Womens hour on Ash Regan's private members bill in the Scottish Parliament

"Bust the business model"

Then it was "a model for Scotland" and now "Unbuyable". I like it how each time they fail they rebrand to try again.

Did you know that there was a debate in 2018? You can read the transcript of the debate: “Tackling Demand for Commercial Sexual Exploitation”

Yes. Hopefully they will realise it's complex enough to warrant a bill of its own instead of tacking it onto the end of another bill.

The late MSP Trish Godman tried this in the past with Scotland hoping no one would notice. She also wanted it illegal for taxi drivers to provide a service for sex workers or clients who were on their way to meet the other. I would have been interested in hearing how she planned on enforcing that had it passed.

Buying and selling sexual services isn't the same as murdering someone, not a great analogy there.

The issue I have with the Christian Institute and other Christian input on sex worker laws is they aren't based on facts or evidence they are going with what a 2000 year old book says. The same people would probably want all sex outside of marriage illegal if they were put in charge of the country.

I posted this earlier showing the Gov has acknowledged there is a lack of evidence from other countries that the NM will improve matters for sex workers. So no, the 1 conviction N.Ire has had in a decade isn't because sex work has magically ended from the NM, it's because it's very difficult to enforce and sex workers aren't going to testify against clients. I just ran a 5 second search on "belfast escort services" now and yep plenty of results still going strong.

https://archive.ph/DnlFp

"The research comes after independent reviews carried out for the Irish and Northern Irish governments, which have both criminalised the purchase of sex, reported that the Nordic model had not reduced the demand for sexual services

The evidence reviewed suggests that such measures may have limited impact on preventing trafficking and sexual exploitation.”"

I'm not able to edit my post above so I will say here that when I put 2014 I should have put 2008. All these figures are in the 2015 study by two Swedish women, Mujaj and Netscher.

If you didn't have a law against murder then you introduced it, you would expect the number of murders to decrease. Let's say that the death penalty was introduced into Britain but the numbers of murders went up. That would be bad but worse if the people who got the death penalty adopted then lied about it and pretended that it was working.

There is just as much prostitution in Ireland now as before 2017 when they introduced the Nordic model there. That goes for Northern Ireland too where they've had it since 2015. This means that either the new laws have had no effect on prostitutes. Or that they have to have sex for more hours with more men to get the money they need.

You can say surely it worked in Sweden? No it did not. The Swedish government told everyone who would listen (including a delegation from Ireland) that the proportion of Swedish men who pay for sex decreased form 12.7% to 7.6% between 1996 and 2014 (there were surveys in those years). What they don't tell people is that it went up in the next survey (2011) and a 2017 survey puts it at 10%.

The biggest lie though is that these figures are not for men who pay for sex, they are for men who have paid for sex at some time in their life. The figures for men who pay for sex is 1.3% in 1996 and 1.8% in 2014. So there was an increase.

They also don't tell you that in 1996 0.3% of Swedish women said they had been paid for sex at some time in their life, in 2014 it was 1.1% and in 2017 it was 1.5%. That's quite something for a law that seeks to reduce prostitution to zero.

Surely you realize that many workers, mostly men have been trafficked. Most trafficked people aren't prostitutes. Did you not hear about the Chinese cockle pickers who were drowned?

I was reading about the review of the Irish Nordic model law published recently that shows it has failed and I came across a response to it by Ruth Breslin of the SERP Institute. Ruth Breslin used to work for Ruhama so nobody can say that she's part of the 'pimp lobby'.

This is the most interesting paragraph in the response

"Based on the evidence The SERP Institute has gathered, dating back to 2015, we have established that approximately 10-15% of women in prostitution in Ireland fit the ‘classic’ definition of trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation recognised in Irish law, while approximately 5-10% describe having entered prostitution by choice, in circumstances where they had other choices available to them. A proportion of these describe themselves as ‘sex workers’ and view prostitution as a form of work. However, the majority of approximately 80% fall into a much larger ‘vulnerable’ category – these are primarily migrant women, new to Ireland and often with limited English, who have been drawn into prostitution by the urgent need to support family/loved ones in their country of origin."

So 10-15% of Irish prostitutes have been trafficked
5-10% of Irish prostitutes chose to become prostitutes and had other choices
80% aren't trafficked but 'vulnerable' although they also chose it

I don't believe that all of this 80% do it to support loved ones. Most of the Chinese ones in Britain want money to start their own businesses. There is a Professor called Ko-lin Chin who interviewed a large number of Chinese prostitutes working abroad and he said that 1% were coerced or deceived. He said that 15% had some degree of control by a employer or debtor.

@MarieDeGournay

The idea that the catholic church has enough power to push the Nordic Model, or anything else, is decades out of date.

Have you heard of Ruhama? It is an organization formed by two orders of nuns, both of whom were involved in Magdalene Laundries. They are funded by Irish taxpayers and have influence on the Irish government.

Ruhama campaigned for the Nordic model. They said that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide. This is not true.

In Northern Ireland the Evangelical bigot Jim Wells said in the Northern Ireland Assembly that 127 prostitutes had been murdered in the Netherlands since legalization there. Rachel Moran repeated his false statistic on Woman's Hour.

She also said that 1 prostitute had been murdered in Sweden since the Nordic model was introduced in 1999. She didn't mention though that no prostitutes were murdered in Sweden since about 1984. Neither did Ash Regan on Woman's Hour. They tell people that the Nordic model will saves women's lives - a powerful argument - bit it is false.

The Crime and Policing Bill is in the Commons now and a number of MPs wanted an amendment that would bring to England and Wales aspects of the Nordic model. "This new clause makes it an offence to pay for, or attempt to, pay for sex either for themselves or on behalf of others." As far as I can tell it won't be going through though.

Are you aware that there has been a review of the 2017 law change in Ireland published in March this year? The change in law that introduced the Nordic model in the Irish Republic.

It is called Review on the Operation of Section 7A of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993. I will try to put up a link but the review shows that the Nordic model in Ireland has not decreased demand. It has not decreased the amount of prostitution. This was its main aim and it has failed.

The interim review of 2020 is also interesting to read. It said that prostitutes are still being arrested and funds to help women exit prostitution haven't materialized.

You would think that Nuala McGovern would have known that. They tried it in Ireland and it didn't work.
Review on the Operation of Section 7A of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993

No, men think they are entitled to buy sex - or, as Ash Regan puts it, pay to rape a woman - is what the Nordic model seeks to change. We can make that attitude unacceptable, out of bounds, clearly creepy and not something that any man would want to be associated with. Lack of prosecutions does not mean a law is ineffective, you know. The UK has only a small number (relatively speaking) of prosecutions for murder each year, that doesn't mean that the law against murder is not working. Logic not your strong point, Chris?

Nothing wrong with having a Christian attitude that prostitution is exploitation of women and that we need to make it possible for men to understand that they are not entitled to sex (nobody is). It's an attitude I hold myself.

@Grammarnut Germany has legalisation, not decrim. Currently Belgium is the only European country to have decriminalisation.

"The aim of the Nordic model is to end prostitution, not police it"

Reality check- the world's oldest profession is never going to end anywhere. Every NM country every day it's business as usual but with sex workers and clients taking a few extra precautions (this also includes not carrying condoms btw- they are used as evidence and not mentioning sex or payment during bookings). N.Ireland has had 1 client conviction in a decade. Sweden who has had the NM the longest for 25+ years still has very active escort directories for the major cities which can be found with a search in seconds. Sex workers are unwilling to testify against clients and convictions are very hard to get with Sweden having 2 convictions out of the first 2000 arrests*.

*Source HIV and the Law Commission report on the situation in Sweden.
hivlawcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FinalReport-RisksRightsHealth-EN.pdf

What we can do is improve matters for sex workers and give them rights instead of making it more dangerous for them. There are reasons why a long list of human rights/health/anti-trafficking/immigration/sex worker etc orgs support complete decrim and not the NM.

In decrim NZ for example, a sex worker won a 6 figure payout after being sexually harassed.

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55298303

There is a report made for the Belgium government on the consequences of their law change. I remember skim reading it and there was some positive outcomes but also a lot of negative. The one thing that stuck with me is that none of the situations (criminalising, Nordic or decriminalising) led to better circumstances for the prostitutes and all of them worked in the favour of the sex buyers. Also the normalising of buying sex was chilling to read.
Recommendation in the report was to formalise pimping and make it legal to exploit prostitutes.

Replace the endless teenaged #thatsyouropinions with just a few well-timed, concise and above all natural acknowledgements of complexity

DH, who has become accustomed to my loud outbursts of ‘oh FFS!’ from another room while WH is on, was genuinely astonished to hear that NMcG is 52 and not a 20-something handmaiden. Even he (who does get what I’m always banging on about, but tbh would prefer not to think about it overmuch 🙄 ) can’t bear listening to her. He actually commented on the curt, snappy voice reserved for those pesky women doing wrongthink, and if he noticed, then it’s worryingly obvious.

Oh yes please! Nuala is so stilted in her delivery, drives me nuts stressing she won’t get to the end of her sentence without a stumble even when just introducing the programme.

Germany has decriminalised prostitution and now has far more brothels than before, violence to prostituted women has not stopped, and brothels are mostly staffed by immigrant women.
The Nordic model does not stop the prostitution of women. What it says is that there is no entitlement to sex and that it is illegal to buy it, which sends a message to all men: that women are not a set of holes for them to use, they are people and their bodies are not commodities.
The aim of the Nordic model is to end prostitution, not police it. This model opens ways for victims to escape prostitution if they wish, the decriminalising methods you list do not, since they accept that being a prostituted woman is a job like any other.

What kind of man wants to have sex with a woman he knows does not actually want to have sex with him?

I think we all know the answer to this one

I’ve seen you appear in a lot of threads on this board, so your style of (not) addressing the points made to you isn’t surprising.

“Client” (in this context), “sexworker” and “sexwork” are buzzwords designed to obfuscate the harsh realities of prostitution and, (if you were arguing in good faith) you’d acknowledge that.

Many ways to earn money don’t require qualifications. I’d hesitate to describe them as ‘professions’ though. Jobs, yes. But in any case, you (quite deliberately) didn’t address the point there either.

Women’s bodies are not “services” and therefore the ‘men’ who engage in acts of assault for money can never be “clients.”

As for: “That's a good one. Where did you get this from, a movie?” - well, no. It’s somewhat telling that you think I’d need to ‘borrow’ that.

Men tend to have far more transactional attitudes and feelings towards sex, because their investment, and their risk is not so great.

The number of men who adopt trans identities who have have engaged in what you call 'Sex work' is very telling, and represents a bit of a disconnect between the adopted identity of 'woman' and the actual reality of being female.

Also, it is well established that many wiomen who end up in the sex industry have suffered previous sexual abuse, including as children. Taking up this' job' is for some a way of attempting to regain control; for others it is a sad comment about their learned lack of self worth and value.

The inside of a woman's body is not a workplace. The nature of the female body and the act of penis in vagaina is a far more intimate act than almost any other ( apart from being pregnant, maybe). because of its interior nature.

This is why rape is such a trauma; the breaching and violation of both personal and bodily integrity. The feeling that what is most intimate to you has been violently invaded.

Women, of course, can also become pregnant through penis in vagina sex...and this is registered at aa very deep and primitive level...even when one is not ovulating.....and which is why women, naturally, tend not to be as promiscuous as men...because the risks of sex for women, and the costs, are far higher.

So, yes " Buying their body" is a very apt phrase. In fact, it does not go anywhere near far enough. It could also be called rape - except the woman involved has on some level consented to this exploitation and invasion.

As you miss the point entirely on whether sex work needs qualifications. Rank these jobs in terms of real-world desirability: accountant, office clerk, McDonald’s server, sex worker. I could throw in sewage repairman or Donald Trump’s toupee fluffer and we all know which job will come out at the bottom of the heap. Qualifications have fuck all to do with it.

Someone asked earlier if sex workers in Britain pay tax. Answer is yes they do unless they are trafficked and they may have accountants like people in other jobs. Whether sex workers will still be legally required to pay tax if the Nordic Model is passed I don't know but would be interested in.

"accountancy but without the qualifications."

Is this a jab at jobs that don't need academic qualifications, or that jobs must require them?

And "client", yes someone who pays for a service is called a client. Clients pay for the service provided, and not "buying their bodies" (another popular buzz phrase I've heard a lot).

"coerced victims of criminal enterprises"

That's a good one. Where did you get this from, a movie?