Red Yellow Blue (RYB)
Inside Global Development
You think fully decriminalizing the international sex trade is the solution?
Listen at Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, who follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims.
Read about how a growing number of Nordic Model countries are combating international organised crime.
A society, which has women ‘for sale’ behind windows, in brothels, massage parlours or anywhere else is conservative.
Having a “flat-rate” fee system, which entitles customers to unlimited sexual services all day for a one-off entry fee of 70 euros incl a beer and bratwurst is also conservative. And all the way you thought you were progressive with legalizing or fully decriminalizing prostitution?
Sweden and France are progressive with a feminist foreign policy, a feminist national action plan to end VAWG and a clear position against normalizing prostitution as work.
To combat human trafficking for sexual exploitation they share and promote a common strategy of implementing Nordic Model to reduce the demand for girls and women in prostitution, in Europe and globally.
European countries with legalization such as the Netherlands, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain are all male-dominated and conservative. They are holding back gender equality.
They are environments of rape culture in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture.
Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.
The top-earning ‘sex workers’ are pawns in an industry that is based on fetishising, objectifying and reinforcing sexist standards on women.
Their pop-feminist idea of women’s empowerment and ‘right to choose’ provides a neat diversion from talking about the larger power structures and social norms that restrict women, in many different ways, all around the world.
To consider prostitution as legal ‘sex work’, decriminalizing the sex industry in general and making procuring legal is not a solution to keeping women and children in vulnerable situations safe from violence and exploitation, but has the opposite effect and expose them to higher level of violence, while at the same time encouraging prostitution markets — and thus the number of women and children suffering abuse — to grow.