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.

Punters would not be the primary benefactor of my activism. Prostitutes would be the primary benefactors. It would be legal for them to have someone else in the flat with them even if that someone was paid or was answering the phone.

It would not be illegal for a cab driver to regularly drive prostitutes. It would not be illegal for a landlord to rent a flat where prostitution occurs. Evictions would be less frequent. If a woman uses some of her profits to improve her working conditions that can never be regarded as 'money laundering' (this does happen).

Two or three women can work together, making the rules for themselves and keeping the profits for themselves. In New Zealand there are many SOOBs (Small Owner-Operated Brothels) where this happens.

The pimps don't like it because the women don't need them anymore. Many punters don't like it because they prefer to negotiate with a pimp rather than a woman. They're more likely to get what they want that way.

What message do your sons receive from you about The purchase of sex?
Have you ever asked them what message they have heard?

Fundamentally, purchasing sex is so … well just wrong… that it is astonishing you are morally ok with it.

How often, in reality, does the "someone else in the flat" not include a pimp? Decrim doesn't stop Pimpy McPimpface from renting a flat and putting four trafficked Romanian women in it. He stands on the door pretending that they hired him as security.

I agree that allowing prostituted women to work only with other prostituted women would improve their safety. My question is how to allow that without allowing pimps to carry on pimping?

I would not want my daughter to be a prostitute in a Nordic Model country. If she was working in an SOOB (Small Owner-Operated Brothel) as they have them in New Zealand that would be a different matter.

If my daughter said she was getting a job as a waitress, I would think that could be a good way to earn some money while she's in her 20s and setting herself up for the rest of her life. If she was still a waitress in her 40s that might be a worry.

There are some people though who are so temperamentally suited to working in a restaurant that it works out well for them. Imagine a waiter or waitress who greets regular customers by name and asks about their families. Very few people are like that. For most women waitressing and prostitution are not good career choices.

There's an interesting documentary by Stacey Dooley. She went to Nevada and talked to the women working in one of the brothels. She spoke in depth to one woman and asked her why she was doing it.

She said that she and her husband both had low paid jobs. She suggested to him that they could get some capital then go into real estate. So she was doing it for a while till she had enough money to set herself up for the rest of her life.

Some people will say that's not the reality of prostitution. There isn't one reality of prostitution, and her reality is more common than you might think. Some prostitutes are drug addicts. Some are coerced. Some are destitute when they begin prostitution, without a job or a home, although they may not stay destitute for long.

Some people will say that prostitution is the most dangerous way to get money. If you are a drug addict death by violence is common. If you are involved in street based prostitution, as many addicts are, you are more likely to die. There are sectors of prostitution though where nobody dies.

There was an interesting case in Nordic Model Ireland where two Romanian women were arrested and convicted of brothel keeping. The police didn't find a pimp and the judge agreed that they were working for themselves. They were still jailed though then deported.

This case got a lot of publicity but there were other cases like this. The proponents of the Nordic Model said it would shift the burden of criminality from women to men, from prostitutes to their clients. That's not the reality though.

Ireland is still in the EU and Romanians can come and go as they please. It's the undocumented migrants who have the problems. That's true even in New Zealand.

I’m sure some child chimney sweeps also made a good living, and there were people who didn’t die from asbestos poisoning.

I don't see what the connection is between prostitution and chimney sweeping or asbestos.

Actually, about 20% of prostitutes in the UK are men: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42265838

It varies somewhat by place, and some estimates of the percentage of men are higher. But they're mostly young gay or bisexual men, so I guess the patriarchy isn't too fussed about them, either...

Name changed for this. You keep talking about NZ as though it's some haven filled with happy hookers, when really it's not. Domestic abuse is rife, rape and CSA is also rife and earns a slap on the wrist, and there are most definitely foreign trafficked prostitutes, as well as damaged young women who are taken advantage of, or do it because they're too unstable to hold down any other job, and it allows them to buy drugs to numb them to past trauma.

I worked in a brothel in 2004 after the law change went through in NZ (The Pelican Club). It was owned and operated by a man, and the prostitutes were technically 'hiring' the rooms from him - I can't recall exactly how it worked. There is a lot from that time that I've repressed/deliberately forgotten.

I was only just turned 16, had been sexually abused by my stepfather during puberty, and was heavily pressured into working in the brothel by my several years older boyfriend who wanted the money - and I adored him and thought I could handle it, in part thanks to the effects of the trauma I'd already suffered.

I altered my birth certificate (poorly) and they chose to believe I was 18, even though looking back I was very clearly a gangly, younger teenager, who in fact looked younger than my age. I was extremely popular amongst middle-aged men, who all had to have known I was underage - but then that was what they liked. It was awful, although at the time I would've insisted I was coping, and it didn't bother me (spoiler: it did). I spent months being used by men older than my father, and the law change didn't help me at all - it just made it easier for me to be pushed into it, in part as it 'normalised' the work.

Most of the women working at the brothel I was at were in their twenties and thirties and seemed hardened to it, but many of them used uppers and downers to blunt their emotions, and were clearly psychologically damaged. It appeared that many had similar pasts to me - filled with trauma, and the inability to hold down a regular job because of that, as well as a sense of self-loathing/lack of boundaries.

I'm sure there are a minority of women (probably the ones active in promoting prostitution and advocating for prostitutes) who are 'stable' and do well out of their careers in NZ, and aren't bothered by the 'job'. But from my experience, the majority are damaged individuals who only become more damaged through their work.

An added issue is that while they are working in the industry, most women will swear blind that they love the job/it doesn't bother them because denial is their coping mechanism. It's only after - often years after - that they will be able to admit, even to themselves, how badly it damaged them.

Anyway, if you read this far, my point is simply that people who haven't been prostitutes in NZ probably shouldn't chat shit about the system being marvellous.

The problems that you have outlined are not specifically problems of shared flats. They would exist if there were no shared flats. But shared flats makes everything better.

The first two problems are related and to do with unprotected sex. When women work together the more experienced women share information with the less experienced women. They will say always use condoms, and tell them what to do if a customer offers to pay more not to use a condom or if he takes it off. And of course they have the backup if the customer refuses to comply.

However, STDs and pregnancy aren't usually regarded as something that most prostitutes are likely to have to face. They are easily avoided. For drug addicts it is different because their lives are more chaotic. They don't work in shared flats though.

Drug addicts have to get large amounts of money to feed their addiction. They can't stop if it is harming them. They have stress from many different aspects of their lives, especially violence, so it is not surprising if they develop PTSD. The only thing that can help them is rehab and I would support more money being spent on that.

A prostitute isn't selling herself or selling her body. If you buy a commodity, you can take it home with you and keep it or sell it. Or destroy it. That's obviously not the case with a prostitute.

Is there more pimping and trafficking with decriminalisation than with the Nordic Model? I would say the opposite. If you think about Britain today, if a woman wants to earn money from prostitution she has a number of choices. She can work alone which is legal but not safe. She can work with another woman which is safe but not legal. Or she can ask a pimp if she can work for him.

If she works for a pimp then at least theoretically if there's a police raid she won't get arrested herself. It is the pimp who will be arrested. That's especially important to a woman who has children. Nothing changes when the Nordic Model comes in.

In all the Nordic Model countries they said they would decriminalise the prostitutes. However, it was never illegal to be a prostitute but it was illegal to share flats. So they haven't changed anything. That's not acceptable. That should not be regarded as an option.

Can you not?

Jobs that are so dangerous that people shouldn’t be permitted to do them, even if they want to waive workers’ rights.

PPE, health and safety? How do you make this ‘just a job’?

@TorrentialRaincloud

"Anyway, if you read this far, my point is simply that people who haven't been prostitutes in NZ probably shouldn't chat shit about the system being marvellous."

You want me to listen to you and I am listening to you, just as I have been listening to other women who have experience of prostitution in New Zealand. I would like to know what you think about something that a woman called Tarryn wrote on her blog.

"So, what happened when we introduced decriminalisation? Something totally unexpected. The paradigm shifted and it shifted radically. The brothels and agencies got wiped out, they were forced out of business. Nobody predicted it. But why did it happen? Despite decriminalisation, the casual independent contractor model for brothel work stayed. The owners had no reason to change it, there was a lot of very good employment case law from around the world saying this was legal and changing would both increase their costs and reduce power over the workers. So they didn’t change it. Decriminalisation however meant you could work outside the brothel system without fear of arrest of police harassment. Suddenly independent work was every bit as safe from arrest as the brothel work. The PRA also includes a provision allowing up to four sex workers to work out of a single location and share the costs equally without a license. Only restriction is all have to control their income independently, you can’t pool the takings and share them out. Gives the safety benefits of a brothel without the exploitation of a manager. Of course this means you’re self employed, with all the issues that brings, but without half your income going into somebody else’s pocket, you can put aside for those things.

Now for the first time, brothel workers had a choice. They no longer needed the brothels and agencies to be safe from arrest. They could stay on in the brothels as self employed independent contractors, with the owners taking around half of what they earned and imposing shift fees, late penalties, controlling their shifts to keep them from complaining, pressuring them to take clients they didn’t want etc. Or they could cut out on their own as an independent worker, maybe get together with a couple of other workers and form one of those new fangled small worker collective brothels. Of course that meant facing the perils of self employment, but they were being treated as self employed in the brothel system anyway. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority elected to cut out on their own. The old brothel system very simply collapsed as the workers found they no longer needed it’s protection. The entire industry paradigm changed. The sex industry in New Zealand is now dominated by independent workers and small worker collectives. Before 2003 there were over 400 hundred brothels and agencies in New Zealand, there are 45 left."

Tarryn doesn't write that the New Zealand system is perfect. She writes that the biggest problem is with undocumented migrants. I have already mentioned this on this thread. I don't think that the New Zealand system is perfect, but I think it is better than the Nordic Model or the British system. Prostitution still exists in Sweden, the problems you encountered would not have been solved with the Nordic Model.

As always, fascinating to see different opinions and the arguments for and against them.

Some people will insist that people's bodies shouldn't be bought and sold as commodities and it's hard to disagree with that sentiment.

But given that most things are seen as being on a spectrum these days, most "work" is exploitation of one kind or another.

If a woman (or man, actually) wants to sell their body, are they being exploited any more than anyone else who works in a job they don't like but for rubbish money and in poor conditions?

Is working a few hours a week for a few hundred quid worse or better than working a forty hour week for less money?

I suspect that's probably the choice many sex workers make.

Hopefully they're able to use their spare time to improve themselves or spend more time with family or friends or care-giving than other people who work full times.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that says all sex workers are victims who need to be "saved."

Of course, it can be asserted that the mere existence of sex work is detrimental to the wider aims of feminism, but if one focusses on outcomes rather than processes, I wonder what per centage of sex workers are happy-ish with their lot?

Perhaps it serves a purpose for a limited amount of time...

As you can see, I'm not massively clued up on the facts here, but over the years these are the lind of thoughts I've had on this subject.

Happy to be corrected if I've made incorrect assumptions, ofc.

@JandLandG I understand musings. I have known, worked with, lived with and been friends with women (and a couple of men) in sex work for decades and two countries.

If you removed the women who were abused in childhood, addicted, mentally unwell, PD, poor, survival sex work, traumatised, pimped and otherwise not ‘consenting’ in any meaningful way, I think there might be 10 prostitutes in the whole world and a BJ would be a million quid.

I’ve never met happy hookers. I’ve met a lot of traumatised, abused women.

As expected, you cherry pick the amplified voices of the prostitutes who praise the system. Never mind those who are crushed by it and therefore have no voices, or who leave, broken, and never speak about it again due to trauma or shame. And when they do speak up (like me in this thread) they're told they're wrong, or just outliers.

And no - prostitution being legalised definitely played a part in my boyfriend thinking it was acceptable to coerce me into it ("You'll be able to do it legally in a couple of years anyway!") and in me thinking that I should try to do it and just cope as it was now 'acceptable' in society. I think it has also contributed to the normalisation in society of 'unwanted sex' being 'no big deal' - after all, women do it for money all the time.

I like that you describe my experience as 'problems you encountered', too, as though I had some minor workplace hiccup. Very minimising.

Or die. Like one woman I knew.

And I saw her sister afterwards.

The men that used her don’t have to look her sister in the eye in Aldi. But I do. Fucking scum.

Dangerous in the sense that they cause death? There are many types of prostitution and the one that I am most familiar with is Soho. Soho has a unique system where the prostitute is never alone in a flat.

As far as I can tell, no prostitute has been murdered in Soho since the 1940s. There was one woman murdered, Camille Gordon, but she wasn't a prostitute. She worked for a clip joint. There was also another woman who was forced out of her flat by the police and later she was found murdered somewhere else.

So there is nothing inherently deadly about being a prostitute. The ones that get killed are the ones who work on the street or work alone. I've never been able to work out how the prostitutes in Soho get away with it, but it seems that they are on the edge of legality because the police do manage to shut them occasionally and there are fewer and fewer of these flats.

I made this point in a different thread years ago. I assumed that everyone knows that Soho is a hotbed of prostitution. Someone said they didn't think that Soho had any prostitutes, surely that's King's Cross, Soho is the gay area. But I can assure you that even now there's a lot of prostitution going on there. And the residents have no problem with it.

Oh god, that's awful. But it's the reality of prostitution for the majority of women. Shame and trauma, with much of the earnings going on drugs or alcohol to help them cope with that, and yes, all too often, it ends in the worst way possible - in death by suicide, overdose, or even murder.

Normalising men using women like disposable objects, devalued and dehumanised, is bad for both individuals and for society as a whole. Prostitution is not, and never will be, a net positive for society - it will always be a net negative.

As an aside, when people ask 'would you want your daughter to work as a prostitute', I also think a good question to ask as well, is, 'would you want your straight son to be a prostitute for gay men' or 'would you want your son to use prostitutes regularly', as unconscious misogyny means people might see those things differently.

I also don't think people are thinking about the depressing, soul-sucking aspects of prostitution. The humdrum indignities, such as inserting lube into one's vagina beforehand, and needing to sexily coax a client to shower first. The humiliation of being told to do specific sexual things to a man who turns you off, and knowing that he's enjoying his control over you. The risk of STIs, which condoms can only lessen and not eliminate, or trying to get a client erect when they're struggling, knowing they'll blame you if they can't. The need to always pretend to be frantic with desire for men old enough to be your grandfather, or who say creepy, disturbing things while they sweat and heave, and pretend to orgasm for them.

Anyone who would be happy for their daughter to go through that is a monster, frankly.

Trauma causes death. Murder is the least of the worries. Although it’s still more common for women in prostitution.

The woman I knew that died, it was trauma, then addiction, then prostitution, then trauma, then addiction, then death.

You know what though, I think you’re a punter and as such, I shouldn’t talk about her because you either won’t care or you might get a thrill. She was a human being.

I care very much about the fate of heroin addicts. I remember that last time we discussed this I pointed out that there would be many fewer heroin overdoses if heroin or another opiod was available to addicts of consistent strength and purity, and if naloxone was more readily available.

My comment seemed to enrage you because you accused me of mansplaining, saying that I must be a man because I'm mansplaining. You had given no indication that you knew the points that I made. If you did know them you certainly didn't want to share them with anyone reading the thread. I made the point not to inform you, but to inform anyone reading the thread.

If you really want to reduce the number of heroin overdoses and save lives, that is the way to do it. Trying to ban prostitution and failing as has happened in Ireland isn't going to help. You pretend that you know all about prostitution but you only know about drug addicts that you worked with and one or two friends.

I’m in favour of decrim with drugs so that doesn’t sound like me. But I’m very aware you’re moving the goalposts so nighty night.

And yes, you talking around the point of a woman’s death does enrage me. Making her invisible so you can argue the points is evil.

Are you a man BTW? And a punter? because you avoided that question.

You pretend that you know all about prostitution but you only know about drug addicts that you worked with and one or two friends.

And you obviously know nothing at all, but have a deeply vested interest in ensuring men can continue to turn women into objects for their sexual enjoyment. I wonder why...

In fact, a BBC Sherlock quote is quite apropos here, I think. The serial killer Culverton Smith, played by Toby Jones (clearly meant to be a take on Jimmy Saville) says:

"I like to make people into things. Then you can own them."

It's clearly what johns value about buying prostitutes; the power and the control, and the fact that they are dehumanising women by turning them into things. You only have to read 'reviews' by punters to know that's what they think.

That isn't something that should ever be normalised in society, and the fact that it's considered acceptable for women to be reduced to objects rented by the hour, whether as prostitutes, lap dancers, or strippers, is imo a big part of what fuels misogyny in society.

It encourages men to continue thinking of women as things.