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.

I find myself recollecting the list of personal protective equipment (PPE) needed by healthcare professionals when performing aerosol generating procedures.

Aerosol generating procedures (AGP) are procedures that generate the production of air- borne particles (aerosols) which stay in the air longer than regular droplets, and which may lead to the airborne transmission of pathogens. Examples include some dental procedures using high speed devices such as drills, tracheal intubation and extubation, and so on. These procedures thusly pose higher risks to the health care staff delivering care, so staff are supposed to wear long-sleeved disposable gowns, FFP3 masks, visors to cover their eyes, and gloves.

During the pandemic, infection control guidelines said that after an AGP procedure was performed, the room should be completely vacated for an hour before cleaning the room for the next patient in order to give any floating aerosols time to fall down.

So if these are all the measures a dentist should be following while doing a filling, in case the patient breathes their germs into his or her face, what should a prostituted woman wear on her face and body to protect herself from a client?

Do bear in mind that participants in intense exercise have also been found to generate aerosols, and she is going to be very close to any heavy breathing from the client.

The war against drugs isn't working and the war against prostitution isn't working. That's the comparison. If you are in favour of decriminalisation of drugs you will be accused at some point of probably being a drug dealer. The idea being that only drug dealers will benefit from decriminalisation. Which isn't even true, the last thing a drug dealer wants if for an addict to get what they need from a pharmacy.

If you are in favour of decriminalisation of prostitution you will be accused at some point of probably being a trafficker/pimp/punter. Pimps don't like it because decriminalisation allows women to work together, keeping the profits for themselves. This has happened in New Zealand. There are still pimps in New Zealand but fewer of them.

As for punters, some will like it and some won't. It's easier for a woman to refuse to do certain things when she's working with other women instead of for a pimp.

What is the risk of a prostitute becoming pregnant from a client? Dr Petra Boynton doesn't mention that but it is very low. The risk of a prostitute getting an STI is also low. That is not an opinion, it is based on evidence, unlike the opinion expressed in the article about FGM. Evidence can be challenged but at least it is evidence not just opinion. The BMJ shouldn't have had anything to do with that article.

You ask if I already know that punters enjoy coercing women. You don't know that. Thinking that all of the people in a group are the same then thinking that you know what they are thinking isn't sensible.

@Dolly96

"As regards the late Laura Lee, I do not wish to speak ill of the dead. However, her campaign for decriminalisation was funded largely by punters and pimps. As Nordic Model Now pointed out, "her public position and expressed views must take into account the wishes of those who fund her campaigning work.""

The link that you gave does not say that Laura's campaign was funded by pimps. It says "She has raised funds for a legal battle against the Sex Buyer Law in Northern Ireland directly from men who pay for sex regularly."

So your claim that pimps contributed to her funds are unsubstantiated. Also, this quote doesn't say that the only people who contributed to her funds were punters. Prostitutes and others who believe in her cause also contributed, probably the majority.

That's a bit different from Jim Wells the Evangelical bigot telling a lie and then Rachel Moran repeating them on national radio without checking it first. It's a bit different from Ruhama the organisation with links to Magdalene Laundries telling a lie and Rachel Moran repeating them in her book without checking it first.

What is the risk of a prostitute becoming pregnant from a client? Dr Petra Boynton doesn't mention that but it is very low.

It will be the same as the risk faced by any other woman who has sex with multiple men per day. Money changing hands doesn't have a contraceptive effect.

The risk of a prostitute getting an STI is also low.

It will be the same as the risk faced by any other woman who has sex with multiple men per day. Money changing hands doesn't have a prophylactic effect.

The big difference between the war on drugs and the fight against prostitution is that, if a man shoots up, he primarily hurts himself. If that man pays to put his dick into a woman, he hurts her.

Pretty sure if I look into it, there will have been women harmed or killed by involvement in prostitution in Sweden during the 1990s. I can't declare that with certainty at present.

You, however, were very confident that no women who worked in prostitution in Sweden were killed since the early 1980s until the facts were shown. So you can continue to claim what you want, but no one needs to believe you now.

As to Rachel Moran, again that statistc was reported in the Dutch press at the time, not invented by Jim Wells as you claimed (and continue to claim). But again, because Rachel Moran is an opponent of the Nordic Model, you're more comfortable attacking her than Anna Rajmon, whose story was featured in the article that started this thread in the first place.

You're cherry picking again.

Here's the full two paragraphs that deal with Laura Lee from Nordic Model Now:

Another example is self-described “sex worker”, Laura Lee, who was quoted several times in the report, including in this section on page 25. She uses advertisements on social media both to accrue business and for political campaigning. She has raised funds for a legal battle against the Sex Buyer Law in Northern Ireland directly from men who pay for sex regularly. Thus there is a potential conflict of interest, as her public position and expressed views must take into account the wishes of those who fund her campaigning work.

So the committee chose to quote a lobby group run by and for the benefit of pimps and a campaigner funded by punters and possibly pimps rather than the European Women’s Lobby, UNISON, Welsh Women’s Aid, SPACE International, the Soroptimists, or the Women’s Support Project. None of these organisations were quoted a single time in the entire report, even though the former represents hundreds of women’s organisations throughout Europe, UNISON is a large trade union that represents millions of low paid women, SPACE is an international organisation of survivors of prostitution and the others are well-respected and established women’s charities.

There is a wikipedia page that lists all of the murdered prostitutes in the UK and gives details including location. It has Camille Gordon who was murdered in Soho in 2004, but she wasn't a prostitute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murdered_sex_workers_in_the_United_Kingdom

Wikipedia - the font of all knowledge.

@HomericEpithet

"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%..."

The point I was making is that these figures can't be applied to prostitutes in general in Ireland because they come from a study of a small group of Dublin drug addicts. The author of the study, Ann Marie O'Connor, stated "As in the previous research, the women who participated in the study this year are not
presented as a representative sample of women working in prostitution in Ireland."

So Ruhama should not have said that this applies to Irish prostitutes in general. Rachel Moran was wrong to put it in her book. 29 women out of the 77 studied (38%) reported having attempted suicide. 19 women out of the 77 (25%) suffered from diagnosed depression and had received treatment from either a psychiatrist or GP. 27 (35%) of women had Hepatitis C.

It could well be that drug addicted street-based prostitutes don't have sufficient access to medical care. I don't know. I expect that undocumented migrants don't. It's going to be different for different categories. It's going to be different for different countries depending on whether they have the Nordic Model or decriminalisation.

It isn't right though when 19 drug addicts in Dublin have suffered from depression to state that 25% of Irish prostitutes suffer from depression. It's even worse when 29 drug addicts in Dublin have attempted suicide to state that 38% of Irish prostitutes have attempted suicide.

1281-1046604.pdf

The statistic was not reported in the Dutch press at the time. The figure of 127 for the number of prostitutes who were murdered is correct. The Dutch report did not say that these women were murdered after the year 2000 when prostitution was legalised in the Netherlands.

The news report is from 2013. It says that these women were murdered over 30 years. So that is from 1983 to 2013. This is where Jim Wells changed the facts.
86 of the 127 murders occurred before 2000, so it would seem that the number of murders decreased after legalisation. Jim Wells suggested to opposite of that. He made people think that by voting for the Nordic Model they would be saving the lives of women, saving them from murder. After Rachel Moran's contribution they thought they were saving the lives of women from suicide too.

I am not a liar or negligent. I might get a fact wrong from time to time, like when I didn't know that a prostitute had been murdered in the late 1980s and not just in the early 1980s. The point that I was making still holds, that they can't claim to have reduced the number of murders in Sweden.

You have no reason to believe that Laura's campaign was funded by pimps. As for 'funded by punters', she wasn't funded exclusively by punters. What do you think they mean by "raised funds ... directly from men who pay for sex regularly"?

Do you think that they mean she used some of her earnings as a prostitute to fund her campaign? Did she post on PunterNet asking for funds? Did she suggest to her clients that they contribute to her cause?

There are many organisations that believe in decriminalisation. Amnesty International UK and Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to mention just two.

There are many dodgy characters who supported the adoption of the Nordic Model in Ireland. Evangelicals such as Jim Wells and Ian Paisley Jr. Ruhama with it's connections to Magdalene Laundries.

Different jobs have different risks. You could look at the different risks and try to identify the one job that has that risk. Then you could say you know of no other job that has that risk and try to ban it.

Some jobs you could ban and some jobs you couldn't. Betting shop staff handle cash and so are at risk of robbery and injury. If you tried to ban it it wouldn't work because people will still want to gamble and people will still want to make money from it. The risks to them would increase.

With prostitution we know that when you try to ban it it doesn't work. That's not just the Nordic Model as in Ireland but also in America too. In America prostitutes and punters are arrested, apart from a couple of counties in the state of Nevada. It's rife there.

So why would you want to do that? The same number of prostitutes but the risk of STIs and pregnancy increases. I can understand that people like Jim Wells and Ian Paisley Jr hate prostitutes, although they have to pretend to care.

Betting shop staff don't expect to be robbed and injured. They are trained to avoid that. Prostitutes don't expect to get an STI or to get pregnant. They may expect to get higher levels of colds and flu from aerosols. Brothels are often supplied with condoms in the UK but not in Sweden. With decriminalisation groups of women working together become more common and more visible to health workers.

But we can give examples of jobs that involves contact with other people's bodily fluids, and the kind of PPE that is required in those professions.

To make prostitution 'safe' I think you are looking at something like a cross between going to the dentist, the process that farmers and vets use to impregnate livestock and a film set with an intimacy co-ordinator. I am sure this would be a turn on for some punters, but probably quite niche.

Prostitution isn't comparable to any job. With a normal job you get sick pay, holiday pay, a pension, and the longer you have been at the job the more you are worth.
The risks prostituted women manage are things done to them by customers, who are so dangerous they are advised to work indoors and in groups. And using low rates of pregnancy as a plus point in countries where the morning after pill is readily available is not making a good case for decriminalisation.

In countries where prostitution is decriminalised, rates of sex trafficking go up. The fundamental problem is men demanding the use of women's bodies, for a service they do not need. That has to change.

1. There is only one so-called job in the whole world that puts the so-called workers at risk of unplanned pregnancy. One: prostitution. There is no other means of making money that is comparable. So all your whatabouttery with gambling establishments is an attempt to set up false comparisons. No one should be working in a so-called job in which their punters put them at risk of pregnancy.
2. The safety measures in gambling establishments and all-night petrol stations, to protect the staff from assault, look like toughened glass windows with a slot at the bottom to pass money and goods through. I don't see any scope for toughened glass windows between prostituted woman and punter in a brothel. There is no way to reduce risk to prostituted women at work sufficiently for them to actually be safe.

Betting shop staff don't expect to be robbed and injured. They are trained to avoid that.

That they are trained in deescalation techniques is proof that they do expect to be robbed and injured. You train people to avoid likely risks, not unlikely ones. It would be like arguing that I put my seat belt on because I don't expect to be injured in a car crash. I do expect to be injured in a car crash, and the law mandates that I wear a seat belt as harm reduction.

Prostitutes don't expect to get an STI or to get pregnant.

But they do expect those things, hence why they prefer to use condoms and most will have a fallback contraceptive in case the condom breaks or the punter rapes her without one. A lesbian can abstain from using any contraceptives because she doesn't expect her wife to make her pregnant. A straight woman uses a contraceptive because she does expect her husband to make her pregnant.

It's because I expect to drop a 20kg lab instrument on my toes that I wear safety boots to work. It's because a prostituted woman expects a man to ejaculate inside her body, with the risks of pregnancy and STIs that that entails, that she wants to use a condom. I don't think I can make this any clearer.

And the point I keep making, which no "pro-sex-work" advocate has ever addressed to my satisfaction: men are putting women at all this risk in order to orgasm. Not to defend the country from invading armies, or feed the nation's children, or cure cancer, but to orgasm. Men feel entitled to put women at this huge risk when these same men could use their own hands to orgasm. Prostitution is rooted in men's contempt for and sense of entitlement to women. Decriminalisation tells these men that what they are doing is fine. Nordic Model tells them that what they are doing is wrong.

What betting shops do this?

Maybe for senior managers. As a student i worked in a betting shop and no one had training about what to do if you were being robbed.

We had guys (always men) spit on the screen, urinate up the counter and threaten to kill us when their horse lost. Shittest job I've ever had.

Still way safer than prostitution, though.

Bloody stupid analogy.

I have just one question for all of you on this thread, no matter what side you take on this.

How many of you actually read the article linked at the very start?

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

I'm guessing the OP linked it for a reason, but there hasn't been much engagement with what it says in the nearly 200 posts on this thread.

I see the pro-prostitution scolds have had another shift change.

Open letter opposing the Nordic Model
https://decrimnow.org.uk/open-letter-on-the-nordic-model/

Complete decrim is supported by a long list of human rights orgs, health/HIV orgs, anti-trafficking orgs and orgs made up of women who sell/have sold sex. These include Amnesty Int, the WHO, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDs, Freedom United (worlds's largest modern anti-slavery org), PICUM (Dutch based org for the rights and safety of migrants in Europe, GAATW (global alliance against traffic in women), Scot-Pep, Umbrella Lane, English Collective of Prostitutes.

Last month, Amnesty UK wrote to the Minister for Community Safety expressing "serious concerns" re Ash Regan's bill:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25632368.amnesty-warns-scottish-prostitution-bill-put-sex-workers-risk/

It has been passed by a few other countries but not all countries are entertaining it-
-Spain very recently defeated a third attempt in parliament to pass the Nordic Model there.

-In 2022 Belgium passed complete decriminalisation, joining NZ and parts of Australia.

-Scotland has defeated Nordic Model attempts in the past- MSP Rhoda Grant in 2015 or so and in 2010 the late MSP Trish Godman tried to sneak it onto the end of another bill hoping no one would notice (TG also wanted a law against "taxi drivers driving sex workers and clients to meet each other", anyone explain how we would enforce that one?)

The Crown Office has warned the bill would be unenforceable. Northern Ireland and the ROI Governments have both accepted the law does not reduce demand at all.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/25481086.crown-office-warns-ash-regans-sex-work-bill-unenforceable/

N. Ireland has had one (yes, one) conviction of a client in a decade since passing the bill. Meanwhile they (and every other NM country) still criminalise sex workers for working together.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-67802849

Also interesting to note Ash Regan still won't meet with orgs made up of women who sell sex such as Decrim Now or Scot-Pep. She will only engage with people who agree with her.

AR doesn't seem to be overly popular herself. She wasn't voted in as an MSP and so didn't actually earn the seat, changed parties not once but twice because she failed to become leader, didn't know what "going underground" means in regards to sex work (she became a laughing stock for that), and more recently earned herself a 2 day Parliament ban.

Do you ever post on FWR about ACTUAL women’s rights or is it only ever trans- and punter-rights? Because never has there been a better example of someone pretending to care about women when actually just caring about men, and using women’s rights as a fig leaf. You don’t give a shit about women, except those with cocks.

And Amnesty and the WHO can go fuck themselves. As can any of the non-profits whose male workers go to majority world countries and use prostitutes there, while pretending to give a shit.

Did you read the article? Yes or no.

Who do you think you are?

"Amnesty and the WHO can go fuck themselves."

Because they don't agree with you?

What about Human Rights Watch, UNAIDs, Freedom United (worlds's largest modern anti-slavery org), PICUM (Dutch based org for the rights and safety of migrants in Europe, GAATW (global alliance against traffic in women), and also HIV Scotland and British based STOPAIDs? They all oppose the Nordic Model and advocate for complete decriminalisation.

And the groups made up of hundreds of women who sell/have sold sex (or thousands across Britain). But again, the views of sex workers won't matter unless they say what AR wants them to say, right?

Thousands of members across Britain I meant. Hundreds in Scotland. Decrim Now's Instagram have a recent video where they talk in Parliament about the bill and talk about how they are and other sex worker orgs.

Someone asking a straightforward question.

Why does that trouble you?