The Failure Of The Nordic Model
The criminalization of sex purchasing is heralded as a progressive solution to a complicated issue. The truth is: It's a complete policy failure.
“It should be difficult to be a prostitute in our society - so even though we don't put prostitutes in jail, we make life difficult for them."
— Stockholm Detective Jonas Trolle
The Nordic Model approach to prostitution is a Swedish police introduced in 1999. Despite little to no proof of its positive impact it has since been exported to a number of wealthy countries. Norway, Iceland, Canada, Northern Ireland, France, Ireland, and Israel. The premise is simple: arrest sex buyers and decriminalize sex sellers. From the marketing, you’d think this was a relatively easy solution to a very complicated issue. Feminists like it because it claims to allow vulnerable women to receive services instead of prison sentences. Conservatives, see this as an empathetic way for fallen women to atone. Both love that it’s punitive. The biggest selling point of the Nordic Model is its promise to prosecute sex buyers.
The Nordic Model and the movement driving it, has changed names numerous times–The Equality Model, which attaches a false sense of equity. The “Abolitionist” Model evokes a visceral emotional response by linking it to the abolitionists of trans-Atlantic chattel slavery. Partial Decriminalization–with hopes that it is confused with actual full decriminalization, which actually has data to prove its efficacy. And, the End Demand Model, which is their true motivation. The Entrapment Model is the most accurate descriptor of this policy.
No matter how many times the branding is changed, facts still remain the same: there is little to no evidence that criminalizing sex buyers has curbed trafficking or exploitation when compared to decriminalization. An inconvenient truth is that this form of criminalization is promoted purely for ideological purposes. It does not help women. I am not a liberal feminist nor will I sing the virtues of prostitution. I reject the Nordic Model because it harms sex workers. Instead of taking a critical look at our modern society, it offers women who sell sex as sacrificial lambs to rhetoric. It’s time we abandon emotion laden morale and embrace critical thinking.
In 2019 I had the life-changing opportunity of attending & speaking at Fukforbundet’s Stockholm conference during my time as a TAMPEP EU board member. Fukforbundet was(is?) a Swedish grassroots organization run and operated exclusively by sex workers. The name of the group was a clever pun. Fackförbundet is Swedish for a labor union. Their website and Twitter are now inactive. They have a policy paper on the Nordic Model in Sweden still available to read. TAMPEP is a European Union-funded network for the health of migrant sex workers in the EU.
The conference served as a reflection of the 20th anniversary of the Swedish Model. We heard testimonies from human rights activists, migrant sex workers, and advocates in regions that had recently introduced this. The reality was apparent, the Nordic Model has had devastating impacts on the women that it claims to protect. There were accounts of migrant women given non-consensual hysterectomies by the Swedish state and sent back to regions with high gender-based violence for the offense of selling sex.
Community members from Ireland and France spoke on the fresh impact of the Nordic Model’s introduction in their respective countries. Months before the conference, the Irish police jailed two migrant sex workers. There was no evidence to show that they were coerced. Under policies introduced by the Nordic Model, they were technically traffickers. You see, they shared an apartment together for safety reasons and lived as roommates. Although they both consensually worked as sex workers, they could still be charged as brothel keepers. One woman was pregnant and both were held for a duration of six months. The women were deported back to Romania.
Stories like this aren’t uncommon under the Nordic Model. In many regions, it’s introduced heightened violence. Sex workers lose trust in public institutions. Landlords and partners of sex workers can be tried as traffickers. Children as taken. In turn, this further marginalizes sex workers. As is the legislation’s intent. As Stockholm detective Jonas Trolle said,
“It should be difficult to be a prostitute in our society - so even though we don't put prostitutes in jail, we make life difficult for them."
The purpose of this policy is to not only punish men, but to make the lives of poor women difficult.
Police Violence
Worldwide, the police are the most frequent perpetrators of violence against sex workers. Decriminalization reduces violence massively by taking sex work itself out of criminal law. Violations of sex workers’ rights by police are common — and well documented. Police violence against sex workers is a persistent global reality.
— Melissa Gira Grant, Playing the Whore
This is where conservatives & radical feminists tend to diverge on this issue. Most conservatives would agree that police intervention may just be a necessary evil while rad-fems would be uncomfortable. The truth is–under the Nordic Model, the police will always be involved with the sex worker.
This is what we know about cops: Police officers across the board have astronomically high levels of abuse. Some sources estimate that 40% of police families face domestic violence, which is 4 times the American average. In states such as Michigan, police officers were allowed to purchase sex from sex workers in sting operations and arrest them with cause later.
The reality above is easy for leftists, progressives, and rad-fems to understand. Yet, there is still a logical disconnect in expecting police officers to be the arbitrators of safety for marginalized women.
Abused Women
This is where we must divorce ourselves from ideology. Many radical feminists oppose the sex industry because of its links to childhood abuse & trauma. As a former sex worker and someone abused in childhood, I wish this was a reality many more people spoke about. Sure, tons of people join the sex industry for personal empowerment. But I’m not blind to reality. The vast majority of women in the sex industry would do something else if they had alternative circumstances. Many, face other marginalizations such as race, gender identity, class, migration status, and/or disability.
In the context of vulnerable people selling sex in a vulnerable situation, the conclusion of sex buyers as culpable predators is easy to arrive at. I just implore you to consider this–Do you want what’s best for sex workers? Do you care about sex workers more than you care about punishing ‘bad men’?
Many women who get abortions do so out of financial destitution. It’s unfortunate that we live in a society that forces women to make that decision. However, women should be allowed to make decisions that work best for them. As Mac & Smith say in Verso’s Revolting Prostitutes, you don’t have to like your job to want to keep it.
Begging the state to enforce paternalistic laws directed towards adult women is regressive. The instinct to use carceral policies to punish ‘bad’ men is understandable. Yet it is an instinct based on feelings rather than fact. Full decriminalization will not alleviate all of the issues that come with sex work. However, it is the most equitable solution we have to ensuring the safety of sex workers.
Conclusion
The truth is, the Nordic Model has been a human rights disaster in every country its been implemented. It does not curb the demand for prostitution. It is largely based on feelings.
Most importantly, it’s bi-partisan and it’s easy. It’s easy to simply name & shame a few Johns and gain a few arrest quotas. It’s easy to charge poor women with trafficking themselves, rob them of their earnings and ban them from the country.
What’s not easy is making sure single Moms have enough money to feed their children. It’s also pretty hard to solve our nation’s widening skills gap. Or to demolish the foster care system that hand-feeds vulnerable youth to predators. Inaccessible housing. Skyrocketing university fees. Healing intergenerational trauma.
The Nordic Model is popular because it’s lazy, it’s punitive and nobody dares to challenge it.
American legislation needs to be made with empathy, and data.
Spot on! In the Nordic Model (aka Equality Model), violence towards (female) sex workers is both a means and a goal.
Sweden's 2010 review of its policy is crystal clear: "negative effects must be viewed as positive from the perspective that the purpose of the law is indeed to combat prostitution.”
Talking to Swedish people, and looking at the scene there, you will see that there is a lot of trafficking going on in practice.
Because the system completely backfires. Buyers still want to buy, but they do not want to girl to tell on them to the police afterwards or to blackmail them saying they will go to the police. So the kind of women they feel safer with are women who don’t speak the local language and who would get in trouble for something else (invalid visa?) if they’d go to the police. Which stimulates trafficking.