Pushing back against the so-called Nordic Model of sex work

[SnugFinch]

Hi. I'm aware that my views might not be the most popular, but I am posting here in good faith.

Many of you know that Ash Regan has been campaigning to get sex work legislation in place which follows the neo-abolitionist model, or Nordic Model. This so-called Nordic Model claims that it will punish buyers of sex work, while not criminalising sellers, and that this will benefit sex workers and stop sex trafficking.

However, this is untrue. By criminalising buyers, it ensures that the only people who will buy sex are criminals who don't care about breaking the law. And because sex workers have a smaller client pool, they have no choice but to put themselves at the mercy of these criminals, and can end up suffering violence as a result.

This so-called Nordic Model has been law in the island of Ireland for nearly a decade now, and it has made things worse for the women involved, and it has done nothing to stop sex trafficking, as the facts in this article (and the testimony of a former sex worker) prove.

https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/02/07/on-problems-with-the-nordic-model-of-prostitution/

Ash Regan's bill has been delayed for the moment, but it hasn't been defeated. There is a growing worry that what happened in Ireland could happen in Scotland. And it could extend to England and Wales as well.

Feminists should want to end violence against all women. So why is there support for the Nordic Model, which has proven to be so hazardous to female sex workers?

I'm curious as to what your thoughts are.

Well no.

Because the men - the pimps and the attackers - are criminalised.

Rather than getting away with ‘I thought she consented’ or ‘I thought she was old enough’, no one needs to prove consent or lack of. The fact of buying sex or selling someone else for sex is already a crime. In that model, attackers go to jail, victims access support.

Under the current model attackers go free (to go murder sarah everard) and victims get a criminal record.

There is a disappointing amount of abuse in response to this thread.

eatfigs asked what it would take to change my view, and I said "If there was evidence that the Nordic Model genuinely made women safer, and reduced trafficking, that would persuade me." That hasn't been provided.

The one part of the UK which does have the Nordic Model, Northern Ireland, had a review commissioned in 2019 which showed that the policy was an abject failure.

https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/justice/report-criminalisation-paying-for-sex.pdf

The evidence is against the Nordic Model. While in countries where decriminalisation has been properly implemented, the results have been good, as in New Zealand, where safety for sex workers increased.

https://www.nswp.org/sites/default/files/en_cedaw_new_zealand_shadow_report_final.pdf

The evidence favours decriminalisation.

Why is physical safety the end goal? It is the absolutely minimum women and girls expect and deserve.

How do you define "safety"? Prostituted women in "legal" brothels are not "safe" by any stretch of the imagination. They are traumatised every single day, leading to lifelong physical and mental harm.

You remind me of a guy who argued for legality of some female genital mutilation, "the less bad kind", in order to reduce instances of the most horrific practice. Unbelievably, he did this at a fundraising event to end FGM.

There is a disappointing amount of abuse in response to this thread.

Where?

@SnugFinch including this in the thread as what I hope is an interesting addition to the topic.

I’ve noticed your arguments are inherently based on a kind of free market capitalism - that people should be allowed to sell themselves if they choose.

My counter is it’s a bigger argument, about the kind of society we want to live in. I want to live in a society where we believe that people’s bodies are not a commodity. And we teach our young men that sexual consent is something to be given amongst equals, and freely (hookups, bondage, marriage - no kink shaming here), and when one person is paying the other - especially if that other person is desperate for money - then it is not a free exchange as that person is not really consenting.

I feel this is such an important principle. I don’t want to live in Afghanistan where women can’t be educated and I don’t want to live in parts of the middle east where trafficking of household staff is legal and I don’t want to live in a country where men are told it’s ok to buy women.

Think about it this way; (this is a mental example but bear with me) there are strong economic arguments that if families can’t support themselves, a person could volunteer themself to be euthenized with money paid to their family to support them afterwards. Maybe some mad scenario where rich people could pay for the fun of murdering someone. We wouldn’t consider such a monstrous idea for a moment would we? I wouldn’t want to live in a country which would allow such a thing even if free will, and contracts, and economic arguments etc etc. Because some things are just wrong. Killing people is wrong. Buying sex is wrong. Therefore it must not be tolerated. Men who do it should be watched with the utmost suspicion. They are not good guys. We must teach our sons that It. Is. Wrong. Consent. Is. Important.

Most girls and women who 'choose' to be sex workers don't, in reality, have a choice. They are either trafficked from abroad or have suffered some form of abuse as children, whether that is sexual abuse or another form which has led to extremely low self-esteem, low educational attainment difficulty making and sustaining healthy relationships.
Those girls and women deserve to have the opportunities that others have to make the most of their education, to live healthy successful independent lives, with genuine career choices open to them.

That can only be delivered by much earlier effective interventions by education, health and social services when vulnerable children are first identified.

Those interventions must be avaliable to all who need them - and yes there is a cost to the tax-payer.

Lot of quote marks here.

If a sex worker has the freedom to choose her clients, and has access to legal aid and healthcare without stigma, her experience is far less harrowing than the stigma they suffer when their income relies on violent criminals. These are the sort of clients they have to accept to survive when the Nordic Model criminalises all clients, and so stops law-abiding clients from using their services.

They are safer because they are less likely to suffer mental and physical trauma.

Read the thread. The post above you compares me to someone who promotes FGM. Another one posts that I'm either a hairy-knuckled driver or a simpering handmaid. And another said I should be "throttled" for advocating sex work. There are other examples.

It's an interesting argument, so thank you for that.

The type of society should be one of choice. Women should be free to do this if they want to, not because they have to. They are providing a service, not selling their body. They choose what to do with their body, but still have it after the service is completed.

Providing a service is different from engaging in consensual sex. You are treating the two things as the same thing. They aren't.

If prostitution hadn't been decriminalised at nights in Holbeck, he could never have even tried that defence.

What you are arguing for is not decriminalisation, but a form of regulation. The Belgian situation is a form of regulation.

We must teach our sons that It. Is. Wrong. Consent. Is. Important.

And there are some things that no human being can consent to.

Yes the hordes of men deciding the quit their medical degrees or their corporate careers or realising that “being a lawyer“ just doesn’t have the fulfilment levels, and taking up prostitution is eye-opening.

You’re assuming that a woman (or a man, either sex can be prostituted) will have access to perfect information on prospective clients. That is an impossible scenario.

You are proposing this impossible scenario in an impossible situation, where individual free choice have no implications for anyone else in society.

Meanwhile, in the real world, complicated, ugly world that we actually live in, we would be better off without prostitution of any kind

This approach reminds me of the arguments PIE types put forward about child sex abuse actually being empowering for the child. That their human rights were being breached by not being "allowed" to have sex with adult men. It's nauseating.

No.

ETA:
Also, it's the client who chooses the prostitute.

If you think someone has made a personal attack, report the post.

Considering your posts, I think you've been given an easy ride tbh.

• Decrim doesn't give prostituted women the freedom to choose punters. Her "employer", more accurately called her State-sanctioned pimp, will order her to open her legs and mouth to anyone who comes in through the door.
• "Choosing clients" implies that prostituted women have 20/20 foresight about whether a punter will turn nasty. That websites like National Ugly Mugs even exist should tell you otherwise. It also puts the responsibility on her to filter out the wrong'uns, which experience tells us will lead to her being blamed for failing to do so. Nordic Model won't stop websites like NUM, that catalogue reports of dangerous punters, from operating.
• Decrim doesn't mean that the violent men will will stop going to prostituted women. The kind of man who batters women will relish being able to pay for one easily and legally, and then claim that masochism was a service she offered.

There is no way to make prostitution safe for prostituted women. None. Not workers co-ops, not decrim, not Nordic Model, none. It is inherently unsafe for women to, multiple times per day, go into a private space with an unknown man who has paid money to have sex with her.

People have this idea that legalised or decriminalised prostitution will be like the Guild of Seamstresses in Ankh-Morpork. It won't. That's one thought experiment that Sir Pterry got very very wrong.

Nordic Model criminalises all clients, and so stops law-abiding clients from using their services.

• The deterrent effect of criminalising something previously legal isn't that high for people already doing it, unless they have a lot to lose from getting caught.
• The effect of criminalising punting is to put power in the prostituted woman's hands to report any and all mistreatment from punters. Even if there's not enough evidence to convict him for, e.g. anal rape when she only offered PIV, the fact that he was punting at all gives the CPS something to get him on.
• Criminalising punting stops "I thought she was a prostitute" being used to successfully defend a learning disabled woman's rapist in court.
• Criminalising punting makes it a criminal offence to ask a woman or girl at the bus stop, or on her way to school, whether she is "open for business".

I say again: Prostituted women are not the only stakeholders in discussions about the (un)safety of prostitution.

Consider the following:

• No other service presents the risk of pregnancy for the service provider.
• All other services in which STI transmission is a risk are delivered by professionals who are wearing PPE, like gloves, aprons, eye shields, and face masks. A prostituted woman gets a condom, if she's lucky.
• I cannot think of any other service where the only distinction between it and criminal rape is that money changed hands.
• I cannot think of anyother service where the purchasers of that service brag online about getting the service provider to forego PPE and will pay more to forego it.

Comparing prostitution to a service is naive, at best.

OP thinks prostitution should be decriminalised, isn't valued as it should be, and thinks that prostituted women are "providing a service" (not envy!)

And came to the feminism section to tell us all about it! Lucky us!

Indeed.

It seems to me that you aren’t really comparing like with like, are you.

Why do countries have exit strategies- if prostitution is just a job, why do governments and NGO’s put effort into supporting women exit the industry?
You also want to destigmatise usage, do you buy you husband or your son’s a Prostitution Experience for their birthday- and if not, why not? Surely your destigmatisation begins at home?

also that link to New Zealand is to a prostitution collective- an Astroturf Trade organization. Their money is dependent on retaining the status quo, and encouraging young men to see buying prostituted women as no big deal.

It is also interesting that you say would support the Nordic Model if it was shown to ‘improve’ women’s safety. That says to me that all things being equal you are prostitution: people being prostituted; and you normalizing it for punters. (Your husband, your sons, your daughters boyfriends and husbands among them)
If the no two models are equally good or bad at protecting women, I still want the Nordic Model, because I don’t want to normalize purchasing sex.

I'm beginning to think this thread is a wind up.

Lots of posts have provided links to the evidence that the Nordic Model works, and yet all we get is over and over again the same unsubastantiated statement that women suffer more under the Nordic Model.

The logical end of normalising prostitution as "a job like any other" is the DSS withholding unemployment benefit from women because sex work was available and they refused it.

Hello,

It's good to see there's been significant pushback against this troll, who "in good faith" sought to promote the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Most of the points the OP made have been rightly dealt with, but there's several things I'd like to say here.

A lot of those who advocate decriminalisation always say we should listen to those who are affected by the legislation - the women who work in this vile trade. But they usually always say "current sex workers" because they know a lot of the women stuck in prostitution cannot speak the truth.

As the OP is fond of sticking with Ireland as her example, she should know that two former sex workers - Rachel Moran and Mia Döring - published excellent memoirs that give a grim and accurate picture of what prostitution is like. The OP didn't listen to them.

Anna Rajmon's memoir, in my opinion, is even better. And it is disgraceful that the OP would use her story to try and promote their decriminalisation agenda. What she actually has to say on the topic wasn't listened to either, just distorted to serve an agenda.

Let me quote Elis - Irish Call Girl here and there to give you a flavour. I'm only quoting from the publicly available preview on Amazon:

"For girls who are considering a career as a prostitute and may believe that they would only do this job temporarily, this 'career' is not temporary, but forever!"

"Success has many forms, but paid sex will never lead you to it."

"Can you imagine being beaten, raped, lying in a bed of tears, and simply swallowing the suffering that happened to you and standing in a humiliating outfit by the door smiling at your next 'owner,' who decided to rent your body for the next few dozen minutes? I wouldn't wish it upon anyone to experience."

"I'll probably never come to terms with the pain I carry within me, but not succumbing to it and focusing on the positive things life offers every day; I consider at least limited success."

How can anyone read just those quotes and imagine that the person who wrote them would be in favour of prostitution, let alone decriminalise it?

The impression I get from reading Anna's book and articles is that Ireland's failures in fighting prostitution isn't because of the Nordic Model, but because of a lack of effort. She never mentions the Nordic Model, but her story is a terrific case for making it law.

I'm going to link Anna's book again, and I strongly recommend you buy it and read it. Stories like hers deserve to be better known, and are a sober antidote to the propaganda peddled by the pimp lobby.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ELIS-Anna-Rajmon-ebook/dp/B0D74HK3D5

Thanks for taking the time to make these points so well.

It would be a fitting end to this thread - IMO!