7-9PM in AH116 (Anderson Hall) at the University of Lethbridge Due to the graphic nature of the talk it is not recommended for those under 16.
Media stories about missing and murdered women seem to appear on a regular basis, but other than a few sentences about the woman and a grainy picture of her we learn little more than about one family’s tragedy. However, when Jennifer Allan sees those stories, she sees the human tragedy as each new victim is profiled and she sees a societal crisis that needs to be addressed. One of the commonalities amongst many of the missing and murdered women is their work in the sex trade. So what is to be done about it?
The speaker will argue that we need to have an adult conversation about decriminalizing the adult sex trade in Canada and introduce society level support for sex workers. At the same time we need to understand the social inequities that lie at the heart of some women’s decision to engage in survival sex work. Their predicament requires solutions such as improvements to laws, social support, and police training.
Speaker: Jennifer Allan
Jennifer Allan is a Vancouver-based First Nations sex worker and human rights activist who have been running her own support program, Jen’s Kitchen, for the past six and a half years. Jen is well known around Vancouver for her dedication and support to street-based sex workers and her activism in opposing legal discrimination against marginalized groups and persons across Canada. At the core of her work is a fierce determination to stop violence against sex workers.
This fall, Jen is travelling across Canada to collect the names and numbers of missing and murdered sex workers to document evidence that there’s an epidemic of violence and discrimination against this group of people. Jen will be writing up a report, with the help of Kwantlen University and Amnesty International Canada, and delivering it to the United Nations by 2013.
This Special Session is jointly hosted by: SACPA-on-Campus, LPIRG, ULSU, Women & Gender Studies at the U of L and Womanspace Resource Centre.