Demand Abolition, an organisation set up to ‘eradicate the illegal commercial sex industry in the US and the wider world’, make the claim that legalising or decriminalising sex work in the United States would cause a ‘surge of human trafficking, pimping, and other related crimes’, and so campaign for it to remain something that should never be normalised. In Demand Abolition’s view the industry ‘whether it’s legal or not, involves so much harm and trauma it cannot be seen as a conventional business.’
To support their claim, they say that in New Zealand — the first country to decriminalise sex work in 2003 — interviews with sex workers revealed that a majority of ‘prostituted people in the country did not feel as if decriminalization had curbed the violence they experience, demonstrating that prostitution is inherently violent and abusive.’
The argument that sex work is inherently violent is a core part of the anti sex work argument. No doubt there are high levels of violence within it — in the UK, sex work has the greatest risk of occupational homicide for women. However, as writers Frankie Miren and Laura Watson point out: ‘Agriculture is the UK’s most dangerous industry, with 167 deaths over the past year. No one proposes that farming be banned. Two women a week are killed by their partner or former partner, but we have yet to see a feminist hazard warning against marriage. Instead there are calls, rightly, to better protect labourers in the field and women in their relationships. Why should the route to safety for sex workers be any different?’
Demand Abolition will never promote any legislation that allows autonomy for sex workers, as this goes against their core belief of sex work being categorically violent with no redeeming characteristics. Organisations who maintain a fundamental feminist approach seek to liberate women by ‘abolishing prostitution’. Unfortunately, this view is rooted in a heteronormative understanding of both sexuality and gender identity. Proponents of this form of feminism regularly mis-gender transgender women and dismiss the existence of male sex workers entirely.
They note that even after decriminalisation, sex workers still feel the stigma and harassment attached to them by the general public. Whether intentionally or not, Demand Abolition chose not to expand on the obvious factor at play here.
Rather than the job being inherently traumatising and abusive — two elements which can of course be at play within the sex work industry, as they can within any industry under capitalism— the continuing stigma and harassment these women face can be summarised by one word: misogyny.
In a culture that is deeply misogynistic of course women who chose sex work will continue to face abuse and intimidation, regardless of their work’s legal status. It is a core element that runs just beneath the ‘protecting all women’ façade of the anti-sex worker argument. It’s also worth pointing out that in the US State Department’s 2019 Trafficking in Persons report, New Zealand is in the lowest possible global ranking for trafficking.
‘Some feminists argue that sex work reduces the female body to an object of sexual pleasure to be exploited in the marketplace by any male — an argument consistent with patriarchal notions of protection, reverence and control,’ writes researchers Meena Saraswathi Seshu and Aarthi Pai.
The contextualisation of sex work, they argue, is critical. An act between consenting adults and where the exchange of money is part of a contract between two or more individuals constitutes what we know as sex work. Trafficked people put into a situation where they are forced to have sex with others for financial gain that partially or entirely gets taken from them is not sex work. It is rape.
What Demand Abolition and similar campaigning groups champion as the ‘answer’ to prostitution is something called the Nordic model. While there is no specific, legal definition for the “Nordic model” of prostitution, Decriminalize Sex Work (a U.S organisation pursuing a state-by-state strategy to end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution) broadly define it as having three main fundamental components:
- 1. It makes buying sex a punishable crime.
- 2. It removes laws that criminalize the direct act of selling sex.
- 3. It criminalizes the organization and/or promotion of selling sex through various means which still cause sex workers great harm.
Unfortunately, the Nordic model actively makes it harder, not easier, to track victims of human trafficking, as countries that implement the framework cause the sex trade to be pushed underground so as clients are not arrested, meaning actual victims will be more difficult to identify and will not know where to turn for support — only adding to their entrapment. Ironically, it means those in favour of this system on the basis of human rights concerns are actively working against their own interests. But this fact alone will not stop Sex Worker Exclusory Radical Feminists (SWERFs) from changing their viewpoint.
SWERFs continually push a narrative of sex work that paints it as a wholehearted form of violence against women — disregarding the nuance of the circumstances in which it may take place and what the sex worker’s input is about their own experience.
They deliberately conflate sex work with human trafficking in the hopes of advancing their pernicious arguments, goading people unaware of the wider realities of sex work into supporting their harmful rhetoric; arguing that decriminalisation would increase trafficking despite there being myriad evidence to the contrary speaks volumes of what their intended goals are. Sex workers are best positioned to be allies in the fight against trafficking and the exploitation of youth in commercial sex given their knowledge and experience of the industry, but they’re denied any input in these restrictive feminist echo chambers if it doesn’t prop up and align with the SWERF manifesto.
Why is it, exactly, that these exclusory feminists take such a reductive view on sex work? Is internalised misogyny at play? Or do they genuinely believe they’re working in the best interests of women’s liberation?
‘To be generous,’ Ariela Moscowitz, Director of Communications for Decriminalize Sex Work writes in an email, ‘we can say they genuinely believe they’re working in the best interest of women. The Nordic/Swedish/Entrapment (a term we’ve coined) model, which assumes that all sex work is exploitative and that arresting clients will ultimately cause the sex industry to disappear (this will never happen, nor do we think it should) is based on the stereotypes that all sex workers are women and all clients are men; therefore, by arresting clients and abolishing the sex industry, gender equality can be achieved.
‘There must be internalized misogyny because they believe that all clients are predators. Ironically, in this misguided attempt to promote women’s rights [they] make sex workers more vulnerable by increasing stigma around sex work and denying sex workers bodily autonomy.’
As the Global Network of Sex Work Projects state in their policy brief for sex work and gender equality:
The American radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, best known for her analysis of pornography, is an influence within the sex worker exclusory movement. Her famous quote that ‘Porn culture is rape culture’ will, on occasion, appear on banners and stickers, showing support of the SWERF belief that all sex work is inherently degrading and damaging.
‘There is so much to be said about the “The Porn Wars” of the 1980’s,’ Moscowitz writes. ‘My personal take on this statement is that it does a disservice to actual survivors of rape and, again, promotes the idea that women don’t deserve the human right of bodily autonomy to choose to participate in sex work. It promotes the idea that they are vulnerable and exploited, making them susceptible to actual violence and exploitation. When women (especially sex workers) are portrayed as commodities and violence against them is normalized (as it often is in media), as Dworkin’s quote does (though, of course, she was saying this in an attempt to abolish it), their voices are silenced and stigma increases.’
Demand Abolition argue that the Nordic model, when implemented, will prevent an increase in overall prostitution. To back up their claim that all sex work is inherently bad, they link to research that shows “an evaluation of New Zealand’s decriminalization revealed that 73% of prostituted individuals needed money to pay for household expenses, and about half of those who were street-based or transgender had no other sources of income”. But this is not giving the full picture.
Of course, there should be no doubt that survival sex work — sex work done when the individual has no realistic other prospect of income — is clearly bad. Those people within the industry doing it because they have no alternative solution deserve the help they require to adjust to something more appropriate for their needs, if that is what they wish.
But this is not to say the entire industry is founded on survival-based sex work. People have myriad reasons for getting involved: money is only one. If you look at this issue from a human rights perspective then it becomes obvious that what is needed is not the implementation of criminalising one half of this experience — firstly, this doesn’t make it any easier for those needing to do this job to pay their bills, nor does it help sex workers who are involved in it for other reasons; it makes the situation even harder for sex workers as now they will be made to engage in unsafe practices and accept unvetted clients at a faster rate to avoid detection from the police, raising the chances they will be exposed to violence or exploitation.
Secondly, it is ridiculous to suggest you can have a person who is selling, a person who is buying, and then to criminalise one part of that transaction and not have that affect the other party, too. This dynamic means getting to the clients without harassing the sex workers is fundamentally unworkable.
Furthermore, the Nordic model would make it illegal for sex workers to work together in a safe, secure location where they can keep tabs on each other as this would be designated as ‘brothel-keeping’ by the government (even just two friends working together under one roof constitutes a brothel in the UK & Ireland), making the workers liable for arrest and legal action — only amplifying their problems and making it more difficult to get a ‘regular’ 9–5 job, thus sending them further into sex work. Those engaging in prostitution will typically be experts at negotiating consent and boundaries — two things which, under the Nordic model, fall apart.
In the UK, the police often raid venues considered as brothels — sometimes, yes, these locations can be run by unsavoury, exploitive parties housing trafficked victims, but many times such ‘brothels’ will actually be houses where sex workers have collectivised and organised to work under slightly better conditions. The Nordic model treats both circumstances as the same and draws no distinguishing feature. Under the UK Proceeds of Crime law, police get half of all assets and cash seized during such raids, incentivising them to carry out more and not differentiate between the two realities: it’s all fair game to them.
As the English Collective of Prostitutes state, decriminalisation works. ‘New Zealand decriminalised sex work in 2003 with verifiable success. Over 90% of sex workers said they had additional employment, legal, health and safety rights. 64.8% found it easier to refuse clients and 70% said they were more likely to report incidents of violence to the police.”
It is also supported by many human rights organisations and activist groups, such as Women Against Rape, Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, and Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, to name a handful.
Amnesty International’s policy advisor Carrie Eisert has went on the record as saying: “The UN working group’s recommendation that sex workers’ rights need to be better protected in international human rights law is an important step in addressing the widespread discrimination sex workers face across the globe. It recommended that full decriminalization of adult voluntary sex work holds the greatest promise to address the systemic discrimination and violence sex workers frequently suffer, as well as impunity for violations of sex workers’ rights.”
It’s important to note that decriminalisation is different from legalisation. Decriminalisation involves the removal of all prostitution-specific laws; sex workers and sex work businesses operate within the laws of the land as other businesses. It allows all sex workers and their clients to report crimes committed against them without fear of prosecution, and reduces the risks of human trafficking as sex workers are able to freely advocate for their own health and safety, eliminating the need for exploitative third parties.
Under legalisation sex work is legal only within certain state-specified conditions, creating a two-tier system where the sex workers with the least social power remain illegal and outside of the protection of the law, highlighting the need for this fight to be an intersectional one in order to ensure a more fair and just system for all. As Martin Luther King wrote from an Alabama jail in the 1960s — injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
‘Intersectionality is incredibly important,’ Moscowitz points out. ‘LGBTQIA2s+ rights are very much intertwined with sex workers’ rights as is the fight for bodily autonomy and labor rights. DSW collaborates with many organizations to ensure that all groups who have a stake in the fight are represented.’
The framework of legalisation means there will be no impact on human trafficking because of the persistence of the black market; sex workers will also remain dependent on potentially exploitative third parties such as unscrupulous brothel owners who view them as a money making tool.
Nevada became the first and only U.S state to legalise — legalise, not decriminalise — prostitution in 1971. It licensed a handful of brothels that gave agency to the brothel owners at the expense of the sex workers within the system. Under this legalised model, which some might label progressive, the state of Nevada has the highest prostitution arrest rate per capita across the entire U.S, at 95.3 arrests per 100,000 residents, proving this model fundamentally does not work for all those engaged in the sex industry. Rather, it strictly enforces policies to prevent people from having autonomy and engaging in consensual adult prostitution outside of licensed brothels.
The Empower Foundation, a Thai-based group of sex workers fighting against their country’s restrictive legislation, argue that: ‘ “Decriminalise Sex Work” is not a debate position, political viewpoint or an ideological argument any more than “Black Lives Matter”. Both are urgent imperatives. Decriminalising sex work is directly connected to the quality of life and livelihood of tens of millions of people globally.’
The reason why it is often viewed as a debate position, Moscowitz adds, is ‘because outdated notions of ideology and morality too often play a role in our law making as opposed to data and evidence.’
Research from Empower into the harms anti-trafficking operations can cause show that ‘for every person classified as a victim of trafficking in Thailand, around six to eight non-trafficked migrant sex workers are arrested, detained and deported.’
The continuing conflation of consensual sex work with human trafficking only perpetuates the dangerous notion that sex workers cannot make voluntary choices about what they do with their bodies, allowing many to view them as simple commodities. Those who insist that consensual adult sex workers cannot possess bodily autonomy or rights, such as SWERFs, and that they are fundamentally exploited or, even, actively working against their own interests as they are engaging within an industry that does not liberate them (implying that all other ‘regular’ jobs under capitalism can liberate you), only serves to put sex workers and those who are actually being trafficked in the commercial sex industry in severe danger with no reasonable way to combat the deep-rooted, ever enduring misogynistic system at play.
Though it may seem like a difficult and uphill battle to ensure the rights of sex workers across the globe are better protected, Moscowitz insists there is hope. Particularly from, ‘Sex workers rights activists! The movement is also gaining incredible momentum around the US with seemingly more people than ever understanding that decriminalization is the only approach to governing sex work based in human rights.’
‘Anyone who wants to be an ally can support organizations advocating for sex workers’ rights. They should listen to sex workers and advocate for policies sex workers themselves support. Where sex work is decriminalized, clients who suspect an individual they’re interacting with is underaged and/or being exploited, they can alert authorities to get them help,’ she writes.
‘Sex workers set boundaries and know how to keep themselves safe. Sex workers are vulnerable to violence and exploitation by these predators because criminalization makes it much harder for them to come forward to law enforcement for help.’
Further information on the campaigning that Decriminalize Sex Work do can be found here.
