https://www.feministcurrent.com/2024/05/15/the-dystopian-place-sex-work-is-work-takes-us/No matter how much men who pay for sex might like to see this as a mere transaction, for the human being being penetrated it is her body at its most vulnerable. One does not separate the vagina from the being nor the verbal and physical abuse inherent to the sex industry from the soul. The standard progressive, feminist view that having sex with someone against their will is rape is mysteriously disappeared when money exchanges hands, as though payment nullifies trauma or the fact that a man knowingly having sex with someone who doesn’t want to be there is a reprehensible being.
Framing prostitution as a form of “work,” and therefore subject to labour laws and open to unionization, was the first step, not in protecting women and girls in the sex trade, as presented, but to normalizing and expanding the industry.
Belgium decriminalized prostitution in 2022 — a move celebrated by the left, libertarian, and liberal alike. What some might not understand is that “decriminalization,” in the context of prostitution, means not only decriminalizing prostituted women (the “product”), but also decriminalizes pimping, running a brothel, and paying for sex. To my mind, “keeping women safe” need not entail rubber-stamping the bad guys, but the decrim lobby likes to skip over that aspect in their ever-successful efforts to woo supporters with conscience-easing slogans.
Women like myself, Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Janice Raymond, Julie Bindel, and Rachel Moran, have long advocated an alternate model first adopted in Sweden in 1999 commonly referred to as the Nordic model which decriminalizes those selling sex but criminalizes those doing the exploiting: traffickers, pimps, johns, and brothel owners. This model disincentivizes exploitation and empowers the prostituted, upending the typical power dynamic and presenting a cultural norm that says paying for sex is wrong. The “sex work is work” faction likes to wax poetic about “ending stigma,” but I see no reason to destigmatize men who wish to abuse women and children guilt-free, or the men who profit from that practice.
In 2022, Belgium’s Federal Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborn called the move to fully decriminalize the sex trade “historic,” explaining, “It ensures that sex workers are no longer stigmatised, exploited and made dependent on others.”
The idea that prostituted women and girls are no longer “stigmatized,” exploited, or dependent on pimps under full decriminalization, though, is nonsense. The problem of “stigma,” in relation to the prostituted, is unresolvable, to start. Women and girls don’t want to sell sex. This is not a desirable occupation. This is why trafficking exists: to fill the massive demand for bodies impossible to provide via willing volunteers. The shame attached to doing a thing you don’t want to do then having to live with it may be undesirable but should speak to the practice itself (not necessarily the woman’s character). But also, as evidenced by other places that have attempted full decriminalization, like New Zealand, the exploitation and abuse of women in the trade only gets worse once its treated as legitimate and above board. What is a woman supposed to call the police about, after all, if what is being done to her is part of her job description? How do labour laws protect women from sexual harassment and abuse if she is being paid to be sexually harassed and abused?
https://archive.ph/1zIZO
