Aboriginal Sex Workers In Canada

With a lack of data and reporting, the police ignored the disappearances based on social constructions – the representing race and profession. Aboriginal sex workers were discriminated by police agencies and their reports were ignored prior to a dramatic increase of disappearances. But now we must question this: what if the missing sex workers were white? How would their disappearances be represented in the media? There is a ‘racial blindness’ in the media, as the social suffering of Aboriginal sex workers in Downtown Eastside Vancouver is discomforting to the neoliberal democratic ideologies in Canada, making their vulnerability invisible to the public. The sex workers who represent drugs, commercial sex, violence and crime are negatively …show more content…
The disappearance of White women garnered more media attention in comparison to Aboriginals, in which the media selectively choose the placement, headline, articles, photographs and tone of their disappearance for their audience to sympathize (Gilchrist, 2010). The media’s coverage of Aboriginal communities display “disproportionately high rates of suicide, victimization, addictions, incarcerations and poverty … reports do not situate these conditions in their relevant socio-historical colonial contexts”, leaving Aboriginals to be left in negative stereotypes, while the missing and murdered Aboriginal sex workers are questioned of their status as persons (Gilchirst, 2010, pg. 14). The racial hierarchy of victims in the press provokes their vulnerability as they can be violated by offenders, and no one will sympathize for them (Gilchrist, …show more content…
As a result of the government’s assimilation practices, and thereafter indirectly attributing to intergenerational trauma, Aboriginals had become victims to excessive abuse, which would be passed on throughout generations. Without any social support from the government, Aboriginal women had to rely on the sex trade to generate an income, due to psychological trauma and a lack of skills to find employment. Aboriginal sex workers were vulnerable to violence, kidnappings and murder; however the police did not adequately investigate these allegations due to their race and profession until a dramatic increase in dis-appearances. The media coverage regarding the disappearance did not attend to the disappearances. If the media had created a moral panic by broadcasting the disappearances of the Aboriginal sex workers, there would have been a continuing outcry for investigations. The Aboriginal sex workers in Downtown Eastside Vancouver are victims to not only predators, but racial discrimination by the government and