy-makers, it presents a picture of the difficult issues that Canadian women face when reporting and prosecuting sexual violence. The volume addresses many themes including the systematic undermining of women who have been sexually assaulted, the experiences of marginalized women, and the role of women’s activism. It explores sexual assault in various contexts, including professional sports, the doctor–patient relationship, and residential schools. And it highlights the influence of certain players in the reporting and litigation of sexual violence, including health care providers, social workers, police, lawyers and judges. Sexual Assault in Canada provides both a multi-faceted assessment of the progress of feminist reforms to Canadian sexual assault law and practice, and articulates a myriad of new ideas, proposed changes to law, and inspired activist strategies. This book was created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Jane Doe’s remarkable legal victory against the Toronto police for sex discrimination in the policing of rape and for negligence in failing to warn her of a serial rapist. The case made legal history and motivated a new generation of feminist activists. This book honours her pioneering work by reflecting on how law, legal practice and activism have evolved over the past decade and where feminist research and reform should lead in the years to come.

During a time of significant demographic, geographic, and social transition, many women in early nineteenth-century Montreal turned to prostitution and brothel-keeping to feed, clothe, protect, and house themselves and their families. Beyond Brutal Passions is a close study of the women who were accused of marketing sex, their economic and social susceptibilities, and the strategies they employed to resist authority and assert their own agency. Referencing newspapers, parish registers, census returns, coroners' reports, city directories, documents of Catholic and Protestant institutions, police books, and court records, Mary Anne Poutanen reveals how these women confronted limited alternatives and how they fought against established authority in the pursuit of their livelihoods. She details these women’s lives not only as prostitutes but also as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who reconstructed the bonds of kinship and solidarity. An insightful history of prostitution, Beyond Brutal Passions explores the complicated relationships between women accused of prostitution and the society in which they lived and worked.

A look at the sex trade in St. John's, with profiles of some of the people who make up the city's diverse sex industry.

Western feminists have long treated the rule of law as an essential ingredient of social justice; however, as the contributors to this collection remind us, meaningful justice remains out of reach for many women and racialized minorities precisely because the law turns a blind eye to the inequities that structure their daily lives. In fourteen chapters that open vital debates about the erosion of the welfare state and the media's complicity in concealing political injustice, Within the Confines details the brutal ironies of a society that criminalizes the vulnerable while absolving the elite. Distinctive in its focus on Canada, the book traces the linkages among racial, ethnic, sexual, and economic vulnerability and reveals the inadequacies of legislative approaches to socio-historical problems such as drug trafficking, homelessness, infanticide, and the legacies of settler colonial violence. In accessible prose, the authors dismantle the myths behind topics that are often sensationalized in the media-pornography, single motherhood, sex work, filicide, gangs, domestic abuse, prison conditions, HIV nondisclosure-and present alternative arguments that expose the justice system's role in widening the gap between the rich and the poor. What emerges is a poignant challenge to the neoliberal fable that women and minorities in Western democracies now enjoy full equality and an urgent call to action for those who seek to shift institutional norms in more equitable directions. A valuable resource for a wide range of fields, including criminology, sociology, social anthropology, gender studies, political science, social work, and legal history, this multidisciplinary volume offers a fresh perspective on the disturbingly predictable judgments that criminalized women face in Canada.