“The ingenuity of the Swedish model is that it protects those who are most vulnerable from being arrested and prosecuted. Nobody is forced to buy sex. But many individuals are coerced, deceived or threatened into selling sex.”
Do we really accept that men can’t control themselves? Do we believe that when a man sees a woman or a girl, he can’t control himself and he has to rape her? Do we really accept that?
No of course we don’t believe that. That is infantilising men. It is insulting their humanity.
Like rape, prostitution is not only about sex. It is also about power and men using sex to gain personal power.
Punters tell us this in their own words on websites such as punternet.com where they can rate the women they buy. It is chilling and disturbing to read their accounts and to see each punter’s lack of awareness that the prostituted woman is a human being with the same needs and hopes and dreams as he has; to see how he never questions his right to expect and demand that she should be ready to satisfy his every whim regardless of her own feelings.
This is what prostitution teaches punters. It feeds their narcissism.
Prostitution survivors tell us the same story. In her powerful speech at Feminism in London 2015, prostitution survivor Rebecca Mott said that punters think their violence is not real violence because “they view the prostituted as sub-human sexual goods. It is nothing happening to nothing.”
Where do the punters go when they leave the prostituted woman at the side of the road or they walk out of the brothel?
They go back to their homes and jobs and leisure activities, carrying their prostitution-inflated sense of narcissistic entitlement with them. Along with their sense that women are other, sub-human.
Together these attitudes make it more likely that they will harass, abuse or rape the other women they meet in their lives. Not less likely.
So it is not true that prostitution stops men raping women. In fact the opposite is true. Prostitution makes the rape and sexual abuse of women and children more likely.
Myth: Prostitution is the oldest profession
For millennia human communities were egalitarian and prostitution was unknown.
In her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner showed that prostitution was invented relatively recently in the long history of the human race, when men seized control and started the system of male supremacy known as patriarchy.
One of the key ways the men controlled women was to divide them into two groups: respectable women and prostitutes. Respectable women had to cover their heads and the prostitutes were not allowed to cover their heads – so everyone could see which group each woman belonged to. The respectable women were dependent on the patronage of a named man – her husband or father. The prostitutes were fair game for all men, any man, to rape. So women accepted “respectability” in order to avoid being fair game. And then she had to make sure that she was always taken as a respectable wife so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a prostitute who was fair game. She had to distance herself from the prostitutes. And so women were divided, one from another. In order that they could be more easily screwed.
As such, we see prostitution as a form of violence against the individual women and against all women. We do not believe that equality between women and men is possible while the buying and selling of women for sex is considered acceptable.
Myth: Regulation makes prostitution safe
One of the common arguments for regulating prostitution is to make it come under Health and Safety legislation so that it is safer for the women. However, this approach fails to consider that the punters are themselves the source of harm.
Dentist in goggles, mask, gown and gloves
Dentist in goggles, mask, gown and gloves
In any other occupation where there is a risk of exposure to other people’s body fluids, workers are required to wear masks, gloves, goggles, and protective clothing.
Condoms do not come close to reducing risk for those in prostitution to a level comparable with those faced by workers in, say dentistry or nursing, because condoms slip and break, and punters refuse to wear them. And condoms don’t protect the person in prostitution from the punter’s saliva, sweat and other body fluids; or from damage to orifices and internal organs caused by friction and prolonged heavy pounding; or from his violence.
Health and safety standards require employers to RETHINK working practices to eliminate unreasonable risk. In prostitution, this would require participants to wear full protective clothing and the prohibition of any intimate contact. This would, of course, change the nature of prostitution itself.
When it is not possible to make work safe, industries are often closed down. For example, the asbestos industry was closed down because the risks were too great and alternatives were available.
We believe that prostitution can never be made safe and we therefore call for its abolition.
This is not to suggest that women in prostitution should not have every available assistance in reducing the harm and minimising the risks involved. The wish to reduce harm is a major argument for the complete decriminalization of the women involved, as advocated by the Nordic Model.
Myth: Prostitution is a victimless crime
A peer-reviewed study published in The Journal of Trauma Practice 2003 interviewed 854 people in prostitution in nine countries. It found that prostitution “dehumanizes, commodifies and fetishizes women”. The vast majority of the people interviewed:
Reported experiencing sexual, physical and verbal violence in prostitution.
Reported a history of homelessness and childhood physical and sexual abuse.
Met the clinical criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Wanted to leave prostitution but couldn’t see how.
The study concluded that prostitution is multi-traumatic regardless where it takes place.”
Do we really accept that men can’t control themselves? Do we believe that when a man sees a woman or a girl, he can’t control himself and he has to rape her? Do we really accept that?
No of course we don’t believe that. That is infantilising men. It is insulting their humanity.
Like rape, prostitution is not only about sex. It is also about power and men using sex to gain personal power.
Punters tell us this in their own words on websites such as punternet.com where they can rate the women they buy. It is chilling and disturbing to read their accounts and to see each punter’s lack of awareness that the prostituted woman is a human being with the same needs and hopes and dreams as he has; to see how he never questions his right to expect and demand that she should be ready to satisfy his every whim regardless of her own feelings.
This is what prostitution teaches punters. It feeds their narcissism.
Prostitution survivors tell us the same story. In her powerful speech at Feminism in London 2015, prostitution survivor Rebecca Mott said that punters think their violence is not real violence because “they view the prostituted as sub-human sexual goods. It is nothing happening to nothing.”
Where do the punters go when they leave the prostituted woman at the side of the road or they walk out of the brothel?
They go back to their homes and jobs and leisure activities, carrying their prostitution-inflated sense of narcissistic entitlement with them. Along with their sense that women are other, sub-human.
Together these attitudes make it more likely that they will harass, abuse or rape the other women they meet in their lives. Not less likely.
So it is not true that prostitution stops men raping women. In fact the opposite is true. Prostitution makes the rape and sexual abuse of women and children more likely.
Myth: Prostitution is the oldest profession
For millennia human communities were egalitarian and prostitution was unknown.
In her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner showed that prostitution was invented relatively recently in the long history of the human race, when men seized control and started the system of male supremacy known as patriarchy.
One of the key ways the men controlled women was to divide them into two groups: respectable women and prostitutes. Respectable women had to cover their heads and the prostitutes were not allowed to cover their heads – so everyone could see which group each woman belonged to. The respectable women were dependent on the patronage of a named man – her husband or father. The prostitutes were fair game for all men, any man, to rape. So women accepted “respectability” in order to avoid being fair game. And then she had to make sure that she was always taken as a respectable wife so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a prostitute who was fair game. She had to distance herself from the prostitutes. And so women were divided, one from another. In order that they could be more easily screwed.
As such, we see prostitution as a form of violence against the individual women and against all women. We do not believe that equality between women and men is possible while the buying and selling of women for sex is considered acceptable.
Myth: Regulation makes prostitution safe
One of the common arguments for regulating prostitution is to make it come under Health and Safety legislation so that it is safer for the women. However, this approach fails to consider that the punters are themselves the source of harm.
Dentist in goggles, mask, gown and gloves
Dentist in goggles, mask, gown and gloves
In any other occupation where there is a risk of exposure to other people’s body fluids, workers are required to wear masks, gloves, goggles, and protective clothing.
Condoms do not come close to reducing risk for those in prostitution to a level comparable with those faced by workers in, say dentistry or nursing, because condoms slip and break, and punters refuse to wear them. And condoms don’t protect the person in prostitution from the punter’s saliva, sweat and other body fluids; or from damage to orifices and internal organs caused by friction and prolonged heavy pounding; or from his violence.
Health and safety standards require employers to RETHINK working practices to eliminate unreasonable risk. In prostitution, this would require participants to wear full protective clothing and the prohibition of any intimate contact. This would, of course, change the nature of prostitution itself.
When it is not possible to make work safe, industries are often closed down. For example, the asbestos industry was closed down because the risks were too great and alternatives were available.
We believe that prostitution can never be made safe and we therefore call for its abolition.
This is not to suggest that women in prostitution should not have every available assistance in reducing the harm and minimising the risks involved. The wish to reduce harm is a major argument for the complete decriminalization of the women involved, as advocated by the Nordic Model.
Myth: Prostitution is a victimless crime
A peer-reviewed study published in The Journal of Trauma Practice 2003 interviewed 854 people in prostitution in nine countries. It found that prostitution “dehumanizes, commodifies and fetishizes women”. The vast majority of the people interviewed:
Reported experiencing sexual, physical and verbal violence in prostitution.
Reported a history of homelessness and childhood physical and sexual abuse.
Met the clinical criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Wanted to leave prostitution but couldn’t see how.
The study concluded that prostitution is multi-traumatic regardless where it takes place.”
The post below is made by text from UK feminist organization Nordic Model Now and images from all over the world. I am a Swedish feminist and it moves me immensely that we are part of this global movement to stop men’s violence against women and children. I love you all. If you come to Sweden, please visit! sorensen.isabel@gmail.com /Isabel
The Nordic Model approach to prostitution (sometimes also known as the Sex Buyer Law, or the Swedish, Abolitionist, or Equality Model) decriminalises all those who are prostituted, provides support services to help them exit, and makes buying people for sex a criminal offence, in order to reduce the demand that drives sex trafficking. This approach has now been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, and most recently, Ireland.
How did this approach come about?
The Nordic Model was pioneered in Sweden after extensive research. One of the researchers was Cecilie Høigård. Here she describes what happened (translated by Daisy Elizabeth Sjursø and edited slightly for length):
“We spent several years doing fieldwork and we developed close relationships with the prostituted women. We heard about their experiences of past abuse, extreme poverty and violence. We were prepared for these stories, because of our previous studies on outcasts and marginalized people. But what the women told us of their concrete experiences of prostitution was unexpected and shocking.
They told us what it was like to use their bodies and vaginas as rental apartments for unknown men to invade, and how this made it necessary to separate their body from their self: ‘Me and my body are two separate parts. It is not me, my feelings or my soul he fucks. I am not for sale.’
The women had numerous strategies to maintain this separation. To be agents in their own lives they showed great ingenuity and vigour within the little space for manoeuvre they had. However, over time it became more difficult for them to maintain the separation between their body and self. After the punter was done, it became increasingly difficult to bring the self back. Eventually the women came to feel worthless, dirty and disgusting. These stories were very similar to accounts we’d heard from victims of other sexual violence, such as incest, rape and domestic violence.
The research group disagreed about many things, but we shared the same feelings of despair about the women’s pain and the punters’ lack of understanding of the consequences of their actions. Then the idea of one-sided criminalisation of the punter struck me like lightning. The idea increased my heart rate, and gave me a sense of everything falling into place.
There was huge opposition to the proposal at first but after some years opponents in the working group changed their point of view. The debate that followed served as a large-scale educational campaign.
In Sweden, the attitudes towards the law changed rapidly in a positive direction, and the proportion of Swedish men buying women’s bodies has decreased.”
What is the aim of the Nordic Model?
Criminal legislation has the primary purpose of making it clear what we as a society consider unacceptable and discouraging people from doing those things.
The Nordic Model makes it clear that buying people for sex is wrong and it has sanctions that discourage people from doing it.
Society’s values do change over time and some things that used to be considered acceptable are now considered unacceptable, and vice versa.
Prostitution causes damage to those in it and it can never be made safe and its existence makes women’s human right to equality with men a distant pipe dream. Vast sums of money are made from the heinous trade in (mostly) women’s and children’s bodies and this leads inexorably to sex trafficking.
It is time to make it clear that buying human beings for sex is unacceptable and to create criminal sanctions that discourage people from doing it.
We do not want to criminalise people. We want to change behaviour. And for those who are in it, we want to provide support to help them make a new life outside it.
What we are campaigning for in the UK
Each country that has introduced the Nordic Model approach has implemented it a little differently. It has been most successful in Sweden where it was introduced as part of a raft of legislative measures to tackle male violence against women and girls and to address sex inequality.
The post below is made by text from UK feminist organization Nordic Model Now and images from all over the world. I am a Swedish feminist and it moves me immensely that we are part of this global movement to stop men’s violence against women and children. I love you all. If you come to Sweden, please visit! sorensen.isabel@gmail.com /Isabel
The Nordic Model approach to prostitution (sometimes also known as the Sex Buyer Law, or the Swedish, Abolitionist, or Equality Model) decriminalises all those who are prostituted, provides support services to help them exit, and makes buying people for sex a criminal offence, in order to reduce the demand that drives sex trafficking. This approach has now been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, and most recently, Ireland.
How did this approach come about?
The Nordic Model was pioneered in Sweden after extensive research. One of the researchers was Cecilie Høigård. Here she describes what happened (translated by Daisy Elizabeth Sjursø and edited slightly for length):
“We spent several years doing fieldwork and we developed close relationships with the prostituted women. We heard about their experiences of past abuse, extreme poverty and violence. We were prepared for these stories, because of our previous studies on outcasts and marginalized people. But what the women told us of their concrete experiences of prostitution was unexpected and shocking.
They told us what it was like to use their bodies and vaginas as rental apartments for unknown men to invade, and how this made it necessary to separate their body from their self: ‘Me and my body are two separate parts. It is not me, my feelings or my soul he fucks. I am not for sale.’
The women had numerous strategies to maintain this separation. To be agents in their own lives they showed great ingenuity and vigour within the little space for manoeuvre they had. However, over time it became more difficult for them to maintain the separation between their body and self. After the punter was done, it became increasingly difficult to bring the self back. Eventually the women came to feel worthless, dirty and disgusting. These stories were very similar to accounts we’d heard from victims of other sexual violence, such as incest, rape and domestic violence.
The research group disagreed about many things, but we shared the same feelings of despair about the women’s pain and the punters’ lack of understanding of the consequences of their actions. Then the idea of one-sided criminalisation of the punter struck me like lightning. The idea increased my heart rate, and gave me a sense of everything falling into place.
There was huge opposition to the proposal at first but after some years opponents in the working group changed their point of view. The debate that followed served as a large-scale educational campaign.
In Sweden, the attitudes towards the law changed rapidly in a positive direction, and the proportion of Swedish men buying women’s bodies has decreased.”
What is the aim of the Nordic Model?
Criminal legislation has the primary purpose of making it clear what we as a society consider unacceptable and discouraging people from doing those things.
The Nordic Model makes it clear that buying people for sex is wrong and it has sanctions that discourage people from doing it.
Society’s values do change over time and some things that used to be considered acceptable are now considered unacceptable, and vice versa.
Prostitution causes damage to those in it and it can never be made safe and its existence makes women’s human right to equality with men a distant pipe dream. Vast sums of money are made from the heinous trade in (mostly) women’s and children’s bodies and this leads inexorably to sex trafficking.
It is time to make it clear that buying human beings for sex is unacceptable and to create criminal sanctions that discourage people from doing it.
We do not want to criminalise people. We want to change behaviour. And for those who are in it, we want to provide support to help them make a new life outside it.
What we are campaigning for in the UK
Each country that has introduced the Nordic Model approach has implemented it a little differently. It has been most successful in Sweden where it was introduced as part of a raft of legislative measures to tackle male violence against women and girls and to address sex inequality.
Shrews filling pamphlets with stickers and prostitution facts in Melbourne
Did anyone one stop and think that making prostitution illegal, all you do is push it further and further into the black market, and the best way to combat abuse is to decriminalize, legalize, and regulate prostitution?
@pfcanimal did you stop and think that we’re going to make it so you can’t jack off to women’s suffering anymore?
@pfcanimal that isn’t true.
Legalisation opens up a black market along side the legal market and both are abusive and exploitative.
Prostituted women who don’t make the legal requirements will find themselves in the illegal sector and illegal and unethical things happen in the legal sector.
You give pimps/sex traffickers the greenlight when you legalise or decriminalise it.
Any given man can pimp out his girlfriend, wife even his daughter under legalisation and decriminalisation
Look at the relight district in Amsterdam the police admit they can’t control sex trafficking and Germany is considered the brothel of Europe (the majority of prostituted women are not from Germany so what does that tell you?)
Celtyradfem 