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A New Paradigm for Thinking About Prostitution

Posted by Jack Stephens | June 5th, 2008 | Crossposted from The Blog and the Bullet

Louise Livesey blogs:

Over at Genderberg is this piece on a new paradigm for thinking about prostitution. And it’s fabulous!

To cut to the core, it argues new moves in Sweden and Scotland are part of a move from a Build-A-Better-Whore paradigm to a Build-More-Sexually-Responsible-Men paradigm

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14 Responses to “A New Paradigm for Thinking About Prostitution”

  1. Roving Thundercloud Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 7:03 am

    That is a great piece! Here’s my favorite bit:

    We need to unstick from the idea that men’s desire for sex is an immovable force of nature so uncontrollable that all we can do is “fix” prostituted women to withstand the frequent violence johns inflict. Battered wives know there’s no such thing as cooking dinner good enough to avoid getting punched or keeping the house clean enough to appease a violent man. Men’s violence is not about prostituted girls, good meals, or clean houses, it’s about communities confronting the male privilege that lets them get away with abusing prostitutes or any women.

    There’s really nothing I can add to that. I just wanted to underscore it, especially for those who hadn’t read the whole thing. Thanks for posting that link!

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  2. Silenced is foo Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    “… maintain a website where men who use prostitutes can be listed so wives can know if the family food money, and her trust, is being misspent. ”

    I know they mean well, but this line alone shows how utterly clueless the people involved are.

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  3. Mike Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Genderberg? Jeez. I knew the f-word was moving toward rad-fem-ism, but to promote Sam Berg and the travesty that is the Swedish model? Yeurk.

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  4. Ampersand Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Mike, an argument is bad or good depending on the argument, not depending on who makes the argument.

    My take on the Swedish model is similar to Winston Churchill’s take on democracy: “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

    The Swedish model has not succeeded in creating a perfect world in which no one is ever abused or treated unjustly. Some people are deeply unhappy under the Swedish model — but that’s true of any system I know of. The Swedish model has apparently succeeded in reducing some of the most abuse-ridden forms of prostitution, and massively reducing human trafficking into Sweden.

    I don’t think either U.S. style outlawing, or full legalization, can claim as good a track record. Until someone has a credible better idea, the Swedish model is the best of the available models for reformers to work towards, imo.

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  5. Ampersand Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Silenced is Foo, here’s the full paragraph you quoted from:

    Instead of the Swedish model, tricking men could be licensed and be made to openly register with governments in countries where they use prostitutes. We could implement a 5-hour course in responsible prostitute-use similar to responsible driver or gun permit courses. We could make STD checks mandatory for every would-be john and maintain a website where men who use prostitutes can be listed so wives can know if the family food money, and her trust, is being misspent. As Eliot Spitzer just dramatically demonstrated, the Gordian Knot of prostitution is cut when johns lose their anonymity.

    I think the paragraph as a whole is interesting. I don’t know if it would create less abusive Johns, but it certainly would be worth a try; if it were legally possible, I’d be interested in seeing a study of the results of such a program for prostitutes’ well-being.

    Maybe it wouldn’t work at all. But what I don’t understand is why you apparently feel that it’s beyond possibility of working, and is beyond the pale to even consider.

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  6. Silenced is foo Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    My point is that probably 99% of clients will find the idea of their names being on public lists unacceptable.

    Net effect? No legal prostitution for them.

    At that point, you may as well just ban it. Same end effect, only less confusion with trying to sort the black-market prostitutes from the legit ones.

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  7. Daran Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    At that point, you may as well just ban it.

    Yes I agree. Prostitutes will be forced to seek out illegal clients. Even if the prostitutes themselves are not prosecuted for this, they won’t get to enjoy the purported benefits of registration.

    Additionally, if criminalised clients are targeted by law enforcement, this will have the effect of “disrupt[ing] a sex worker’s ability to earn a living“.

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  8. Djiril Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    My take on the Swedish model is similar to Winston Churchill’s take on democracy: “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
    That is exactly my take on full decriminalization. It is not a solution in itself, but it is the best place from which to find solutions to the problems of abuse and trafficking.

    I find it very disturbing to see so many endorsing the Swedish model with so little analysis of how it is actually working in Sweden. I hear a lot about how decriminalization “doesn’t work,” but very little critical analysis of whether the Swedish model does. Not by any who support it, anyway. I keep hearing that it has “reduced trafficking,” but very little about how it has actually affected the lives of the people it is supposed to help. I have looked for studies of any kind, but have not found any.
    (I have also heard it claimed that the government instantly deports women without passports without trying to find out if they were trafficked.)

    Meanwhile, if what those who are critical of the model say is true, it has actually made the lives of the people it is supposed to help much worse than under decriminalization. I very seldom hear this addressed by the advocates.
    Here is a blog entry which sums up most of the arguments against it:
    http://torduange.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/sweden-is-not-utopia-even-though-white-liberals-think-it-is/

    I don’t want to be the enemy of other well-intentioned people, but I am afraid that many feminists are endorsing a legal model which actually harms the people they are trying to help. If you disagree, please lay my fears to rest. Show me something resembling proof that the Swedish model is doing more harm than good and that the arguments in the post I linked are without merit.

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  9. ms_xeno Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    Torduange, as quoted in the link above:

    …Basically, i’d prefer modern societies to work with biology rather than against it. All the pumping rooms in offices and three years of maternity leave are still working against biology rather than with it, even though it can sometimes look otherwise. But that kind of thing is really just most empty gesturing towards the idea of female rights without actually giving women respect and consideration as equitably as men…

    [snerk] Okay, then.

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  10. Djiril Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    Oops. In my previous post I wrote “more harm than good” when I meant “more good than harm.”

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  11. Djiril Writes:
    June 5th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

    ms_xeno:
    Yeah, not sure what to make of that comment, or some of the other stuff said in the post for that matter, but I did think it was a good summary of the arguments against the Swedish model.

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  12. Mike Writes:
    June 6th, 2008 at 3:19 am

    Mike, an argument is bad or good depending on the argument, not depending on who makes the argument.

    True. I still think she’s a loathsome hack and ideologue.

    My take on the Swedish model is similar to Winston Churchill’s take on democracy: “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

    Pithy slogans don’t make an argument.

    The Swedish model has not succeeded in creating a perfect world in which no one is ever abused or treated unjustly. Some people are deeply unhappy under the Swedish model — but that’s true of any system I know of. The Swedish model has apparently succeeded in reducing some of the most abuse-ridden forms of prostitution, and massively reducing human trafficking into Sweden.

    Massively? Not according to the sources I’ve read. I don’t have them with me right now, as I’m not posting from home, but I will edit in or repost sources later.

    I don’t think either U.S. style outlawing, or full legalization, can claim as good a track record. Until someone has a credible better idea, the Swedish model is the best of the available models for reformers to work towards, imo.

    We do have a credible better idea: the New Zealand model.

    Sweden’s model drives prostitution underground, provides no way out and economically harms the prostitutes themselves; if any model is more likely to cause harm to women in prostitution, it’s that one. It’s a system born of a blinkered ideology rather than a real desire to help, and I loathe it for that very reason.

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  13. swedenguy Writes:
    June 6th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    It’s amazing to me how ready people on all sides of this issue are to shoot off their mouth in complete ignorance of the facts.

    It is not true, as torduange.wordpress.com suggests that

    “johns get to be more abusive, cheaper and any other unpleasant adjective one can think to add. ”

    in Sweden compared to what is the case in Denmark. A simple check of the online prostitution ads in the respective countries shows that johns pay more in Sweden. Every john and every prostitute in Sweden knows this.

    Some prostitutes of the oh-I’m-so-happy-to-be a-whore type even support the 1999 law for this reason. For example:

    http://swedishsexworker.wordpress.com/

    Tordangue doesn’t seem to realize that the anti pimping laws that ze he complains about were not part of the 1999 law, and that profiting from prostitution has been illegal since just about forever.

    Genderberg is even worse in this regard, linking approvingly to an essay on the “Womens justice center’s” website that claims that :

    “renowned Swedish brothels and massage parlors (…) proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century when prostitution in Sweden was legal.”

    This is just flat out false. Brothels and massage parlours were few, illegal, clandestine and dwindling in number in this period, not “proliferating” and “renowned”.

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  14. Sb Writes:
    June 8th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    We do have a credible better idea: the New Zealand model.

    And if you actually want to read about how its working I would suggest this page

    http://www.justice.govt.nz/prostitution-law-review-committee/

    And in particular the latest report

    http://www.justice.govt.nz/prostitution-law-review-committee/publications/plrc-report/index.html

    These documents show the operation of a real alternative to the “swedish model”.

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