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.

They are both patently harmful to the exploited person doing the task.

What's undoubted is that nearly 100% of punters are men.

That does explain a lot.

Prostitution, asbestos and sending children up chimneys are all inherently dangerous.

However, STDs and pregnancy aren't usually regarded as something that most prostitutes are likely to have to face. They are easily avoided.

Where is the laugh response when you need it?

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.

More of a rental arrangement then?

However, STDs and pregnancy aren't usually regarded as something that most prostitutes are likely to have to face. They are easily avoided.

Are you on glue? Condoms do not protect women from HPV, herpes, and genital warts. You are one broken, sabotaged, or covertly-removed condom away from all the other STIs and pregnancy.

All backup contraceptives come with risks to the woman. The Pill quadruples her risk of a stroke. Intrauterine devices are recommended against for women who change sexual partners frequently because of the risk of pelvic inflammatory disease.

All so that men can pay some money to get their dicks wet.

You weren't asking a question, you were making an accusation. I don't see why I should have to respond to daft accusations when someone is losing an argument.

If you are in favour of decrim for drugs and you express your opinion on a forum you will probably be accused at some stage of being a drug dealer. Because, of course, only a drug dealer could benefit from decrim. So they think.

Similarly, anyone in favour or decrim for prostitution is likely to be accused at some stage of being a trafficker, pimp or a punter. I am not any of those and neither am I a man or a transwoman. I'm not a prostitute either, in case you wondering.

The issue of women dying of heroin overdose is an issue that both of us want to address. You believe that to deal with the issue we should lock up not only traffickers and pimps but punters too. I believe that we should decriminalise both drugs and prostitution, spend more money on rehab, and provide a pure form of the drug of consistent strength. Naloxone too.

Most heroin overdoses can be avoided. I don't need to tell you that usually it's because they buy heroin that happens to be stronger than what they are used to. Then they stop breathing. An avoidable tragedy.

Well, there's a non answer.

I am not convinced the so-called Nordic model will make it safer for women, and the evidence of decriminalisation in Germany seems to be from what I have read that women move from other countries and I am not sure they are completely free in their choice.

I don't what the best answer is other than to increase outreach work so that women can leave more easily and have support before they do.

You believe that to deal with the issue we should lock up not only traffickers and pimps but punters too.

Why shouldn't we do that? This would be in line with other laws where the end user receives a criminal conviction as well as the seller. Punishing the end user helps to remove demand for the illegal item or service.

If someone knowingly buys a stolen item, both they and the seller can receive a criminal conviction. Same for a drug dealer and their customers. Same for an under age buyer of alcohol and the person who sells it to them.

What is special about paying to rape a woman which makes you think that the purchaser should be exempt from prosecution?

@Dolly96

"I see this is continuing, and that @JennyShaw has replaced the OP @SnugFinch as the lead troll here.

Again, most people here are against this decrim nonsense and can see it for what it is. An attempt by the pimp lobby to legitimise their criminal business."

I think most people can see that it's not me who is the troll. SnugFinch is the OP and I'm backing her up. That's not a troll. Trolls are people who make accusations and question people's motives.

"JennyShaw is wrong to say that no women in prostitution in Sweden were murdered since the early 1980s. Jannica Ekblad, a 26 year old victim of prostitution, was murdered in 1989 by Ulf Olssson. After the law was implemented in 1999, only one woman in prostitution was murdered in Sweden, which was Eva Marie Smith Kullander in 2013. Her death was horrible, but it wasn't due to prostitution. She was murdered by her ex-husband."

Thank you for telling me about Jannica Ekblad, I didn't know about her case. Now I shall continue to tell people that there were no murders of prostitutes in Sweden in the 1990s, because it is important to show that the Nordic Model didn't decrease the number of murders of murders. I will no longer tell people that the last case was in the early 1980s.

It's not true though that the Eva Maree Kullander Smith (you spelled her name wrong) case wasn't due to prostitution. Her children were taken away because she had been a prostitute. When she went to visit her son the father was there and murdered her and seriously injured a social worker. This would not have happened if she hadn't been a prostitute and Sweden didn't have laws that harm them.

"Rachel Moran, however, is a supporter of the Nordic Model, so you go after her instead. Another online activist, Gaye Dalton, also tried to go after Rachel Moran, and didn't succeed."

You resent me pointing out that Rachel Moran has said and written things that are false. It is not true that 127 prostitutes were murdered in the Netherlands since legalisation there, as she said on Woman's Hour. It is not true that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide and 25% have been diagnosed with depression, as she wrote in her book.

When someone slanders or libels another person, they are saying something that isn't true. Rachel Moran has said many things that aren't true, and everything that I have said about her is true.

"Punishing the end user helps to remove demand for the illegal item or service."

No it doesn't. Demand has not reduced let alone been removed in Ireland either North or South. We saw this most clearly with the review of the law in the Irish Republic published earlier this year.

As for Sweden, the claim they make is that street prostitution decreased by half and that the number of men who pay for sex decreased from 12.7% in 1996 to 7.6% in 2008. Street prostitution was already decreasing in Sweden so they can't take credit for that after 1999 when the Nordic Model came in.

The 12.7% and 7.6% figure is not the proportion of Swedish men who pay for sex. It is the figures for men who had paid for sex at some time in their life. It went back up to 10.2% in the next survey, and in the 2017 survey it was 10%.

The figure for men who pay for sex, active sex buyers who had paid in the previous 12 months, increased from 1.3% to 1.8% between 1996 and 2008. We don't have a figure for 2017.

We also have figures for women who have sold sex at some time in their life. In 1996 it was 0.3%, in 2008 it had increased to 1.1% and in 2017 it was 1.5%. Far from removing demand it seems that Sweden is full of it.

In Britain today it is not illegal to pay or be paid for sex. It is not a crime. You may liken it to buying a stolen item, or selling drugs or selling alcohol to someone underage. I don't agree with that just as I don't agree that it is rape.

No, more like massage or any one of a number of services.

I am not on glue and neither is Dr Petra Boynton writing in the BMJ

"The recent increase in sexually transmitted infections in the general population in the United Kingdom contrasts with a reduced prevalence in female sex workers. And the prevalence of HIV infection in sex workers, mainly associated with injecting drug use, remains low— between 0% and 3.5%. Sex workers have a responsible approach to managing the risk of sexually transmitted infections, with a high prevalence of condom use for commercial vaginal sex (98%). The Home Office strategy shows inadequate understanding of risk, and the proposed changes could increase negative health outcomes, while limiting patients’ access."

I have already answered this in my comment about Soho on the previous page.

The BMJ who just published a piece about 'decolonising Female Genital Mutilation'?

That BMJ?

@JennyShaw People taking drugs, and men turning women into objects to be used at their pleasure, are not comparable. The industries (whether legalised, decriminalised, or illegal), the outcomes for individuals, and the impact on society are all very different. It's a misleading, inaccurate comparison.

As for your comparison to massage – massage doesn't come with a risk of pregnancy, or involve people putting their genitals inside the masseuse's genitals.

It also doesn't involve the intrinsic humiliation and dehumanisation of the masseuse, which prostitution does, with clients essentially paying for legal rape. Johns are using money to overcome what would otherwise be an absence of consent, and they're aware of that. It's part of the thrill, knowing that they have the power to coerce a woman to sexually submit to them despite her lack of attraction.

But perhaps you already know that.

Did you actually read the paragraph or are you doing the thing where you google and hope for the best?

It just says that prevalence has reduced, not that STIs are no longer a problem.

They also suggest that rates of HIV could be as high as 3.5%, which is more than 1 in 30. It's not clear why Petra Boynton thinks this is low. According to the Terrence Higgins Trust 111,800 people are estimated to have HIV in the UK, so about 0.16%

Your extract does suggest that the far higher rate could be due to using dirty needles, but that doesn't really suggest that these are people who are free to make choices about employment or who are happy with their work.

As far as I can tell, no prostitute has been murdered in Soho since the 1940s.

Did you just google prostitues, murdered, Soho?

And is 'not murdered' the measure of job satisfaction in the world of prostitution?

I'm struggling to think of another job where an unwanted pregnancy, rape, strangulation, or an STD is such an accepted part of the job that new recruits have to be taught how to manage the risk.

You resent me pointing out that Rachel Moran has said and written things that are false. It is not true that 127 prostitutes were murdered in the Netherlands since legalisation there, as she said on Woman's Hour. It is not true that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide and 25% have been diagnosed with depression, as she wrote in her book.

I have no specific knowledge about mental health amongst women caught in the Irish sex trade, but given the oft-repeated statistic that one in four (25%) of UK adults will experience mental health issue, I'm surprised you are so certain that 25% of prostituted women aren't depressed. Are we supposed to believe that prostitution has a protective effect for mental health?

When I checked for more up to date analysis about depression in particular, I found the following on the Office of National Statistics website:

Around 1 in 6 (16%) adults experienced moderate to severe depressive symptoms; this is similar to rates found in summer 2021 (17%), however higher than pre-pandemic levels (10%).

When comparing within population groups, prevalence of moderate to severe depressive symptoms was higher among adults who were economically inactive because of long-term sickness (59%), unpaid carers for 35 or more hours a week (37%), disabled adults (35%), adults in the most deprived areas of England (25%), young adults aged 16 to 29 years (28%) and women (19%).

Is your issue that you don't believe that women in Irish prostitution will have sufficient access to medical care to be diagnosed with health issues? In my view, that would be an indictment on the sex trade.

In conclusion, given the context of these wider statistics on depression and the impact of financial deprivation, I would find it surprising if the depression rate amongst women in the Irish sex trade was as low as 25%...

@JennyShaw
Similarly, anyone in favour or decrim for prostitution is likely to be accused at some stage of being a trafficker, pimp or a punter. I am not any of those and neither am I a man or a transwoman. I'm not a prostitute either, in case you wondering.

You say you're not a trafficker, pimp or a punter or a prostitute. Does this mean you're not involved in prostitution in any way, or do you have a different role or describe your role in a different way? Brothel owner/keeper? Madam? Or...?

You haven't said you're a woman, but you've said you're not a man or a transwoman. Why not just say you're a woman if that's what you are? Or are you saying you're not a woman either? You must be either a woman or a man. What sex are you?

If you're not involved in prostitution in any way, why are you so in favour of it? What do you believe is its value for society? Why do you not think (as I do) that a world without prostitution would be a better place?

I’ve had to be trained in all sorts for my job. I save people’s lives on the regular.

I shouldn't have to take the same, and much worse, training to make sure men come.

The times when we expect people to put body parts into other people are all, except for this, life-saving. Why are men’s orgasms up there with heart surgery? And if prostitutes and punters had to scrub up like surgeons, I don’t think we’d have a lot of takers.

Yet barepunting is a thing, as evidenced by punters comments online.

STIs and pregnancy remain problems that prostituted women have to take steps to avoid in their "work". No other job has this risk associated with it.