this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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The Nordic or neo-abolitionist model exists. Sweden was the first nation to implement it I think. Selling sex is legal, buying is not. Seems to work for them
You've got that backwards. In Sweden, buying is illegal, selling is not. Essentially turning the customer into a rapist and the seller into a victim. And rightly so! Considering that most women selling sex are doing so because of human trafficking, or at least coercion or desperation, it's cruel, immoral, and ironic that they are criminalized in the rest of the world outside of Sweden and the other countries that have followed their model.
Men who pay for sex are the driving force behind human trafficking.
I think you are agreeing with the post above yours. They said that selling sex is legal, while buying is not.
Yes. My mistake. Thanks.
That's exactly what I said. I'll just quote myself here:
Apologies. I swear I reread your comment 3 times, and each time I replaced legal with illegal in my mind. I see it now!
Do you know something I don't? From what I hear both sex workers and johns continue to exist, just like in the old abolitionist/prohibitionist model.
The point isn't to prohibit it, it's to give the prostitute the legal advantage when reporting the john (and thereby rein in the behavior of johns with the tacit threat)
Well that's nice, but I feel like it could also be abused. What if a prostitute (which is one kind of sex worker) threatened to report a john as a form of blackmail?
It'd probably be best to regulate the entire thing as a legal industry and put in place some sort of watchlist for suspected bad johns.
They already can and sometimes do, usually as honeypots (here I mean the criminal kind). "Blackmail is illegal" and also blackmailing someone being very dangerous are two major elements preventing it. I don't think making buying legal would be a significant factor since usually the blackmail is on the level of social standing, not getting charged with a relatively minor crime (generally a misdemeanor). Furthermore, especially because prostitution exists more in the open in these societies, the prostitute who blackmails would also have her reputation damaged quite severely, to the point that it might not be viable for her to continue her profession if it gets out that she even attempted blackmail -- to say nothing of the fact that, not to beat a dead horse, having someone who absolutely hates your guts (the victim) makes being a prostitute much more dangerous: What if this is one of the old john's friends or someone he hired to hurt you?
"The plight of the johns" is also just not a very moving cause because anyone who is worried about getting blackmailed even given all of these factors can just not buy sex. Prostitutes are much more likely to be desperate -- though less likely in these countries than in a place like the US.
Well, there's some good arguments there. But making something you want people to do illegal is certainly counterintuitive and doesn't seem like a sane approach to me.
Ah, so you do want to prohibit sex work. I get that's not what you think you're saying, but prostitutes can't exist without johns, and so it doesn't fall under "support sex workers". Now, abolishing sex work is a thing intelligent, well-meaning people argue for as well, but that's a different conversation.
No, because a) blackmail is just a very poor business model in this case and b) most people don't stand to lose that much over a misdemeanor, especially since the prostitute would also need to prove her case, the John can sue for libel if she fails to, etc. etc. Anyone scared of the fringe chance can just not go, but most people who otherwise would want to go would probably still want to go.