[brabel]

In some Nordic countries, it's not illegal to sell sex, but it is to buy it. What do you think about that? Do you think making the men fear the law, but not the women, would do anything to help the women?

I guess the government's objective is to kill the business completely, which is about as realistic as prohibiting alcohol.

[c21h30o2]

It lets SWERFs pat themselves on the back and feel good by pretending they're not punishing sex workers, only the "evil" men who provide sex workers with income. In practice we have seen in both Sweden and Norway that police systematically pressure landlords and hotels to evict sex workers from rented apartments/rooms under threat of pimping charges. Immigrant sex workers have been deported after going to the police to report crimes.

[randomswede]

With "systematically pressure", you can actually say "tries to enforce the law"[1], if they're aware that the premise is used for swapping sex for money, they need to make it stop. Simply paying for a not-for-work apartment or should not fall under that legal space, though.

[1] https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K6P12S2

[c21h30o2]

They really don't need to. They are kicking people out of their homes because of a law that shouldn't exist. They could just not prioritize it and free up resources for other crimes.

[manquer]

Laws against sex work traditionally also make victim(involuntary or forced workers or trafficked) also the criminal.

It is extremely hard to differentiate who is involuntary legally even if there was strong provisions for it and sex workers mostly can not pay for expensive legal counsel who can make that case.

Nordic laws are an attempt to not decriminalize sex work at the same time not punish the workers at all.

It is not about controlling demand over supply

[Ma8ee]

I think that situation is somewhat absurd. People in general don’t think sex between consenting adults is wrong, so why is it suddenly when money is exchanged? And, at least, Sweden still has the law that any form of procurement of prostitution is illegal, which means it is still impossible for a prostitute to for example legally pay a guard, or even use the money to pay rent.

[throwaway472927]

From the linked article

This increases competition of sex workers for johns, artificially drives prices down, gives johns greater bargaining power over sex workers, and doesn’t fix the problem of johns trying hard to remain anonymous and requiring situations where you’re less able to go to the police if you wanted. Sex workers hate this.

[manquer]

I am aware of her view from the article. The approach I believe is more aimed at involuntary victims not being further victimized or being threatened with being reported to law enforcement as a mechanism of control. The sex workers Aella is sampling and interacting with may or may-not be a representative of this segment or Nordic countries have bigger problems with this than in United States

I don't have an opinion(or data) on whether this is effective or is good approach or not, just wanted point out that it is less about driving demand down, they are not trying to criminalize johns(it already was) but trying to address issues on the workers side perhaps ineffectively.

[Ma8ee]

But in the current situation the buyer will be a criminal whether the sex worker is there voluntary or as a victim of trafficking, or even underage. So it's very unlikely a buyer would ever report to the police if they suspect that the sex worker is there involuntary or is abused by her pimp.

The law is supposedly there to protect the sex workers, but you don't do that by forcing into hiding and making it unlikely that any crimes against them will be reported by anyone else.

If they really cared about the sex workers they would instead make it easy for them to get anonymous support with health, in particular mental health, and drug abuse problems. And institute a hotline for sex buyers to call without risk getting into any legal troubles if they suspect that a sex worker needs any help for whatever reason.