Intersecting Inequalities in Access to Justice for Trans and Non-binary Sex Workers in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Introduction In the context of renewed debate about Canada’s “end demand” sex work laws, we took an intersectional approach to characterize experiences with the criminal legal system and perceived access to justice among transgender (trans) and nonbinary sex workers in Canada. Methods The Trans PULSE Canada community-based study collected multimode survey data in fall 2019. Data were cross-stratified by lifetime sex work and sex assigned at birth, ethnoracial group, or household income. Age adjustment did not meaningfully impact results. Results Of 2012 included participants (median age = 30, 66.5% assigned female at birth, 48.9% non-binary), 280 (16.1%) had ever done sex work. While access to justice was limited for trans and non-binary people overall, sex workers were more likely to anticipate (72.1% vs. 50.5%) and experience (43.2% vs. 15.7%) police mistreatment. In the previous 5 years, sex workers were more likely to experience violence for any reason (61.4% vs. 27.4% of other participants) or due to being trans or non-binary (41.4% vs. 14.0%), and to have avoided calling 911 for police (51.4% vs. 18.1%). Few sex workers trusted that they would be treated fairly by police if they experienced physical (10.8% vs. 34.9%) or sexual (4.7% vs. 20.6%) violence. Intersectional inequalities included that sex workers assigned male at birth and street-based workers were most likely to have experienced gender-based violence, and that Indigenous and racialized sex workers reported higher levels of police mistreatment and 911 avoidance. Conclusions Overall, trans and non-binary people in Canada reported high levels of violence and limited access to justice. Sex workers faced large inequities in these outcomes, which were exacerbated for transfeminine, Indigenous, racialized, and street-based workers. Policy Implications These findings challenge the notion that Canadian sex work laws protect sex workers and highlight the limitations of formal legal protections for trans people. These inequities must be addressed in sex work legal reform efforts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".