I remember being in high school in the '90s, and even then somehow hearing about the the Canadian Supreme Court's Butler decision which was meant to keep "obscene" material from entering Canada. The stuff being stopped at the border was almost all lesbian.

It's actually not much of a risk to say, "I don't think we should put sex workers in jail." That's a decent, normal thing you should believe. But then what are you going to do about it?

I wouldn't advocate for a feminism that's buttoned-up and divorced of the messiness of our real lives. Your feelings are your feelings, but you're not going to litigate your feelings about my body. The feminist ethics that I signed up for were respect for my bodily autonomy, that my experience is my experience, and that I'm an expert in my own life.

Kristin Gwynne has been writing some great stuff about the sexually violent element of "stop-and-frisk." This isn't just "turn out your pockets." This is young people being groped. That form of power - using sexuality for power and control - seems pretty straightforward to me. When are we going to just say that the cops are the enemy here?

In the current situation with criminalization, we've created situations where sex workers have very little power and control over their lives. Increasing one group of women's power and control over their lives does not take anything away from other women. When a woman's value has been constructed as keeping a man and keeping him faithful, then when he's not we've been taught to internalize that there's something wrong with us.

In New Zealand, sex workers are regarded as workers, as people who are members of the community, people who have a stake in the community - not just in the workplace, but in the broader community. They aren't objects to be controlled and regulated. They are not collateral evidence of a crime. They are human beings.

It's a misnomer to say you can criminalize one part of the transaction and not criminalize the entire transaction. For example in Sweden, where the law was passed in 1999. Those laws didn't actually decriminalize people who sell sex; they introduced new criminal penalties for the people who buy sex. Nothing changed in the legal status for the sex workers themselves. It's impossible for them to operate a legal business. When you criminalize part of a transaction, you're creating collateral damage for all those engaged in it. You are now making them work in a criminalized context.