The Swedish government wants to make paying for sexual services online a criminal offense. The law could have global implications for online services and put creators at risk, warns Yigit Aydin. He fights for the rights of sex workers on behalf of the association ESWA.
As a Swede who is unsure that this law will do what it is intended to do, here is what it is actually intended to do and the context in which it is written:
In Sweden it is legal for an individual to sell sex to another individual. Buying sex however, is illegal. This is intended to protect the one selling sex from the buyer. The thought is that there’s no valid reason to criminalise the actions of a person who is already in a pretty exposed situation. This law has been in effect for 26 years.
The intention of this proposed law is to make it illegal for a buyer to order specific porn from a seller, as in requesting that the seller produces a specific thing for the buyer. Which, while “who fucking cares what consenting adults do” is a valid position, is in line with current legal thinking. The intention isn’t to criminalise selling porn, even when it’s been made to order for a buyer. It is to protect those in an exposed situation.
I can’t say if that’s how it will work out however. I’ve heard worries that it will have other consequences.
edit: added a reference to current law.
edit2: 26, not 36.
I added some more context, but the sex work itself isn’t discouraged by the law (though it certainly isn’t encouraged either - there are certain caveats to the situation). Buying sex is. And that’s what they want this law to do as well.
Do bear in mind that I’m not commenting on whether or not this is the correct way to construct the laws around sex work. I am, rather, conveying what the essence of intent is in the current legal framework.
the rationale behind the original law is that sex work is overwhelmingly done by people who are being coerced and/or trafficked, and the reasoning behind this new law is that trafficking is also a big problem online. sanctioning a market, the argument goes, would invite rent-seeking traffickers like andrew tate.
Since I’m trying to be pretty neutral, I can only say that such a thing wouldn’t be in the spirit of current legal thinking on the subject.
If I allow myself to deviate a little, I do see the problem. It does restric a sex workers’ ability to sell their service(s) and that is of course a problem for them. I’m personally leaning more towards a well regulated legal market, but I also understand that such a market is difficult to control and I am sympathetic to understand the legal thinking that lead to this current framework because of that.
There are things, other than blanket legalization of buying sexual services, that could be done to help increase the status of sex work which probably should be done in my opinion. Like making it easy for the sex worker, who isn’t doing anything illegal, to file for taxes and get the benefits of others who run their own business. I don’t think those issues exist to intentionally make things difficult. I think they exist because of negligence. They could be fixed, but the thinking seems to be that it is not important.
I am sympathetic to the legal thinking that lead to this current framework because of that.
As someone who has watched Swedes push their model internationally with evangelical fervour for decades and as a consequence dug into its antecedents I’d suggest you have cause and effect reversed.
The Swedish model starts with the premise that sex work is a bad thing, and moves onto how it can be prevented in a way that not only doesn’t give agency to sex workers, it actively removes and denies that they have agency. Paternalistic welfare activity has been de rigeur in the Swedish state since WW2 and this is just one facet of it.
I’m OK with Swedes running their state however they like, but when they team up with American evangelical money and run around trying to push their model onto other countries with active campaigns I’m less ok. Particularly the pseudo science that is used to justify it.
Sorry, maybe I was being unclear (while I’m quite good at English, I do realise that “being sympathetic” has a different meaning than I intended).
I do not necessarily think it is the correct model. There are a lot of valid opinions on how to do it, and I do lean more towards well regulated legalisation. But I understand the thinking that made the system what it is. I see the points that favour it. That said, I also see the points that disfavour the current law.
I do think it’s healthy to have a discussion about it, and I think Sweden does need to have that discussion. We need to have a discussion about weed too, for example.
It’s OK, I understood that you were trying to explain it rather than justify it.
However the part I’m pushing back on is how you are characterising the thinking this new law, and the existing Swedish sex work laws are based on. The starting premise needs to go one further step back into the basis of the original Swedish model laws.
You say that “I understand the thinking that made the system what it is” (above) and “I can only say that such a thing wouldn’t be in the spirit of current legal thinking on the subject.” (2 posts up where “thing” is referencing “why there can’t be a regulated market for digital adult services.”)
But you fail to state that **the initial premise that the system is based on is that the Swedish state does not consider it possible for an adult to give consent to sex work. **
It’s the short answer to “why can’t there be a regulated market” - the answer is that in the view of Swedish model proponents sex-work cannot be consented to and is therefore treated in the same light as rape/abuse.
This is a position that the proponents of the Swedish model keep ducking and weaving to avoid admitting. The pseudo science it built its claims on have not held up to scrutiny.
The premise is flawed, thus the laws built on a flawed premise may be internally consisten, but that doesn’t make them rational.
Unless of course we don’t believe in bodily autonomy in which case then sure, the state had better start criminalising unprotected sex, skiing, hang gliding, bungee jumping, and anything else that might harm us.
In Sweden it is legal for an individual to sell sex to another individual. Buying sex however, is illegal.
Yes, and in Russia we have a saying “simplicity is worse than theft”. It’s about the simplicity of thinking this works to discourage buying without encouraging to sell covertly\illegally\unofficially\you get the idea.
The seller and the buyer are connected with their common interest in a deal. So what affects the legality of one of the sides, also affects that of the other. Because the former will be interested in avoiding legal means to protect themselves in everything connected to that deal, to keep their source of income or social ties over it or whatever.
It is more about the fact that when the buyer is committing a criminal act, they can be prosecuted for that criminal act.
It also is assumed that the sex worker will not be interested in helping. It is on the judicial system to find the criminals and prosecute them.
The sex worker is doing something entirely legal. It’s up to the system to protect their right to do that while also protecting them from predation. That’s the thought, anyway.
The sex worker is doing something entirely legal. It’s up to the system to protect their right to do that while also protecting them from predation. That’s the thought, anyway.
Respectfully no it’s not.
The thought is to ensure that culpability sits with the buyer and not the seller. By criminalising the buyer the thinking is that the poor victim forced into sex work should not receive any punishment. Which is fine if the person was forced into it/trafficked but it’s not OK if the person chose to do it of their own free will.
The Swedish model is at its heart paternalistic - it denies people the right to choose to do sex work because the state doesn’t believe a person is capable of making that choice, they can only be coerced into it.
I have had to clarify this a couple of times now in this thread but what I wrote is not my personal stance. It is what the stated intention is. That doesn’t make it right or effective.
All my my comment was intended to do, was to add context to a discussion about a society that I live in. I did not intend to put my personal stamp of approval on the consequences of that societal context.
I do personally believe that, assuming the stated intention is true, the law hasn’t done what was meant to be achieved perfectly and that it should be discussed whether there is something that can be done to better the situation.
We have a few moralistic laws in Sweden that at the very least need more debate. The laws around sex work are definitely on that list imo.
I have had to clarify this a couple of times now in this thread but what I wrote is not my personal stance. It is what the stated intention is. That doesn’t make it right or effective.
As per my other reply, that was understood.
I do personally believe that, assuming the stated intention is true, the law hasn’t done what was meant to be achieved perfectly and that it should be discussed whether there is something that can be done to better the situation.
Again, as per other (long) reply, the big problem is the “intention” you are portraying is not actually consistent with both the speeches made when the original laws were passed and any reasonable reading of the law.
The intention is to abolish sex work because in the minds of the framers it is not possible for an adult to consent to it.
I’m not upset with you for trying to improve understanding. I’d however implore you to consider how taking agency away from people, telling them they are not capable of making a decision about themselves and their body is morally and ethically flawed.
The justification about it stopping trafficking has not held up to analysis, criminals continue to do crime. It’s guys like the one in the article and other men & women who pay the price for someone to have a righteous middle class glow.
Strong social welfare systems (like Sweden has) help prevent people doing it from desperation - so buttress those if there’s a shortcoming. Strong regulation of migration prevents trafficking before we even get to regulating the industry. Those are things that peer reviewed papers have shown to work.
You do keep saying that you understand but you also implore me to consider how taking agency away from people, telling them they are not capable of making a decision about themselves and their body is morally and ethically flawed.
Something which I’ve never said that I personally haven’t. So I think we’re closer in personal belief on the issue than we maybe assume we are.
Hey, you thought TERFs were a weird wedge between European and US feminists when they first got a foothold in the UK?
I have terrible news about how that process has been running again regarding sex work and surrogate pregnancy.
Surrogate pregnancy is less controversial because there the traditional US stance is in the minority and bans have been expanding relatively unopposed. Sex work, though? There are outright porn bans being advocated in left-leaning circles all over Europe. The fact that they’ve been calling themselves “sex work abolitionists” should be sobering.
Expect the global right to try to deploy the same strategy on this issue going forward. There are already similar proposals in the US and they are very aware that they can recruit some segment of nominally left-wing feminist activists and voters with these issues, just like they did with transphobic policies.
Despite Sweden’s great international PR, they have extremely harsh drug laws and wildly restrictive alcohol laws. They very much like to police what consenting adults do in private.
IDK where this fixation in regulating other people’s sexual life comes from, I assume it’s from the Middle-east religions?
When asked the question “who is the victim in this supposed crime?” they will tell you it’s the exploited women (is there male prostitution? IDK), but those are supposed victims (even if 99.99% of prostitutes were forced into it, you’d still have to prove exploitation in each specific case - that’s how justice works in every other matter except this one). They won’t be able to explain (if not with, often made-up, statistical arguments) why they don’t treat women (and men) that are exploited in different businesses the same way (think, migrants forced to work in slavelike conditions in agriculture).
The sad truth is, those moralists are just more interested in dictating other people’s sexual behaviour than they are interested in human rights.
It’s worth mentioning that, besides the various semi-bans on prostitution (which do irritate me, but whom - in all honesty - I can live with), this unhealthy sexual fixation of our societies is what gifts us the marginalization (when it’s not persecution) of LGBT people.
Your assumption is both false and seems racist. How the heck do you get the idea that Swedish sexual morals would be defined by people thousands of kilometres away?
Sweden has a long lasting history of being more strict around alocohol, drugs and prostitution. Sexual morals in Europe are predominantly shaped by the dominant christian church, be it catholic or protestant. Both the catholic and protestants are their own makings of Europe and during the crusades European Christians often slaughtered orthodox Christian.
Muslim countries have been more progressive on issues such as abortions and reproductive healthcare and partly seen a regression since the christian colonizers. Prostitution has always been illegal under Muslim law, but it also has been illegal in Christian Europe and legality is more the exception than the rule even today. Again the idea that this would somehow be the “fault” of “Middle-east religions” is absurd. This is some 1500 years “home made” European stances.
How the heck do you get the idea that Swedish sexual morals would be defined by people thousands of kilometres away?
I think that’s a reference to the 3 Abrahamic religions all of which originated in the Middle East - and of those Christianity most certainly is shaping the morals of Sweden (or at the least certainly has in the past)
(Judaism, Christianity and Islam being the “big 3 abrahamic” - Zoroastrianism & Bahai aren’t really in the same category worldwide and aren’t Abrahamic as far as I am aware)
Are you saying the girls producing these services are being exploited ?
Do laws like this really address that? Seems unlikely to me.
Suppose a third of digital adult services are exploitative. I suspect that this type of law curtails almost all of the non-exploitative providers but the exploitative ones carry on. It might even make the act of exploitation more profitable.
What are the purported benefits of this law?
Are they just assuming that paid online sex work is bad and should be stopped?
Who fucking cares what consenting adults do in private in separate locations via the magic of the interweb.
As a Swede who is unsure that this law will do what it is intended to do, here is what it is actually intended to do and the context in which it is written:
In Sweden it is legal for an individual to sell sex to another individual. Buying sex however, is illegal. This is intended to protect the one selling sex from the buyer. The thought is that there’s no valid reason to criminalise the actions of a person who is already in a pretty exposed situation. This law has been in effect for 26 years.
The intention of this proposed law is to make it illegal for a buyer to order specific porn from a seller, as in requesting that the seller produces a specific thing for the buyer. Which, while “who fucking cares what consenting adults do” is a valid position, is in line with current legal thinking. The intention isn’t to criminalise selling porn, even when it’s been made to order for a buyer. It is to protect those in an exposed situation.
I can’t say if that’s how it will work out however. I’ve heard worries that it will have other consequences.
edit: added a reference to current law.
edit2: 26, not 36.
The article does cover this, but I still don’t really understand the purported benefit of discouraging sex work. Is it just a moral thing?
I added some more context, but the sex work itself isn’t discouraged by the law (though it certainly isn’t encouraged either - there are certain caveats to the situation). Buying sex is. And that’s what they want this law to do as well.
Do bear in mind that I’m not commenting on whether or not this is the correct way to construct the laws around sex work. I am, rather, conveying what the essence of intent is in the current legal framework.
I get it. I understand that that the buyer is the criminal and that the provider is not. The article explains that.
What it doesn’t explain is why there can’t be a regulated market for digital adult services.
the rationale behind the original law is that sex work is overwhelmingly done by people who are being coerced and/or trafficked, and the reasoning behind this new law is that trafficking is also a big problem online. sanctioning a market, the argument goes, would invite rent-seeking traffickers like andrew tate.
That answers my question i guess.
Regulation seems like a better answer to me. A licensing system that ensures workers have agency and access to support to avoid pimps and so on.
that’s if you want to acknowledge that human beings do this of their own free will, which sweden does not. our drug policy is the same.
Sure. That’s a valid question.
Since I’m trying to be pretty neutral, I can only say that such a thing wouldn’t be in the spirit of current legal thinking on the subject.
If I allow myself to deviate a little, I do see the problem. It does restric a sex workers’ ability to sell their service(s) and that is of course a problem for them. I’m personally leaning more towards a well regulated legal market, but I also understand that such a market is difficult to control and I
am sympathetic tounderstand the legal thinking that lead to this current framework because of that.There are things, other than blanket legalization of buying sexual services, that could be done to help increase the status of sex work which probably should be done in my opinion. Like making it easy for the sex worker, who isn’t doing anything illegal, to file for taxes and get the benefits of others who run their own business. I don’t think those issues exist to intentionally make things difficult. I think they exist because of negligence. They could be fixed, but the thinking seems to be that it is not important.
edit: clarified the intention of a sentence.
As someone who has watched Swedes push their model internationally with evangelical fervour for decades and as a consequence dug into its antecedents I’d suggest you have cause and effect reversed.
The Swedish model starts with the premise that sex work is a bad thing, and moves onto how it can be prevented in a way that not only doesn’t give agency to sex workers, it actively removes and denies that they have agency. Paternalistic welfare activity has been de rigeur in the Swedish state since WW2 and this is just one facet of it.
I’m OK with Swedes running their state however they like, but when they team up with American evangelical money and run around trying to push their model onto other countries with active campaigns I’m less ok. Particularly the pseudo science that is used to justify it.
Sorry, maybe I was being unclear (while I’m quite good at English, I do realise that “being sympathetic” has a different meaning than I intended).
I do not necessarily think it is the correct model. There are a lot of valid opinions on how to do it, and I do lean more towards well regulated legalisation. But I understand the thinking that made the system what it is. I see the points that favour it. That said, I also see the points that disfavour the current law.
I do think it’s healthy to have a discussion about it, and I think Sweden does need to have that discussion. We need to have a discussion about weed too, for example.
It’s OK, I understood that you were trying to explain it rather than justify it.
However the part I’m pushing back on is how you are characterising the thinking this new law, and the existing Swedish sex work laws are based on. The starting premise needs to go one further step back into the basis of the original Swedish model laws.
You say that “I understand the thinking that made the system what it is” (above) and “I can only say that such a thing wouldn’t be in the spirit of current legal thinking on the subject.” (2 posts up where “thing” is referencing “why there can’t be a regulated market for digital adult services.”)
But you fail to state that **the initial premise that the system is based on is that the Swedish state does not consider it possible for an adult to give consent to sex work. **
It’s the short answer to “why can’t there be a regulated market” - the answer is that in the view of Swedish model proponents sex-work cannot be consented to and is therefore treated in the same light as rape/abuse.
This is a position that the proponents of the Swedish model keep ducking and weaving to avoid admitting. The pseudo science it built its claims on have not held up to scrutiny.
The premise is flawed, thus the laws built on a flawed premise may be internally consisten, but that doesn’t make them rational.
Unless of course we don’t believe in bodily autonomy in which case then sure, the state had better start criminalising unprotected sex, skiing, hang gliding, bungee jumping, and anything else that might harm us.
Yes, and in Russia we have a saying “simplicity is worse than theft”. It’s about the simplicity of thinking this works to discourage buying without encouraging to sell covertly\illegally\unofficially\you get the idea.
The seller and the buyer are connected with their common interest in a deal. So what affects the legality of one of the sides, also affects that of the other. Because the former will be interested in avoiding legal means to protect themselves in everything connected to that deal, to keep their source of income or social ties over it or whatever.
It is more about the fact that when the buyer is committing a criminal act, they can be prosecuted for that criminal act.
It also is assumed that the sex worker will not be interested in helping. It is on the judicial system to find the criminals and prosecute them.
The sex worker is doing something entirely legal. It’s up to the system to protect their right to do that while also protecting them from predation. That’s the thought, anyway.
Respectfully no it’s not.
The thought is to ensure that culpability sits with the buyer and not the seller. By criminalising the buyer the thinking is that the poor victim forced into sex work should not receive any punishment. Which is fine if the person was forced into it/trafficked but it’s not OK if the person chose to do it of their own free will.
The Swedish model is at its heart paternalistic - it denies people the right to choose to do sex work because the state doesn’t believe a person is capable of making that choice, they can only be coerced into it.
I have had to clarify this a couple of times now in this thread but what I wrote is not my personal stance. It is what the stated intention is. That doesn’t make it right or effective.
All my my comment was intended to do, was to add context to a discussion about a society that I live in. I did not intend to put my personal stamp of approval on the consequences of that societal context.
I do personally believe that, assuming the stated intention is true, the law hasn’t done what was meant to be achieved perfectly and that it should be discussed whether there is something that can be done to better the situation.
We have a few moralistic laws in Sweden that at the very least need more debate. The laws around sex work are definitely on that list imo.
As per my other reply, that was understood.
Again, as per other (long) reply, the big problem is the “intention” you are portraying is not actually consistent with both the speeches made when the original laws were passed and any reasonable reading of the law.
The intention is to abolish sex work because in the minds of the framers it is not possible for an adult to consent to it.
I’m not upset with you for trying to improve understanding. I’d however implore you to consider how taking agency away from people, telling them they are not capable of making a decision about themselves and their body is morally and ethically flawed.
The justification about it stopping trafficking has not held up to analysis, criminals continue to do crime. It’s guys like the one in the article and other men & women who pay the price for someone to have a righteous middle class glow.
Strong social welfare systems (like Sweden has) help prevent people doing it from desperation - so buttress those if there’s a shortcoming. Strong regulation of migration prevents trafficking before we even get to regulating the industry. Those are things that peer reviewed papers have shown to work.
You do keep saying that you understand but you also implore me to consider how taking agency away from people, telling them they are not capable of making a decision about themselves and their body is morally and ethically flawed.
Something which I’ve never said that I personally haven’t. So I think we’re closer in personal belief on the issue than we maybe assume we are.
Fair
Hey, you thought TERFs were a weird wedge between European and US feminists when they first got a foothold in the UK?
I have terrible news about how that process has been running again regarding sex work and surrogate pregnancy.
Surrogate pregnancy is less controversial because there the traditional US stance is in the minority and bans have been expanding relatively unopposed. Sex work, though? There are outright porn bans being advocated in left-leaning circles all over Europe. The fact that they’ve been calling themselves “sex work abolitionists” should be sobering.
Expect the global right to try to deploy the same strategy on this issue going forward. There are already similar proposals in the US and they are very aware that they can recruit some segment of nominally left-wing feminist activists and voters with these issues, just like they did with transphobic policies.
Despite Sweden’s great international PR, they have extremely harsh drug laws and wildly restrictive alcohol laws. They very much like to police what consenting adults do in private.
While exporting one of the largest Vodka brands in the world (Absolut)
People who could do it with safe payments, smaller risk of STIs or getting stabbed 42 times with a blunt knife, are now going to walk the streets.
That’s the benefit, misery helps power. Misery means vulnerability to be used as a human tool of power.
Some people have that delusion that the EU is progressing, not regressing, as a whole. Or that it’s in the early stages of rot, while it’s not.
Laws and politicians should be cleaned from time to time and made anew, similar to shit in the latrine.
IDK where this fixation in regulating other people’s sexual life comes from, I assume it’s from the Middle-east religions?
When asked the question “who is the victim in this supposed crime?” they will tell you it’s the exploited women (is there male prostitution? IDK), but those are supposed victims (even if 99.99% of prostitutes were forced into it, you’d still have to prove exploitation in each specific case - that’s how justice works in every other matter except this one). They won’t be able to explain (if not with, often made-up, statistical arguments) why they don’t treat women (and men) that are exploited in different businesses the same way (think, migrants forced to work in slavelike conditions in agriculture).
The sad truth is, those moralists are just more interested in dictating other people’s sexual behaviour than they are interested in human rights.
It’s worth mentioning that, besides the various semi-bans on prostitution (which do irritate me, but whom - in all honesty - I can live with), this unhealthy sexual fixation of our societies is what gifts us the marginalization (when it’s not persecution) of LGBT people.
Your assumption is both false and seems racist. How the heck do you get the idea that Swedish sexual morals would be defined by people thousands of kilometres away?
Sweden has a long lasting history of being more strict around alocohol, drugs and prostitution. Sexual morals in Europe are predominantly shaped by the dominant christian church, be it catholic or protestant. Both the catholic and protestants are their own makings of Europe and during the crusades European Christians often slaughtered orthodox Christian.
Muslim countries have been more progressive on issues such as abortions and reproductive healthcare and partly seen a regression since the christian colonizers. Prostitution has always been illegal under Muslim law, but it also has been illegal in Christian Europe and legality is more the exception than the rule even today. Again the idea that this would somehow be the “fault” of “Middle-east religions” is absurd. This is some 1500 years “home made” European stances.
I think that’s a reference to the 3 Abrahamic religions all of which originated in the Middle East - and of those Christianity most certainly is shaping the morals of Sweden (or at the least certainly has in the past)
(Judaism, Christianity and Islam being the “big 3 abrahamic” - Zoroastrianism & Bahai aren’t really in the same category worldwide and aren’t Abrahamic as far as I am aware)
I agree, but it’s hard to rule out trafficking for an example.
Are you saying the girls producing these services are being exploited ?
Do laws like this really address that? Seems unlikely to me.
Suppose a third of digital adult services are exploitative. I suspect that this type of law curtails almost all of the non-exploitative providers but the exploitative ones carry on. It might even make the act of exploitation more profitable.
they claim to address that, yes.