The Ideal Nordic Model Poster Child

There are a number of groups who oppose the full decriminalization of prostitution and support the criminalization of clients. Sometimes this will be called the “Nordic model” because it’s the legal model for prostitution used in Sweden and Norway. Others will dishonestly call it the “Equality Model”. You may even see it framed as “decriminalization of selling sex” to capitalize on the fact most people are not aware of the difference between partial and full decriminalization, because the Nordic model only makes the buying of sex illegal and would not criminalize the sale of it.

No matter the group peddling the Nordic model, they all have to deal with a similar issue: sex workers generally oppose it. Sex worker led organisations like SWARM, ECP, SWOP, DecrimNow, Red Canary Song, and STRASS all support the full decriminalization of sex work. That’s not an exhaustive list. Large human rights groups like Amnesty International also support the full decriminalization of sex work. In the face of that, how can they possibly convince people that their goals will actually protect the sex workers they claim are victims?

Nordic model lobbying groups need poster children for their movement. They need people who have a history selling sex who view prostitution as inherently wrong and exploitative.

Among the many slogans sex workers use while trying to gain public support is the phrase “listen to sex workers”. Nordic model advocates capitalize on this, though they generally eschew the term “sex worker” in favor of “prostituted woman”, by utilizing the stories of people who have sold sex in the past and who support the Nordic model.

What does their ideal poster child look like?

Nordic model advocates will usually want someone who started selling sex young. They’ll exaggerate that as much as possible, including using language which makes people assume that the person telling the story was as young as possible. For example, they might find someone who started selling sex at the age of 17, then refer to them everywhere as a past “child prostitute”. That language makes the person seeing these stories think of someone much younger than 17, inspiring an increased level of horror compared to what would occur if they said the exact age. They want you to assume that clients had no doubt about the teenager selling sex being underage, to imagine that anecdotes from years later are from the perspective of someone still underage rather than a grown adult, and to make it seem like children being forced into the sex trade make up a far larger percentage of those in prostitution than they do.

For their commentary to work, these Nordic model poster children will also need to be ex-workers or trafficking victims rather than current sex workers. The narrative they want to spread is that leaving prostitution improves someone’s life, rather than that when someone’s life improves they’re more able to leave prostitution. It’s very compelling to hear someone talk about how horrific their experiences were, how grateful they are to no longer be experiencing it, and there’s no need for concern about how current workers will be impacted by the legislation they advocate for. When someone is an ex-worker they often suggest that the Nordic model might have protected them from ever getting into prostitution at all, or argue their clients could have been punished with it, rather than being forced to acknowledge the reality of how those laws would put them at higher risk if still actively selling sex.

Many of the people whose stories get uplifted are also Christian, often having found or rediscovered their faith in Jesus after ceasing to sell sex. That isn’t a surprise, when groups like Exodus Cry are so explicitly Christian themselves. Groups with brand themselves as rescue organisations often have Christian messaging as a part of their support.

What makes some ex sex workers want to be spokespeople for the Nordic model?

Just as I don’t want people to suggest that my opinions on sex work all come from being traumatized and therefore irrational, I won’t make that argument about those who support the Nordic model. Not all supporters are grifters with savior complexes – many people with a history of selling sex genuinely believe their time selling sex would have been less bad if the Nordic model had been in place.

Some people think that if it had been illegal to pay for sex, that less clients would have sought them out. I can see how that line of thinking is seductive in a scenario where a person fell into prostitution without an active decision. If people offer you money for sex in a desperate moment where you’re poor and struggling, you’re in a precarious enough situation that you might say yes despite not wanting to… and then after a few people ask, you start selling sex regularly. It’s easy to picture that those people wouldn’t have offered if they were criminalized, and therefore that an individual never would’ve started selling sex at all.

The unfortunate reality is that making it illegal to buy sex doesn’t stop potential clients from exploiting people. In practice, there are not a lot of prosecutions of clients under these laws and they are well aware of how small the chance is that they will face any consequences for offering to pay a vulnerable person for sex even if that person does report them.

Another reason that some people with a history of prostitution may want to see it made illegal to pay for sex is because they hope to make it easier for others to seek justice if they have been abused. Knowing they personally have no recourse regarding abuse they faced whilst selling sex, often because the standard to prosecute for sexual assault is so high, they may seek to make it illegal to pay for sex because that is much easier to prove. In a case where a client assaults a sex worker, he can theoretically be arrested and punished for paying for sex in a situation where he otherwise might face no consequences at all.

Of course, the same problem arises as with the idea that laws against buying sex act as a deterrent, which is that even clients who assault sex workers are unlikely to be prosecuted for paying for sex. It doesn’t give sex workers more likelihood of obtaining justice, and criminalizing our clients actually makes it more likely that we will be assaulted in the first place. Using a legal system which is not designed to protect the vulnerable is never going to result in a favourable outcome for sex workers.

Outside of the faulty reasons that many people with a history in prostitution will support the Nordic model, it is also worth considering that certain projects will provide material support only to ex workers who agree with them ideologically. If a project is providing money and much-needed healthcare like rehabilitation from drug addiction, people are incentivized to support their political agenda to keep receiving that help.

How do we push back against this kind of propaganda?

Unlike a lot of these Nordic model organisations, most sex worker advocacy groups are careful about whose stories we share and we make sure to protect people’s privacy. We don’t feed prostitutes into the media’s woodchipper by sharing their traumatic stories publicly just to score political points. Given this, it’s never going to be viable to combat every story of abuse that Nordic model advocates uplift with a story of the trauma caused by it that can be widely shared. Instead, we need to empower sex workers to share their own stories on their own terms, and to focus on the broader impacts.

While it is hard to collect data on sex workers’ level of risk or the impact of certain legislation on us, the data we do have is on our side. Appealing to people’s emotion is effective, yes, but we also need to show them the raw numbers. The Nordic model leaves sex workers more vulnerable to abuse, and we face more attacks under any form of criminalization.

I’ve remarked before that I’d meet a lot of the Nordic model poster child criteria. If not for the fact that I’m transgender and a lot of the advocates against sex worker rights are also trans, I’m sure they’d be happy to recruit me as a mouthpiece for their rhetoric. I wouldn’t take them up on the offer, throwing other sex workers under the bus, but I’m not naïve enough to imagine that there isn’t a scenario in which I could have been less educated on how the law functions and where I might have been manipulated into it.

As someone who started selling sex at 17, who has done it in brothels where I did not have full control over what clients I saw, I realize that sharing how the Nordic model would harm me personally is a good way to combat the messaging of groups who oppose sex worker rights. I encourage others to do the same, whether they’ve had similar experiences or have only had positive ones selling sex. We don’t need individuals whose trauma we spread everywhere, we need a huge number of people with a variety of experiences all talking about how we’re impacted.