The CBC Keeps Trying to Normalize Prostitution

The CBC over the years has seemed to have made a conscious effort to normalize the dehumanizing practice of prostitution.

Of course the CBC will never use the term prostitution, the first way the news organization tries to normalize the practice is by changing the language. They use progressive sounding euphemisms like “sex work” instead of prostitution, and “client” instead of people paying for sex, in order to try and subvert people’s natural adverse reaction to the illicit industry.

In reality these “sex worker rights advocates” really are just inadvertently acting as prostitution propagandists cherrypicking the minority of willing participants selling their bodies not as a last resort in order to normalize a practice profoundly damaging to everyone who participates in it, no matter the form it takes.

The people trying to legalize prostitution and try and make it seem like a “job” as respectable as something like accounting are well meaning but misguided, wanting to make the job “safer” or less “stigmatized” rather than helping people get out of that lifestyle entirely.

The CBC platforming these fringe ideas using Canadian taxpayers’ money should be one of the top examples of why the CBC needs to be defunded, or heavily reformed and its budget reduced. 

A recent article published by the CBC talks about the benefits of CERB for prostitutes, and the difficulties getting on CERB when many prostitutes do not file taxes as a consequence of how they primarily make their money.

The fact that this article could be rewritten about low level drug dealers is quite telling. By tackling the issue of CERB payments for prostitutes the CBC seems to be subtly pushing the activists line that “sex work is real work” ignoring the fact that it is a criminal offence to purchase sexual services essentially making prostitution illegal by proxy of the purchaser. 

In an episode of the now defunct CBC radio show Out In The Open hosted by Piya Chattopadhyay titled “Choose Sex Work”, Chattopadhyay, “speaks with people who willingly engage in sex work, to understand the personal value they glean from it,” which is again a way of cherrypicking from the small minority of people who claimed to be happy with the practice and ignoring the majority doing it because they think it is a last resort, or where brought into the industry through human trafficking. 

In a final example, the CBC published an article titled, “Stop enforcing sex work laws during COVID-19, Amnesty, sex worker advocates say,” which at no point ever criticizes the practice of prostitution as dehumanizing or mentally/physically harmful. It also contradicts the narrative the CBC is pushing on Covid. One would think during a pandemic a person who has multiple sexual encounters with strangers daily would present some sort of public health risk, but it seems the CBC can only focus on one narrative at a time. 

Many advocates argue legalizing prostitution wholesale would reduce human trafficking and would not greatly increase those taking part in the practice, although when the Netherlands legalized it foreign human traffickers came to the Netherlands because of the lesser legal risks involved. 

This is the same sort of thing that happens with “safe injection sites” which in theory may reduce deaths per overdose, but in the long run just creates a fake safety net that increases the use of drugs increasing the population at risk of overdoses even if each individual overdose is less likely to result in death.

There are countless other examples of CBC publishing content normalizing the criminal market of prostitution easily found by simply searching their website for “Sex Work”. 

It feels quite strange for a news organization paid by taxpayers’ to be pushing content normalizing prostitution, but also for a company that touts itself as “feminist” to be pretending that by calling prostitution “sex work” and interviewing the tiny minority “empowered” by the practice is not simply legitimizing the abuse of the majority of those not wanting to participate in it. (not to ignore the equal tragedy of male prostitution). 

The CBC should reflect the values of Canadians, not the values of the most radical of social activists who do not seem to understand the damage the policies they advocate for could cause.

Many Canadians, especially conservative Canadians, already dislike the CBC for their Liberal bias in their reporting, but due to the harmful stances the CBC promotes on prostitution all Canadians should be up in arms with the CBC’s use of taxpayers’ money.