Is it harmful to have sex with strangers? Is it harmful to make money?
No, to sell your time, your company or sexual services is not in itself harmful. But it is damaging to sex workers to be subjected to oppressive conditions like discrimination and social stigma. Swedish prostitution law contributes to such oppression. Sex workers are being discriminated against, and thus prejudice and stereotypes are preserved. Even though the law supposedly aims at protecting sex workers, it is evident that the main purpose of the law is to protect society from a perceived social ill.
It is legal to sell sexual services in Sweden, however it is illegal to buy. According to a ruling some time ago in an administrative court of appeal (kammarrätt), sex workers must pay taxes for their incomes from prostitution, although nobody knows how. Sex workers have duties but no rights? Sex workers in Sweden are at risk being evicted if they are found selling sexual services; they are also at risk losing their regular jobs, and losing custody of their children.
What other groups in Sweden are denied their rights to work in cooperation with others or alone, in safety of their own premises?
Would it be possible to treat other groups of workers, or religious or ethnic minorities like this, without them crying out about discrimination or human right violations?
Every person saying that men ‘buy our bodies’’ is guilty of preserving inequality between the sexes. Even though we ourselves and our customers maintain otherwise, they continue to objectify us, and regard us a commodity.
Furthermore, they say that such an attitude cannot be acceptable in a gender-equal society; although they do everything they can to preserve it themselves! How will we ever achieve equality if such prejudice and stereotypes are allowed to persist?
Swedish politicians and feminists are proud of the state’’s prostitution policy. They insist that it has positive effects and are constantly bragging and telling lies about the situation in Sweden for sexworkers.
In Sweden you can only find ONE politically accurate opinion about prostitution and it is expressed by most of the politicians, the police and social workers. What they say is founded on what they believe and not on facts or scientifically research and sadly this believing is exported as facts to other countries. Another opinion among politicians would be the same as a political suicide.
People with another opinion are afraid to speak, because if they do they will be subjected to harassment and oppression or even loose their jobs.
Yesterday I read an article at ANSA.it - - Minister targets prostitute clients:
Interior Minister Giuliano Amato wants Italy to follow Sweden’s lead in the battle against prostitution by making buying sex a crime. Advocates say that, by targeting demand rather than supply, this approach has slashed the street sex trade without hitting its main victims - the prostitutes themselves - since being adopted in Sweden in 1999.
“In this way it is possible to pursue both the ‘managers’ and the clients and not just with fines for blocking the flow of traffic,” Amato said. “Prostitution has been reduced in Sweden and almost all of its effects in terms of public security have been wiped out,” he told Italian news weekly L’Espresso.
I wonder who in Sweden has been telling lies this time?
And has Amato asked the sexworkers in Sweden what we think about the laws in Sweden? Properly NOT, cause sexworkers in Sweden strongly discourage other countries from adopting similar legislation.
Sexworkers in Sweden want to have the same human rights as the rest of society.
We want a more sensible policy and legislation concerning the selling and buying of sexual services, a decriminalisation that means that the legislation prohibiting sex for pay between consenting adults is removed. As a result of a policy change, sexworkers could then start to be protected for real by the existing laws, for example rape, sexual abuse, trafficking.
The law against procurement of sexual services (promotion or deriving profit from prostitution) and the law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services introduced in 1999 are the two main ways the Swedish state sees itself as ’’combating’’ prostitution.
As a summary, I can tell you that the law against purchasing sexual services have increased the risks and the violence against sexworkers and the law against procurement make it impossible for us to work safely.
Let us look at some facts instead of listening to what some feminist and politicians in Sweden want to believe. Petra Ostergren, a social anthropologist from Stockholm, has since 1996 written articles and done research about feminism, equal politics and prostitution. Last year here new book ’’Porr, horor och feminister’’ (Pornography, whores and feminist’s) got a lot of attention in media.
Petra Ostergren has written an article in English about Sexworkers Critique of Swedish Prostitution Policy. Here are some quotes from that article:
The law against procurement
The law against procurement renders it illegal to work indoors, work with others, to profit from the sexual labour of others, and advertise. Due to the law against procurement, sexworkers are forced to lie in order to rent premises, or alternatively they have to pay exorbitant rent. Either way, they constantly worry about being discovered. They also report often having to move (when discovered) and being treated badly by landlords and ’’rent pimps’’. Some women prefer to make contact with their customers on the street. Other sexworkers find this too humiliating.
Most of the women I have spoken to wish to be able to work together with others. This is to ensure safety and to support each other. They find it unfair that they cannot do this and feel scared when they have to work alone.
This law also makes it difficult for sexworkers to cohabit with a partner since it is illegal to receive any of a sexworker’s income. It is hard for a sexworker to have a family at all since sexworkers are considered to be unfit parents and therefore can lose custody of their children if it emerges that they sell sex.
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The law against purchasing sexual services
As a result of the new legislation, the sexworkers say it is now harder for them to assess the clients. The clients are more stressed and scared and negotiation outdoors must be done in a more rapid manner. The likelihood of ending up with a dangerous client is thereby greater.
Due to the law, sexworkers feel hunted by the police, social workers, media and sometimes even anti-prostitution activists on the streets.
The more vulnerable sexworkers seem to be the ones most negatively affected by the law. Women working on the streets in some bigger cities claim that there is now a greater percentage of ‘perverted’ customers and that the ’’nice and kind’’ customers have disappeared. A ‘perverted’ customer is someone who demands more violent forms of sex, sex with feces and urine and who is more prone to humiliate, degrade and violate the sexworker. He also more often refuses to use condoms.
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Official reports
All of these reports find that street prostitution dropped immediately after the introduction of the law. They also suggest that recruitment was lower, although the National Council for Crime Prevention means that the exact number of prostitutes in for example Stockholm was hard to estimate because street prostitution had moved to other streets and took place in a larger area than before. All of the authorities say that there is no evidence that prostitution was lower overall. Instead hidden prostitution had probably increased.
All of the reports address the problems emerging after the new law was introduced. The National Police Board writes that the sexworkers that are still in street prostitution have a tough time.
The respondents in the National Board of Health and Welfare’s study (of which none are sexworkers themselves) believe female sexworkers now experience more difficulties and are more exposed then before.
The buyers are ‘worse’ and more dangerous, and the women who cannot stop or move their business are dependent on these more dangerous men, since they cannot afford to turn them down as before. Even the buyers that were interviewed believe that the law mostly affected the already socially marginalised women.
The National Police Board has also found the law an obstacle to prosecuting profiteers who exploit the sexual labour of others. Earlier legal cases against such men could sometimes be supported by the testimonies of sex-buyers. But these men are no longer willing to assist, since they themselves are now guilty of committing a crime.
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Some pictures from a story sent in Norwegian TV the 28th of April this year about prostitution in Sweden - Sexkjøp i det skjulte.
The police in Sweden are going to arrest a customer of a sexworker, literally with his underwear down, and they barge in to the hotel room.
The sexworker sees that they are filming and tries to cover her head with a towel to protect her own integrity.
The police shout very aggressively: - What are you doing? And then he rips off the towel and says: - This is the police!
The pictures change and now you see a policeman in a car. He works with prostitution and says:
- It’s not ok to buy another human, that’s slavery according to me, prostitution is awful and inhuman.
But he is not talking about prostitution; he is talking about trafficking for sexual purpose. And unfortunately people very often think that selling and buying sexual services is the same as sexual trafficking. But it’s NOT.
Prostitution is voluntary sexual service carried between consenting adults. If there is no agreement it is not about prostitution, then it’s about enforced sex and sexual violence, for instance sexual slavery and victims of trafficking.
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Many politicians says that the Swedish law against purchasing sexual services is an effective weapon against trafficking. But there are no facts at all that can show that our laws about prostitution in Sweden have been effective against trafficking. And there is no logical argument that are suspense and strong to claim this opinion. In Sweden the cases of trafficking for sexual purpose is increasing for every year.
Trafficking is modern among politicians these days and of course they want to show action against trafficking and they use this issue to gain votes and to make a political career. But to fight trafficking you need to inform people about how to discover trafficking, you need creative and focused resources and not laws that forces prostitution underground.
A new report, from organisation for migration research IOM, exposing that within trafficking 75 % is about slavery work in other areas than the sex industry. Do the politicians in the future also want to outlaw all who employ help to agriculture because people are forced to do slavery work at farms? Or shall we become criminals if we buy diamonds in a jewelery store, diamonds that can have been found by child labour under slavery in Africa?
Very often politicians also claim that all foreign sexworkers are victims of trafficking. In Denmark the police says that a maximum of one percent of the foreign sexworkers are victims of trafficking.
And if you are a victim of trafficking the only help you can expect from the Danish or Swedish governments is to be locked up in a closed institution for refugees for some months BUT only if you help the police and expose yourself, for the threat against your family can be executed by criminal organisations.
And when the police no longer need you, you are deported back to your home country directly in to the arms of criminal organisations.
Countries which adopt the Swedish laws about prostitution can calculate on that robbery, ill treatment and rape of sexworkers will grow, that the policy that comes along with such laws will imply more discrimination towards sexworkers and that sexworkers will be to afraid to go to the police if they need help.
Communication between sexworkers and authorities will collapse, collaboration will become aggravated and sexual trafficking will be hard to detect. We have already seen this happen in Sweden.
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Isabella Lund (trying her best to write in English)
Sexworker in Sweden
Member of SANS - Sexworkers and allies network in Sweden.
Isabellas blogg in Swedish: ”Att arbeta som eskort”
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If you want to learn more about how the laws in Sweden has affect us, please read Petra Östergren’s whole article Sexworkers Critique of Swedish Prostitution Policy. I also recommended:
- A Norwegian report from 2003: Purchasing Sexual Services in Sweden and The Netherlands (pdf). It is written by a working group whose task was to collect experiences, which argued for and against the criminalisation of the purchase of sexual services. The working group was appointed by on the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Police Affairs. They gathered experiences from both Sweden and The Netherlands and it is very interesting to read their report.
. - An assessment of Gunilla Ekberg’s account of Swedish prostitution policy (pdf) by: Vincent Clausen. Gunilla Ekberg’s account of Swedish prostitution policy is frequently referred to in debates worldwide, and it is thus forming part of the basis of knowledge upon which strategies and approaches are discussed and constructed. Ekberg frequently draws conclusions that are directly contradicting or otherwise in conflict with the evidence in the sources used. Ekberg’’s article should be seen as a political manifesto, rather than an attempt at accounting for the effects of the prohibition of the purchase of sexual services.
Download the French translation
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Andra bloggar om: prostitution, sexköpslagen, feminism, politik, människohandel, sex, Petra Östergren, horstigma, sexköpare, koppleri, kopplerilagen, mänskliga rättigheter, Italien .
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May 28th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Prostitution in a free way of a free femail/mail could probably never be wrong regardless of all (i knows what is best for others) people in Sweden.The sexual trafficking from other countries is however a completely different story where we sadly all to often could see abused people for the interest of money.
The old and annoyingly sad truth about prostitution is that in the rooms where the fancy people live as they like to see them selves,we usually could find leading people everywhere in the world who sometimes visit these prostituted humans.With there pants down off course !?.
Have a nice day.
SideShow Surfer
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Good article.
Being an italian citizen I know very well Mr. Amato’s ludicrous opinions!
Swedish government has spread lies everywhere in the world about its “solution” about prostitution, including Italy.
In my site I explained that, even translating into italian language the Norwegian government’s report about Sweden and the Netherlands.
And I’m really happy to see that Mr. Clausen found many of the same faults I found (and shown on my site more than a years ago) in Gunilla Ekberg’s account.
Let’s stop these lies, they already did a lot of damage.
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I agree with you Jonathan and sometimes I feel ashamed over Sweden because of these lies. It’s bad already what all the lies and our stupid laws has done to us, but then they also use it against sexworkers around the world…
July 21st, 2007 at 5:59 pm
In our subconscious, the concepts of protection and aggression are not very far away. After all, both mean “to use force for a particular purpose”. So it’s not surprising that the word “to protect” may be easily used to mask the meaning “to destroy”. Keeping this in mind, it may seem that protective abolitionists collect examples of abused prostitutes for the same reason pedophiles collect pictures of children. The women among them want to destroy sexual competition, the men indulge in rape fantasies. If you look at the psychological mechanisms, it’s nothing but the good old Holy Inquisition reborn, hunting the modern witch – the prostitute. Boo.
The Swedish approach seems to me like a subconscious compromise. On the one hand, the Inquisitors refrain from attacking their witches directly, which grants some plausibility to their claim that they only want to protect them. Apparently, the lack of logic in their past attitudes became too much for them to bear – in our modern climate of alleged personal freedom, the old ideas of godless, morally inferior women couldn’t survive. On the other hand, the Swedish approach allocates to prostitutes the role of defenseless, suffering victims – exactly the position in which the Inquisition wants them to be. For most people, what’s inside their heads is more real than what’s around them.
A policy that really wanted to improve the situation would probably grant prostitutes strong rights and make life hell for pimps. Furthermore, it would fight poverty and drugs, offer women alternatives and help to get out of the trade. To me, prostitution sounds like quite a crappy job, but I understand that it’s extremely personality-dependent. What is hell for one is heaven for another, and all I can do is to ask what it is for a particular person. Inquisitors never ask if they aren’t sure that they will like the answer.
July 21st, 2007 at 7:41 pm
He, he, he hgss… it’s very often I feel like a witch
It’s just a pitty that I do not have any magic power to change things to the better for sexworkers in Sweden.
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Isabel, as a native English speaker let me just say you write in English very well indeed. Your ideas and opinions are presented very clearly. I think you raise many telling points. I have found that news about chnages in social policies in one country can be transmitted to other countries in ways that leave a lot to be desired if it is only the proponents of these ideas who are left to publicise changes that have been made. Hence the importance of your voice. I also wonder what the National Council for Crime Prvention is doing regarding researching and analysing what sexworkers in Sweden are now experiencing. Saying that the task of knowing how mnay sexworkers there are in Stockholm is hard would not reasssure anybody about their competence. Are they doing any detailed research and if so, are they doing it in a way which encourages sexworkers to contribute to it? Are you Isabel, in a position to work with others to present a detailed and true picture of what is happening? For example, do you have any evidence (anecdotal or statistical) of what is actually happening re the incidence of violence against sexworkers? I would suspect it would become, as you have said, more hidden and therefore unreported making any anecdotal evidence you unearth more important than ever. If the laws are putting you more at risk then the laws are failing.
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Thanks for your comment Don
There isn’t any big research that would tell true picture of what is happening. You can relay on official police report because sexworkers doesn’t report violence against them to the police. To make any money as a sexworker you have to have the police on a distance so they don’t take your clients. And if you see your client in your home and your home is a rented apartment you take a big risk if the police get knowledge about this. A landlord is required to terminate a lease if that person receives knowledge that the sale of sexual services is occurring in one of his/hers apartments.
And sometimes the social services consider parents unfit as a parent solely because they are selling sexual services. Sexworkers therefore always run the risk of losing the custody of their children if it is revealed that they sell sexual services. If you go to the police and they fins out that you have children they are forced to send a report to the social services.
This is one of many reasons that causes sexworkers not to seek help from the police if they are the victims of abuse or has been tricked. The confidence in the police as well as for the social authorities is often non-existent because all the legislation aims to do is counteracting the sale of sexual services.
The administrative court of appeals has ruled that the sale of sexual services is a business model that should be taxed. But it is very difficult to run a business legal in Sweden and pay taxes the right way. This means that sexworkers risk being overtaxed, which causes huge financial difficulties. A sexworker that was going to leave the business was forced to continue her sexual activities so she could pay the over taxation. And it was a police, who worked against prostitution that was behind all this, he took contact with the tax people and told them about this sexworker!
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Oh vilken lång artikel. Hur i hela friden har du hunnit med detta, Isabella?
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 am
Eh, och Thierry som tydligen gjort den franska översättningen hade kanske lite bråttom när han skulle göra den.
August 26th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Jeg har lest en del rapporter fra land hvor legalisering er innført, som Nederland, Tyskland, Skottland og Australia. Disse rapportene viser at trafficking er økende, vold og voldtekt er like omfattende, om ikke verre! Så legalisering har ikke akkurat løst problemene de heller. Lest også en interessant artikkel fra en mann som først trudde alt var ok da han kjøpte seg en prostituerte i Nederland, altså siden det er legalisert, men oppdaget fort da han snakket med forskjellige prostituerte at det var mange traffiking offer der. Han sluttet da å kjøpe sex da han innså at det var slaveri og at han ikke kunne se forskjellen på trafficking ofre og “frivillige” prostiturte. Så hvordan skal en kunde se forskjellen?
August 26th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Hva er ditt forslag for å få bukt med trafficking? Mener du at den nederlanske modellen fungerer bedre enn den svenske? Mener du det er mulig å få fullstendig likestilling selv om det vil bli mer og mer vanlig at menn kjøper sex av kvinner? Å selge seg selv, er det noe du vil anbefale andre? Kan du se forskjellen på de som gjør det “frivillig” og de som ikke gjør det “frivillig”? Kan det ikke være en mulighet at andre prostituerte kanskje lyver også til deg om hvordan de havnet i prostitusjon? Hvilken grunner går igjen for at kvinner havner i prostitusjon? Er det så at om du hadde hatt andre valg ville du fortsatt valgt å være prostituert eller ønsker du å slutte? Ønsker de fleste av de prostituerte å fortsette eller ønsker de å slutte?
August 26th, 2007 at 3:32 am
Legalisation is a `pull factor’ for traffickers. Project Respect estimates, “at least seven licensed brothels in Victoria have used trafficked women in the last year”. An Australian Institute of Criminology study estimated that Australian brothels earned $1 million a week from illegal prostitution. Mary Sullivan and Sheila Jeffreys point out that, “Legalisation was intended to eliminate organised crime from the sex industry. In fact the reverse has happened. Legalisation has brought with it an explosion in the trafficking of women into prostitution by organised crime. Convicted criminals, fronted by supposedly more reputable people, remain in the business” (2000, p 12). In Victoria estimates from the police and the legal brothel industry put the number of illegal brothels at 400, four times more than the legal ones (Murphy 2002). In1994, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) stated that in the Netherlands alone: “nearly 70 per cent of trafficked women were from CEEC [Central and Eastern European Countries]” (IOM, 1995).
August 26th, 2007 at 3:32 am
At the most basic level an expansion of the sex industry in its current forms will be accompanied by increased incidence of violence. Violence against women in prostitution does not seem to have decreased in the Netherlands or Victoria since legalisation, and there are even suggestions that it has increased. (Jeffreys 1997, Daley 2001). A report by the Australian Institute of Criminology in 1990 found that many prostitutes in legal brothels were at a high risk of violence (TA, 1990, p 4). Research in 1994 by an NGO found that a significant percentage of women felt unsafe with customers most or some of the time (Pyett, Haste & Snow 1994: 13). The Prostitutes Collective of Victoria (PCV) was receiving up to 15 reports of rape and violence against prostitutes weekly. Also, many of these women in illegally run brothels in Victoria did not report to police, either for fear of being charged with a prostitution-related offence, or because they already had outstanding fines and were afraid of being jailed (Australia Country Report).
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/historic/lg/inquiries-03/ptz/lg04-ptz-res-03.htm#P255_33251
August 26th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Ser at mange begrunner legalisering som forebyggende på voldtekt, dvs. kan de ikke kjøpe noen så voldtar de noen. Dette syns jeg faller på sin egen urimelighet, og forteller jo egentlig hvem kundene er. Er dette personer man vil ha gående rundt i samfunnet vårt? Menn som ikke kan kontrollere seg og som ser det som rett til å “tømme” seg, og får de det ikke “frivillig” fra en prostituret så kan de ligeså greit voldta noen. Det er jo ganske klart hvilket kvinnesyn slike personer har! Hva mener du om det? Mener du det er en sammenheng? Har lest en rapport hvor tall for antall innbyggere i et land kontra voldtekt kontra antall prostiturete le presentert. Det var interessant da jo letter tilgjengelig prostiturte jo mindre voldtekt var det.
August 26th, 2007 at 3:56 am
On the international scale, we can see that where social protection is weak or non existent, where relations between men and women are marked by great inequalities, where access to education and the labour market are closed to women, prostitution is more developed. The fight against prostitution thus also includes a policy promoting development and equality between the sexes at the international level. Lastly, the question of the clients’ responsibility, which has long been ignored, will have to be raised.
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france_159/label-france_2554/label-france-issues_2555/label-france-no.-47_3651/feature-male-female-relationships-the-french-experience_3652/prostitution-male-female-relationship-like-any-other_4883.html
August 26th, 2007 at 3:59 am
F: Cannot one recognize rights for prostitutes without supporting prostitution?
MVL: De facto, prostitutes are the people who are most deprived of rights. But among the rights of prostitutes there is above all the right not to be prostituted, the right to report clients to the authorities for rape or failure to assist a person in danger, to report pimps for exploiting another person’s body, to pursue the State which does not implement a victim protection policy. This is the great intellectual dishonesty of those who wish to confuse the rights of prostitutes with the right to let oneself be prostituted, which is far from the same thing.
August 26th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Hej bente!
Idag vet IOM att människohandel förekommer till största delen (75%) inom helt andra branscher än sexbranschen. Problemet med människohandel är ingenting man totalt löser genom att avkriminalisera eller legalisera en bransch. Men det blir lättare för kunder att anmäla misstankar om människohandel till polisen. Sexarbetare behöver inte vända sig till kriminella för att få hjälp och kan få skydd av polisen. Vi vet av vår historia att om en brasch kriminaliseras så utnyttjar kriminella organisationer detta genom att exploatera den markanden.
Australien är populärt föremål för att ta upp som ett exempel på hur legalisering har misslyckats… men när man läser rapporter som du har gjort så måste man ALLTID inom detta område kritiskt granska dess innehåll och vem det är som står bakom rapporten. Lögner och rena propagandan är mycket vanligt bland politiker i dessa frågor. Jag har inte tid att kolla upp dina källor just nu men läs gärna fakta från andra sidan jorden och mer fakta från andra sidan jorden. Läs också gärna mitt inlägg om hur det är i Nya Zeeland.
Du undrar om mina tankar kring våldtäkter… Jag tror att människor som är sexuellt frusterade mår dåligt. Män som är sexuellt frusterade och som kanske inte är den typen av män som vill prata om sina problem eller som försöker lösa problemen konstruktivt … kan hantera denna frustration genom att bli aggresiva och våldsamma. Inte säkert att det går så långt som till våldäkt men jag tror att en hel del misshandel förekommer pga sexuell frustration. Och vad händer i samhällen där det sexuella förtrycks? Sami Moubayed, en Syrisk författare, journalist och politisk analytiker, berättar precis vad som händer i en artikel i Washington Post - Sexual Repression in Syria
Och i en norska Dagbladet läste jag att sexköp är vanligare i länder där de sociala normerna är mer rigida och konservativ när det gäller synen på kvinnor och deras plats i samhället. “Jo mer konservativt, desto høyere er etterspørselen av prostituerte, og desto mer hemmelighetskremmeri er det omkring sexkjøp.”
Bente du ställer många frågor i inlägg nummer 11. Jag har en syn på människor som innebär att jag alltid vill lyssna på vad de själva säger före att jag vill höra andra människors tolkningar av hur de mår eller vad de vill. Läs därför gärna mitt inlägg om Kaxiga offer som kräver mänskliga rättigheter. Läs också gärna vad som står på SANS hemsida på deras sida om fakta kring försäljning av sexuella tjänster.
August 26th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Bente…Det er i alle fall veldig klart hvilket syn du har. Og det synet deler jeg ikke med deg.
August 27th, 2007 at 12:33 am
En af Bentes kilder er her:
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/catwaust/web/myfiles/legprost.htm
Jeg tjekkede den øverste på siden, af den omtalte Mary Sullivan. Hun nævner ingen opgørelse af omfanget af vold i prostitution i Australien, og dermed naturligvis heller ikke dokumentation for, at den skulle være øget.
Mary Sullivan ser køb af sex som et overgreb i sig selv, og da omfanget af prostitution måske er vokset, vil omfanget af overgreb dermed også være det ud fra Sullivans opfattelse.
Men Sullivan skriver også om effekter af den stadigt hårdere konkurrence mellem de prostituerede. Er der hårdere konkurrence, må det være fordi der er kommet flere prostituerede, men ikke tilsvarende flere kunder. Hvordan skal man så opgøre væksten i prostitution ?
Hver sjette australske mand har ifølge Sullivan betalt for sex på et eller andet tidspunkt. Det svarer stort set til niveauet i de skandinaviske lande.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Hi Isabel:
You said in reply to me:
“The confidence in the police as well as for the social authorities is often non-existent because all the legislation aims to do is counteracting the sale of sexual services.”
I think where trust between sex workers and the authorites (in each and every guise) doesn’t exist then there is real danger of exploitation and violence going unchecked. An under-world is created which assists no-one. It may look as though the problem has been swept away but from what you’re saying Isabel, it looks as though it has only been swept into dark, inaccessible corners where more violence is perpetrated. Are there any NGOs that seek to help sexworkers?
You also said: “The administrative court of appeals has ruled that the sale of sexual services is a business model that should be taxed. But it is very difficult to run a business legal in Sweden and pay taxes the right way. This means that sexworkers risk being overtaxed, which causes huge financial difficulties. A sexworker that was going to leave the business was forced to continue her sexual activities so she could pay the over taxation. And it was a police, who worked against prostitution that was behind all this, he took contact with the tax people and told them about this sexworker!”
This is just the type of perverse application of the law you get when people are no longer the focus but the administration of the law is the focus. I would say Isabel that this example that you’ve given is a telling indication that the driving force is not a concern for people but a delight in appearing to be doing the politically correct thing. The end result is not protection but persecution of the vulnerable. That’s why this is not deeply ironic - it is truly perverse.
The example of Victoria provided by bente is fascinating - and disturbing too. I wonder what research there has been done into demand for prostitution in Victoria. If legislation has led to an “explosion” in numbers of brothels, where are the men coming from? And have men locally increased their use of brothels? And if these changes in numbers of illegal brothels are so massive what is now happening in response within Victoria?
Thanks Isabel for stimulating this dicussion. And BTW does this raising of these matters put you more at risk in Sweden yourself?
September 20th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I am from the US, and also know Isabella, and I wanted to post here to ask a question. We are having a discussion about Swedish prostitution laws on our Word Press Blog at http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/ Perhaps some might want to join us as people would like to communicate with Swedish workers.
I am interested in how other laws that apply to prostitution effect Swedish prostitutes. I collected some below. Perhaps someone has the time to respond? Thanks if so!
http://www.bayswan.org/swed/swed_law.html
It is against any laws to work out of your apartment, I think, from my research? Is it against the law to work in a separate space? Alone or with other sex workers?
I see that landlords can be charged if they know there is a crime and my assumption is that, since clients are committing a crime, that means that it is illegal to work out of an apartment?
In Canada the only really legal prostitution seems to be outcall at a hotel or on the client’s turf. This is a result of prohibitionist policies supposedly constructed to make it better for sex workers (ha!) The massage businesses may have a quasi legal status. I am not sure as these laws are variously interpreted and I have heard debate as to what is and isn’t legal. I believe some of their laws have not been challenged at the highest courts?
I wonder if someone could explain the activities related to sex work in Sweden that are potentially illegal now. Also, it is my understanding that other vulnerabilities are exacerbated like child custody? Others?
Thanks so much if you can!
My Critique of Swedish Prost Laws is at:
http://www.bayswan.org/swed/swed_index.html
September 20th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
You will find a lot of useful information about our laws and the negative consequences
they have here in Sweden at SANS webpage http://www.sans.nu/sans_eng.htm
According to the law against procuring or “pimping” it is illegal to facilitate or in an undue way economically exploit a person who have brief sexual relations for money.
A landlord is required to terminate the lease if the person is aware that the sale of sexual services is happening in his/hers property.
The law against procuring hinders sexworkers to:
· hire the help of others.
· work together.
· work indoors in their own facility.
· market their services in the press.
· share their profits with a partner or husband.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:02 am
I have not seen the website before and I am excited to look through it!
Thanks for taking the time to answer.
It sounds like, although the Swedish law purports to criminalize the clients, the truth is, combined with other laws against aspects of prostitution, the new law puts the selling of services in a category where it is nearly impossible to do prostitution safely without being part of some kind of crime on other people’s part…plus your children can be taken away in child custody and you have to choose between being evicted all the time or taking more of a risk by doing outcalls. That’s scary.
How would a collective of sex workers be punished now? Would all be charged with pimping each other (as our lawyers tell us could happen here) or would they ‘just’ be evicted? Have any attorneys commented on that?
Thanks!
September 21st, 2007 at 6:27 am
A collective of sexworkers would have to face prison if they work together, and it happens… so yes it is bad really bad for us her in Sweden.
Youre welcome