It’s john who pays in Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Selling sex isn’t illegal in Sweden, but buying it is — a radical approach to prostitution that faced ridicule when it was introduced nine years ago.

Now, while Americans are preoccupied with the downfall of New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer in a prostitution scandal, some countries are considering emulating the Swedish model, which prosecutes the client but views the prostitute as an exploited victim.

Officials say the changed approach has reduced the demand for prostitutes and reshaped attitudes toward the sex trade.

“We don’t have a problem with prostitutes. We have a problem with men who buy sex,” said Kajsa Wahlberg, of the human trafficking unit at Sweden’s national police board.

She said foreign law enforcement officials and politicians are coming to Sweden in droves to learn more about its 1999 law.

On Friday, Wahlberg was meeting with police officials from the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal but where authorities have closed some brothels in a crackdown on organized crime in Amsterdam’s red light district.

In January, a high-level British delegation came to study the Swedish approach as Britain reviews its own prostitution laws, which prohibit soliciting and loitering for sex, but not buying sex.

Norway’s government plans to propose a Swedish-style prostitution law after Easter.

Under Sweden’s so-called “Sex Purchase Law,” paying for sex is punished by fines or up to six months in prison, plus the humiliation of public exposure.

Pimps and brothel keepers are also prosecuted, but not prostitutes, because they are viewed as victims, treated as commodities in the sex trade.

While authorities judge the new system a success, critics question whether it has really reduced prostitution or merely pushed it off the streets into more isolated surroundings. Wahlberg concedes that accurate statistics are hard to obtain, but estimates the number of prostitutes in Sweden dropped 40 percent from 2,500 in 1998 to 1,500 in 2003.

She says police know from eavesdropping on human trafficking rings that Sweden is considered bad business because of its tough stance.

“They are calculating profits, costs and marketing and the risk of getting caught,” Wahlberg said. “We’re trying to create a bad market for these activities.”

In the case of child prostitution you’d probably agree that is also a transaction made on false information.

Sure, they can’t give consent because they don’t possess it.
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They sure do possess consent when they buy something from a candy store. You’re not suggesting that those transactions are invalid. So why is child prostitution different?

It’s not made on false information, it’s made on ignorance, because children are children.

Because children have been deemed by the consensus of parents, who are voters, to lack possession of informed consent, and because parents in general don’t want their children having sex, there are laws against it. Basically, parents are speaking through the law that nobody is allowed to have sex with their children, even if the child says it’s ok. Note that if someone does, the children are not subject to criminal charges.

But when the child grows up to be an adult, they gain possession of informed consent. At this point, their legal guardianship transfers to themselves. At this point, they are expected to and legally recognized to bear responsibility for their actions. Nevertheless, people like yourself still insist on stepping in and acting as their parent, “for their own good”. They can have sex with whomever they want (risking disease, lack of “dignity,” breaking up other people’s marriages, etc, and all the other myriad harms of prostitution) so long as they do it without money changing hands. A dinner or a concert or a photo shoot is ok, and being a slut is legal. But the moment a dollar changes hands, people like yourself intercede and say no, you’ve crossed the line, we know better, that isn’t allowed. And unlike the case with children, now they are subject to criminal charges.

I can understand how throwing a pedophile in jail helps others. I can’t understand how throwing a willing prostitute in jail helps anyone, and especially not her, the one people like yourself are ostensibly “trying to help.” That’s a pretty brutal kind of help, sort of like Islam lite. (”We kill them to retain honor.”) You do know, don’t you, that jails are rife with rape, disease, violence, and reduction of dignity, don’t you? They should be reserved for those who harm others against their will, not those who pleasure others according to their will (and pocketbooks).

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