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Feminism: chat

Unison voting on ditching the Nordic Model

80 replies

SapatSea · 10/04/2022 11:06

Unison, the second biggest UK union, is due to vote at its national conference in June on a motion to abandon its 12-year policy of supporting the Nordic Model approach to the sex trade and to switch support to full decriminalisation – which would decriminalise pimps, brothel keepers, and sex buyers as well as those involved in prostitution.
Nordic Model now have produced a booklet laying out the issues at stake that you can download at:
nordicmodelnow.org/2022/04/05/decriminalisation-of-the-sex-trade-vs-the-nordic-model-what-you-need-to-know-booklet/

OP posts:
BlackForestCake · 15/07/2022 18:56

Just as an aside, a song about a prostitute who is "prettier, younger and sexier" is currently number one in the German charts.

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 05:29

I'd like to see SW legalised completely. It gives women the freedom to work without feeling like there's something 'wrong' with it.

GoodThinkingMax · 16/07/2022 05:54

Linguini · 12/04/2022 22:12

Thanks for the link SepatSea
Anyone who supports legalisation of prostitution is supporting male supremacy and should be treated with at the very least suspicion or distain.

Yes. It’s basically commercialised rape. Decriminalising the pimps and the men who want to buy women’s bodies sends a message that this is acceptable behaviour in the treatment of women.

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 05:56

The Nordic model assumes women are humans. That's what I look for.

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 06:06

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 05:56

The Nordic model assumes women are humans. That's what I look for.

That's just silly talk, at least have a grown up chat about it. There's no government in the world that realistically assumes women aren't human.

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 06:13

GoodThinkingMax · 16/07/2022 05:54

Yes. It’s basically commercialised rape. Decriminalising the pimps and the men who want to buy women’s bodies sends a message that this is acceptable behaviour in the treatment of women.

No it's not rape at all! Once again the experience of rape victims gets minimised and diluted further down by comparing them to prostitutes. Legalisation would create a safer environment for girls, less underground trafficking, more help, less stigma. Its already legal now in the form of escorting so what's the difference. My husband and I used to know a guy who did well runnng an escort agency so I think those grimacing at pimps have been watching too many movies and have the notion that pimps must be bad, just because.

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 06:24

Legalisation would create a safer environment for girls

Girls?

Yeah, I don't believe you see women who work in the sex trade as human. you don't even see them as adult.

And it is rape. At least to the male punters. You think we are pursed-lipped prudes. I know countless women all the way from street level workers to a woman who owns a dungeon. Friends, clients, colleagues, flatmates. It's rape.

I'm not grimacing at pimps. I'm grimacing remembering the women I know who are dead now.

MsMcGonagall · 16/07/2022 07:51

Why can't buying sex be criminalised, and selling sex decriminalised? Then it's the men we can arrest? Is there something obvious I'm missing?

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 08:00

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 06:24

Legalisation would create a safer environment for girls

Girls?

Yeah, I don't believe you see women who work in the sex trade as human. you don't even see them as adult.

And it is rape. At least to the male punters. You think we are pursed-lipped prudes. I know countless women all the way from street level workers to a woman who owns a dungeon. Friends, clients, colleagues, flatmates. It's rape.

I'm not grimacing at pimps. I'm grimacing remembering the women I know who are dead now.

Who you know, or have heard about? All the more reason to bring it out from being underground & hidden.

If you can't hold your own without trying to be smart about the terminology it's best not post. Most people in everyday life can understand girls to mean women & females in general, why you would alude this as inhumane God only knows!

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 08:08

Most people in everyday life can understand girls to mean women & females in general

People who refer to women as 'females' are always utter arseholes.

And it's who I know. Which is what I said.

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 08:12

What a bizzare and utterly childish comment to make. I am female and also a woman. You clearly have a language phobia of some sort to resent the definition of our sort, how original.

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 08:15

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 08:12

What a bizzare and utterly childish comment to make. I am female and also a woman. You clearly have a language phobia of some sort to resent the definition of our sort, how original.

You dehumanise other women.

AuntieStella · 16/07/2022 08:29

I dislike the use of the term 'girls' to refer to adult women as it demeans by infantilising.

It's OK for actual female children, and in a few other contexts - such as the Love Island thread.

But I really wince when people talk about their shite DH messaging girls for sex, when they mean young women. It's as of they don't know that paedophilia and the abuse of girls is a real issue

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 08:30

@MrsTerryPratchett
I see, are you able to explain your thinking in a way that makes sense as I don't know how you've arrived at the conclusion that referring to women as female in any way dehumanises them.

I don't think many others will understand this either. Unless you're just a troll trying to be smarmy?

MrsTerryPratchett · 16/07/2022 08:32

I don't think many others will understand this either.

I think they will. In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever.

And don't @ me. If I want to reply to you, I will.

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 08:33

@AuntieStella
Why is the love Island thread exempt, that's a strange exemption to make as they're all adult women.... Yet I'd refer to them all as 'girls' and so do most people???

partystress · 16/07/2022 08:36

@PissedOffUnison can I check how this would have worked? Unison has lots of caucuses (special interest groups?) and any one of them can propose a change to the stance of the whole union?

so a caucus of, say, school midday supervisors, could vote for a policy of lobbying for curfew on all men after dark?

or, a caucus of school cleaners could promote a policy of supporting compulsory education of boys in what coercion, crime or trauma has led up to the making of videos on Pornhub?

I am staggered that an LGBT group would have had the power to do this with no wider debate/vote.

Adelishious · 16/07/2022 08:39

I've yet to see a thread on the dehumanisation of the love Island cast because the woman are being called girls. Maybe someone on here should start one🙄

PissedOffUnison · 16/07/2022 10:33

partystress · 16/07/2022 08:36

@PissedOffUnison can I check how this would have worked? Unison has lots of caucuses (special interest groups?) and any one of them can propose a change to the stance of the whole union?

so a caucus of, say, school midday supervisors, could vote for a policy of lobbying for curfew on all men after dark?

or, a caucus of school cleaners could promote a policy of supporting compulsory education of boys in what coercion, crime or trauma has led up to the making of videos on Pornhub?

I am staggered that an LGBT group would have had the power to do this with no wider debate/vote.

Basically, One person from my branch of several thousand members was able to vote for this on behalf of all of us. I already suspected a lack of democracy in Unison but this makes an absolute mockery of it.
I’d imagine this was the same way Unison voted that TWAW and criticised the ‘discriminatory’ EHRC guidance on single sex spaces.
As I say, not a union for women.

Unison voting on ditching the Nordic Model
Unison voting on ditching the Nordic Model
MargaritaPie · 18/07/2022 22:30

"Why can't buying sex be criminalised, and selling sex decriminalised? Then it's the men we can arrest? Is there something obvious I'm missing?"

Summary for this approach:
-The sex trade continues, but with increased violence and stigma against sexworkers
-Sexworkers are not decriminalised under the Nordic Model, they are still committing an offence for working together. They are also unable to rent property and Social Work may take their children off them (selling sex is seen as a form of "self harm" under the Nordic Model)
-Extremely difficult to convict clients as sexworkers are unwilling to testify against them.
-Increases spread of HIV and STDs as condoms are less likely to be used(because they can be used as evidence by police)

decrimnow.org.uk/open-letter-on-the-nordic-model/

hivlawcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FinalReport-RisksRightsHealth-EN.pdf p38

stopaids.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/STOPAIDS-factsheet-sex-work.pdf

www.swarmcollective.org/blog/2019/9/20/nordic-model-in-northern-ireland-a-total-failure-no-decrease-in-sex-work-but-increases-in-violence-and-stigma

www.lse.ac.uk/women-peace-security/assets/documents/2022/W922-0152-WPS-Policy-Paper-6-singles.pdf

hhh333hhh · 20/07/2022 15:08

Selling sex doesn't need to be decriminalised because it isn't illegal. Sex workers get arrested but it is usually for 'brothel keeping' or soliciting. In Nordic Model countries they say that they have 'shifted the burden of criminality' from sex workers onto their clients, from women to men. That's not true though.

In no Nordic Model country has brothel keeping been decriminalised. Women still get arrested. Some sex workers have pimps and some don't. I'm not interested in decriminalising pimps but I am interested in decriminalising women who work together. They keep the profits for themselves, they make the rules for themselves. They control who they see and they control what they do with their clients. It isn't true what they say in the Nordic Model Now! handbook. Sex workers don't have to do anything that the client wants.

Before the Nordic Model was introduced in Ireland the then justice minister Frances Fitzgerald doubled the penalties for brothel keeping. Two young Romanian women were arrested, as mentioned in Dr Geoffrey Shannon's official report into the Nordic Model there. They weren't the only ones. Ireland has failed to come up with the money to help women exit and there is no evidence of a reduction in demand.

Not only can't women work together, if they decide to hire someone to answer the phones or anything, that person is regarded as a pimp (as is their landlord). Frances Fitzgerald said that women might pretend that they are not being pimped, but how can you arrest women because they might have been pimped? You are arresting someone for someone else's crime (if they have been pimped), and moreover you are arresting a woman for a man's crime. Where's the justice in that?

Adelishious · 22/07/2022 14:53

Pimps are usually used for protection against clients, they aren't necessarily a bad thing.

GoodThinkingMax · 22/07/2022 16:20

Oh, unless they're the pimps that rape their "girls," or push them addictive drugs, or beat the women up if they don't make enough money, or ...

MrsTerryPratchett · 22/07/2022 16:29

Adelishious · 22/07/2022 14:53

Pimps are usually used for protection against clients, they aren't necessarily a bad thing.

This is not been my experience in decades of knowing women doing this and in more than one country.

I have seen women beaten up by pimps though. And forced to work.

Adelishious · 22/07/2022 16:49

@MrsTerryPratchett I've seen women beaten up by non pimps too but they do tend to get a bad rap when many are in fact beneficial to the girls.

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