Nordic model demand in Daily Mail

[LadyVymes]

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

If the Nordic Model is so great why are such a large and growing list of orgs signing a letter (the one by DecrimNow) against it?

Could it be because under the Nordic Model sex workers are still criminalised for working together and can lose their home because the Nordic Model forces their landlords to evict them if they are renting. In Sweden there were only 2 client convictions (who received a low fine) over a 13 year period because sex workers are unwilling to testify against their clients. Attempting to police the Nordic Model costs more which means less funding for Social Work and other support services. Condoms are still used as evidence same as if prostitution were illegal outright which can increase the risk of condoms not being used.

Pimping is already currently illegal in Britain.

"The open letter (from DecrimNow) cited support for full decriminalisation from Amnesty Internationall and the World Health Organisation (WHO)) without mentioning that these organisations were advised by a pimp who has since been sentenced to 15 years in prisonn for sex trafficking, that their research is generally of very poor qualityy, and that their position has been robustly critiquedd_."

It's dissected here:

"Statement on the DecrimNow open letter opposing the Nordic Model

At the end of last week, DecrimNow, a lobby group for the full decriminalisation of the sex trade in the UK, published an open letterr to Westminster MPs calling on them to “stand up against continuing attempts to introduce Nordic modell legislation into Parliament”. The open letter was signed by an impressive array of academics and organisations.
We were immediately contacted by a number of our followers who were disturbed by this development and wanted to know how to respond. We are therefore making this brief statement about why the open letter is full of flaws and providing suggestions about what you can do about it.
What’s wrong with the open letter?
The letter says, “trafficking isn’t caused by the demand for sex, but by people’s poverty and lack of options: people are made vulnerable to traffickers for a number of reasons.”
Sex trafficking is enormously more lucrative than any other form of human trafficking – ten times more lucrative according to a recent studyy_ – precisely because so many men are prepared to pay for sexual access to vulnerable women and girls. To suggest that cashing in on this bonanza is not a cause of sex trafficking is naive in the extreme.
Yes, poverty and brutal immigration laws cause large numbers of people, particularly women and children, to be trapped in situations where they are vulnerable to traffickers who want to use them as a meal ticket. But they wouldn’t be such a great meal ticket if so many men weren’t such enthusiastic prostitution users.
The solution to poverty and brutal immigration laws is not opening up prostitution but tackling these inequities head on.
The open letter’s aspiration to make ‘sex workers’ safer is an oxymoron. Prostitution in all its forms is inherently dangerouss and can never be brought into line with even the most basic health and safety guideliness.
What’s more, all the evidencee_ suggests that prostitution-buying brutalises men, making them more entitled, and more likely to rape and harass women and girls and to sexually abuse children. This means that anything that gives the green light to the prostitution system (as full decriminalisation certainly would) will inevitably lead not only to more women and girls being drawn into the sex industry where inevitably they will be harmed but also to more male violence against women and girls in the general community.
But the open letter doesn’t mention any of this. Which begs the question of whose interests they are promoting? It certainly doesn’t look like they are promoting the interests of the most vulnerable women and girls. They seem to be advocating prostitution as the solution to their poverty and disadvantage, and that that should be sanctioned and recognised in law and policy.
Is this really what we should be aiming for? A world where poor women and girls have no alternative but to prostitute themselves in order to survive? And the corollary that large numbers of men have sufficient disposable incomes to buy sexual access to them?
That doesn’t sound like a world I want to live in. Surely it will lead to an ever-greater divide between women and men."

Article continues here...

nordicmodelnow.org/2021/04/15/response-to-the-decrimnow-open-letter-opposing-the-nordic-model/

Pimping is already currently illegal in Britain.

It won't be under decriminalisation, which again underlines my point. This move would legitimise and lend tacit approval to the sale of women for men's sexual pleasure. A trade which lowers the status of all women and is hugely lucrative for sex traffickers and will remain so if prostitution is decriminalised.

"The letter says, “trafficking isn’t caused by the demand for sex, but by people’s poverty and lack of options: people are made vulnerable to traffickers for a number of reasons.”"

I agree. If poverty could be resolved, then that prob wouldn't mean the end of prostitution but it would certainly reduce it and ensure those who do sell sexual services are doing so on their own free will and not because they are desperate for cash. So why is the focus not on poverty?

Also what I'd like to know is that if the Nordic Model deters some clients and the sex workers make less money, who is going to compensate them for the money they would have made otherwise? Will those who campaigned for the Nordic Model give them money?

Sweden has shown that the buying-sex part of the Nordic Model just isn't enforceable, with a client being convicted on average just once every 6.5 years. Word of the complete lack of client convictions will spread and Swedish men who buy sex will know there's absolutely nothing to worry about re the Nordic Model. A quick Google search for "Stockholm escorts" reveals there are still plenty of sex worker details online for men in Sweden to contact. The Swedish sex trade is still going strong, the Nordic Model isn't the magic bullet it's made out to be by some.

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

It is fundamentally offensive to view women as objects to be bought and sold for male pleasure.

Women are not bought and sold in sex work. Women sell a service as do many people.

The sort of sex work we should end up with is where 2 or 3 women can work together from a flat. They make the rules and take the profits for themselves. They don't let a man into the flat if they don't like the look of him. They don't do anal or sex without a condom, unless they are one of the minority who choose to do them for a lot more money. Could be just for a favoured regular client. There is never more than one man in the flat so they are safe.

There are already places like this in Britain. The 'walk up' flats in Soho are like this. The problem is that it's not legal. So that's where the pimps and the traffickers come in. They do the illegal stuff so the women aren't going to be arrested. If there's a police raid they say truthfully 'I am not running a brothel'.

I was listening to talkradio with James Whale last night and they were talking about sex work. There was a woman who has written a book about trafficking. It's called something like 'The Truth about Trafficking'. I wish I could remember her name because it sounds like a good book on the subject. Anyone else hear it?

The sort of sex work we should end up with is where 2 or 3 women can work together from a flat.

That is your opinion. As a feminist I am entitled to view prostitution as the sale of women to men for men's sexual pleasure, which I do. I believe this degrades the position of women in wider society. It is interesting that you never address that point.

The Swedish sex trade is still going strong, the Nordic Model isn't the magic bullet it's made out to be by some.

You seem to be wilfully misunderstanding me to promote your agenda. My point is not that the Nordic Model will eradicate sex work (although it has been demonstrated to reduce it in Nordic countries and that is why the legislation remains popular in Sweden and Norway). My point is the Nordic Model is the least worst option because - I accept that you can't eradicate it altogether, although I wish we could for the benefit of all women - at least it sends a message to pimps and punters that this is illegal activity and unacceptable to wider society. In this way the men procuring women are stigmatised, rather than the women themselves. I do not want to live in a society which legitimises prostitution by removing all laws relating to it so that women can be bought and sold at will with tacit approval. Your arguments against the Nordic Model have at no point convinced me that legitimising prostitution is healthy progress for women and girls. Women are not commodities.

Saw this the other day. Seems apt.

👏👏👏 Arabella

If it's a service and not herself being bought, then naturally the more experienced (i.e. older) in the trade a woman is, the more she will be able to charge. Surely?

For example, a 55 year old female lawyer with decades of experience has a higher hourly rate than a woman who has just qualified as a solicitor.

Prostitution exploits women as a class. Decriminalisation plays into the hands of those who want to profit from the exploitation of women as the situation in Germany demonstrates. Where there is low risk money to be made by gangs and criminals how much bargaining power do you really think women have. Pole dancing/table dancing clubs in the U.K. are not run in a way that prioritises the financial interests the women who work in them. So I see the Nordic model as the least bad option. Go after the supply of money into the trade i.e. the punters and send the message that buying access rights to a woman’s body is not socially acceptable.

"it has been demonstrated to reduce it in Nordic countries"

All that has been observed is that street prostitution has reduced, with the sex trade in general believed to be at the same level.

May also be explained by the fact when the Nordic Model started in Sweden it was before the internet was available for home users so there wasn't the option of taking bookings via internet as there is now.

"If it's a service and not herself being bought, then naturally the more experienced (i.e. older) in the trade a woman is, the more she will be able to charge. Surely?"

In many cases yes, mature women do often charge more than the younger.

Margarita you fail to address the wider point that decriminalisation legitimises the sex trade by removing all laws pertaining to it and this is bad for ALL women. This is because you are entirely wedded to decriminalisation for whatever reason, but you will never discuss the impact that prostitution has on lowering the status of all women if some women's role is to exist as objects for men's pleasure.

Great post Arabella!!! That post says it all.

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats I think the difficulty here is that you are basing your arguments on logic, reason and, most problematic of all, some kind of morality. What a fucking world we have become.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

If it's a service and not herself being bought, then naturally the more experienced (i.e. older) in the trade a woman is, the more she will be able to charge. Surely?

Do you think that being a waitress is a real job? What about an entertainer? What about a lorry driver? How do you think a 55 year old lorry driver gets treated?

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

The whole point of the Nordic model is to eliminate prostitution. That is what they said it would do. If it doesn't do that then women suffer indefinitely from arrest and eviction. It just goes on forever.

You say that it has been reduced in Nordic countries. The usual statistic that is used to demonstrate that is a drop between 13% and 8% for the proportion of men who pay for sex. That is not the proportion of men who pay for sex though, it is something different, and it went back up to more than 10%. They don't tell you that though.

We know the figures for the proportion of men who pay for sex in Sweden. It went up from 1.3% to 1.8% in the same period. All of these figures are in the Mujaj and Netscher study of 2015. It's true that the figures went down after the 2008 financial crisis, but that's because of the financial crisis not the 1999 law.

If you're talking about the number of street prostitutes, that dropped to near zero in 1999 and gradually returned till in the capital two thirds had returned.

Street prostitution in Denmark and Norway increased, so that counts as a success. However, in London there is very little street prostitution now. None in Argyle Square or Tooting Bec Common as there used to be. There's supposed to be a Red Light District on Ilford Lane which is on the eastern boundary of greater London but there are no street prostitutes to be seen there in the daytime.

That's all due to ASBOs. If you want to close down a RLD it's not difficult. It's easier to find a street girl in Stockholm than in London. There are RLDs in Leeds and Manchester but why use the Swedish method when the British method works so well?

Also we know that there has been a reduction in street prostitution in Scotland, without any great efforts by the police. In the report the police accept that some of them may be working in less accessible areas and some may be working indoors: that's something the Swedish police refuse to accept.

I honestly don't want to keep repeating myself, but this is about whether or not legitimising prostitution via decriminalisation is a good thing for women and girls (it isn't). I know you want to keep repeating your propaganda about decriminalisation, go ahead. I don't buy it, but do carry on without addressing any of my key points.

What other jobs require a person to allow another to penetrate their body for ANY reason?

@HecatesCatsInFancyHats

That is your opinion. As a feminist am entitled to view prostitution as the sale of women to men for men's sexual pleasure, which I do. I believe this degrades the position of women in wider society. It is interesting that you never address that point.

There are two types of feminist. The Radical Feminist and the sex-positive (or prosex) feminist. To sex-positive feminists the idea that a woman or a woman's body is being sold doesn't make sense. What is being sold is a service. Sexual pleasure is not seen as something different in nature from any other pleasure. Music, food and sex are three of the great pleasures in life. Sex is not something that degrades people. It doesn't remove their dignity, status or honour.

Sheila Jeffreys is a Radical Feminist and was mentioned earlier in this thread. Like other Radical Feminists she believes that all women should be feminists and all feminists should not have sex with men. She is a political lesbian which doesn't necessarily mean she has sex with other women but does mean that she doesn't have sex with men. She said "all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with men."

You can also read the book 'Intercourse' by Andrea Dworkin. So you have to ask why they want to stop prostitution. Is it because they care so much about the happiness of prostitutes or is it because they think it's an easy way to stop lots of men from having sex with women?

The foreword to one version of Andrea Dworkin's book 'Intercourse' is by Ariel Levy. This quotation is from page xx.

"If the antiporn crusade was a losing battle, it was also a costly one: it divided, some would say destroyed, the women's movement. The term "prosex feminist" was coined by women who wanted to distance themselves from the antiporn faction. Of course, all feminists thought they were being prosex and fighting for freedom, but when it came to sex, freedom means different things to different people. Screaming fights became a regular element of feminist conferences in the 1980s, and perhaps the single most divisive issue was an ordinance crafted by Dworkin and MacKinnon.

In 1983, when MacKinnon was a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and Dworkin was teaching a course there on pornography at MacKinnon's invitation, the two drafted a city ordinance positioning porn as a civil rights violation. Their legislation, which would allow people to sue pornographers for damages if they could show they had suffered harm from pornography's making or use, was twice passed in Minneapolis but vetoed by the mayor. Dworkin and MacKinnon were subsequently summoned by the conservative mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana, and their legislation was signed into law in 1984 by a city council opposed to core feminist goals like legal abortion and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. It was soon overturned by federal courts, but many feminists never forgave Dworkin and MacKinnon and antiporn feminists in general for getting into bed with the right wing."

Radical Feminists still ally themselves with some very nasty people like Jim Wells the Northern Ireland evangelical and Ruhama which was started in the Irish Republic by two orders of nuns both of whom were involved in Magdalene laundries. They all share the same false statistics. They all take statistics that apply only to drug-addicted street based sex workers and pretend that it applies to all sex workers. They all exaggerate the problem of trafficking but aren't so interested in modern day slavery in all of its forms. They all want to ban prostitution, pornography and erotic dancing.

They insist that prostitution and pornography are the cause of sexual violence against women in general, for which they have not the slightest shred of evidence. No wonder they are accused of prudishness. Some people approach sexual matters with curiosity and humour, others with disgust and horror. The latter probably grew up in repressed families where sex was taboo.

People who disagree with me are prudes, etc. Not that interesting.

It doesn't injure chefs to prepare food when they're not hungry.

[Extract]

"1) No job title is threateningly flung in the faces of women and girls all over the world the way “whore” and its many synonyms in many languages are used to commit verbal abuse.

2. Prostitution is often compared to coal mining. Harms to coal miners are accidents that safety equipment aims to reduce; harms to prostituted women are intentionally inflicted on them. Pornography commonly portraysharming womenas an attractive goal for consumers.

3. Prostitution is often compared to low-paid McJob work. Fast food employees don’t need specialized social services to “help” them quit the way prostitution survivors need protecting from pimps. When prostituted women escape they are more often in the same situation as domestic violence victims, fleeing from imminent harm with only the clothes on their back and the fear of being recaptured in their minds.

4. Prostitution is often compared to cleaning toilets. Being forced by economic necessity to clean toilets every day would be deeply unpleasant but it isn’t rape and it doesn’t leave people with PTSD, sexually transmitted diseases, or unwanted pregnancies. Anyone who has both cleaned a toilet and engaged in sex could explain the vast differences in these two activities.

5. Prostitution is not service work, it is bodily exploitation. The sex, race, and age of who provides a legitimate service doesn’t matter for cashiers, plumbers, accountants, cab drivers, etc. the way it matters to prostitute-using men who won’t accept sexual services from a man’s body when they want a woman’s body or from an elderly woman’s body when they want a young girl’s body.

6. There is no occupation that can be done while the worker is unconscious. Prostitutes are often drugged, passed out from unendurable pain, or have head trauma inflicted on them before and during being sexually assaulted.

7. Prostitution is not an entertainment media profession like modeling or acting. Actresses pretend to have sex, prostituted women are not pretending having sex and the harm to their bodies and minds is evidence of exploitation, not an occupation. There is no trafficking ring forcing teenage girls to perform Shakespeare for men’s leisure.

8. Basic work safety conditions are impossible to reconcile with prostitution. Laws aboutoccupational exposure(“reasonably anticipated skin, eye, mucous membrane, or parenteral contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials”) mandate latex gloves, eye goggles, face masks, and aprons to protect employees. Prostitution can never beOSHAcompliant."

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/12/17/prostitution-not-work-crib-sheet/

Do any of these Decrim advocates ever go up to the staff at McDonald's and say "You should be sucking penises for cash instead".

I wonder why not?

Maybe because it's grossly insulting and despite the endless pretence otherwise (like pretending 50 year old prostitutes earn more money upthread), everyone knows that prostitution is inherently dangerous, unpleasant work.

@ArabellaScott

Saw this the other day. Seems apt.

It's worth a cut and keep.

everyone knows that prostitution is inherently dangerous, unpleasant work.

It really does come down to what other job role requires allowing a person to penetrate you for their pleasure. I cannot really understand anyone ignoring the uniqueness of the role and the inherent risk. There IS no comparison.