Criminalising the Purchase of Sex

Lessons from Sweden

Jay Levy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415739320
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317811428
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

In an attempt to abolish prostitution, Sweden criminalised the purchase of sex in 1999, while simultaneously decriminalising its sale. In so doing, it set itself apart from other European states, promoting itself as the pioneer of a radical approach to prostitution. What has come to be referred to as 'the Swedish model' has been enormously influential, and has since been adopted and proposed by other countries. This book establishes the outcomes of this law – and the law's justifying narratives – for the dynamics of Swedish sex work, and upon the lives of sex workers.

Drawing on recent fieldwork undertaken in Sweden over several years, including qualitative interviewing and participant observation, Jay Levy argues that far from being a law to be emulated, the Swedish model has had many detrimental impacts, and has failed to demonstrably decrease levels of prostitution. Criminalising the Purchase of Sex: Lessons from Sweden utilises a wealth of respondent testimony and secondary research to redress the current lack of primary academic research and to contribute to academic discussion on this politically-charged and internationally relevant topic.

This original and timely work will be of interest to sex worker rights organisations, policy makers and politicians, as well as researchers, academics and students across a number of related disciplines, including law, sociology, criminology, human geography and gender studies.

1 The sexköpslagen – legal and discursive precedent

DOI: 10.4324/9781315816708-1

Legislative debates provide a unique arena in which both forces can be studied, as they directly confront each other’s claims and engage in moral politics.

(Weitzer 2008: 15)

In this chapter, I provide an introduction to the 1999 criminalisation of the purchase of sex, an overview of the socio-political climate in Sweden during the years leading up to the law’s introduction, as well as a critical interpretation of the political debates, the law’s genealogies, and the discourses that have been used to justify and shape the sexköpslagen.

To this end, I give an overview of abolitionist feminist understandings of prostitution as a form of violence against women, juxtaposing these understandings with an understanding of sex work as legitimate labour. I focus also on the contributions that have been made by civil society and in parliament, where civil society and social movements have often played a significant role in the formation of Swedish law and understanding (Anker 2007).

Specifically, I discuss which groups and actors have come to be highly vocal and influential and which groups and actors have come to be excluded from debate, both past and present, ‘whose knowledge is accepted and whose sidelined’ (Doezema 2010: 9). Through this discussion, I will establish how consensus has been achieved on what is a notoriously tricky, contentious and emotive topic.

Abolitionist radical feminism, gender equality and a fear of the foreign

The 1999 sexköpslagen criminalising the purchase of sex was introduced as part of the kvinnofrid (‘women’s peace’) legislative package.¹ In spite of being included in gendered kvinnofrid legislation, the law is gender neutral: the purchase of sex from anyone of any sex is criminalised (Ekberg 2004; Svanström 2006). Through this criminalisation of demand, Sweden aims to create a society free from prostitution (Claude 2010; Danna 2012; Dodillet 2004).

Since January 1, 1999, purchasing – or attempting to purchase – sexual services has constituted a criminal offence punishable by fines or up to six months imprisonment. The women and children who are victims of prostitution and trafficking do not risk any legal repercussions.

(MIEC 2005: 1)

Legislation was introduced from within a backdrop of a radical feminist discourse, which constructs prostitution as ‘a problem of male conduct’ (Harrington 2012: 3) and a form of male, patriarchal violence – both to the individual and on a structural level – against women (Clausen 2007; Danna 2012; Florin 2012; Jeffreys, S. 2010; Leander 2005; Subrahmanian 2007; Working Group 2004): the ‘core issue of prostitution in Sweden is thus considered to be men’s power and men’s sexuality’ (Hubbard et al. 2007a: 12; also see Harrington 2012; Svanström 2004).

The radical feminism that informs the sexköpslagen is an oppression model of ‘prostitution’ (with abolitionist radical feminists tending to prefer this term to ‘sex work’, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2), constructing sex work as itself a form of violence in which other violence is always enacted. As a result, these radical feminist philosophies and interventions seek to eradicate prostitution (see Brooks-Gordon 2010). Notably, Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Melissa Farley, Janice Raymond, Kathleen Barry and Sheila Jeffreys have internationally championed radical feminist theory, advocacy and research, and in tending to refer extensively to one-another’s work (see Weitzer 2005a), these and other authors constitute a powerful and influential academic and political lobby, a lobby that has come to significantly inform dominant discourse in Sweden.

For those radical feminists who hold all heterosexual intercourse to be an expression of patriarchal power … prostitution is perhaps the purest expression of male domination.

(O’Connell Davidson 1995: 1)

What prostitution does in a society of male dominance is that it establishes a social bottom beneath which there is no bottom. It is the bottom. Prostituted women are all on the bottom. And all men are above it.

(Dworkin 1992: 6)

Prostitution performs the function … of creating ‘manhood’, raising men’s status by enabling them to use the subordinate class of women.

(Jeffreys 1997: 194)

Within some broad radical feminist discourse, not only prostitution but all forms of heteronormative penetrative sex are understood as an expression and enforcement of patriarchal exploitation and domination (for example see Dworkin 1987; Jeffreys 1997; MacKinnon 1987; also see Cusick et al. 2009; Doezema 2010; O’Connell Davidson 1995). Prostitution comes to be seen as the ultimate realisation of women’s subjugation to men, where, through the buying of sex, men exercise patriarchal rights of access to, and power over, women. Women’s and men’s sexual pleasure is dismissed as irrelevant or secondary where, fundamentally, it is asserted that ‘prostitution is a form of male sexual violence against women’ (Jeffreys 1997: 6). This discourse may be seen as something of a reworking of Marxist ideas (Saunders 2005; Willis 1984), with patriarchal oppression superimposed over an oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie as explanation for class struggle and gender relations (Willis 1984). Indeed, as discussed later in this chapter, radical feminism uses similar ideas of ‘false consciousness’ to those of classical Marxism in order to undermine the self-determination of those for whom it purports to speak.

Along these lines, prostitution is constructed as an act of structural violence in and of itself, irrespective of whether it involves observable or demonstrable violence (see Weitzer 2005a; Weitzer 2007). Universally and immutably, violence and gender inequality are seen to be inherent to prostitution (O’Connor and Healy 2006). This is not an empirical or grounded scientific theory as such, but rather more of a philosophy, wherein these claims of radical feminism are not easily subject to confirmation or disproof (Weitzer 2005a; Weitzer 2007).

Thus, according to this radical feminist understanding, in Sweden female sex workers are seen as disempowered ‘victims’ of violence, their clients as male exploiters of these victims:

I find it difficult for society to [be] equal, as long as you have a certain group of women that you could, you know, exploit … there is an imbalance between the buyer and the woman that he buys. You see what I mean? It’s often, each and every time you buy something you use power.

(Interview, 2010, police (prostitution and trafficking))

I look upon the prostitutes as victims, and … the men that are using prostitutes … I see … them as the bad guys, because they are using these victimised women, for their own purposes.

(Interview, 2009, Stockholm police (Narcotics Division Team Leader))

we are talking about these issues as a type of men’s violence against women.

(Interview, 2009, founder of ROKS women’s shelter)

Prostitution is accordingly regarded in Sweden as a form of gendered violence against ‘women and children’ (MIEC 2005), harmful to society at large (see Danna 2012; Ekberg 2004; Working Group 2004) and to aspirations of achieving a gender-equal society (Ekberg 2004; MIEC 2005). Gender equality has been actively sought since the 1960s in Sweden (Svanström 2004); the ambition for gender equality is key (Danna 2012; Florin 2012; Harrington 2012; O’Connor and Healy 2006; Östergren and Dodillet 2011; Svanström 2004), with the presence of sex work seen to demonstrate an asymmetry between the sexes, detrimental to the very fabric of Swedish society:

prostitution is … not reconcilable with a gender-equal society, and in essence, Sweden has defined prostitution as a form of violence against women.

(Interview, 2009, academic; medical, Karolinska Institute; Senior Public Health Officer)

In Sweden we don’t like prostitution, we think it’s a, some kind of violence, men’s violence against women, and we think, we are talking about equality.

(Interview, 2009, Stockholm Länsstyrelsen)

The sexköpslagen should also be seen in a wider context of concern about broader issues of gendered and domestic violence, problems again tied in with ‘gender equality’ (Leander 2005; also see Kilvington et al. 2001; Regeringskansliet 2008; Subrahmanian 2007). Sweden is argued to have ignored these problems in the past (Elman 2001; Gould 2001), to have trivialised some forms of gendered violence (Harrington 2012). Indeed, there is argued to have been a ‘reluctance among politicians and policy analysts to examine gender inequality and/or the welfare state through the prism of sexualized subordination and violence against women’ (Elman 2001: 39).

If you going out [to] party, you have at least two or three guys, trying to rape you, when you come home. It’s normal. It’s nothing weird.

(Grace, interview, 2009, sex worker (stripping; phone sex); Rose Alliance)

violence on women is a big problem also in Sweden, yeah. Despite all this gender equality stuff … the sex buyers’ law in that context, that it came out of this work on ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary: abbreviations, acronyms, translations
• Introduction: Sweden – A brief history of ‘The People’s Home’
• Methodology
• 1 The sexköpslagen – legal and discursive precedent
• 2 Perceptions, understandings and constructions
• 3 Levels and spaces of sex work in Sweden
• 4 The Swedish model on service provision – the prostitution units and harm reduction
• 5 The Swedish model on service provision – sex workers’ experiences
• 6 Compromised citizenship – outcomes of law, policy and discourse
• Conclusions: social exclusion in Sweden’s ‘People’s Home’
• Bibliography
• Index