sexuality, thoughts

Swedish Model

*** Warning — long read ***
So the EU and many governments want to embrace the Swedish model for the regulation of prostitution do they?
Buying and selling sex is not currently illegal in the UK but soliciting, pimping, brothel-keeping and kerb-crawling are all criminal activities. By contrast the Swedish model says that it is legal to sell sexual services but it is illegal to buy them.
The Swedish model is a complete nonsense, for a number of reasons …
1. It is totally illogical. Making the selling of sex legal, but the buying of it illegal just does not make sense. It is like saying that Tesco may sell me a Mars Bar but it is illegal for me to buy one. If we applied this logic to any commodity other than sex the proposal would be laughed out of court as being totally ridiculous.
Moreover, I suggest, It may also be a restraint of trade: I’m legitimately allowed to trade in a commodity but no-one is permitted to engage with me to buy it so I am restrained from carrying on my legitimate business.
2. By criminalising the buying and selling of sex government is attempting to legislate morality and exercise control over private sexual behaviour — which I submit are basically none of their business. Sex workers are human beings and selling sex is their trade. As such sex workers must surely be entitled to the same labour rights as other workers and the same human rights as other people. It is vulnerability, not sex work, which creates victims. (And let us not forget that not all sex workers are prostitutes and not all are female, although the majority probably are.)
No wonder the English Collective of Prostitutes (the nearest UK sex workers have to a trade union) has said:

We are appalled that at a time when benefit cuts and sanctions, lowering wages, increased homelessness and debt are forcing more women, particularly mothers, into prostitution, the best that MPs can come up with is to increase criminalisation. These proposals will further divert police time and resources from investigating rape, trafficking and other violent crimes to policing consenting sex.

3. It doesn’t work. All the criminalisation of either sex workers or clients is going to do is to push sex work further underground, where it becomes prey to abuse and criminal activity.
The argument for the Swedish model is that by attacking the demand to buy sex the sex industry in general, and trafficking in particular, are reduced. However there is no credible research to support the idea that the Swedish Model reduces selling, buying or trafficking. However there is significant research to show that conflating sex work and trafficking is a conscious attempt to prevent people from voluntarily migrating to do sex work. The argument about the reduction in trafficking doesn’t hold water. Evidence shows that the vast majority of the UK’s sex workers are there voluntarily, have not been trafficked, and are not being controlled.
Instead of improving things, a Swedish National Police Board report shows that the policy has driven sex work underground and made sex workers even more vulnerable. It has also lead to an expansion of indoor sex work (OK taking girls off the streets is arguably a good thing): for example, apparently Thai massage parlours offering sexual services in Stockholm increased almost three-fold between 2009 and 2012.
Yes, of course UK law needs to be changed to improve safety for sex workers. In the UK sex workers are forced to work alone because working with anyone else constitutes running a brothel. Working alone dramatically increases the risk of them being subjected to rape, violence, robbery and even murder. Given that 80% of the UK’s female sex workers work indoors, decriminalisation would enable these women to work from premises in teams of two or more which would be safer for them. And the same has to be true for male sex workers as well.
Moreover decriminalising the sale of sex empowers sex workers to use the justice system to seek redress for abuse, violence and discrimination. Removing the threat of criminal penalties would also enable sex workers to work with police to facilitate the enforcement of anti-trafficking laws.
Decriminalisation would also encourage sex workers to have more open access to health, legal and social services. Indeed following the Dutch model licensing of sex workers could go even further by making regular medical check-ups a condition of the licence. And healthier sex workers has to be good for them as well as good for the punters.
4. You can’t regulate an intangible commodity like sex. Basically it is bad law because it is unenforceable.
You can licence the sex workers, but without doing that you cannot regulate sex. People will have sex, even if they aren’t supposed to. And where they’re having sex as a commodity there will be a trade in it. Any two people can go off and have sex and who can tell if money (or other tangible payment) changes hands? The deal doesn’t have to be done in the open; it will happen in a private room somewhere well out of sight of law enforcement’s prying eyes and the tax man. Basically the buying and selling goes underground.
This is no different from the way in which any (black) market works: A is willing to sell commodity Z to B who will pay for it; if this is illegal then it just gets done “under the counter”. This happens in every country; you cannot stop it. The UK currently has a thriving trade in illegally imported (cheap) alcohol and tobacco as well as drugs; during WWII rationing coupons were illegally traded; during the beef crisis, meat was still sold on the bone, but out of sight. They are tangible commodities and the trade can be restricted by confiscating the commodity when discovered. But how do you confiscate sex? It’s like saying that consultancy is illegal — it cannot be enforced. Anyone can talk to (have sex with) anyone and who can tell if money changes hands along the way?
So unless you are prepared to licence sex workers, basically it is a free for all and open to exploitation by any petty (and not so petty) criminal. And ultimately that is bad for everyone. The girls are exploited (or worse) by pimps and open to abuse from the punters; and they can’t do anything about it as they can’t report the abuse. The punters are vulnerable too; they can be fleeced of their money and they have no clue about the health status of the girls. Everyone loses.
5. But it is even wider than this. Sex work challenges our current social and cultural norms — just as homosexuality, illegitimacy, anal sex and even masturbation have done in the not so distant past. As a result we changed the way we thought about those issues. Isn’t it about time that we changed the way we think about sex work too?


So what should we do? We agree that the UK’s sex work laws need to be rationalised and updated.
The ECP and other sex worker rights groups continue to campaign for the introduction of laws similar to those in New Zealand, where sex work is decriminalised and women are allowed to work together in small owner-operated brothels. To me this seems a sensible option; it takes girls off the streets, gives them safety in numbers and permits them the security of being able to have abuse and criminal activity against them investigated by the police. If we were to go further and follow the Dutch model of licensing sex workers then regular medical check-ups can be made a condition of the licence — which has to be good for everyone’s health. Let us not forget too that once permitted and legal, earnings from sex work can be taxed; and what government wouldn’t like more money in its coffers?
How hard is this? Why is the logic so impossible for politicians and law enforcement persons to grasp? Why is this too much to ask?
Wake up guys. Smell the coffee. Stop jerking your knees and start thinking.
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Sources:
Suzi Godson; 10 Things You Need to Know Before You Support the Swedish Model of Sex Work. This is a short, well researched article which cites its references.
Alexandra Topping; Selling sex should be decriminalised but buying it should be illegal, say MPs.