for Shannon.

I’m resisting the urge to email this story to all of the people who have, over the last two and a half years, told me that I’m too serious, too angry, too intense about my work. “What’s your problem?” I’ve been asked. “Why do you have to take it all so personally?”

Because women I know are dying. That’s why.

A few months ago it was suicide, then chronic illness, that took the lives of women I've worked with. Today, it's murder.

This morning, nine women piled into two vehicles, all smiles, on their way to soak up some of this precious sunshine at a local beach: a couple hours of fun amidst some pretty serious struggles they’re all experiencing. They packed along a picnic lovingly prepared by one of our dedicated volunteers (wraps, veggies, fresh cut fruit, homemade cookies), affixed bedazzled sunglasses to their faces, flushed with excitement. As they pulled out of our parking lot, the hourly news released a few more details about the woman whose body was found in a local park on Sunday, another piece of the puzzle of whether she’s one of “ours” snapped sickeningly into place. My stomach drops, my head starts spinning. I’m hoping they’re not listening to the news in the cars; but some of them know her, and whether they do or not it’s naïve to think they’re not already thinking about her, wondering.

We’ve been fielding calls and giving interviews to local media for a couple of days now, since the story broke. Reporters want to know: Is there cause for concern among sex workers in Victoria? Do we have any reason to believe the woman, who according to news reports already filed lived a “high-risk lifestyle,” was a sex worker? We use what counselors sometimes call the Broken Record Technique. Yes, we are aware of the case. No, we don’t know the woman’s identity yet. The police haven’t released her information yet, we don’t know anything you don’t. No, we’re not willing to speculate about who she is or why what happened to her happened. Repeat. Over and over.

It’s hard not to feel like they want this woman to have been a sex worker. It’s as if involvement in sex work and drug use are accepted as answers in and of themselves to the questions of this case. In the absence of any actual information about who she was and what happened to her, blanks can be filled in with details like these that carry a lot of weight, if not accuracy.

I refresh the local news website I’m following and the timeliest headline possible comes up: “Prostitution laws continue to allow women to be victimized, court hears.” I feel like commenting, “Hey, thanks Captain Obvious!” underneath the story, but I don’t. I have to remember that this ‘news’ is not as redundant to most people as it is to us, my coworkers and me, who see scars and bruises and the deep, long-lasting effects of psychological and physical trauma on the hopeful, resilient women we work with every single day.

That conversation is happening right this minute in a courtroom in Toronto, as the federal and Ontario provincial governments try to convince the Ontario Court of Appeal that Justice Susan Himel (a heroine in our community) was wrong to rule that the federal prostitution laws do more to harm sex workers than to protect them. The Harper government argues that since sex workers choose a dangerous profession and one that is contrary to the law, that they are not entitled to protection or safety. What they’re essentially telling people who engage in sex work is, we won’t entertain the idea of changing the laws so that you can work safer because the work you do contravenes those laws. If your head’s spinning trying to find the logic in that, you’re not alone.

But make no mistake: for our government, this debate is not a question of legality at its essence. It’s a proclamation based on moral judgments that divide people into deserving and undeserving of the violence that is done to them. According to Statistics Canada, the top three most dangerous jobs you can have in Canada are taxi driving, policing and sex work. If any politician (let alone a head of state) were to publicly state that police officers don’t deserve protection from violence on the job, heads would roll. The fact that the Prime Minister can get away with this exceptionalism is deeply indicative of the way that sex workers are judged and (de)valued in our communities. Harper said last December that sex work is "bad for society." This opinion, enforced by outdated laws, literally results in death, which is, I'm just going to go ahead and put this crazy idea out there, worse than his, or my, or anyone's discomfort with the idea of sexual services as valuable commodities.

The top three pieces on the hourly news are still about the Stanley Cup playoffs when we get the call that the woman is indeed “ours.” The grieving begins in our community as the celebration begins outside. "It's never going to stop," a coworker said to me, jaw clenched, as I headed out the door for the day. How heartbreaking, how utterly infuriating it is that even rational people who dedicate their working (and often private) lives to providing advocacy and support for sex workers are sometimes forced to conclude this.

I have to be clear: we don't yet know what happened to Shannon. Whether her death is related to her work, we can't say for sure. But the angry grief on the teary faces of my coworkers and the fear in the voices of clients who phoned us for information about the missing woman today is proof enough that their response isn't just about her. "We live in an ocean of violence," another of my coworkers said earlier. "When you've known a lot of people who have died violently, you're always just waiting to hear who the next one will be."

That's my problem.