Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to Behind the Bad Podcast with me, paulson, victoria. Today we're going to continue reviewing Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mack and Molly Smith. So deportations deportations are intrinsically violent, but the deportation of sex workers from countries that have implemented the nordic model is often particularly brutal. In canada, sex worker group butterfly says that migrant women are frequently detained indefinitely by immigration enforcement. Some spend weeks or even months being subjected to quote inhuman and degrading treatment, false allegations and false evidence being used to keep them detained. End quote before being deported. One sex worker named Cookie said quote the first night was incredibly cold, since I only had my vest while sleeping on a board. I thought to myself quote I have no clothes and I have no food. I thought to myself quote I have no clothes and I have no food. What did I do wrong? For a full week I was not allowed to shower or change my clothes. Butterfly reports that another migrant sex worker stayed with a friend after escaping domestic abuse and was then attacked by a client in the flat they both shared. When the police arrived, they immediately arrested her friend on suspicion of trafficking her and arrested her on suspicion of working illegally. Both of the women were deported.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Police in Nordic countries routinely use sex workers' reports of violence to deport them. One woman, whom the police had identified as a sex worker after she reported an incident of violence that gave her a serious head injury, was deported from Oslo so rapidly that the injury made it difficult to travel. In 2014, three Nigerian sex workers in Oslo were attacked and robbed in their home at gunpoint. The woman went to an emergency shelter to recover, but when they returned to their home a few days later, they were arrested and deported. They had valid visas and had not overstayed them. To deport people who come to your attention as victims of a violent crime is an incredibly aggressive enforcement approach. Incredibly aggressive enforcement approach, not one that should be considered normal or legitimate. When a case came to light in 2017 of a woman in London who had been threatened with immigration enforcement after reporting a rape, there was, rightly, a national outcry. Yet Nordic prostitution policy, where such cases are routine, is held up as aspirational and feminist. In our view, nobody deserves to be deported, but the police break even their own rules by deporting sex workers who have a legal right to be in the country. By deporting sex workers who have a legal right to be in the country. Swedish authorities routinely deport migrant women from other EU nations on the grounds that sex work constitutes quote a threat to public order and security or a quote a dishonest means of support. Quote a dishonest means of support. It is no coincidence that so many of the sex workers deported from Scandinavia are black women.

Speaker 1: 4:12

The Nordic model emerged in response to racist anxieties about the migration of black sex workers, particularly to Norway, who were depicted through the stigmatizing trope of the sexually aggressive black woman. Oslo sex worker outreach organization, procentret, notes that when the law was drafted, there was lots of discussion about how quote the streets had become immoral. Most of the debate was about the very visible Nigerian women. There were politicians talking about how terrible it was for them to be approached by these women. The women were treated like they were garbage that needed to be cleaned away. The media stories were about quote black whores causing quote immorality in the streets. That was the main focus.

Speaker 1: 5:14

The criminalization of sex workers for sharing flats, the use of fines and evictions against sex workers and the extremely aggressive use of deportations are incompatible with the claim that the nordic model quote totally decriminalizes sellers. It retains, adds and intensifies numerous tools with which to harass, prosecute, arrest or harm sex workers through criminal law or civil measures In conveying to the police that disrupting commercial sex is their job. The law pushes the police to use these tools against sellers, which they do with particular alacrity when the seller is black. The effect, of course, is that the seller has a good reason to hide from the police, making Nordic cops endless comments about how easy it is to still find sex workers. If the punter can find prostituted women, so can the police, more chilling than jocular it, froze into a harsh light to the rhetorical question that we hear a lot as activists. Quote how can a prostitute in Sweden be in danger we're asked by cops and politicians and campaigners alike, quote when all she has to do is pick up the phone, even if the punter is rude to her, and the police will arrest him because he is already committing a crime? Such a question must be rhetorical, because clearly these campaigners have never paused to hear sex workers answers.

Speaker 1: 7:14

Is that a sex worker working under the Nordic model still has a lot to fear If she's a migrant, even one with a visa? If she's a migrant, even one with a visa, she can be arrested and taken to a deportation centre today If her name is on the tenancy of a flat she shares, she can be prosecuted. Would you call the police if doing so would make you homeless today or open you up to prosecution? Dorothy, a migrant sex worker in Canada, spoke of how this fear shaped her behavior. Quote they, the robbers, treated us like a money machine. We were robbed four times in one week. We could not call the police, otherwise we would have had more trouble. I told the police about this after they eventually arrested and detained me, but they did not care.

Speaker 1: 8:17

When people who sell sex have desperate, urgent reasons to hide from the police, we are profoundly vulnerable to violent men. Such men know that they can attack us, rob us or assault us, and because contacting the police means we'll risk being made homeless on top of being robbed at gunpoint, we won't contact the cops. Sex workers under such a system are sitting ducks, the pimp and the trafficker. As we noted when we discussed demand, third parties like managers benefit when sex workers' lives become more difficult. For instance, where sex workers face legal obstacles to tenancy, as is the case under the Nordic model, it makes sense to get another person to be a quote go-between with the landlord. Such a relationship is one of hugely uneven power. If the quote go-between requests £300 a month to do this, the sex worker is stuck having to pay him as well as the landlord, and if she won't or can't, he can easily get her evicted. The Norwegian government writes that in Sweden, prostitutes' dependence on pimps has probably increased. Someone is needed in the background to arrange transport and new flats so that the women's activity is more difficult to discover.

Speaker 1: 9:57

The victims of exploitation and sex trafficking are a key concern for many feminists, including sex worker activists. There are women in abusive relationships who have been coerced into prostitution by their partner. There are those working in prostitution who have been coerced into it by people who promise them different work and to whom they pay some or all of their earnings from sex work, usually to pay back a debt for crossing the border. Does the Nordic model approach make the situation better for women like these? Bear in mind that there is no simple binary divide between sex workers and those you would consider trafficked. All of these people are using the safety strategies we have outlined in this book when they can. All, for whatever reason, are seeking to make money, whether to buy drugs, placate a violent partner or abusive manager, give to a landlord or send to a dependent family member, or indeed to pay off a people smuggler. Policies which make a prostitute's life harder will make the lives of those you would consider trafficked harder too.

Speaker 1: 11:27

Think back to the Norwegian government report cited earlier in this chapter, the one that said the sex by a law meant that people in prostitution now had to quote work harder. That applies to everyone selling sex in norway. There isn't an exemption for those in the most exploitative situations. Another norwegian government report into the sex buyer law states this even more bluntly. The worst harms, it notes, accrue to quote addicts, the mentally ill and people from other countries, the forced prostitutes.

Speaker 1: 12:13

And if an exploited migrant sex worker goes to the police under the nordic model as under other models, she will be deported with her debt unpaid. The Swedish parliament noted when women are quote, discovered by police and found to quote have been missing a legal basis for their stay, they will often have been immediately deported without the police attempting to investigate under what conditions they have come and stayed in. This means that significant information about trafficking in human beings has been lost. If such a woman tries to seek new employment through exit services, she may be told she needs to quit sex work before they can help her. She is likely to be fearful of approaching exit services at all for fear that revealing herself to anybody quote official will lead to her deportation. So she must continue to sell sex, whether under duress or entirely of her own volition, all the while the number of clients shrinking, the shifts getting longer and work growing more dangerous. Would all this be worthwhile if the market for commercial sex in nordic countries is smaller? Fewer women will be exploited in prostitution and even trafficked right.

Speaker 1: 13:52

The problem with this idea is that criminal law is not a key determinant of the size of the sex industry in any given country. Look at the United States. If criminalisation was the key factor in the size of a country's sex industry, the US would have a tiny sex industry, have a tiny sex industry, as chapter 5 details. In many states penalties for purchasing sex far exceed those in Scandinavia. And of course, sex workers themselves, along with managers, landlords, taxi drivers and colleagues, can all be swept up into prosecution. Yet the US has a huge sex industry. That's because the key determinant is not criminal law, but poverty and people's access to resources when a country has no social safety net or when the social safety net excludes. Some people struggling to avoid homelessness or to pay for health care might well sell sex in order to get housing or medication. People who are undocumented struggle to enter the mainstream labor market or to assert any labor rights in these contexts. Some people sell sex, often under conditions that are, to a greater or lesser degree, exploitative or abusive. But the solution isn't to criminalize commercial sex if it was, the us, would trafficking. Instead, it is to ensure that people have access to the resources that they need, including the right to safe migration and the right for migrants to work and assert labour rights without fearing deportation.

Speaker 1: 15:55

In fact, swedish policy makers aren't at all clear on what the law has achieved. Claims that levels of sex work have declined are generally misleading, as they are usually based only on levels of street-based sex work are usually based only on levels of street-based sex work. Street work in Stockholm did indeed decline briefly after 1999, but then went back up again, and the law probably merely speeded a transition to indoor work that was already being facilitated by the internet. Today, it is impossible to run a brothel in sweden, boasts a cop to anti-prostitution campaigner janice raymond, who uncritically repeats him. But according to police, the number of brothels in Stockholm have increased sharply. In 2009, they estimated there were 90 Thai massage parlours which offer sex in the city. By 2013, the number was 250.

Speaker 1: 17:13

Swedish politicians complained of the sex industry's resilience, noting in 2003 that street prostitution in one country had more than doubled, contrary to the claims of quote abolitionism. Swedish politicians argue quote we have never thought that you could eradicate prostitution with it. But sex laws is an important signal of what is acceptable in a society and not Not exactly the quote existential threat to the sex trade that advocates claim. Then Can anybody hear us? All over the world, it is routine for anti-prostitution policing to involve evicting sex workers, prosecuting them and deporting them. Only in the Nordic countries, however, is this imagined as a feminist achievement.

Speaker 1: 18:21

For Sweden particularly, cleansing the nation of undesirables as a form of social improvement has long been part of national identity. In the early 20th century, the political theory of the people's home was established to conceptualize the ideal Swedish society and its benevolent welfare state. Benevolent welfare state the basis for this idea is that, like a small family household, swedish citizens contribute and, in turn, are benignly looked after by the state, which acts as a quote good parent, steering its offspring away from misbehaviour and corruption. Unsurprisingly, the role of the prostitute in the people's home is an antagonistic one. Who is but a prostitute could, more archetypally, threaten the family. Half Other groups, too, are seen as similarly disruptive to Swedish familiar normativity People who use drugs, people with HIV, transgender people, People with HIV, transgender people. How this quote national family has historically responded to these groups paints a picture of Swedish control In the name of the people's home, eugenicist commitment to, quote social hygiene.

Speaker 1: 20:17

21,000 people were forcibly sterilized before 1975. 90% of those sterilized were women who were deemed to be quote inferior, antisocial, dangerously hypersexual, promiscuous or feeble-minded. During the 1990s, the Swedish state incarcerated people living with HIV without trial, some of them for years. 90% were sex workers and drug users sex workers and drug users. This legacy lives on in Swedish governance. In 2009, a left party politician noted that these punitive responses to HIV played a part in the social construction of quote the nice, clean Sweden. In order to legally reassign their gender, trans people were subject to compulsory sterilization until 2013. Even the presence of drugs in the body is criminalized. What the fuck? This is a far harsher anti-drug law than any other european country has, which goes some way towards explaining sweden's devastating number of drug deaths, the second worst in Europe. Ultimately, only Sweden's quote ideal, normative citizens, healthy, productive people of Nordic stock are those who can be deemed responsible and rational, looking after themselves in a way that is independent but in accord with family rules, protecting the brand For anti-prostitution feminists be gilded by the idea of the quote people's home, a utopia of social order.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Sweden's prostitution law represents the dream. Reality cannot be allowed to intrude. We hear a litany of phrases exalting Sweden's quote decriminalization of quote prostituted people, says the nordic model completely decriminalizes those who sell sex acts whilst offering support services to exit prostitution, while dr megan tyler from the nordic model information network says the law quote basically hinges on essentially a legal framework where all prostituted persons are decriminalized, so there's no criminal sanction against anyone in prostitution, but sex buying, pimping and brothel keeping are all criminalized. When someone raised quote Operation Homeless. When someone raised quote operation homeless in the comments section of her website, prolific anti-prostitution feminist Megan Murphy was confused. Can you at least explain how and why the police are supposedly quote seeking out and harassing sex workers and what that has to do with the Nordic model? It seems the articles you've provided have something to do with something called quote operation homeless. I don't know what that is and I don't understand how it relates to the Nordic model. Murphy has penned literally hundreds of articles advocating for the Nordic model over a period of years. For her to not know about Operation Homeless betrays a notable and typical lack of feminist curiosity about sex workers' experiences under the system they are advocating for. Similar examples abound In her book Pimp State, which also advocates for the Nordic model.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Banyard writes quote securing the sex by a law isn't a case of job done for campaigners. Indeed, the task turns to prizing open the full potential of the law, which sometimes includes pressing for amendments in the legislation itself. At this point, the reader might wonder if PINP state will acknowledge operation homeless, prosecutions, deportations or other abuses that sex workers suffer in nordic nations. Banyard instead continues quote in sweden, for instance, the maximum possible penalty for paying for sex was increased in 2011 from six months to one year's imprisonment. These sorts of issues that the law has sometimes not been enforced enough against clients or that the penalties were too low are the only criticisms of the law Banyard raises.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Another anti-prostitution activist told an audience of activists and politicians quote Of course, under the Nordic model, no one selling sex is criminalised, yet we're told constantly that they are criminalised De facto, and I'm not sure what that means. I mean you're either criminalised for selling sex or you're not. Emphasis ours. When Amnesty Report came out full of the voices of women like Mercy, mary, esther, eunice, speaking of criminalisation, eviction and deportation, uk campaign group Nordic Model Now simply commented quote the Nordic model works and should keep on keeping on. The people's home brand is closely linked to ideas of innovative social democracy. As a result, when other countries implement prostitution laws based on those of Sweden, they tap into the same feminists catched, even when such pats on the back are far from deserved.

Speaker 1: 27:14

In Canada, bill C-36, or the Prosec communities and exploited persons act, was introduced in 2014. The law, which criminalized clients and advertising while retaining most of the existing penalties for prostitutes, brought an array of political favours to the fore, from regressively hostile to progressively poetic. Conservative MP Joy Smith spoke with heartfelt compassion of a young abuse survivor who had inspired her fight to bring the bill about. A quote living, breathing, beautiful human being with a soul Truly an admirable sentiment. It's never a bad time, of course, to be reminded that prostitutes have souls, especially when compared with the words of Conservative colleague Donald Platt, who said, quote Wow.

Speaker 1: 28:35

Other proponents of C-36 framed the issue as one of quote community harms, such as noise, impeding traffic, harassment of residents. Quote unsanitary behaviours and the encroachment of sex workers into the spaces of school children. And the encroachment of sex workers into the spaces of school children Again quote end. Demand reveals itself to be roomy enough for multiple political ideologies. In the same debate, smith again asserted her feminist credentials Quote this bill is historic and it's progressive. For the first time in Canada's history, women trafficked into prostitution will not be treated as nuances. They'll be treated with dignity End quote. Shortly after that, 11 migrant sex workers were arrested in Ottawa and deported.

Speaker 1: 29:41

For all that, feminists say they prioritise tackling violence against victims, addressing the hurt caused to us by the buying of sex. It is striking how frequently this mask slips when it does. We see yet again that the goal of quote doing away with sex workers and the spectra of quote harm to the community drive these policies. For those who have known violence in the sex trade, the doublespeak of these politics is clear. As for the laws, vaunted disciplinary effect on male sexual entitlement, well, as evidence emerges of harms to sex workers and little or no reduction in the size of the sex industry.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Anti-prostitution feminists, keen to quote protect the brand of the nordic model, increasingly shift to citing changes and social attitudes towards prostitution as a key metric of the law's success. When the law was first implemented, most of Swedes did not support it. Nearly 20 years on, a large majority of the population does. As Banyard writes, that attitude shift is at the heart of the Sex Buyer Law on the statute book and its enforcement on the ground. It is about society collectively drawing a line in the sand. The suggestion is, of course, that the effect of the law has been set anew and more feminist norm. Swedes no longer think it is acceptable to quote buy a woman for sex. In making this argument, advocates of the Nordic model make a telling omission. The same survey that shows many more Swedes now think it unacceptable to pay for sex also shows that many more Swedes now think it's unacceptable to sell sex too. A majority of swedes, particularly women, would like to see prostitutes fined or jailed. The quote line in the sand that banyard and others are so keen to celebrate looks less feminist when it is drawn to penalize not only the client but the prostitute too, as retired academic Robert Fulham-Weider writes. Quote the shift in opinion to a strong majority favoring criminalizing all facets of prostitution suggests that the sex, suggests the sex purchase ban has implanted a norm, to be sure, but it may not be a norm feminists should take comfort in.

Speaker 1: 32:52

Okay, so we are ending on page 172. Um, yeah, this, this, this is so shocking. I did not really. I thought genuinely before going, even before the book, going really deep into sex work, um, all the Nordic model and all the Nordic model and political side. And I mean you need to get political when you are in sex work, otherwise you're in trouble and it is. You know you can get criminalised. You know laws change, bills come through all that such.

Speaker 1: 33:39

But to know, like I hear so many people say, oh, sweden's amazing, sweden's this, it's horrific what they did to transgender people. How on earth did they ever think that was acceptable to do to a human, a human being? Disgusting. Sweden is not what I thought it was. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed this episode. This has been Behind the Pedal with Paulson, victoria and we've got, I think, three more parts to this book and then we're done with it. So if anybody has any more book suggestions, I'm making a list. I would love to hear it. If you would write a lovely review or give us the most amount of stars, that would be amazing. It is greatly appreciated, will be on spotify, apple youtube everywhere. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being here while we're listening to part 17 of this and goodbye, bye.