Although I aspire to keep apprised of everything going on in the world, the truth is that it is not possible. There is only so much time and effort one can dedicate to current events. Sometimes current events do not come up on my radar until later. That is how I felt when I read an article from Reason Magazine entitled Maine's Bad Prostitution Law Could Be Coming Soon to Your State. Prior to reading it, I did not know that Maine enacted a law to partially decriminalize prostitution or that in July 2023, it was the first state to do so.
Maine adopted what is referred to as the Nordic [Criminal] Model. Why is it referred to as the Nordic Model? Because Sweden was the first to adopt it in 1999. Norway and Iceland later adopted the model in 2009. Essentially, the Nordic model is an approach that criminalizes prostitution customers but not sex workers. The idea behind this approach is that punishing the clients will reduce demand for sexual services. I take multiple issues with this legal approach to sexual activity.
The first is that it makes the paternalistic assumption that all sex workers are victims and are incapable of consenting to sexual activity, whereas clients are exploitative and unscrupulous. Instead of empowering sex workers (most of whom are women), such an approach infantilizes them. This is not to minimize the prevalence of human trafficking or child prostitution, both of which are ethically problematic due to their coercive nature. It does, however, exclude and ignore the reality that there are consenting adults that are willing to pay for sex or willing to get paid to have sex. After all, there is a reason why prostitution has been referred to as the "world's oldest profession." Sex is a highly pleasurable act, and as such, there is an understandably high demand for sexual services.
Under the Nordic Model, it is clear that the client gets punished because the client is still de jure punished for paying for sex. By not legally punishing sex workers, it seems like the Nordic model helps sex workers. However, that is far from being the case. The fact that purchasers of sexual services are punished still keeps the market an underground market. This means that most of the aspects of criminalizing prostitution remain intact. While some find criminalization acceptable, I do not and I have not since I wrote a piece on legalizing prostitution in 2013. The Nordic Model presents a few issues for sex workers:
1. While proponents state protecting sex workers as a benefit of the Nordic Model, the Nordic Model exists to reduce demand for prostitution and ultimately eliminate the demand for commercial sex services. Tangentially, this reasoning falters considering that the Nordic model does not reduce the demand for sexual services (Kington and Thomas, 2018) because again, people really like sex. But let's get back to the crux of the issue here. Sure, the sex workers do not get sent to jail for being sex workers under the Nordic Model. For those who rely on that revenue to pay their bills, that provides little comfort for sex workers because fewer clients means less income for them. Plus, this means accepting worse work in the sex trade, which brings me to my next point...
2. The clientele under the Nordic Model is reduced to those who are willing to break the law, which increases the likelihood of high-risk and/or violent encounters. This is not mere conjecture. A 2023 study from the University of Chicago shows that prostitution legalization lowers rape rates, whereas criminalization, notably under the Nordic Model, proliferates sexual violence (Gao and Petrova, 2023).
3. Under decriminalization, it is still illegal for sex workers to work together and provide mutual assistance, to work in safe locations, or the employ people to help keep them safe. Plus, clients will be more reluctant to undergo screening processes prior to having sex. This means that sex workers cannot take basic measures to help ensure their occupational safety, as was the case in the Canada case study (McDermid et al., 2022). A report from the London School of Economics found not only did the Nordic Model make clients more dangerous for sex workers, but also that sex workers were more likely to face eviction or deportation (Vuolajärvi, 2022). By keeping prostitution in the underground market, it makes it more difficult for sex workers to gain a sense of empowerment.
4. According to a study from Reframe Health + Justice Consulting (D'Adamo, 2021), the impact on sex workers from implementation of the Nordic Model included the following: shifting power balances to favor clients, increases in violence and stigma towards sex workers, decrease in income, increased use of substances, and decrease in health outcomes (e.g., increased stress and fatigue). A report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) similarly found that the Nordic model increased stigma and discrimination of sex workers while reducing health services (ACLU, 2020, p. 10).
Postscript. Endangering sex workers and lowering their quality of life is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Nordic Model. Aside from sex workers and clients, this Model also screws over law enforcement. Why? Because they are spending time and resources to police private, consensual sex acts. This argument is all the more important considering that Maine, much like the rest of the United States, has endured police shortages since the pandemic. Last year, the towns of Limestone and Dixfield, Maine had to shut down its police stations due to shortages. The police could be pursuing actual crimes instead of victimless ones.
Conflating consensual adult behavior with exploitation is a direct assault on bodily autonomy specifically and freedom generally. To respect sex workers and their profession, we need to fully decriminalize sex work and treat it as if it were any other economic service. Only then will we take the right step in civil liberties as far as sex work is concerned.
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