Edit to add my opinion so I’m not just replying “I agree” to 90% of comments. I think it should be legal, properly regulated, taxed and viewed as a profession. I haven’t personally engaged in it but I have no moral objection to it. I do hate the common sentiment that it was the individual’s “only option” though.
I am for the civilized approach of the Nordic Model.
What is the Nordic Model?
The Nordic Model (sometimes known as the Sex Buyer Law, and the Swedish, Abolitionist, Survivor or Equality Model) is an approach to prostitution that has been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, Ireland and Israel. It has several elements:
1. Decriminalisation of selling sex acts
Prostitution is inherently violent. Women should not be criminalised for the exploitation and abuse they endure.
2. Buying sex acts becomes a criminal offence
Buying human beings for sex is harmful, exploitative and can never be safe. We need to reduce the demand that drives sex trafficking.
3. Support and exit services
High quality, non-judgemental services to support those in prostitution and help them build a new life outside it, including: access to safe affordable housing; training and further education; child care; legal, debt and benefit advice; emotional and psychological support.
A holistic approach
A public information campaign; training for police and CPS; tackling the inequality and poverty that drive people into prostitution; effective laws against pimping and sex trafficking, with penalties that reflect the enormous damage they cause. Read more >>
I’m worried that if buyers demand to practice in secret, it becomes practically impossible to regulate and for sex workers to implement proper occupational safety practices. For example, security guards to protect them from violent customers.
That’s a part of the problem… also this ‘protective’ approach labels prostiutes per se as victims and denys them autonomy.
Here are two intersting reads about ‘the nordic model’ :
https://www.academia.edu/50493737/The_Nordic_Model_in_Europe_Prostitution_Trafficking_and_Neo_Abolitionism
https://scholar.google.de/scholar?as_ylo=2025&q=nordic+model+of+prostitution&hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5#d=gs_qabs&t=1770060948847&u=%23p%3Db8BF5LYTIuwJ
Over all it seems like ‘the nordic model’ doesn’t make prostiution disappear but reduces its general visibility… rather to the worse for men and women working (or being forced to worked) in this profession.
Imho: This was forceable… declaring things illegal doesn’t make them disappear, being it postitution (for which the efffort was made many times in history) or e.g. alcohol.
This sounds like a good approach, and I would’ve loved for this to work, but unfortunately, this approach does not reduce harm to sex workers, but increases it.
Amnesty International has found that Nordic model laws caused sex workers to face ongoing risk of police harassment, client violence, discrimination, eviction, and exploitation..
A study by the UK parliament has found that it just pushes people into the black market, with disastrous effects for the workers, because they are now extremely difficult to reach and thus protect by the authorities.
Figures provided by National Ugly Mugs, a service which allows sex workers to confidentially report incidents of abuse and crime, showed that reports of abuse and crime against prostitutes greatly increased after Ireland’s adoption of the Nordic model approach to prostitution by criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. The figures stated that crimes against prostitutes increased by 90%, with violent crime increasing by 92%.
It is now illegal to be a prostitution-buyer or pimp in Ireland, so of course the number of reported crimes went up. Declaring failure because of more reports is like saying “MeToo” caused more rapes. No - we’re just hearing about what’s always been there, now that it’s safer to talk about it.
I hope the pimps that keep women hidden in servitude on the black market face huge consequences for their unethical actions.
unfortunately I don’t have time to read the first two links and properly respond (they’re long pdfs), but thanks for providing them.
In France, it’s a bit more complicated.
According to the law anything implying money with a sex worker can be considered as pimping (which is obviously a criminal offense). You have a friend who is sex worker and they buy you a drink ? You’re a pimp. You’re a sex worker and you want to rent a flat? That’s gonna be hard, because your landlord could be considered as a pimp.
Even banks refuse to open accounts to sex workers. A french porn actress (Khalamite) is an activist on the subject and made a YT video about that a few time ago.