How a sex work scholar earned the Order of Canada

Inside Frances Shaver’s remarkable career. A Tyee Q&A.

When Frances Shaver found out she was appointed to the Order of Canada in recognition of her research on the sex industry, she felt surprised and honoured. Shaver is a professor emeritus in Concordia University’s department of sociology and anthropology, where she taught sociology and was a leading national voice in advocacy for the rights of sex workers.

The Order of Canada is the second-highest level of distinction in the Canadian honours system appointed to leaders from all sectors of society.

In June, she was appointed by the Governor General of Canada alongside 63 professionals including recording artist Avril Lavigne, filmmaker and artist Sylvia D. Hamilton and Vancouver-based human rights activist Joe Average.

“People always tell me that [my research] was pathfinding and groundbreaking,” Shaver told The Tyee. “But I couldn’t have gotten there without all the others I’ve worked with. It’s an honour that I absolutely share with all the sex workers, allies, organizations and students that I’ve worked with because they all made it possible.”

Shaver retired from Concordia in 2017 and now lives in Vancouver. At a time when conversations about sex work were and continue to be highly stigmatized and contentious, her work is celebrated for its thoughtfulness and respectfulness, centring the experiences and voices of sex workers while meaningfully addressing the social stigma and moralizing that have been part of how sex work has been understood in the public imagination.

Frances Shaver, centre, in a white jacket, walks with sex workers and their allies in the 2013 sex worker march in Vancouver. Photo by Bill Reimer.

In her early days conducting research on the sex industry in the 1980s, Shaver explained that traditional data sources, such as crime statistics, police reports and clinical and social agency data, problematically viewed sex work as a crime and those participating in it as victims of coercion. It was then that she saw the importance of treating sex workers as the experts of their own experiences.

“We really need to take seriously this notion that the sex workers themselves are the experts,” she told The Tyee. “They need to be telling us what they need in that industry to make themselves respected and have all the human rights that accrue to them as members of our society.”

In over 50 years of work, Shaver pushed for the decriminalization of sex work through evidence and data in consulting roles for the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women and Canada’s Department of Justice. She was a founding member of Sex Trade Advocacy and Research, a group that allowed researchers to work in tandem with sex workers to ameliorate sex worker health, well-being and safety.

In 2008, Shaver was called as an expert witness for three sex workers who conducted a landmark charter challenge known as the Bedford case, which successfully argued that three provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code related to the prohibition of sex work were unconstitutional.

Frances Shaver, centre, in a red scarf, poses with Terri-Jean Bedford, left, in a white shirt, and her supporters on the steps of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013. Photo courtesy of Frances Shaver.

Shaver spoke to The Tyee about what she has learned about the landscape of sex work in Canada throughout her career, the challenges she faced and the work that still needs to be done. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: Can you describe your early days at the University of British Columbia? What was campus like, and what was the landscape of sex work at this time?

Frances Shaver: Well, it was way back in 1963 when I started my BA in sociology and English. Brock Hall was still there and they were still producing those absolutely fabulous cinnamon buns. There was no student centre at the time. But since then, there have been enormous changes. It’s almost difficult to recognize the campus now.

Sex work research wasn’t so much of an interest to me then, and I didn’t know very much about it at all. But when I started to work as a community worker at First United Church [in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside], back in 1967, I ended up coming up with a job that included [visiting] the city jail.

Most of the women that I met, of course, were involved in the sex industry in one way or another. It certainly was an industry that was highly stigmatized, both for anybody involved in working in it and the industry itself. The buyers, the clients, nobody really seemed to worry about them or comment on them at the time.

In your years building relationships and trust with sex workers, what have you learned about community-based academic approaches to researching sex work? Why has this been important to you in your career?

When I was doing my research, there were not really sex workers’ organizations to talk to. I mean, when I was working for the Fraser Committee (a special committee formed by the federal government to study problems associated with pornography and prostitution), the two I was most familiar with were the Alliance for the Safety of Prostitutes and the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes.

Between the two organizations, they were quite diverse, and this is one of the key lessons I learned at a number of levels about people and organizations involved in the sex industry. ASP was made up of women who probably were less comfortable with their work in the industry. They really wanted out, but they also didn’t want to go to jail because of the way the laws were formulated.

CORP, on the other hand, came at it from an entirely different manner. “We’re professionals, and we like what we’re doing, and we’re doing a good job, and we’re meeting a need, and this is what we want to do.”

I felt that this was just simply representing diversity in the industry. It didn’t necessarily mean that one was right and one was wrong, or that one was more living with false consciousness than the other. The notion that things were just so different and diverse and complex than traditionally represented was really an important lesson for me.

And some of the data that I was collecting and putting together back in the early days really falsifies popular perceptions. So, not all sex workers are victims of abuse. Not all sex work involves coercion. And many women work for themselves.

Strategic comparisons really gave us the idea that, well, maybe it’s not sex work that’s the problem. The most undesirable effects of prostitution are really linked to broader social problems, rather than the commercialization of sex.

Carol Leigh, left, and Frances Shaver, right, pose at an event called the First International Hooker’s Masquerade Ball in 1997. Leigh, also known as ‘the Scarlot Harlot,’ was credited for coining the term ‘sex work.’ Photo courtesy of Frances Shaver.

Your recommendations for the government regarding the decriminalization of sex work received opposition, particularly amongst second-wave feminists. Why do you think that is, and would you say those perceptions have changed since then?

When I started, it really was a time that my work was not taken seriously at all. I mean, I had colleagues who really demanded, how could I support decriminalization and still say I was a feminist?

I argued that I was supporting it based on the evidence and the data that were available. Back in 1983 when I was writing for the advisory council, I was able to say I think the best way to go with this, the most appropriate legal approach, is decriminalization.

We also need to do something about the stigma and victimization approach while recognizing that some [sex workers] might be victims. It’s absolutely essential that we recognize that the vast majority aren’t.

And that was tricky because in those days, it seemed to me that feminists would argue that they were supporting prostitution, but really they were supporting women sex workers.

They saw them as victims that needed to be protected, and really shouldn’t be being arrested. On the other hand, they didn’t care much about the clients. They supported the sex workers, but not prostitution, not the sex industry. That, they wanted abolished entirely.

So in the articles that I wrote, I was trying to make clear that you could support women and you could support the industry. What you couldn’t support was the violence and the extortion and the coercion that may well have been happening within the industry.

But you know, it wasn’t just my colleagues. [It was also] friends at dinner parties, for example. I remember one woman saying to me over dinner, “How can you talk about prostitution and human rights in the same sentence?”

I would say [perceptions] have changed to some extent since then, in part because of the legitimacy and respect that now goes along with [sex work] research, both in terms of the veracity and the integrity of the data and also the kind of approach that’s taken when you’re involved in community-based research.

I did a lot of hoop-jumping each time I would get more involved with a different group or a different leader [of a sex worker organization].

There was this lack of trust for researchers, which I certainly respected because I think, and well and truly so, we are to be not necessarily trusted. It’s important that we earn that trust in terms of how we’re relating to people.

In 1990, Frances Shaver travelled to San Francisco to collaborate with Martin Weinberg and his research team from Indiana University to research sex workers in the city’s Tenderloin district. Photo courtesy of Frances Shaver.

Looking forward, what still needs to change when it comes to our perceptions and treatment of sex workers in Vancouver, and particularly those whose sex work experiences are seen as more or less worthy of care?

Well, sex work and sex workers are still stigmatized, marginalized, and they’re still seen as vulnerable. The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform has been involved in leading a [constitutional] challenge, and they want to get to the Supreme Court.

They wanted to be interveners and participate in a case concerning the constitutionality of sex work laws based on sex workers’ charter rights, and so that’s currently ongoing, and they were denied.

Now, there are no sex workers or sex work organizations that have been allowed to intervene and participate in that court case, and yet the court case is all about their lives, it’s all about their work, and it’s all about them.

There are certainly ways in which things haven’t changed. I still think a lot of our policy is still driven by ideology and morality than by justice, evidence and a better understanding of the industry.

I feel at some levels, the old arguments for decriminalization and the normalization of the sex industry have to still be made. I mean, it’s exhausting. I and others were making them back in 1985, and we’re still making them in 2024.

But there are some important things to celebrate, too. Sex work organizations [supporting] sex workers are stronger and more visible than ever before.

We know more about sex work and its related activities than ever before, and we know about it in a sympathetic, methodological, reliable manner. Our alliances have expanded, which I think is really important. We have sex workers and service workers and health and education practitioners, lawyers, police, researchers, policymakers, communicators, and even citizens have been participating in those kinds of alliances.

That all means that there are a whole new set of opportunities for strategic actions emerging, which would involve social policy reform, funding opportunities, influencing public opinion.

So while I still bemoan the fact that we’re still fighting similar battles, we’ve got more people and a much more diverse group of people fighting those battles than we did before.

I think at some point, it’s just going to have to get better. And it is getting better. 

Text: Jeevan Sangha 16 Jul 2024 for The Tyee

Jeevan Sangha is the 2024 Hummingbird journalism fellow with The Tyee. She has written for CBC Music, Billboard Canada and Shado Magazine.

Source portal thetyee.ca