not funny

[jawnbc]

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For the record folks - and blathering about "free speech" aside - do me a favour and don't make jokes in your blog about the trial happening here in Vancouver for the murder of (the first) 6 (of nearly 30) women in the downtown East side.*

These women were brutalized and murdered and have all too often been dehumanized in the press as "prostitutes" and "drug addicts" etc. Their families are suffering enough.

Your need to be clever or kewl or cutting edge? Fuck off. Take your adolescent, insensitive shite elsewhere.

It's horrible. All of it. And not funny. None of it.

*I'm gonna avoiding naming the accused: I don't want to contribute to his notoreity.

Comments

[jawnbc]

They're doing that out here as well, even in those cheap-assed freebie "newspapers" handed out at bus stops.

I've done a bit of work in the neighbourhood (a bit) and know lots of people that knew some of the women (through their work, activism, or having been down there using themselves, so it's been on my radar for a really long time.

What so many people don't understand is that authorities did sweet fuck all about the first 20 women. It was years before they would even investigate any as missing. Because, you know, prostitutes and junkies disappear all the time...so what? There were even allegations about parties and assaults "out at a pig farm in Coquitlam"...that weren't at all looked into.

I'm glad these women are now people again. I just wish something had been done sooner: it might well have saved most of them.

[catdraco.livejournal.com]

Sweden seem to have the right idea: decriminalising the selling of sex, but criminalising the purchasing of sex.

[catdraco.livejournal.com]

Mm. I disagree with it being a victimless crime, but aside from that the evidence I've seen doesn't seem to support the theory you're outlining. Legalising and regulating prostitution seems to increase the volume of sex workers/trade - and increases dramatically the amount of organised crime that goes along with it. While it's a logical idea, the reality doesn't seem to follow that logic.

[lusty-librarian.livejournal.com]

while i don't know much about the highway of tears (http://www.highwayoftears.ca) (where lots of folks, mostly women, have disappeared on the highway in northern BC), or the more than 20 women, many of whom were sex workers, who have "disappeared" in Edmonton, i see that there's not much effort expended to find out what happened to these people. oh yeah, most of these women were Native, and poor.

it's like deja vu all over again...