Isabella Lund

Sexarbetare i hela Europa har under många år sagt högt och tydligt “Nothing about us, without us”.

Nu gör vi det igen och riktar skarp kritik mot ett utkast till en rapport av FEMM om prostitution och dess hälso- konsekvenser på kvinnor i EU:s medlemsländer.

Rapportör är EU parlamentarikern Maria Carlshamre (Fi) och föga förvånande går rapporten naturligtvis emot de Europeiska sexarbetarnas manifest och gemensamma deklarationen samt Europarådets resolution “Prostitution wich stance to take“.

(Ni vet Europarådets resolutionen som svenska politiker inte ville rösta igenom. Resolutionen som Beatrice Ask tyckte var problematisk för att man ska visa respekt för sexarbetare och lyssna på oss. Kommer ni ihåg att vår protest mot Asks uttalandet bemöttes med ett sanslöst svar från justitiedepartementet?)

FEMM är EU:s kommitté för kvinnors rättigheter och jämställdhet, och jag har ingen förhoppning om att de svenska EU politikerna i FEMM, Maria Carlshamre (Fi) och Eva-Britt Svensson (v), kommer att lyssna på vår protest. De är välkända fanatiska prostitutionsmotståndare och har inte sexarbetares mänskliga rättigheter på sina agendor.

Här följer det gemensamma uttalande från Europas sexarbetare om Carlshamres rapport, uttalandet har skickats till samtliga medlemmar i FEMM.

Dear FEMM Committee members,

We applaud your work and commitment to improve the rights and health of women in Europe, including migrant women, as is evidenced by the proposed FEMM report /”On prostitution and its health consequences on women in Member States”./ However, we are compelled to raise our concerns when the potential ‘improvements’ being put forward by this report risk leading to repressive policies towards both prostitution and migration and which may deeply undermine prostitutes’ ability to implement strategies of self-protection and self-determination.

*ON LANGUAGE*
An important part of the more than 20 year history in Europe of sex workers self-determination is reflected in the words they use to describe their own realities.

We strongly object to the use of the phrase ‘prostituted women’ on the grounds that it denies women the agency promised to them by our feminist legacy; it erases the voices of those (migrant) sex workers who have made clear decisions about their own futures, it conflates the different experiences and needs of sex workers and trafficked persons, and it obliterates the
experiences and needs of transwomen
working in prostitution.

We ask that the members of the FEMM Committee remove the phrase ‘prostituted women’ from this report in respect of the voices of all women working in the sex industry, none of whom call themselves by this term. We ask that this phrase be replaced with sex worker, or trafficked person where appropriate.

*ON VIOLENCE*
The disproportionate levels of violence experienced by both indoor and outdoor based sex workers and the failure of the law to protect sex workers from violence has been identified across Europe as a major factor in increasing sex workers vulnerability, particularly those who have no legal status or are directly criminalised. Social vulnerabilities of sex workers is one of the structural determinants of the risks to health and well-being and in particular to HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).The often unsafe and violent environment of the work place and the poor living conditions of sex workers increases their vulnerability.

We object to the FEMM Committee report which suggests that some forms of harm are essential to prostitution and to the language which reaffirms stereotypes about potential causal factors to entry into prostitution. The sex workers rights movement, advocacy workers and academics have vastly contributed to our knowledge about sex work, sex workers and their clients. It is unethical to deny the diverse realities lived by women and transwomen working in the sex industry by selecting research which favours a particular ideology.

We ask that the FEMM Committee members reconsider and remove all statements in the report which unilaterally apply causal factors and consequences to the diverse lives and experiences of all women working in prostitution.

*ON HEALTH*
The unspoken position of The FEMM Committee report seems to be that prostitution is a health threat to all women. This idea risks leading to instituting proscriptive policies that undermine the rights of all women to sexual self-determination under the guise of ‘protecting’ women from the harms of prostitution.

The right to life, safety, free speech, political action and access to information and to basic health and education services are important to all women including those women and transwomen working in sex work. No one should lose these human rights because of the work they do.

A human rights-based approach to health promotion and programme implementation for sex workers has been the core principle of UN agencies for many years. It is essential that the national and regional programming policies and interventions for sex workers should fall in line with the human rights framework if they are to be effective in reducing vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and enhancing the health and well- being of SW.

We ask the FEMM Committee to weigh very carefully the balance between making a strong ideological statement and re-entrenching ideas about vulnerability and potential to victimisation for women thereby undermining every women’s right to self-determination and sexual autonomy and which may lead to repressive policies that increase vulnerability especially for those women and transwomen working in sex work.

*ON TRAFFICKING*
The presence of migrant sex workers in Europe and in other regions of the world requires a rethinking of the issue of women’s labour migration and complex system of factors that provoke different forms and levels of vulnerability.

Positioning migrant women working in the sex industry as mainly victims of trafficking results in the conflation of very different experiences, needs and possible remedies for migrant sex workers and trafficked persons; within this framework no woman benefits. Increasingly we are seeing legislation discussed or introduced by States that risk restricting the freedom of movement of all women. Such policies often enhance rather than halt trafficking mechanisms by making women more dependent on potentially exploitive third parties.

We ask that the FEMM Committee to re-examine those statements in the report which directly conflate prostitution and trafficking. We encourage FEMM committee members to support strong anti-trafficking policies which are based on the protection of women’s human rights. At the same time we stress the need to create a legal and a social framework for dealing with sex work based on the protection of sex workers’ human, labour and civil rights, including those of migrant sex workers.

In closing we would like to stress how important it is for women to work in solidarity together /with/ the women and transwomen working in sex work without denying our diversity of experience or vision for a just and equitable world.

We call on the members of the FEMM Committee to promote *holistic policy and strategy* underpinned by principles of respect and inclusion of (migrant) sex workers and to promote European policies that are based on the equality in access to civil and social rights including the right to health protection.

*”Nothing about us, without us”*

Signed:

Petra Timmermans
Coordinator - International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe ( ICRSE)

Licia Brussa
Director - TAMPEP Foundation International

Katrin Schiffer
Project Coordinator Correlation Network

Aliya Rakhmetova,
Project Coordinator SWAN network (CEE/CA)

If committee members are committed to listening to all women on the issue of rights, including the voices of sex workers (women, transwomen and men, and men) living and working in Europe, then we encourage you to take the time to read the /Declaration on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe/ and the /Sex Workers in Europe Manifesto/. Both are available via the www.sexworkeurope.org website.

Ps…
Förutom det här gemensamma uttalandet så har flera sexarbetarorganisationer i Europa skrivit direkt till Maria Carlshamre och de andra medlemmar i FEMM för att protestera. Du kan t.ex. läsa de danska sexarbetarna prostest här.

Till sist…
Oscar Swartz konstaterar att det är kristen sexualmoral som är ett av skälen till att vi alla skall avlyssnas och registreras och filtreras.

Anna Svensson har varit på Stigma-spaning och kommit på att hon och jag inte vill förknippas med varandra pga de fördomar som människor har om oss. (Det är inget personligt för vi gillar varandra annars.)

Blogge skriver om Kielos balja av avföring.

Och sen attackeras både jag och Greta Garbo av Sharazad på ett sätt som är så dåligt underbyggt så att det är skrattretande. Min blogg har t.ex. röststs fram som Årets politiska blogg av torskar enligt denna kvinna!

Skrattretande är också attacken mot mig av en socialdemokratisk politisk sekretare i Eskilstuna.
Emeli Lanninge skrev den 15 maj… “Har ni tänkt på att “Isabella” kanske inte är den hon utger sig för att vara och lika gärna kan arbeta som alibi för torsklobbyn.”

Ja jag vet att det är sent men ni har väl inte missat Charlottes debattartikel på fjärde sidan i Expressen “Hellre socialpolitik än sexköpslag” från den 10 maj?

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Andra bloggar om: prostitution, feminism, politik, horstigma, EU, FEMM,
Maria Carlshamre, Eva-Britt Svensson, sexarbete, sexarbetare
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written by Isabella

Ett pressmeddelande från SWANK: Sex Workers Action New York, SWOP - NYC: Sex Workers Outreach Project NYC, PONY: Prostitutes of New York samt Desiree Alliance angående guvenör Eliot Spitzers avgång i New York.
Via SWOP samt Bound, Not Gagged.

Uttalande från mina kollegor i New York handlar om det sexarbetare i Sverige och i hela världen kämpar för, mänskliga rättigheter för alla människor inkl. sexarbetare…

New York, NY
In the wake of former Governor Spitzer’s resignation, sex workers and human rights advocates remain concerned about the representation and future of “Kristen” and other sex workers, who do not have the legal and social privileges that will be afforded to Mr. Spitzer. The identity of the sex worker implicated in this case has already been made public, a situation mirroring many a sex worker’s worst nightmare. “Kristen’s” exposure may entail not only bring her legal repercussions, but invasion of privacy, financial hardship and social opprobrium.

Rather than continuing to sensationalize Spitzer’s actions and those directly involved, we urge the press and the public to shift their focus to the legal climate under which sex workers operate, while respecting “Kristen’s” agency to have chosen sex work as a viable source of income.

“Everyone wants to know how high her rates were, all the salacious details, but the real issue at stake here is that the hypocrisy of criminalizing sex work has been exposed!

It’s a part of our society, of every society, and we need to take this opportunity to stop with the value judgments and start coming up with policies that respect the human dignity of all people, sex workers and all workers.” says Dylan Wolfe of SWANK (Sex Workers Action New York).

Former Governor Spitzer took a lead role in developing the NY State Anti-Trafficking Law as well as other initiatives that stigmatize sex workers and their clients. It is the stigma of sex work that leads many individuals like “Kristen” to keep their occupations a secret, creating further isolation and opportunities for exploitation. This same stigma compromises the safety and well-being of people like “Kristen” when their private lives become public knowledge.

Sex workers are then forced to work further underground, rendering them more vulnerable to abuse, while denying them access to the basic civic participation, health and social services available to other people.

“Hopefully Mr. Spitzer’s unfortunate public decline will send a message to all like him who pass laws that endanger the safety of sex workers while indulging in the service themselves,” Sarah Bleviss of SWOP said, “Sex workers clearly provide them a very valuable service; it’s time for lawmakers to return the favor.”

Too little attention has been paid to what the repercussions of this case will be for those most directly concerned, sex workers, and more generally to the impact of laws and attitudes that marginalize them. It is time for a change.

Spitzer pushed through penalty enhancements against clients of all sex workers. Sex worker advocates fought against such provisions because these policies drive people who need help further underground. Often prostitution is wrongly conflated with trafficking and vice-versa. People are trafficked for many kinds of work, be it domestic labor, farm work or other jobs, and this kind of exploitation undoubtedly needs to be addressed.

The majority of men, women and transgendered people working in sex work, however, are ’normal’ members of society who have used their own intellectual agency to decide to make a living in a sexually-oriented way.

Laws, like the Mann Act (against inter-state transportation for the purposes of commercial sex), are too often used for punishing sex workers and their clients rather than those who profit from their exploitation.

Sex workers make a living in an industry with the potential for high risks and little by way of protection from abuse. The stigma surrounding our work can be lethal at its most extreme: we are often the targets of notorious serial killers, like the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway who targeted prostitutes because he thought he “could kill as many of them as [he] wanted without getting caught.” If sex work were decriminalized and legitimized as a form of paid labor like any other, or seen simply as an intimate exchange between consenting adults, the associated harms would be greatly diminished.

Furthermore, sex workers could access their basic human rights and social services without fear of legal reprisal or personal upheaval. “Eliot Spitzer has represented himself to the public as a law and order man, and ironically, has been in the vanguard of further criminalizing sex workers and clients. . . However, it’s a shame that so much time, energy, and tax payer resources are being spent to criminalize consensual sex between adults. It’s time to decriminalize prostitution.” says Sarah Blake of Prostitutes of New York (PONY).

Incoming Governor Paterson and other law-makers need to create policies that actually reflect the realities of their own lives and those of their constituents, including sex workers, rather than the harmful legislation of morality, whereby private matters become public scandals.

Contacts
Madeleine Dash, Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK),
877-776-2004 x 2 swank@riseup.net
Audacia Ray, 718.554.1714
Sarah Bleviss, Sex Workers Outreach Project NYC (SWOP-NYC), swop.nyc@gmail.com
Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Desiree Alliance
http://www.BoundNotGagged.com

Läs mer om “sexskandalen” i New York:

De senaste rubrikerna om skandalen i DN: “Kristen”: Jag är inget monster, En ny attraktion på Mayflower hotell och New Yorks guvernör tvingas gå.

Aftonbladet skrev igår: Hon fick Eliot Spitzer på fall och naturligtvis har även SvD skrivit om New York guvernörens avgång.

Jag uppmanar media i Sverige att ta till sig budskapet ovan från New York och tänka efter lite innan man publicerar artiklar om sexarbetare.

Bland de största tidningarna så har Sydsvenskan som vanligt skrivit minst om den här affären, de har enbart en rapporterande artikel från TT.

Och den mest tänkvärda artikeln om detta finns idag på ledarsidan i Sydsvenskan: Linje lusta i politiken, signerad av Mats Skogkär. Han skriver att finländarna kanske är Nordens fransmän. För i Frankrike betraktas den politiker som inte har några utomäktenskapliga förbindelser närmast med misstänksamhet…

“Den inställningen är knappast gångbar i Sverige, den omskrivna svenska synden till trots. Här hävdas arbetslinjen, inte linje lusta.

Men den trygge landsfadern Per Albin Hansson, statsminister 1932-46 och socialdemokratisk partiledare 1925-46, levde under många år ett komplicerat dubbelliv med två kvinnor, på den tiden en offentlig hemlighet. Det skulle nog inte gå idag.

I Sverige är dock pengar i allmänhet en betydligt känsligare fråga än sex – förutsatt att sex inte byts mot pengar.”

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Andra bloggar om: prostitution, media, politik, horstigma, New York
mänskliga rättigheter, sexarbete, sexarbetare, Eliot Spitzer, USA
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written by Isabella

When England’s Home Office minister Vernon Coaker visit Sweden later this week he will meet a bunch of people who will do their best to export Sweden’s law against purchase of sexual services to England.

Unfortunately they will be dishonest and try to do this with lies and propaganda and once again I will be ashamed of being a Swede.

The original motivation for Sweden’s prostitution laws wasn’t as a measure against trafficking, but as time has gone by, so has the argument.

That’s because the radical feminist ideas that the law was based upon has often been questioned which has led to trafficking increasingly being associated with the law as a way to defend it. After all, everybody is against trafficking, which is why they try to refute criticism on that level.

In the latest official report about human trafficking for sexual purpose from the The National Criminal Investigation Department in Sweden, published in December 2007, the police do not want to estimate the numbers of victims of trafficking in Sweden.

And in a new report from The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, published in December 2007, you can read that the knowledge about prostitution is very, very low among the police and other authorities in Sweden. The police and social workers doesn’t know how many sexworkers there is in Sweden. They do not know who or where we are. And that’s only natural, sexworkers in Sweden avoid contact, we do not have any trust at all for them.

The Swedish authorities believe that the sextrade is going to stop if you make it full of shame, illegal and as inhospitable as possible.

And because of this, the laws and the policies surrounding prostitution in Sweden there is no trust at all among sexworkers for the police, social workers or other authorities. That sexworkers would need social- and legal safety doesn’t even get mentioned in the debate about prostitution in Sweden.

Despite these facts some detectives, social workers, prosecutors and politicians in Sweden very often express what they believe as facts, even though they don’t have any evidence that supports their claim whatsoever.

You could for an example take part of these believes and lies in an article in The Guardian, Saturday January 5, 2008 - How making the customers the criminals cut street prostitution. Or listen to Rachel Williams
reports from the red light district in Stockholm.

If the so called facts from the police and prosecutors in the article and in the report is true, it would be a strong evidence that our laws in Sweden is a big, big catastrophe in the fight against human trafficking.

If the statements are true we have ten times more victims of trafficking in Sweden than the police in our neighbor country Denmark estimate that they have. And in Denmark prostitution is legal.

If it is true… we have as many victims of trafficking in Sweden in this moment as they have found in the whole USA during the last seven years! Can this really be the truth? Why all these lies?

The issue of trafficking is now popular among some politicians; it is also a good springboard for a political career.

Politicians like to be seen as strongly opposed to trafficking, and it is therefore easy to argue for a criminalisation against our customers. And in Sweden there exists only one political correct opinion by the politicians, police and social workers, that the sex-purchase law is good, that it helps sexworkers and is effective against human trafficking.

This image, based upon what some people believe and not what they in fact know or the reality, is now being exported to other countries with lies and propaganda.

Sexworkers in Sweden advocate decriminalisation and better working conditions, because underground profiteers, pimps and traffickers flourish and we would rather avoid them.

It is damaging to sexworkers to be subjected to oppressive means like discrimination, violence and social stigma. Sex workers are being discriminated against, and thru that prejudice and stereotypes are preserved. The whore stigma, the social shame surrounding sexwork is very, very strong here in Sweden, stronger than I have met in other countries.

As an example of this let me tell you about a debate in our parliament the 23rd of October 2007. It was a debate about a resolution that the Council of Europe took in the beginning of October – Prostitution with stance to take?

In that debate our minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, said (anförande 123) that the problem with the resolution is that there is a policy in it that says that they the Council of Europe states should respect peoples free choice to work as sexworkers and that the state should listen to sexworkers in questions concerning us.
She thinks that’s wrong!

Swedens minister of Justice says open in our parliament that the government in Sweden should not listen to sexworkers in questions concerning us!!!

I sincerely hope that knowledge, facts, common sense and a pragmatic and humane policy triumphs over ignorance, prejudice, racism, moral hysteria and career driven politician’s springboards.

Because 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. Don’t make the same mistake!

Isabella Lund
Sexworker in Sweden
January 07, 2008

More…
You can read more about the situation in Sweden at SANS web page. A report that is very useful to get information about Sweden and our laws is a Norwegian report from 2004. Here at my blog you can read in English, Lies about sexwork in Sweden and How abolitionists spend their time!!!

Ps…
Those who say men are buying our bodies are guilty of preserving an unequal view of women; we are being objectified as a commodity. Our protests that claim a difference of opinion are ignored or made an exception.

Our customers do not oppress us; we are being oppressed by this point of view! How will we ever achieve equality if such a prejudice and stereotypes are allowed to persist?

It is contra feministic to say that men should take responsibility for my decision as a woman and as a sexworker. Why should men take responsibility for my choice to work with sex, because I am a woman who likes sex?

Pss…
In the spring of 2007 the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen carried out a reader’s opinion poll that showed that the support for the sex-purchase law in Sweden is only 36 percent. Most Swedes wants to decriminalise prostitution.

Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?.” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?.” But, conscience asks the question, “Is it right?.” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

No man treats a car as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behaviour to sin; he does not say ‘you are a wicked motorcar and I shall not give you any more petroleum until you go. He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.

Bertrand Russell

 

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Andra bloggar om: prostitution, sexköpslagen, feminism, debatt, media,
politik, människohandel, sex, horstigma, sexköpare, yttrandefrihet,
mänskliga rättigheter, Beatrice Ask, regeringen, sexarbete, sexarbetare
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written by Isabella

En kund till mina kollegor i Australien beskriver vad prostitution handlar om i en artikel i Sydney Morning Herald - Let’s get a full head around paying for it . Kunden ifråga, Sam de Brito, är författare och hans enormt populära blogg All Men Are Liars utsågs till Australiens och Nya Zeelands bästa blogg 2006.

Sam menar, precis som jag och många med mig i sexbranschen, att en överenkommelse mellan mig och en kund är skönt ärlig i jämförelse med vad som händer på den riktiga köttmarkanden på krogen och på Internet communitys för att “hitta den rätte”.

Earlier this year I visited a prostitute for one obvious, practical reason and another less so: I’m sick of lying to women. Being single and in my 30s, I find it increasingly difficult to justify the lies and manipulation involved in having a sexual relationship with women who I’m not in love with. …

Political correctness tells me I should be ashamed of visiting a sex-worker but I’m not. Despite what some people would have you believe, men do not control the sexual spigot at my local pub. Women are the guardians of that flow and while they may torture and bankrupt themselves with dieting, beauty regimes and cosmetic surgery to maintain that influence, men exhaust themselves accruing wealth and power with which to purchase their attraction in the marketplace known as matrimony.

Prostitution pares this transaction back to its base elements. An estimated one in six Australian men have at some point in their life visited a sex worker, according to the Australian Study of Health and Relationships conducted by La Trobe University.

But it is something blokes will rarely admit to and this stigma radiates directly from the prostitute, a woman whose career choice is sneered at by most and condescended to by the rest.

Critics of the sex industry, such as the US conservative Hadley Arkes, say that prostitution “inescapably implies that the intimacy of sexual intercourse need not be connected to any authentic sentiment of love and that it need not take place in a setting marked by the presence of commitment.

“In that sense it might be said that prostitution patronises the corruption of physical love: it reduces physical love to the kind of hydraulic action that animals may share, and as it does that it detaches the act of intercourse from the kind of love that is distinctly human.”

The obvious reply to this is why does sex have to be so damn serious and why do I have to be in love to indulge in it? That’s the rub, I guess, because though meaningless sex can be good fun, it’s transcendent when you’re in love.

Läs hela artikeln här…

På sin blogg All Men Are Liars har Sam fått 533 kommentarer till sitt inlägg om den här artikeln - Sex, lies and prostitution redux. I sitt inlägg skriver Sam bla:

The reaction was not surprising and I received a tonne of emails from critics and supporters, including two offers from high-class call girls to do the job properly (thinking, thinking) and a mighty spray from Herald cartoonist Cathy Wilcox.

The reason I wrote the piece seemed lost on some readers so to clarify, it was thus: if you’re honest in the dating game, i.e. you say to women, “I’m just interested in a sexual relationship”, you will have a lot less success than if you lie, or omit the truth, i.e. intimate you may be interested in a relationship.

To my thinking, visiting a sex worker is a lot more honest than pretending you’re in to someone so you can lure them to bed.

I’m not ashamed of visiting a prostitute and many of the people who tut-tut about the sex industry are still happy to get their thrills reading about it as evidenced by my piece being the the most-read article on the entire SMH site, Monday.

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Andra bloggar om: prostitution, feminism, sex, horstigma, sexköpare.
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written by Isabella

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.
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• 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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written by Isabella