Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Behind the Batter Podcast with me, pulse and Victoria. Today we're going to be carrying on with our lovely book Revolting Prostitutes and, yeah, this is going to be page 151. I'm so sorry if you hear me my voice being raspy. I went to the Download Festival this weekend and thoroughly fucked my voice, Literally. On the last day my voice was just like nope, you're not gonna work, and I have a few interview style episodes with a few other people in the coming days. So I'm drinking lots of water and I'm hoping that it gets better. But yeah, I do apologize if I sound like rusty, but yeah, let's get on with this.

Speaker 1: 1:05

The exit services. So what happens next? Doesn't the nordic model include some kind of help? These initiatives, called exit schemes, are the second strand of the ideal nordic model envisioned by carceral feminists. Even academic Melissa Farley, proponent of criminalising clients, concedes that doing so does more harm than good. If these schemes are absent Quote it seems the idea is that when people selling sex see their income decrease, prostitution will no longer be a viable economic strategy and they will be pushed into a program that finds them alternatives. These exit services are supposed to be integral to the sex purchase ban rule to the sex purchase ban Nordic model now writes that quote. Well-funded support and exit services are vital, and the Nordic model is the only legislation that prioritizes this approach in assisting women to rebuild their lives.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Such a scheme could take many forms, most obviously direct economic support, such as help with accessing benefits or other employment. It could also mean help regularizing someone's immigration status so they can get a job in the mainstream economy. It could mean prescription drugs, counselling or other healthcare. It could mean access to childcare, education, housing anything that addresses or elevates the factors surrounding the person's entry into sex work in the first place. The very name, quote exit scheme is problematic. It reveals a shaming focus not on where a person is trying to get to, but where they are coming from. In other contexts, such as schemes might be called quote pathways to new employment schemes or quote career development schemes For prostitutes. The focus is firmly on what must be left behind.

Speaker 1: 3:59

Effective and non-judgmental support schemes are a good thing. Non-judgmental support schemes are a good thing. All kinds of people need assistance with benefits, bureaucracy, childcare or new skill acquisition. Unfortunately, projects that aim to shift sex workers out of prostitution often are ineffective and judgmental. Worse, some of them even criminalise sex workers, as in Kent's quote safe exit programme discussed in chapter 4. As such, a term exiting scheme carries some baggage for sex workers, but sex worker advocacy is not simply about making a sex worker safer. Simply about making a sex worker safer. It is also about removing the barriers to leaving it behind. Any action that, without judgment, seeks to give sex workers more or better options is therefore both an exiting scheme and a sex worker's rights goal, and sex worker activists are already working on such projects all over the world.

Speaker 1: 5:09

At the state level, however, initiatives like these need cash, and lots of it enough to begin to replace prostitution as a key form of economic support in the lives of people like Sylvia, annabelle and Violet, if that's what they want. People who sell sex often have a range of complex needs, and holistic support cannot be done on the cheap. This should be something that sex workers and anti-prostitution progressives can agree on. Indeed, such advocates often rightly emphasize the fact that leaving prostitution, even for people who want to do so, is a complex process that takes time and support. In a sense, if you want Sylvia, annabelle and Violet not to be prostitutes, there is an easy solution. If Sylvia is earning £200 a week from a couple of nights of street based sex work. Just give her £200 a week she needs. This, it should be emphasised, is not exactly the same as finding Sylvia a different job which pays her 200 pounds a week. Earning 200 pounds relatively quickly in two nights of sex work is a different proposition to earning 200 pounds doing shift work on the minimum wage, even more so if you're paying for childcare or if you have a disability. Sylvia may have her own reasons to be unable or unwilling to take a minimum wage job or indeed any other job offered to her by someone who lacks an understanding of her specific needs.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Quote help that demands that the recipient just get a job rapidly becomes punitive, as anyone navigating britain's fraying social safety net can attest. People sell sex to get resources. If you ensure they have the resources they need, they will choose to do something else with their time. The Nordic model's good reputation for exit services does not hold up under scrutiny, for exit services does not hold up under scrutiny. In 2005, a report by the Swedish government found that quote criminalization cannot be anything but a complement in the process of reducing prostitution and cannot in any way replace social initiatives. Despite this intention. No extra funds have gone to social services, while the police received additional funds for this purpose.

Speaker 1: 8:13

On repeated occasions Emphasis added a left-winged politician raised concerns in the Swedish parliament that quote in Stockholm there are prostitution centers which work with the treatment of people who have or have been in prostitution. The center's resources are small. It is hard to believe claims that the Nordic model states. It is hard to believe claims that the nordic states see sex workers as victims who deserve care. When a rapist can get a lower sentence quote because his victims were prostitutes and no one seems to have given the swedish police the memo that prostitutes are supposed to be supported.

Speaker 1: 9:06

Swedish detective superior intendant jonas troll memorably told a reporter quote it should be difficult to be a prostitute in our society. So even though we don't put prostitutes in jail, we make life difficult for them. End quote. One policy worker from the Swedish women's NGO sector told a researcher Quote If the prostitution law was supposed to help those women, then you would also have a huge program, a social program, for them, which was never introduced. A senior government advisor on prostitution painted a similar picture. Nothing Discourse at a political level is always more important than doing something for people within this category. On the ground, the government should have known that they've done nothing, absolutely nothing, to improve social services for people who sell sex and they haven't given a penny to the municipalities. Of course it was expensive. Of course it was expensive. It's less expensive, of course, to export and promote the law through conferences and screening documentaries.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Sex worker communities see through these shortcuts. Canada activist collective Stop the Arrest, sta, says that sex workers are forced via the courts to participate in programming to help them move away from quote poor life choices. It tends to place the focus on individual rather than societal change. Money talks and bullshit walks. I at all change, money talks and bullshit walks. The services that do exist are imbued with hostility to sex workers, in which distributing condoms or other harm reduction materials is seen as encouraging sex work. Quote maybe some young girls. They find this safety resource on the internet and say, ah, maybe it could be really safe because I have this handbook, comments the Swedish National Coordinator Against Trafficking and Prostitution, adding snidely quote if they make so much money, maybe they could buy their own condoms. One social worker in the Stockholm prostitution unit comments I think it might take longer to do something about your problems, ie prostitution If you get help. During the time, lisa, a sex worker in Sweden, reported that the Stockholm prostitution unit wouldn't help her until she had quit prostitution. Prostitution unit wouldn't help her until she had quit prostitution. The social worker told me she was going to help me to write a note authorizing sickness benefits. So she said quote if you stop prostitution for three months and you don't do anything for three months, then I will write that. So I was angry because if I am not working sex work, how am I going to get money? I need first money, then I can stop.

Speaker 1: 12:42

In Ireland, reports that asylum seeking women were selling sex sparked alarm from the justice Minister Francis Fitzgerald and became fodder for her campaign to introduce Nordic model style legislation. Fitzgerald commented quote and I do find those reports shocking. I certainly don't want to see any woman in Ireland feeling that the only option for her is prostitution in order to look after her family. People who are seeking asylum in Ireland a process which can often last for many years receive an quote allowance from the state. Receive an quote allowance from the state. At the time the reports regarding prostitution emerged, this allowance was just 19 euros a week. When the draft bill to criminalize clients in ireland was published, wendy leon wrote. There is no reversal of the cuts to social welfare and child benefit, which have undoubtedly pushed more women into prostitution. No increased than 19 euros per week given to women in the asylum system. No additional funds for education, training or drug treatment programs that might open up other options. At the time of writing, the allowance that people seeking asylum receive from the Irish state has increased to just €21.60 a week.

Speaker 1: 14:26

When people are pushed into prostitution by poverty, the response of the Nordic model is not to alleviate their poverty but to try to take away their survival strategies. Even if these services were both well-funded and non-judgmental, pushing sex workers into them by making the sex industry a harsher place is still cruel, even if they want to. It is the most marginal sex workers who will generally take the longest time to get in touch with services and to change jobs. If you have a drug dependency or poor mental health and you struggle to keep appointments, then you'll struggle to access services. If you're an undocumented person who worries that making yourself visible to services means you'll be deported, or a mother who fears that outing yourself as a prostitute to social workers means you'll risk losing child custody, then even if these worries turn out to be unfounded, you might hold on as long as you can before taking the risk of approaching services. The complexity of such situations means it may take several months or longer to exit, months or longer to exit, and in the meantime you'll still be working in a sex industry that has been made deliberately harsher. But all this is hypothetical, because even the exit services in Sweden, the epicenter of the Nordic model, aren't meeting the needs of those who want to leave sex work.

Speaker 1: 16:14

3. The Seller. The third key principle of the Nordic model is supposed to be decriminalising prostitutes. This feature is thrust forward time and again by its supporters. Banyard describes the way the Nordic model quote criminalizes sex buying and third party profiteering, but it completely decriminalizes selling sex. British member of parliament Fingham Debonair says, quote Nordic model supporters have always been clear full decriminalization of supply, criminalisation of demand. Again, the intentions on the whole are perhaps good. However, in practice, in every country that has the Nordic model style laws, much criminalisation of sex workers has been retained. There are multiple laws against soliciting the criminalisation of sex workers who share a flat, targeted evictions of sex workers and the aggressive use of prostitution law and immigration law in concert to deport sex workers. To deport sex workers.

Speaker 1: 17:37

In France, supporters trumpeted the success of the Nordic model a year in, with the claim that nearly a thousand quote johns had been arrested and quote zero prostituted persons. However, wendy Leon found a somewhat different story. Only the national law against soliciting has been repealed. There are still various municipal anti-prostitution decrees that lead to continued arrests of street-based sex workers. Not quite zero arrests for prostituted persons. Then, when Ireland implemented the Nordic model, ministers rejected a provision that would have allowed sex workers to keep the money they had on them when their client was arrested. Instead, when a client is arrested, the police take all of her cash as quote proceeds of crime. This is, it should be obvious, a de facto fine for sex workers.

Speaker 1: 18:39

In Norway, street-based sex workers were still being fined several years after they had allegedly been quote decriminalized. Police routinely evict sex workers if they find out where they live and under Norwegian law, refusing to give your address to a police officer when they ask is punishable with a fine. If the worker discloses her address, she will be evicted generally on the same day. If she does not, she will be fined. Black women are disproportionately targeted by such enforcement. Tina, a Nigerian street sex worker in Norway comments quote when you are black, they take the black women and leave the white man, the black women and leave the white man. Esther, a black sex worker working in Norway, says she had seen a significant shift From 2008 to 2009,. Police would ask how you were doing Since 2011,. They have clamped down. Now they come and it's like she hits the table Bam, bam, bam. They are much worse to Nigerians and Romanians and Bulgarians. Last year, 2014, was the worst. Since September last year. It has been war. They don't want to see a black face. Nigerian street-based worker Yunus told Anmesty thing to help black women.

Speaker 1: 20:35

There is absolutely no shadow of a doubt that what is going on in norway is having the most detrimental impact on the most marginalized sex workers, says katherine murphy from amnesty international. The people pursued by the police the most, the most at risk for violence, the ones subject to being made homeless or deported. The impact is being felt most strongly for those women. The over-policing of marginalized groups is not a problem created solely by the Nordic model. Of course, police forces all around the world already target certain populations for bullying, blackmail, theft and assault, but their power to do so is cultivated through the laws they enforce and the legitimacy those laws lend to their office and the legitimacy those laws lend to their office. Anti-prostitution laws bolster the authority of police to enter into the lives of prostitutes on the grounds of disrupting their survival. Sydney, an indigenous sex worker from Canada, demonstrates the opportunistic mindset of cops who exploit any chance they get to harass sex workers on the street. She recounts, quote I had a cigarette in my hand and it was burning out and they were like quote what are you going to do? Throw that on the ground If you do. If you do, we're going to make you pick up all the cigarette butts around here. Jen clamin from montreal based sex workers rights group stella points out quote when we introduce police and law enforcement as saviors, which which is what the Nordic Model regime attempts to do for sex workers, we give police another tool in their arsenal to attack these communities.

Speaker 1: 22:42

The criminalisation of indoor workers. In almost every jurisdiction where the Nordic Model operates, sex workers sharing flats are criminalized. In oslo, norway, a sex working woman was prosecuted as a brothel keeper for sharing her flat with two friends, even though the court acknowledged that her primary motive was safety. Police in sweden stake out flats, to quote catch pairs of sex workers stake out flats. To quote catch pairs of sex workers In Northern Ireland. The first arrests made when the Nordic model was implemented was one client and three sex working women who were arrested for brothel keeping, as they were found during the raid ostensibly aimed at catching the client to be sharing a flat.

Speaker 1: 23:34

The Republic of Ireland implemented the Nordic model in March 2017 and in July 2017. Two migrant women were convicted of prostitution offences in the small town of Tralee in County Kerry, or Tralee in County Kerry. Florentina, who was renting a house, was convicted of allowing the house to be used for prostitution. Although the court accepted, she did not benefit quote materially or financially from the settle. Her friend, mahayla, was charged under the brothel-keeping law with quote using the same address for prostitution and was convicted and fined. Advocates of the Nordic model might think that Lorena, the main tenant, deserved to be prosecuted as a brothel-keeper, although prosecuting a migrant woman for a flat share from which she was not benefiting financially seems a harsh application of the law, but it is hard to see on what basis such an advocate could argue that Mahaila should be prosecuted. Mahayla should be prosecuted.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Some prominent Nordic model advocates deride the idea that sex workers might want to work together. A senior human rights adviser at the Carter Center, for example, claimed that quote working together for safety is just a code for running a brothel or pimping, adding that pimps call themselves sex workers, so that's convenient. In reality, sex workers sharing an apartment is very normal. If you have ever had a housemate to cut housing costs or to enjoy their company, you should emphasise with why sex workers might want to share working flats. There is something intensely dehumanising about the implication that sex workers are so alien that these normal human considerations do not apply to us. It is also an obvious safety measure, one used by many other kinds of workers kinds of workers. Even some advocates for the nordic model acknowledge having shared flats in this way during the time that they were selling sex. Prominent campaigner rachel moran writes in her memoir that quote if I'd get a request for a call-in, I'd use a bedroom in the brothel of one of the women I was associating with at the time. I'd pay them a fee for the use of the room, which was common practice. I'd made money myself that way when I had my own apartment Emphasis ours. That way when I had my own apartment Emphasis ours. Moran has been one of the most active campaigners for the Nordic model across the globe. For many years she has spoken with politicians and addressed the United Nations. Her story is cited by other advocates as the illustration as to why the Nordic model is needed In such a fraught and adversarial context.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Moran's offhand acknowledgement that not only did she share a flat with other workers but she quote made money that way reads strangely. Any current sex worker who made such a comment would be damned by moran and the law she helped bring in as a pimp. We do not want to engage in a similar smear. Moran's way of working seems legitimate and unremarkable. After all, there is a quote opportunity cost to letting another worker see a client in your room when you yourself could have been using the room to work. In outside overheated sex industry debates, it would not seem alarming or noteworthy to ask a friend for a small financial contribution towards your bills if they were using your space, if they are using your space.

Speaker 1: 28:20

What is painful, of course, is the hypocrisy. The irish law that moran spent years campaigning for penalises women doing exactly what she describes herself doing and indeed women behaving more quote sympathetically, such as those who took no financial contribution and simply allowed a friend to share their space Brackets. The Nordic model in Ireland doubled the penalties for quote brothel keeping from a six-month jail sentence to a year. When questioned on this hypocrisy, moran declined to give a clear answer as to whether she felt that a prosecution for brothel keeping would have helped her at this time in her life. Of course, it is not just Moran's question to answer. All advocates of the Nordic model should perhaps explain whether they think the prosecution of Moran as a brothel keeper would have been a positive thing for her or for society at large and, if not, why they are happy to push for laws under which so many other sex workers are prosecuted just for doing the same as she did. Examples abound Even selling sex in quote duos, ie advertising threesomes, can put sex workers afoul of brothel keeping laws.

Speaker 1: 29:58

Sex workers David and Celia, a married couple, were convicted of brothel keeping charges in Ireland in May 2018 for working together in this way. The two narrowly avoided jail and were each fined 600 euros. And there's 73 year old Teresinha prosecuted for brothel keeping in Ireland in July 2017. The court accepted that no coercion was taking place. Teresina was simply renting a flat from which she herself could sell sex and was sharing it with another sex-working woman. Teresina was visibly distressed during the court case and spoke via a court interpreter. And spoke via a court interpreter. She was selling sex out of desperation in order to pay her son's medical bills. She had been in ireland for four days and had only seen one client making 80 euros. The court wow. The court took the 80 euros as a fine and the judge ordered that the money could be given to an organization that helps women involved in the sex trade. Right, that is where we're gonna end. We're gonna end on 160, just because it does, oh, actually. Just because it does, oh, actually, no, should we do? Yeah, let's end on 160, maybe okay, no, let's carry on.

Speaker 1: 31:33

Evictions. Police operating under nordic model legislation view disrupting commercial sex as good in itself and frequently deploy quote be cruel to be kind strategies against sex workers. Quote be cruel to be kind strategies against sex workers. In sweden, landlords who rent property to sex workers can be criminalized for quote promoting prostitution, with obvious consequences for sex workers increased preclarity and risk of homelessness. The law directly pushes for eviction of sex worker tenants. Quote if the landlord does not do what is reasonably required for the termination of the tenancy, he or she will be considered to have promoted the business. The Norwegian police even had a specific operation to evict sex workers. They would tell a landlord that they suspect a specific tenant to be a sex worker and invite the landlord to either evict the tenant or face prosecution themselves. The tenants were evicted, as if to deliberately dispel any doubt as to what this policing strategy was aiming for. The police gave it the name Operation Homeless.

Speaker 1: 33:00

The financial outlay involved in being evicted is often much greater than the fines given to buyers caught paying for sex. An evicted sex worker will lose her deposit. If she has paid that month's rent already, she will lose that too. It should be obvious to any empathetic person that being suddenly made homeless and losing a large amount of money will not help anyone out of prostitution. Such measures sit uneasily with the claim that nordic model style legislation treats prostitutes as victims of violence. Who could think that women experiencing violence should be evicted?

Speaker 1: 33:48

Mercy, a black sex working woman in norway, was evicted this way three times between 2013 and 2014. On one occasion she was effectively quote evicted while she was out at the shops. The landlord. Landlord changed the locks. She had to beg to be allowed to collect her possessions, telling Ann Misty quote I had to wait a week with no clothes or money or anything. Another sex worker, mary says quote, sometimes they would give us just a few minutes to get out. We would lose the money that we had paid. Eunice says quote I have been given minutes to leave my apartment. You don't have time to get all your things. I had to go and sleep in the train station. Esther says the police gave us 20 minutes to get out. We were cooking soup at the time and we had to take the pot out in the street with us.

Speaker 1: 34:49

In 2014, nine black sex workers reported to the Oslo police that they had been raped and assaulted by a man armed with a machete who had posed as a police officer. A few days after their report, their landlord, alerted by the police that his tenants were sex workers, evicted them. Admiracy spoke to dozens of women evicted in this way and found that all but one were given a day or less to leave their apartments. Every single one was black. Operation Homeless is no longer a specific operation, not because the police realized it was horrifying, but because the work of evicting mostly black sex working women has been quote mainstreamed into the work of the oslo police.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Okay, now we're gonna end on 162. There was a chapter beforehand where, like it seemed that I might have wanted to end it there to be nice and clean, but no, we've ended it on 162. So this is horrific. So this is horrific every time I read this book. It is horrible and obviously it you know it's graphic, like you have those images in your head.

Speaker 1: 36:15

And me personally, being a sex worker, and the fact that right now, with the politician Ash Regan trying to bring in the Nordic model here in Scotland and the UK, is terrifying, absolutely terrifying. I have a child myself and every time I read this book I do fear. I very much fear for what my life will be like in a year. Will I be able to continue sex work? Will I be in prison? Will I have my kid taken off of me? Oh, that is a harrowing thought and it is horrible. My kid is my world and that is my worst fear is having them taken off of me just because I do a job that helps put food on the table. It helps us survive. Nobody should go through that. It's a basic human right to have a roof over your head and food in your stomach, a roof over your head and food in your stomach and to have healthcare as well.

Speaker 1: 37:34

The world is so fucked right now. It is disgusting and it is scary. There are so many wars going on, so many people that need help and we want to bring in the Nordic model, which will just worsen it for so many people, myself included and many friends. The fact that currently, with the crime and policing bill, they want to stop us advertising and they also want to prosecute landlords, designers who do sex, worker websites it's ridiculous. Now I'm currently watching handmaid's tale and again it is horrible, because this is what the world is becoming. Women are getting pushed down even further into the ground because they can and we need to stand up and say something, not just women, everyone we need to stand up, especially the clients. We need to not be afraid of the government. We need to not be afraid of the politicians who earn way fucking more than us, who look down at us, who will gladly spit on us. Let's be honest, that's what they're doing to everybody right now in the UK. They are screwing us all over. Right now in the UK. They are screwing us all over and we really need to get a grip and realize what is happening in the world and it is fucking scary. And just because it's not happening to you and it might not be happening to a loved one does not mean that it needs to carry on.

Speaker 1: 39:46

So, yeah, this has been behind the Paddle Podcast with me, poulsen, victoria and I shall see you next week, monday and then the following Thursday. We are nearly coming to an end with this book. There's only a few more weeks, I believe four, four, yeah, four more weeks of this book. If you have any more suggestions, maybe a happy book, I don't know. I mean it's fine. I like reporting on the depressing stuff because it does need to get said, it needs to get heard. So, yeah, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. Please leave a like. We are on youtube, spotify, apple. Please give us a review. It really, really helps us out. And, yeah, bye.