Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Behind the Bada podcast with me, blossom Victoria. Today's episode we are continuing with Revolting Prostitutes. I am so happy I think this is part 18. Now we are nearly at the end. I hope everyone is having a lovely week. Revolting Prostitutes is created, created by molly smith and juno mack, and this is page 172.

Speaker 1: 0:36

So patriarchy police and the state sex worker activists often note that anti-prostitution rhetoric is a welcoming place for male feminist grandstanding. Anti-prostitution politics serve the desire of the quote good guys to bolster their own manhood and ostensibly feminist adjacent campaigning can be fueled by some pretty chauvinist ideas. As one swedish prosecutor told an audience, a real man should manage to get his woman, get his due of sex by powers of seduction and mutual consent and for love or mutual enjoyment or procreation or for passing the time of the day, not for money. Going to prostitutes was cheating, it was degrading, it was contemptible Beyond the pale. Whores were for losers, whores were for losers. This view of quote real men, the jab at quote whores, let alone the idea that a quote real man should quote get his due of sex and women, are hardly testament to the feminist credentials of swedish policymakers. Lionizing the police does much to establish these politics as a friendly environment for other self-identified quote feminist men. If the police are going to deliver justice for poor, abused women, they can be held aloft as a system of heretic masculinity, a port, a portal which others can enter, while they protect themselves into the future of the quote heretic police officer male. Anti-prostitution campaigners can use these politics to superficially distance themselves from other kinds of masculinity. Quote whores were for losers. Quote whores were for losers.

Speaker 1: 3:30

The politician who proposed the law in sweden specifically notes the feminist credentials of his countrymen, claiming that the law went forward because quote swedish men had different views on prostitution than men from other parts of the world. Journalist and fated anti-prostitution campaigner, nicholas Kristof, revealed a rather strange view of sex when he bemoaned American promiscuity in the New York Times, while claiming that Indian men have a cultural tendency to pay for sex with 14 year olds. Such condemnations dwell heavily on the morals of individual, often racialized quote bad guys. By advocating quote end demand laws, men relocate the blame for patriarchy onto more obviously monstrous men and feel superior in calling out those other men's violations or objectifying treatment of women. The hypocrisy, of course, that the anti-prostitution movement is at times deeply violating and objectifying to sex workers.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Anti-prostitution feminism is a place where men can participate in flinging slurs like holes, whores, orifices and cum dumpsters at sex workers and call it feminist analysis. It's a place where men who consider themselves feminist aligned can patronise and dismiss prostitute women as men have done for centuries. It's a place where a police officer can rifle through the bathroom bin at sex workers, flat retrieve blood-soaked tampons, publish photographs of them in his memoir with a touching depictation to dedication to sex workers he has met in his work. Quote this is my attempt to describe your reality and still be treated like a feminist activist. As sex worker, charlotte shane observes anti-prostitution feminism makes it progressive for men to dwell in incessantly on violent, coercive sex and abject bodies, while at the same time enjoying praise and even politzer prizes. Meanwhile, anti-prostitution feminists hone in on the abuse and exploitation of quote pimps and punters, while overlooking or tactically supporting similar abuses by police, landlords and immigration officers. You will search a long time if you are looking for any comment on the arrest, confiscation of money or brutal deportation of sex workers that occur in jurisdictions with quote the Nordic model branding. With quote the nordic model branding.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Journalist joan smith traveled to sweden in 2013 to report on the kexclopsklagen and asked the police whether prostitution had become more dangerous for women. She confidently reports that all swedish police officers I spoke to insisted this was a myth. Her piece opens and concludes with an officer in a police car watching sex workers through the window. It would be hard to think of a better way to encapsulate carceral feminism than this A perspective that opens and closes with shadowing a police officer sitting in his seat, literally sharing his position and reproducing his gaze. It is clear in whose shoes Smith is walking.

Speaker 1: 7:59

The power difference between men and women is one kind of structural balance between men and women is one kind of structural balance. The power difference between sex workers and the police is another. Swedish feminist commentator ganilla ekberg writes, quote those who are pro-prostitution of course ignore power differences between men and women, but carceral feminists are deeply invested in both ignoring and reinforcing the power differences between the police and prostitutes. In attempting to eradicate the gendered inequality that they rightly see in the purchase of sex, they intentionally or accidentally strengthen the state's power to harm prostitutes, which is of course itself a deeply patriarchal dynamic. You might think that this leaves us, as feminists, at an impasse. If challenging the patriarchal sex industry strengthens the patriarchal state, then it is hard to see how we can proceed. In fact, of course, it is easy to imagine a world wherein no man is able to pay for sex, simply because everyone who might have needed to sell it already has the resources that they need have needed to sell it already has the resources that they need. We can work towards a more feminist world by making women less poor, but not through bolstering the patriarchal power of the carceral state.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Ignoring or bolstering state power allows the experiences of people like mercy, mary, tina, eunice and esther to fall through the cracks. Mainstream feminism maintains a profound uninterest in the experiences of women like them, the direct state violence, fines, evictions and deportations, and the violence they suffer because the state fails to protect them. When journalists write that the nordic model decriminalizes women who sell sex and criminalizing organizations repeat the claim that sweden's law completely decriminalizes all those who are prostituted, it's hard to draw any other conclusion than mainstream feminism simply doesn't count. The criminalisation or deportation of mostly black migrant sex workers in Nordic countries, as we wrote the chapter on borders deportations, are a violation of human rights. People are ripped from their families and friends simply because of where they happened to have been born. Yet even within the left, the injustice of deportation can sometimes prove a slippery topic to keep on the table.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Despite claims to radicalism, an analysis of borders rarely features in anti-prostitution advocacy. A generous assessment of this would suggest that For some, borders and immigration seem too permanent or unchangeable to reckon with that they will never go away. As sex workers and feminists, we do not accept that borders and their enforcement are inevitable or immutable. Enforcement are inevitable or immutable. We too are working towards a radical feminism that can abolish borders, capitalism and the sex industry without causing harm to sex workers. Just as it is a bad cliche to claim that a future without commercial sex is a futile endeavor because quote the sex industry will always be there, or quote the world's oldest profession it is also a feasible excuse to dismiss border abolination simply because it is difficult to change.

Speaker 1: 12:44

In this chapter we have tried to speak to both the quote ideal nordic model and the nordic model as it really exists. The nordic model as it really exists includes harm to sex workers and when it advocates refuse to acknowledge or to try to fix these harms, to reveal their ultimate disregard for the safety of people who sell sex. But even if these problems, the deportations, the evictions, the fines were fixed. The ideal Nordic model would still harm people who sell sex and harm the most marginalised the worst. That is because any policy that makes sex workers poorer will also tend to make them less safe, will also tend to make them less safe. As Thai sex worker collective Empower have pointed out, criminalisation is about what can be taken away from sex workers. If you care about the most marginalised people in society, why not start from thinking about what can be given to them Chapter 7 from thinking about what can be given to them chapter seven charmed circle germany, netherlands and nevada.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Regulationism a legal model that heavily regulates a legal strand of the sex industry while continuing to criminalize workers who can't or won't comply with various bureaucratic requirements such as mandatory health testing, employment in certain venues or registering publicly as a prostitute, also called legalization, licensing, prostitution. Gisettes prostitution law, quote this law won't protect sex workers, it is just about control from a sex worker. In germany, many people are familiar with the terms legalization and decriminalization, yet, without realizing, these words refer to distinctly different things. Under legalization, some sex work, in some contexts, is legal. This legal sex work is heavily regulated by the state, generally not in a way that prioritizes the welfare of workers. This is in part because a mindset that advocates for legalizing sex work tends to see prostitutes not as workers but as anxiety inducing vectors of disease or symbols of disorder who must be controlled. Often to legalize means to implement new laws related specifically to sex work, including new criminal penalties, rather than repealing the existing ones, rather than repealing the existing ones. By comparison, decriminalisation, which we'll come to in more detail in the next chapter, describes a situation where sex work is legal as the default position. With legalisation, only some sex work in only some contexts is legal, whereas with decriminalization, prostitution is, as a starting point, not a crime. The regulations that exist under decriminalization tend to prioritize the welfare of people who sell sex, in part because a mindset that advocates for decriminalization tends to see sex workers as workers and from that flows a certain for workers rights.

Speaker 1: 16:53

To feminist skeptics, legalization the idea of the government giving licences to brothels or creating special zones for street work rolls out the red carpet for patriarchy. What kind of message does it send when the state formalises prostitution? What effect does a legally ratified sex trade have on male sexual entitlement? Are the exploited bodies of women working in these places becoming damaged from overuse. Anti-prostitution campaigners have long objected to any form of legalization, objected to any form of legalization, highlighting the effect of quote brothelization on the well-being of quote prostituted women. Although diverse nations have legalized their sex industry, including Bangladesh, austria, senegal, latvia, tunisia, hungary, peru, venezuela, chile, parts of Australia and some counties in the US state of Nevada, much feminist discussion focuses on the regulatory models of Europe, particularly Germany and the Netherlands, which are often described in terms such as a free-for-all, relaxed, an open house, and liberal.

Speaker 1: 18:29

Liberal support for regulationism is linked to the notion that prostitution is something innate, perennial, inevitable, the dirty job that someone has got to do. This has deep roots. Christian theologians, for instance, have argued that commercial sex is an outlet for sexual impulses that would otherwise result in worse sins. The patriarchal double standard praises men for having multiple sexual partners, but shames and condemns women for the same. Mathematically, the only way for men to practice promiscuity while allowing the majority of women to remain quote respectable is for a small number of women to be extremely sexually active. An 1897 editorial in a johannesburg newspaper stated it more explicitly. Quote the virtue of the mond is assured by the demi-mond end. Quote, that is, patriarchal.

Speaker 1: 19:48

Sexual norms render sex work not only economically viable but in some sense necessary, whether for the benefit of the individual client or for the benefit of society. Then there are those who see in sex work a greater capitalist purpose. This logic suggests that with an entrepreneurial outlook, there is hope for the sex industry which, much like the cannabis market, is a wild frontier that supply needs the firm guiding hand of a rich grown-up. These industries, in the hands of the right people, can become a boon for all who would benefit from tourism, taxitation and regulation, making the rich richer and the sex workers who share their vision more visibly legitimate as professionals. This ideology also sometimes sees the rights of workers as interchangeable with the rights of managers in sex work, the logic being that the latter are criminalised. Also To the exasperation of sex working feminists, we are often accused of being invested in these same values.

Speaker 1: 21:21

We are often accused of being invested in these same values. When we make clear that we're asking for the decriminalization of sex work. We are persistently misunderstood to mean legalization and are maligned as liberals, capitalists or men's rights activists interested in securing the unimpeded primary of male sexuality. If the decriminalization of prostitution is falsely characterized as legalization and the two are semantically bound together, then advocates for prohibition can blame both policies for the failures of one. Contrary to its false reputation as a benign sex funfair, a regulationist legislation approach to prostitution is not friendly for sex workersulationist laws manifest in wildly different ways as countries on every continent anxiously try to eliminate selectively, through criminal law, what they consider to be the most pernicious aspects of prostitution as a whole. These approaches speak clearly to a set of cross-cultural fears that will by now be familiar to the reader the fear of the visibly queer or diseased body, the fear of the migrancy, the fear of sexualized social contamination of their migrancy. The fear of sexualized social contamination. The fear of disorderly, unsupervised women roaming freely in society or commanding economic power by organizing their work amongst themselves. The charmed circle.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Paradoxically, to legalize sex work is not necessarily to make the work legal. Rather, it creates a two-tiered system where some is legal and much is not. In nevada, for example, 10 out of 17 rural countries permit licensed brothels, and no sex work can legally take place in any other areas, including the biggest city, las Vegas. In the Netherlands, people sell sex legally in brothels and sex clubs red light district windows clubs, red light district windows, tipple zones, street sex worker zones, sex cinemas and massage parlours, and these are licensed at the municipal level. Elsewhere, it's still illegal. Since legalisation in the Netherlands, more than 40% of these venues have lost their licence, leaving sex workers fewer places to work legally.

Speaker 1: 24:26

In Germany, the Prostitutes Protection Act of 2017 stipulates that all sex workers must be registered and issued with a sex worker ID card. Some of the conditions for receiving this card include testing for pregnancy, stis and drug use, as well as mandatory counselling. Nevada, the Netherlands and Germany are typical of places that impose rules on how the sex industry may operate. The most precarious sex workers cannot comply and some must work illegally, forming a vulnerable, criminalised quote. Underclass. Trans women, for example, are barred from work in the state-run brothels of Turkey. Many sex workers in Germany live far from the narrowly designated quote prostitution zones and so work outside them. Many Australian sex workers cannot risk losing their privacy by adding their names to the government's official register of prostitutes. Those in Nevada with a criminal record, often for survival crimes like shoplifting, cannot work in the legal brothels. Sex workers close to the poverty line have no means to pay the rent on a Dutch red light window about €80 to €160 per shift payable in advance.

Speaker 1: 26:09

In Senegal, sex workers living with HIV cannot produce a health certificate for the police and cannot work legally. They are known as less clandestines. Married women in Greece are barred from work in state-regulated brothels. Undocumented migrants cannot work in any legalized jurisdiction. For these people, the idea of a quote legalized framework is meaning less. The state has drawn a charmed circle and they are not standing inside it. With such significant barriers to overcome, legal status is unobtainable for the vast majority of people and in most places, the amount of illegal, unregulated sex trade far exceeds that of the legal sex industry.

Speaker 1: 27:08

In Germany, a migrant trans sex worker commented on the 2017 implementation of the Prostitute Protection Act saying quote I have no health insurance and often no place to sleep. Now I should get registered. How should that work end? Quote Dee, a migrant sex worker in Austria, says, am powerless here. I don't get a wage slip. I can't take out any credit or loans. I can't lease a car. I pay the tax office, I pay social security, but I won't get a pension. I don't get anything. I also don't get unemployment benefits. I can't do anything in my name.

Speaker 1: 28:03

The Dutch sex workers rights organisation De Roodraad describes the previous Dutch system of policy of tolerance towards sex workers. Quote as work. With the legalization of one group of women, the work of another group of women now becomes illegal. End quote. This two-tiered pattern is a universal feature and failing of the laws we refer to as legalization or regulationism, which is that they tend to empower the worst profiteers. A frequent feature of legalized regimes is that working for a manager is legal, whereas working independently, either on your own or with friends, is fully or partly criminalized. The result is that legalization pushes sex workers into working for managers and grants managers additional power over workers. As former brothel worker Mariko writes quote the legal brothels waive their legal status as their carrot so that you feel like you need them to make that money. End quote. If your options are to keep working for a manager or to go independent and risk arrest, you may be compelled to accept substandard or even abusive workplace conditions. Former brothel worker Amy Walker says of her time in Melbourne brothels it's in the best interest of the brothel owners for the women to be insecure, uncomfortable and competitive. To be insecure, uncomfortable and competitive. End quote. Sex workers have told us that they have known brothel managers in nevada to tip off the police about independent workers nearby, since these workers represent a threat to their business that can be quote solved by having them arrested.

Speaker 1: 30:26

Legalization extubates the existing vulnerabilities of sex workers. After the introduction of the prostitutes act, a parasite industry immediately sprung up to offer services to struggling sex workers, for example, providing dummy addresses and post forwarding, or helping with german language application forms. This, of course, allows predators to easily identify sex workers who might be targeted for exploitation, the ones who are uncertain of their rights or close to the breadline. A street-working migrant in Germany says quote my boyfriend is handling the bureaucracy for me. I try to understand what he does so that I won't be too dependent on him, but I haven't succeeded yet. Due to the increased complexity of having to register under the prostitutes protection act, I will understand things even less, and those of my colleagues who work with pimps will become even more dependent on them.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Those who have had to work illegally under a quote legalized regime remain subject to many of the harms of clear-cut criminalization. Their interests and those of the police are still in opposition. In Germany, police now have the power to enter any prostitution venue at any time. As in any criminalised system, when the police act as the de facto regulators of sex work. It not only provides fertile ground for police corruption but blocks those who are in breach of regulations, often the vulnerable street workers most at risk of violence, from accessing police assistance when needed. Many will not report an incident of rape or assault at work because they may well be opportunistically targeted by the attendant police officer for a charge or of a penalty regarding their unauthorized work.

Speaker 1: 33:04

During the trial for serial rapist and murderer adrian bailey, it emerged that at least 10 of his rape victims in victoria, australia, where sex work is regulated, were sex workers who had refused to give evidence because of distrust and fear of the police. As for those sex workers who can work legally, regulationism frets. Regulationism treats them like tear-away adolescents grounded by fretful parents. This results in measures to confine the worker to the four walls of the brothel. Under legislation in western australia in the 1970s and 1980s, sex working women were not allowed to have relatives within a 500 kilometer radius, could not have their brothels to visit, were not permitted to have stable relationships with local people, and they were restricted to certain areas of the town. Access to swimming pool was restricted. The women must live in the brothels, okay, so that is where we're going to end it for today. We've ended on page 182 it it.

Speaker 1: 34:37

I love this book. It very clearly reads out legalization, decriminalization and criminalization. And once again we are at the end of this episode. And I am going to talk about the want for decriminalland we are on everywhere and right now, ashreegan of the alba party is trying to bring in the nordic model to scotland, which obviously we do not want. So, please, um, go look up decrim scotland and see what you can do. Basically, and, yeah, support us in any way possible. We really do appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 35:39

Also, right now, the the government are trying to get this bill passed, which is called the crime and policing bill, 24th of april 2025. We do not want that to go through because if that goes through that, there's so much that will be affected. But the main reason me saying this is that the main reason me saying this is that they are trying to stop sex workers advertising online and they want to prosecute landlords, close friends, people who do know about sex work, including partners. They even want to prosecute web designers of um who are creating sex worker websites. It is honestly devastating and ridiculous at the same time that they want to do this and obviously, if you take away advertising online for sex workers, me included. I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay my bills, and that is very scary. So if you go on the English Collective of Prostitutes page, from there you will be able to learn more about the crime and policing bill and you will be able to email your MP stating that we don't want this, and these are the reasons why the English Collective of Prostitutes does have that by default. All you have to write in is your postcode and it will automatically, by default, tell you who your MP is in that area and it will write a written response to them. All you need to do is write your email and your name. You can obviously make it all up and send along that email.

Speaker 1: 37:39

We really do support and thank you guys for hopefully that who are listening. You're you're on part 18, so I should hope like we have swayed your opinion that criminalization is needed very much, and I think two more parts are coming out to this series and then I will be starting a new book series and then I will be starting a new book. If you have any ideas on what book I should read next, please, um, send, send that my way and I would love to read them. And if anybody does want to come on the podcast or have any topics they want to hear about, hear more about, learn more or tell other people about, please give me a shout. I would absolutely love that. And yeah, we have actually just hit over 70 episodes. So thank you very, very much for everybody who is listening and has continued listening from the start. I really, really appreciate the dedication and I appreciate you listening. So thank you very much and bye.