An Ill-Conceived Case for the Nordic Model (or, The guardian is Whorephobic Trash)

Content note: sex work, whorephobia

The guardian recently published an incoherent editorial titled, “The Guardian view on criminal policy: sex, money and the long arm of the law” which suggests that the recent legislation passed in fRance which criminalizes sex workers’ clients “could help reduce harm”. The majority of the short piece is spent recognizing that criminalizing any aspect of sex work leaves sex workers vulnerable to less safe working conditions, and that organized sex workers’ groups instead campaign for decriminalization, but it ends with this paragraph:

The great difficulty, however, is that it leaves the sex industry intact. And in all paid-for sex there is, arguably, an inherently exploitative dimension. Even if there is nominally consent, in most cases, if not all, this will be a choice that women make out of desperation, rather than anything positive. The social and economic circumstances in which a woman sees sex work as the best available option represents, in itself, an environment of coercion. Criminalising not the women involved but their clients – particularly when, as in the French proposal, it is accompanied by a properly funded programme to help sex workers into more secure jobs – may be the least-bad answer, in both moral and practical terms.

Apparently the Nordic model—which the guardian acknowledges harms sex workers— is the “least-bad” option because decrim “leaves the sex industry intact”. As if criminalizing sex work will kill the industry, as if the sex industry is inherently more exploitative then other gendered labor, as if no one has actively chosen to do sex work because it’s more empowering for them than, say, underpaid janitorial work; as if women & femmes don’t have transactional sex all the time and formally demanding cash for time & services isn’t subverting the patriarchy which usually demands that labor for free; as if the sex industry must be (could be) destroyed at all costs, even the safety of the sex workers they claim to want to rescue.

Non-coercive sex work is no more exploitative than any other labor. If you want to end exploitation: end capitalism. Close wage gaps & open the borders, and give migrants the right to work legally. Raise the minimum wage and lower the rent. Give us all Universal Basic Income.

If you want to help sex workers: listen to them. Making sex work more dangerous by criminalizing any part of it will not kill the sex industry, it will just hurt the workers—they still need to work and will continue to do so even in bad conditions unless you remove the necessity for earning money to survive. Stop trying to “save” women from the sex industry while ignoring what they’re collectively fighting for.