Nordic model demand in Daily Mail

[LadyVymes]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9482555/MARY-HARRINGTON-social-justice-warriors-backing-men-pay-sex.html

"Some people argue that the Nordic Model does not fully decriminalise prostituted women in Sweden, because the police pursue them for sharing flats under laws prohibiting procuring. This article, based on information from legal scholar, Gunilla S. Ekberg,[1] explains why this line of argument is erroneous."

https://nordicmodelnow.org/myths-about-prostitution/myth-police-prosecute-prostituted-women-for-sharing-flats-in-sweden/

The problem with “safety in numbers”

"This means that in reality renting and maintaining a business premises is unlikely to be within the reach of the majority of independent prostituted women. So in practice, it would generally only be possible for a group of them to operate from a business premises if someone put up the money for the purchase or lease.
Typically this would be done by someone for profit, meaning they would be profiting from the prostitution of the women operating from the premises – which is abhorrent when we consider the damagee it causes. Moreover, it would contravene Article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAWW), a UN treaty that the UK has ratified and is bound by."

https://nordicmodelnow.org/2017/09/07/the-problem-with-safety-in-numbers/

nordicmodelnow.org/2017/09/07/the-problem-with-safety-in-numbers

I see a lot of unsourced speculation thrown around on some articles from this site.

"Suppose both women have a punter, one of whom becomes aggressive. Even if the other woman hears, what is she supposed to do? When prostitution is liberalised, the policing of it is generally deprioritised, meaning the police are likely to take even longer to respond to a call for help."

Since violence is illegal, you would call the police if a client is being aggressive or abusive, and at least under complete decriminalisation sex workers in a brothel would be able to call the police if needed without worrying if they will be arrested themselves for working together.

The article doesn't give any source for its claim that "police will take longer to respond to call a for help from a sex worker who has an abusive/aggressive client under 'liberalised' laws'. Just seems complete speculation. Violence is violence and I find it very hard to believe the police would not grant such calls the priority they merit if sexwork was legalised or decriminalised.

Since violence is illegal, you would call the police if a client is being aggressive or abusive, and at least under complete decriminalisation sex workers in a brothel would be able to call the police if needed without worrying if they will be arrested themselves for working together.

Just being involved in prostitution puts women at greater risk of violence.

"Just being involved in prostitution puts women at greater risk of violence."

Regardless what exactly the risk is, why would you make it even riskier with criminalisation? In Nordic Model France, 10 sex workers were murdered in 6 months. And why would you push for a model like the Nordic Model which criminalises women for working together?

www.pion-norge.no/aktuelt/more-than-10-sex-workers-have-been-killed-in-6-months/

How can you argue that removing all legal checks on prostitution will make women safer and reduce violence when it is coming into contact with pimps and punters that puts them at risk of violence in the first place? Making it more widespread increases the risk.

To even more women.

Working together can help keep women safe. The Nordic Model makes this illegal, decriminalisation does not. Removing this "legal check" would make it safer, as well as stopping giving women criminal records.

The Nordic Model helps to reduce prostitution (as seen in Norway) and therefore the number of women subjected to violent men.

www.hivlawandpolicy.org/sites/default/files/FinalReport-Risks%2CRights%26Health-EN.pdf page 38

That isn't what this is saying re Sweden at least:

"Sex trade estimated to be the same as pre-law levels".

"The Swedish State Criminal Department warns that the sex trade may now be more violent"

"Despite over 2,000 arrest, only 2 client convictions in 13 years who received just low fines."

"Sweden’s Alliance of Counties says that resources for social work are scarce, as the money has been siphoned to policing"

So in Sweden it's business as usual for prostitution, except it may now be more violent. Clients can pay for sex rest assured that it's practically impossible to get convicted for it. Sex workers are still criminalised for working together, they may also be made homeless because of the part which makes it illegal to rent to a prostitute, and there's also less funding for support services because the money goes towards trying to enforce all this.

Sound good? Or could this be why so many are supporting decrim instead?

"Suppose both women have a punter, one of whom becomes aggressive. Even if the other woman hears, what is she supposed to do? When prostitution is liberalised, the policing of it is generally deprioritised, meaning the police are likely to take even longer to respond to a call for help."

The whole point of two women working together is that they only let one man into the flat at a time. Obviously if they let two men in there would be no point. He is outnumbered if anything happens.

Decriminalising prostitution so that there are no laws pertaining to it other than those that apply to other businesses a) does not reduce prostitution but instead creates a bigger market for it b) acts as approval of prostitution as a legitimate trade (which lets face it the sex work is work mantra was designed to do) which generates money from the sale of women's bodies, lowering the status of ALL women in society c) In practice benefits from pimps and brothels above all, as New Zealand demonstrates. This is why there is vocal backing for decriminalisation from er, pimps and brothel owners.

"The application form for opening a brothel in New Zealand is just two pages long: three pages shorter than the form needed to adopt a dog or cat from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home...

... One of the many survivors of the sex trade I met during my research is Sabrinna Valisce, who volunteered with the NZPC over a 25-year period. Valisce campaigned alongside her colleagues for blanket decriminalisation, but now regrets doing so. “I thought it would give more power and rights to the women,” she told me, “but I soon realised the opposite was true.”
According to Valisce, decriminalisation benefitted the punters and brothel owners rather than those selling sex within them."

www.independent.co.uk/voices/prostitution-decriminalisation-new-zealand-holland-abuse-harm-commercialisation-a7878586.html

I'm not convinced decriminalisation is the answer. I have felt for a long time that more support groups to help women out of prostitution should be the biggest step. Which includes more funding for women's refuges.

"This is why there is vocal backing for decriminalisation from er, pimps and brothel owners."

Have you had a look at the list of signatures on the DecrimNow letter which is agains the Nordic Model and in favour of decriminalisation?

Posted message too soon. Here is the link: decrimnow.org.uk/open-letter-on-the-nordic-model

And you do realise that in many cases of women working together for safety, the "brothel owners" are in fact the women themselves?

@MargaritaPie

"This is why there is vocal backing for decriminalisation from er, pimps and brothel owners."

Have you had a look at the list of signatures on the DecrimNow letter which is agains the Nordic Model and in favour of decriminalisation?

This is called institutional capture by the SWIW lobby. There's no reason why half those organisations need to take a view on prostitution at all. They're certainly not doing it because they have demonstrable track records on women's rights. They've signed because they've been lobbied into signing.

What's Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF)'s pedigree in the fight for women's rights? Or the Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU)? Dr Sophie Lewis, author of ‘Full Surrogacy Now’ believes women's bodies are generational vessels for rent. There are all the usual TWAW proponents on there too. It's a social justice warrior's charter - influenced by a thrust in academia towards breaking down social norms and barriers. Do you know who benefits when that happens? Men.

There are also human rights orgs, anti-trafficking orgs, HIV and health orgs (who understand that criminalisation models such as the Nordic model leads to less use of condoms for an example), feminist orgs, rape+sexual violence orgs etc. Not to mention actual prostitutes themselves.

Interesting how out of all the signatures you choose to pick out Locomotive Engineers and Firemen and a bakery/food union.

Interesting how out of all the signatures you choose to pick out Locomotive Engineers and Firemen and a bakery/food union.

There are some organisations of the type you mention there and not others. We know about the dubious origins of Amnesty's position on the decriminalisation policy. That:

(a) that the policy was originally proposed by Douglas Fox, a pimp who has a powerful vested interest in a thriving prostitution industry; and (b) that Amnesty’s International Secretariat had decidedd_ the policy approach in 2013, before it commissioned the research and consulted with members.

nordicmodelnow.org/myths-about-prostitution/myth-amnestys-research-in-norway-has-proved-the-nordic-model-is-harmful-to-sex-workers/

But do answer the question about Locomotive Engineers and Firemen and a bakery/food union - why on earth should we be taking advice from them on the safest model for prostitution?!

@Flywheel

That's a good article. It astonishes me how anyone can watch what has unfolded in Germany and still defend decriminalisation.

And great that she calls out the absurdity of organisations that sell themselves as "progressive" which are pushing for the exploitation of the most vulnerable. There should be no doubt that these orgs are driven by a misogynistic agenda.

Another Mary Harrington masterpiece in the Daily Mail. Have the Daily Mail taken a feminist turn recently (great, if so. It reaches the masses)?

(a) that the [Amnesty Int] policy was originally proposed by Douglas Fox

False.
www.amnesty.org.uk/douglas-fox
"...has had zero input on Amnesty's draft policy on sex work. Claims that he did are without foundation."

"But do answer the question about Locomotive Engineers and Firemen and a bakery/food union - why on earth should we be taking advice from them on the safest model for prostitution?!"

I don't know. By all means ignore their signature on the DecrimNow letter, but instead focus on the signatures that are from more relevant people and orgs (see my last post).

@PearPicking, get your info on sex work the Daily Mail if you want to. Personally I would prefer something a little more credible.

Oh there's more...

Why is a pimp helping to shape Amnesty’s sex trade policy?

"Amnesty’s draft policy cites support from “human rights organisations” for the call to decriminalise brothels. “Most significantly,” it states, “a large number of sex worker organisations and networks, including the Global Network of Sex Work Projects [NSWP], support the decriminalisation of sex work.” Yet in March this year Alejandra Gil, the NSWP’s former vice-president, was jailed for 15 years for sex trafficking.

This isn’t just one unfortunate reference to the group, a singular blip in an otherwise scrupulously sourced document. Amnesty’s draft policy also cites as evidence a report written by the NSWP; a report annexe written by the UNAids “advisory group on HIV and sex work” – which is co-chaired by the NSWP; and a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in which Gil is personally acknowledged as one of the “experts” who helped develop its recommendations. The organisation’s logo is on the report’s front cover, alongside those of the WHO, UNAaids and the United Nations Population Fund.

What this exposes is how staggeringly successful Gil’s group has been in pushing its agenda to legitimise commercial sexual exploitation through some of the world’s top human rights institutions. Known as the “Madam of Sullivan”, Gil is reported to have been at the centre of a pimping operation in Mexico City, sexually exploiting around 200 women. What is crucial to recognise, however, is that Gil didn’t have to hide her vested interests as a pimp in her NSWP role. The group campaigns for pimping and brothel-keeping to be recognised as ordinary work. According to NSWP policy, as a pimp Gil was a “sex worker” whose precise role was a “manager”. So why did UNAids award this group a formal advisory role?"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/22/pimp-amnesty-prostitution-policy-sex-trade-decriminalise-brothel-keepers?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

How this for an idea... not sure it is the solution but a very simple first step towards better legislation?

Make any man who wishes to use a prostitute go through a short government run education programme about issues relating to prostitution, then go on a publicly accessible register of Johns. Anyone using a prostitute who is not on the register is committing a serious crime.

@JediGnot,

I imagine if that was set-up not a single client(or "John" as the Americans like to say for slang) would entertain the system. Noone would bother with it in practice and it would be the same as if prostitution were illegal.

It wouldn't be enforceable anyway. In Sweden they only managed to convict 2 clients for the paying for sex part of the Nordic Model in a span of 13 years. This is because they pled guilty(sex workers are unwilling to testify against their clients). All a client has to do is deny he paid for sex and the police have to let him go.

www.hivlawandpolicy.org/sites/default/files/FinalReport-Risks%2CRights%26Health-EN.pdf p38

Introducing laws which just can't be enforced isn't going to achieve anything. Britain does have a law since 2008 which makes it illegal to pay for sex with a trafficked person(even if the client was unaware), and I understand there have been literally zero convictions for this.