Criminalising Online Sex Work: „This law will have international implications far beyond Sweden“
Criminalising Online Sex Work: „This law will have international implications far beyond Sweden“
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/12433603
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?
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.
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.
I assume it’s from the Middle-east religions?
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 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.
Meanwhile in Belgium: Belgium's sex workers get maternity leave and pensions under world-first law
Under a new law in Belgium - the first of its kind in the world - [...] Sex workers will be entitled to official employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick days. Essentially, it will be treated like any other job.
Sex work was decriminalised in Belgium in 2022 and is legal in several countries including Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and Turkey.
I hate the fact that there's sexually frustrated people who are trying to create laws regarding sexuality.
"I'm not happy until you're not happy."
"Puritanism Is the Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy"
What you hate is organized religion. Hate the source, not the symptom of that infection.
Very correct, In most cases at least.
I just want to make sure nobody gives them a pass because of their religion, which has no place in politics anyways.
I'm an engineer so I don't know much about morals, but I have a very simple rule to distinguish good from bad: I ask who is harmed because of the process. If someone objectively does -- the process is bad. All is good otherwise.
You're getting to the right idea, computer boy!
Bit simplistic, that.
Hey, my approach to engineering is "if machine moves, machine works", and I'm sure there isn't any more nuance than that, so... call it a tie?
The problem with "harm" is it's hard to measure or qualify. What is "objectively less harm" in situations where you're trying to regulate the use of narcotics or, indeed, sex work. Is it more harmful for it to be illegal because there's some harm associated with it or is it more harmful to criminalize it? And if you don't criminalize it but harm does come to pass how do you mitigate that?
What do you do when two people identify harm in opposite actions? How do you measure which harm is more harmful if you can't have a zero harm outcome? What is the unit of harm?
Almost always something "bad" happens though, someone is harmed... Someone rapes, you jail that person -> the rapist is harmed. Is it a bad process? Of course not.
It's not about not harming anyone, it's about harming the right people. Who we harm in what case is what almost all political discourse is about.
I get what you're going for, but as presented this is a terrible take, or at least a poorly worded one. Systemic harm isn't a zero sum game. It's not about putting the harm on the bad people, it's about reducing the harm of the system overall without ever crossing the basic ground rules and limitations of the system in the process.
Not all harm to "the right people" is justified and it's extremely difficult to determine the limitations around that. You are right that deciding what interests, legitimate or not, to affect when making a decision is the entire point of politics, though.
If I regret working in a very dangerous workplace (such as being a miner), then can I lobby on banning that? Or "selling your body" only applies if genitals are involved?
No, as you've already pointed out: It's only "selling your body" when genitals are involved.
For working as a miner, brick layer, cleaner or berry picker, the usual labour protection and anti-trafficking laws must suffice.
I have never worked in either field but I don't think these are comparable in terms psychologic harm they usually do. (Which is an argument for more mental and legal assistance for sex workers rather than for bans.)
And again a bunch of puritan assholes have the need to ensure that, like they themselves, nobody will enjoy sex freely in the way that they want to. It's always a tiny group that just had to ruin it for everyone, and then they'll spin it as "but won't anyone think of the children!" or similar bullshit like that.
Fuck these right wing assholes
Not sure I disagree with this proposal. This is wierd to me though. You can buy pre-recorded stuff. But not live stuff. Oh well.
So holding a poll of what to record and then selling that would be fine, I guess.
Gonna have an unpopular take here, but pornography and sex work under our current system shouldn't be celebrated as a "bastion of freedom", given how it's selling access to one's body and sexuality as a product. Even if they agree to it consensually, the choice happens in a world where money decides what people can or can't do, if one is going to survive or not. This makes the concept of "real consent" complicated, because the need of money, much like the need of food or essential goods can force people into doings they wouldn't freely choose if survival wasn't on the line.
Given this, one could definitely consider it commodified rape - it's not necessarily violent like forced rape, but it's still shaped by money, power, and pressure in a system where people's bodies get turned into things to be bought.
The law does suck ass and shouldn't be supported though, the issue stems with a system where our survival depends on money (with selling your body being a way to get by) and not individual morals. I fully agree with Yidit when he says that it'll just cause sex work to become more dangerous by moving it underground.
I wholeheartedly agree. Especially with the problems of objectification of people, in particular women, having gotten worse again, we should be very careful to assume everything involving a person of legal age to undress for someone else without direct physical threat to be automatically good or liberating.
On the contrary being able to maintain privacy over your body can be an expression of much more freedom as you liberated yourself from objectification.
Irrespective of that these aren't issues that can be tackled through laws like this. Better legal avenues would be banning of sexualized ads, banning of advertisment for cosmetics, cosmetic surgery and the like to minors and the like.
