Big change in Germany's prostitution law: Nordic Model gets parliamentary majority

[Lamahaha]

I can't find a link right now (I'm sitting in an airport!) But I just read this Facebook post and thought I'd share some of it.

"Yesterday was so unreal. And it took me some hours to realize I am NOT dreaming. After years of fighting against windmills for the first time a parliamentary majority for the implementation of the “Nordic Model” in Germany became thinkable: The German CDU came out with a statement in favor of following the recommendation of the European Parliament, referring to corresponding “considerations of the Social Democrat Party” to do so.

I mean we are not talking about ANY country, but the country where prostitution is so deeply engrained into the national identity. And that’s not all: How weird it feels, when they quote your feminist stances and make it their own. When they make clear they understood that there is a wrong distinction between human trafficking/forced prostitution on the one hand and so called “self-determined voluntary” prostitution on the other – and say they want a better society for all… "

I think it's pretty huge! Perhaps someone else can find links, too fiddly on phone!

Subject:
Prostitution laws change in Germany due to efforts by feminists

Message:
I can't find a link right now (I'm sitting in an airport!) But I just read this Facebook post and thought I'd share some of it.

"Yesterday was so unreal. And it took me some hours to realize I am NOT dreaming. After years of fighting against windmills for the first time a parliamentary majority for the implementation of the “Nordic Model” in Germany became thinkable: The German CDU came out with a statement in favor of following the recommendation of the European Parliament, referring to corresponding “considerations of the Social Democrat Party” to do so.

I mean we are not talking about ANY country, but the country where prostitution is so deeply engrained into the national identity. And that’s not all: How weird it feels, when they quote your feminist stances and make it their own. When they make clear they understood that there is a wrong distinction between human trafficking/forced prostitution on the one hand and so called “self-determined voluntary” prostitution on the other – and say they want a better society for all… "

I think it's pretty huge! Perhaps someone else can find links, too fiddly on phone!

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MsMelanie, quite a way upthread: I do not believe that women who enter sex work of their own violation should have their bodies policed. It’s their body, their choice.

Now that's what I call a Freudian slip.

Nope. Simply spell check.

The word is Volition.

But you keep on nit picking and not listening to the people that really matter in all of this - the sex workers.

This is really great news, thanks for sharing Lamahaha.
The Nordic Model on prostitution is so much better for society, prostitutes and women in general.

I hope it goes through.

msmelanie

You're hardly vulnerable though are you?

Those are the sex workers' voices I'm interested in. The ones who are at risk.

A lot of sex workers don’t actually have sex. They don’t have pimps. They advertise online, work by themselves for themselves free from a pimp in the background.

Sounds wonderful. I'd like a job like that - and I'd be a 'lady' as well! No end to the benefits.

No, I’m not vulnerable. I’m interested in what sex workers actually want. Their voices should be heard and I am supportive of them.

Ladies on the street and trafficked women and girls are totally different because they are primarily drug addicted and/or coerced and exploited. No decent person would agree that is okay, because it’s not.

"Their voices should be heard and I am supportive of them."

And who on this board do you think isn't?

And stop calling them ladies.

@CharlieParley
*“Your slight of hand in bringing in those who are not prostitutes when that is however what the entire thread is about, is noted and rejected.

We are talking about the law that regulates prostitution in Germany. We are discussing the protection and needs of the women whose actual bodies are bought and sold and touched and used and abused. What your friends whose bodies are not bought and sold and touched and used and abused demand is therefore both irrelevant and immaterial to that discussion.”*

Brava! Could not have said it better myself. So tired of the dilution of prostitution into “sex work”

Hands up anyone who believes the 'Ms' 😂

This is essential reading...
Consent, Coercion, and Culpability: Is Prostitution Stigmatized Work or an Exploitive and Violent Practice Rooted in Sex, Race, and Class Inequality?. By Rachel Moran1 · Melissa Farley2

At www.spaceintl.org/assets/Uploads/MoranFarley2019.pdf

You are discussing them without listening to them. That is the issue

Sex workers are the only relevant people to listen to.

It has lots of peer researched facts like this about the link between prostitution and trafficking, and % with a pimp (not all pimps are male btw)

“Cho, Dreher, and Neumayer (2013) found that across 150 countries, when prostitution was legal, there was increased trafficking. Similar overlaps between legal prostitution and trafficking have been reported in the European Union (Jakobsson & Kotsadam, 2013; Leem & Persson, 2013; Osmanaj, 2014) and in the U.S. (Heiges, 2009). In a review of reports on adults in prostitution, 84% were trafficked or under pimp control (Farley et al., 2014).“

Women have been talking to each other for years about this. The demand must stop and the so called privileged ones can continue if they choose...it's not going to be you that this affects.

Yes, the paper does include the voices of prostitutes
“ In thousands of interviews, we have heard prostituted women, men, and transwomen1 describe prostitu- tion as paid rape, voluntary slavery, signing a contract to be raped (in legal prostitution), the choice that is not a choice, and as domestic violence taken to the extreme. These are more accurate descriptions of prostitution than consenting sex or unpleasant work. Sex buyers’ descriptions of prostitution mir- ror the women’s: “renting an organ for ten minutes,” “like a cup of coffee—when you’re done with it you throw it out,” “I use them like I might use any other amenity, a restaurant, or a public convenience,” “You get what you pay for without the ‘no.’”

@MsMelanie
Not all sex workers voices are relevant. If they’re not prostitutes (selling actual sex), it’s not relevant.

MsMelanie, who do you think the majority of prostituted women ARE?

The "happy hooker" types you say you are friends with... or the women and girls who are trafficked, drug addicted, and on the street?

@MsMelanie Take the Nordic Model in Ireland. Two workers recently imprisoned for working together. Hmmm thought that was getting decriminalised.
And not to mention the sex worker support groups manned by the former organisation RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES!

The brothel keeping legislation is from the 1993 sexual offences act, and in the 2017 Act the penalties were increased. It is not a result of the introduction of the Nordic Model legislation in Ireland. www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PQ-13-06-2019-94

As I said, it is irrelevant for the purposes of our discussion, what those demand whose bodies are not bought and sold. The Nordic Model improves the lives of the most vulnerable and those are the women we are concerned with.

Just as we have safeguarding rules that apply even to those children and adults who are perfectly safe, because these rules protect the children who are not safe from the adults who are a danger.

It is the same with many laws and safeguarding frameworks. We legislate against worst case scenarios to protect the vulnerable from those who wpuld harm them and for the sake of the former all those who aren't the latter accept that certain restrictions apply to all of us.

As for your mandatory health checks and all - posters here mostly don't know, but this sounds far more odious than it is. If you're on the pill for instance, you go and see your gynacologist every six months. Mandatory health checks also apply to other types of work. And some include mandatory mental health checks, too. Never heard anyone affected by that whinge as much about it as you to whom these checks don't even apply.

In this respect, btw, the German authorities are indeed treating prostitution like any other employment. Rules and regulations relevant to the line of work and stringently enforced.

And as I also said before, we are listening to the voices of prostitutes. It's just that you don't hear them because you don't like what they're saying. Terribly arrogant of you, is it not?

We on the other hand hear and acknowledge dissenting voices. However, we focus on helping the most vulnerable. You and your friends are I'm-alright-Jacking all over this debate though, arguing against a model that protects those who suffer most because it affects your friends' bottom line. I cannot imagine a more misogynistic attitude than actively campaigning against protecting the most vulnerable for the sake of the "privileged" as you call them.

Regarding Germany
“Sporer (2013) described the consequences of the 2002 Ger- man law on prostitution. Pimps moved impoverished women to German cities from Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. While police charged pimps with extortion, kidnapping, and traffick- ing, the women were so terrified of the criminals that they were only willing to testify after the pimps were jailed. Even before 2002, prostitution was considered to be “against good morals and customs”—“sittenwidrig.” Although prostituted women were marginalized, they were not entirely devoid of rights. Some criminal laws protected her; the law protected her freedom of action while prostituting. If someone tried to control her, to tell her what sex acts she had to perform, how much she had to charge, how long she was to work, or how she was supposed to be dressed, then that person could be charged with crimes of pimping, trafficking or the aiding and abetting of prostitution and they risked a high prison sentence. Sporer further explained:
The new Prostitution Act of 2002, turned the same actions, the very same rules set by brothel operators and pimps, from punishable offences into legal practices— overnight. The new law gave them a “right of direction” [Weisungsrecht, the right of legal employers to exercise authority over employees and to issue binding instruc- tions] over women in prostitution. They can now legally give orders to the women. Only the worst kind of orders, e.g. that a women has to engage in specific sexual prac- tices with a specific punter, remain illegal. Practically all other forms of influence are well within the limits of this law. They are now part of the “right of direction” exerted by those who run the brothel. The women are no longer sufficiently protected from these people, and for legal reasons, the police can no longer intervene.
This is precisely what we had to experience in the course of investigations against a brothel run in Augsburg a few years ago. We had found the women had been subjected to very strict rules and regulations by the brothel opera- tors. For example, they had to be at the disposal of the punters for 13 hours running, they weren’t allowed to leave the brothel earlier, they had to walk around stark naked, they weren’t even allowed to decide on the prices for their services. Prices were unified and set. They some- times had to offer unprotected sex. And they had to pay fines to the brothel for violation of any of these rules. These conditions are degrading and are of course incom- patible with human dignity. But the court declared all of this to be legal now, because of the new Prostitution Act. It has led to a massive erosion of women’s rights. What has developed is a legally instituted relationship of superiority and subordination that is being exploited by profiteers in the sex trade. You could therefore say it is a new form of slavery, under state supervision.” (Sporer, 2013, pp. 2–3)
Sporer, H. (2013). Reality of prostitution. Brussels: European Women’s Lobby. Retrieved from: www.womenlobby.org/IMG/pdf/ helmutsporer1oct2013englishfinal.pdf.

Perhaps I’ve just never been over the village bridge, but I’m struggling to imagine the social circles a person would move in to be friends with not just one, but “several” dungeon owners

The thing about the choicey-choosy model of empowered prostitution being a feminist act is so blah. If it’s so great, why do women have to be trafficked into it at all? You don’t get huge swathes of people being trafficked into being nurses, or accountants, or working in Tesco.

@DoctorAllCome

It is relevant because what is deemed to be sexual services isn’t just about women having sex with men!

My friends are relevant if it affects them which it does. They have made the choice to do this line of work. Those who choose to do it shouldn’t be prevented from doing it. They should be allowed to work with one another rather than being forced to work alone.

The Nordic Model is a disgrace once you scratch the surface.

@MsMelanie I agree that women in prostitution working together for safety should not be criminalised. Legislators need to look at how to balance the need to uphold brothel-keeping as an offence in order to not enable criminal gangs/pimps with how to respond to this practice by women.

It doesn't at all follow despite your assertions that the Nordic model is a disgrace.

I read years ago an article by a German priest (though he may have been Irish, working in Germany) about all the babies dumped in orphanages because of a craze for sex with pregnant women - punters saw it online, and wanted to try it out.

The human cost of prostitution is enormous. Sick of the bullshit Happy Hooker cheerleaders.

...you can't even watch a history programme without seeing the results. On a programme about Hadrian's Wall, they talked about the graveyard of babies that was found, which showed that the building it was attached to was a brothel, the babies would be killed as inconvenient.