Welcome back to 50 PLUS A TIP Podcast and you guys are in for a treat! This episode Riley and I sit down with the extremely knowledgeable, SWer ally, and absolute powerhouse Tamara O’Doherty. Tamara is a lecturer in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University (the #1 university in Canada for criminology), with several research projects and publications related to the impacts of criminalization, victimization in commercial sex, legal analyses of human trafficking, and other human-rights and knowledge production publications. Prior to her academic involvement, Tamara spent decades working along side sex workers and other sex worker allies, primarily in Vancouver's Downtown East-side, and during the height of the missing women's crisis, throughout the Pickton trial and its related media frenzy, through the 2010 Olympics, the BC provincial Inquiry into the missing women's crisis, and through the Bedford and SWUAV legal cases as they each made their way through the court system. 

If that intro is any indicator - we had a LOT to discuss this episode, so we had to break it up into 2 PARTS.

This first part of the interview we cover: What is the current SW research showing us? Why are there so many misunderstandings and so much misinformation about SW? Is s3x trafficking a real concern? What is the Bedford case, Bill c36, PCEPA and what are their implications? What are some legal changes that should occur and what would the desired results be? And from a research standpoint - are there benefits to commercial sex?

Once you’re done learning about all that, head over to PART 2 of this interview where we ask Tamara all your listener questions!