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.
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.
Again, I understand what you’re saying. I am talking about stated intention as far as the discussion goes. That people cannot consent in a situation where money changes hands can absolutely be interpreted as part of the foundation but my personal thought on that is more that it is due to negligence.
In effect, it is irrelevant to the proponents of this model whether or not consent can be given.
Does that make it better? No, not at all, and I definitely think that those who consider the legal construction to be sound should have to discuss that point as well.