The recent article by Simone Watson of the Nordic Model Australia Coalition ( Tasmanian Times, 13 July 2015, Here and Here ), is one the most hypocritical and disgraceful articles that I have ever seen.
A criticism of Amnesty International’s Draft Policy on Sex Work, it exemplifies all of the very things that it accuses the Amnesty report of – unjustified assumptions, begging the question, and pseudoscience.
The article refers to ‘survivors of prostitution’ and ‘the harm done by prostitution’, which are the very things that the Amnesty report examines and finds not to be true.
This so-called ‘Nordic Model’ is not about any kind of science. The use of the term ‘Nordic’, while certainly not bad, is a red flag to followers of history and students of extremist movements. The use of the term ‘model’ tries to claim a scientific basis or at least a legitimacy that this ‘movement’, this small political pressure group does not have.
So let us first make one thing clear. This lobby is not about feminism, not about freeing women, and not about making conditions safer or better for sex workers. It is simply one more excuse to criminalise private sexual behaviour.
Any belief that starts from an a-priori position that sex work is bad, that people in the industry have no choice about following it, that harm inevitably follows from prostitution, and that the clients of this industry are engaging in some sort of wrongful activity, is essentially a fundamentalist religious position and one argued out of pure belief.
It is not supported by scientific studies. It is as fake and dodgy as Creationism. In seeking to stigmatise customers, it stigmatises the industry and all who use or provide its services.
The 19th century attitude that prostitutes are ‘fallen women’ reeks out of every line of its arguments.
Any lobby group, or government, should when considering legislative changes first of all seek the opinion of the representatives of the people affected. Australian governments have a poor record of this. In seeking to improve public transport, the opinions of the representative body – the Victorian Public Transport Users Association for example – are, even if sought, not paid much attention.
The government and lobbies try to paint these groups as unrepresentative, or dominated by certain interests, or run by unqualified people. There are some limitations to such representative bodies, but they are in a far better position to provide unbiased advice and feedback than is the government, and they usually include people who were formerly in those government positions or who are otherwise equally or better qualified than the government’s own advisors.
The sex industry is a useful industry providing useful services to society, and has been a part of human history since its inception. Attempts to suppress it never succeed, and always result in worse abuses than those that exist within the industry itself.
In Australia, there are several organisations that represent sex workers and which are funded by and elected by those workers. There are a number of state bodies, such as the Vixen Collective in Victoria. The peak national body is the Scarlet Alliance. The political party which was started to represent sex workers and which includes Australia’s only elected politician who has worked as a sex worker, Fiona Patten (MLC Victoria), is the Australian Sex Party.
All of them are vehemently opposed to this ‘Nordic Model’, which they well know is retrograde and dangerous to the workers. The industry bodies in Sweden are also fighting the harm produced by this law. Studies such as the 2014 Canadian Ka Hon Chu/Glass study and the 2008 Holmström/Skilbrei study, which was presented to the Nordic Council Of Ministers, have noted the increase in violence and HIV/Aids infections in Sweden linked to the Nordic model.
Although it has been 15 years since it was passed, this law has not found favour in most nearby countries. Whether it is the customer or the worker who is being criminalised, the effect is the same: the industry is forced underground. Workers and customers who are doing nothing wrong are being tarred as criminals. As with any other industry, if forced to operate underground and against the law, the activities of organised criminals and abusive providers and consumers start to assume prominence, even control.
The ability of workers to access police, legal, social and medical help suffers, and with them, the health and safety of the workers and their families.
Ultimately, the laws that are fairest and best for the industry are those that are suggested by the workers within it and the people they choose to represent them. If the Nordic Coalition genuinely had an interest in the welfare of workers and of women, it would dialogue with these representatives and listen to their arguments. It does not. Instead it refuses, believing that such representatives are funded by the ‘dirty money’ of the sex industry – which I would have thought was rather the point.
It is true that in some countries – Congo is a particular example – large numbers of women are forced into sex work contrary to their desires. It is also true that in other countries, countries which supply goods that we use every day, large numbers of workers and particularly women are forced into something that we may well call slavery – dangerous work, with extreme hours, in controlled and nasty living conditions.
In still others, females are mutilated and forced into extreme controlled polygamous marriages, in societies that do not permit them even to leave home except under the most outrageous control. All are accompanied by corrupt governments and extreme laws, including anti-prostitution laws, that deny freedom to women. To separate out prostitution as a special case is an indication of the fundamentalist program of the Nordic Coalition.
Furthermore, conditions cannot be generalised between countries. In developed nations such as Australia, most women do have a choice about being sex workers. Some, as with workers in any other unpleasant but lucrative employment, don’t like the work but do like the freedom, flexibility, and pay. Others undertake the work because they see it, correctly, as socially useful and as their contribution to society, and there are others who quite simply enjoy it.
As with nurses and doctors, they do face a certain danger of assault or HIV infection in their work. And in many countries, such as Vietnam, sex work is an honourable trade with no cultural stigma.
The complete denial of such motives by the Nordic Coalition amply demonstrates that they are lobbying to push a perspective, not to further justice.
Because of its unfortunate uptake by Sweden, a country in which a long history of liberality and human rights is now moving backward towards repression, this ‘Nordic Model’ approach is being given a credence and power that it absolutely does not deserve – not in terms of its arguments, and not in terms of its adherents and support.
This is a fringe group and is out of step with the attitudes and mores of Australian society. The criminalisation of sex is not in accordance with the views of the Australian people. Unscientific and bigoted fundamentalism of this type has no place within the determination of the laws and regulations of our country.
*Tom Kent is now semi-retired after a lifetime of Public Service and media work. A well-known internationally-published poet and composer in Melbourne who works with the band My Melbourne Down and classical musicians, he continues to take an interest in human rights issues, having especially worked with Asian and African migrant communities.)
