Jeremy Corbyn now supports the Nordic model

[QuarksandLeptons]

Such fantastic news and real progress. The leader of the opposition has come out in favour of the Nordic model.

twitter.com/sarahchampionmp/status/1015603574829658112?s=21

This is real progress. Sarah Champion and Jess Phillips must have been instrumental in explaining why this model is needed to Jeremy Corbyn who had previously voiced support for full decriminalisation. Full decriminalisation legally favours the corporate prostitution industry (pimps and buyers) over the safety and dignity of the women who end up in prostitution.

The Nordic model is the name for a legal approach to prostitution where the woman (or man) selling themselves for sex is decriminalised and is not prosecuted. Support services are provided for people leaving prostitution. Pimps, brothel owners and buyers who make money out of or buy women for sex are criminalised.

This model is in use in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, and Ireland. Rates of trafficking drop when the model is implemented as it reduces the demand for buying women for sex.

More info here:
nordicmodelnow.org/what-is-the-nordic-model/

They're also strangely resistant to looking at any reports from New Zealand, where decriminalisation has been a success

I and sure the other posters who oppose the normalisation of prostitution have looked at reports from New Zealand, including reports from exited prostitutes which show that everything is very far from being ok there.

Where there are people who view a woman's body and the overriding of her consent as a commodity to be profited from it's inevitable that abuses will arise and misogynistic beliefs and practices will be perpetuated. The fact that some of these people are the women themselves doesn't alter this, regardless of the reasons for their (qualified) choices

Offred and Ereshkigal You make many good points. I don't really want to take (and then defend) a position on policy because I'm so very pessimistic about it. Today my position is mostly (to paraphrase another poster in another thread): Men, sort your shit out.

Thank you. Yes we can agree on that entirely. As I said I have been where you are now.

Yes, decriminalisation seems to operate as a way of legitimising all sorts of organised crime (like buying real estate has been but on steroids) TBH and once it happens then the market has control, the economy comes to depend on it and taxes are made from it which means that politicians look the other way when traffickers present women for licences.

Then everybody becomes beholden to pretending that it is a wonderful success and since many of the women suffering the most are immigrants and for the rest their livelihoods depend on not speaking up, nobody cares.

I and sure the other posters who oppose the normalisation of prostitution have looked at reports from New Zealand, including reports from exited prostitutes which show that everything is very far from being ok there.

Yes.

There was a trial of this many moons ago in a couple of cities in the UK, and after a couple of Judges, high ranking Police etc got picked up its strangely got dropped.

No idea why!

Sorry, Brazen, but I seriously doubt that most prostitutes are doing that as a career choice. I live in Mexico and the pimps woe young girls, carry them off and a few months later they either end up dead or in New York. I do not believe in the Happy Hooker. If it is such an attractive, viable career for a woman, why the need to trick, deceive and kidnap?

Oh god Keith Vaz

I tried to find it the other day for another thread

He was recorded saying of one of the young men, that he had not worked as a prostitute before, and Keith Vaz said something about "breaking him in".

That's utterly fucking disgusting. It has really violent / unpleasant undertones.

And yet our dear Labour leader said that this was his personal life, so none of anyone's business, and did not impact on his impartiality leading this committee looking into prostitution.

Ha fucking HA.

It's always the men looking out for each other isn't it.

Oh whoops missed page 2!

My comment is in response to something someone said about 80 years ago!

twitter.com/channel4news/status/1015232544135172097

I too think looking at it from a perspective of individual choice is misguided. We have laws to protect everyone in society. Men purchasing the use of a woman's body for sex is one of the most vile manifestations of misogyny and patriarchy that there is, in my opinion. A society that condones this as acceptable or simply just inevitable is a society that hates women.

We have laws about minimum wage to protect workers. There are a lot of people who would be willing to work for less than minimum wage, whether that be because they are desperate, privileged enough to not need the money, have a passion for a field of work that is hard to get into, whatever. If we look at the issue on an individual basis, Jeff is willing to work for less than minimum wage and Peter is happy to employ him on those terms, so what's the problem? Jeff and Peter are happy, but the problems are pretty obvious when you zoom out just a tiny bit. Allowing Peter to pay Jeff less than minimum wage opens the door to exploitation of all workers and Peter should be prosecuted (not Jeff) because he is being an exploitative shit regardless of how much Peter wants to accept that exploitation.

People get tied up in knots over whether prostitutes are 'happy' and doing it of their own free will, as if this is the key to the whole discussion. But sometimes consent isn't the be all and end all. There are a huge number of things that I cannot legally consent to, so I don't buy the argument that as long as people are selling sex of their own free will, there's no problem.

In my view, allowing people (almost exclusively men) to buy sex from other people (the majority of whom are women) harms all women and girls. I certainly don't want prostitution to be visible in society. I don't want it to be even slightly socially acceptable to buy sex. My heart breaks when I think of my daughter finding out about prostitution, which of course one day she will. What kind of message does the entire concept of the 'industry' send to her (and me and all other females) about our value and the power dynamic between men and women in our society?

Cardsforkittens
I think decriminalisation is the 'least worst' approach. But it would need to be accompanied by broader social change that alleviates women's poverty and addresses the ubiquitous sexualisation of women by men
Absolutely! The way I've put this before amounts to "the world isn't ready for legal prostitution" but what I mean is what you said.

Just to add, personally I am highly sceptical of any claim that more than a very small minority of prostitutes have not been coerced, traumatised, groomed or outright enslaved into the industry. But as I say, even if the vast majority had entered as a completely free choice, I still don't think people should be allowed to buy sex.

I look at the prostituted women of Liverpool who sell sex for £4 a pop and that un managed zone in Leeds where women and girls are prepositioned on the street going about their daily lives, and I think of how in Germany I was sexually harassed on the street more times in two weeks than I am in a year in the UK and wonder just how much the German state's approval of prostitution has endorsed the view of women as public property that underpins street harassment, and I conclude that we need to cut demand and stigmatise punters for the sake of all women and girls by whatever means works. The "happy hookers" are not the only people with skin in the game, all women and girls are affected.

Let me repeat the second part again, then: But as I say, even if the vast majority had entered as a completely free choice, I still don't think people should be allowed to buy sex.

Also People get tied up in knots over whether prostitutes are 'happy' and doing it of their own free will, as if this is the key to the whole discussion.

I won't tie myself up in knots about it as I don't consider it to be the main point. I also would not put 1000 happy hookers above 1 woman who was there against her will.

All these statistics and surveys are all well and good, but how many women who have been trafficked or coerced into prostitution are able to answer them? And how do we know that anyone on the internet claiming to be a prostitute and happy with their job is who they say they are? 130 people saying on a thread on here that they are prostitutes and it’s totally their own free choice does not mean it is true, or that their experience is representative of all prostitutes or even a majority. I simply do not believe that the majority of prostitutes are selling sex through choice. I know of a woman who worked as a secretary in a brothel, she was well aware that the girls working there were trafficked, and has told some horror stories of new girls being drugged and ‘broken in’ by the male criminals running the operation, one of whom was her partner. The fact that we have trafficked people who are enslaved working in nail bars and used to grow cannabis in residential properties does not leave me with much hope that there aren’t thousands of women who are sex slaves in this country. Yes it would be good to be able to consult the people whom would be affected most by a change in legislation, but the women and children who are suffering aren’t going to be filling in surveys, if they could even be contacted. I would hazard a guess that the women who work as prostitutes and have the time and ability to come onto mumsnet and answer government surveys are not the ones we need to be listening to.

Even this article that is critical of Nordic Model acknowledges that 6% of brothel prostitutes are trafficked and 13% fell coerced. If 6% of people in any other job were trafficked, there'd be outcry.

@zurichgnome whose choices are entirely free?

Who you take to bed is one circumstance where your choices should be absolutely free and uncoerced. Endorsing otherwise is endorsing rape culture.

Who you take to bed is one circumstance where your choices should be absolutely free and uncoerced. Endorsing otherwise is endorsing rape culture. And as soon as money changes hands, the decision to have sex is transactional, it's no longer truly free.

FFS my job is pretty shit at times but I'm not expected to risk pregnancy, STIs, thrush, bacterial vaginosis, cystitis, jaw cramp, split lip, vaginal tearing, and anal tearing several times per day and that risk list assumes that the punter isn't violent. Even Belle Du Jour hinted at this when she wrote out her typical chemists shopping list in her book, which included thrush cream and cystitis remedies. No other job expects this, hmm maybe that's because prostitution is exploitation based on sex class and not an actual job.

I find the idea that prostitution would be ok in a world where men didn't sexualise and dehumanise women baffling. If men didn't sexualise and dehumanise women there would be no prostitution. And if prostitution was introduced into a world without sexualisation and dehumanisation of women, then sexualisation and dehumanisation of women would commence in that world.

We will not succeed in persuading men that we are not sexual commodities for their use if we simultaneously legitimise their use of us as sexual commodities.

Thank you Tallulah that captures what is so wrong about the arguments whether legalisation or decriminalisation.

I'm a fairly regular poster on MN. Feel free to check my post history if you have doubts about me.

I love the suggestion that I'm unfamiliar with you and that your past posts are any more convincing! The sentence I picked out was more than enough to know that, regardless of whether you are who you say you are, you are not the person to be consulted when it comes to the fate of the majority of prostituted women.

It's like arguing that we shouldn't try to enact legislation about garment industry sweatshops because Savile Row tailors can love their jobs and be well paid.

Ok that video is depressing as fuck. Surely we as a society can be doing better than this? I may be for men’s rights, but perpetuating that sort of misery is a right we can do without.