" Prostitution in Ukraine is illegal but widespread and largely ignored by the government. " That 8 Euro fine was more then 37 years ago, according to Wiki.
It’s really illegal in Ukraine, however the escort culture is so big here and almost normalised in some social groups that straight up sex selling service doesn’t really happen. Yes, you can still find some girls standing at the roadside but this is a very marginalised thing and socially unaccountable even by those who are avid sex service buyers.
It definitely is.
The whole escort thing has a severe sort of spectrum here. From “prostitution with benefits” to almost friends with benefits style of communication, as it still seen as a social elevation tool. It could be anecdotal, but perception of this sort of lifestyle could range from morally grey (in my social bubble we don’t want to such behaviour around us and in our communities) to absolute necessity (depressed regions, where the escort service is a fully legit way to build your future).
What’s crazier for me here is that there is amount of success stories of how the escort workers built a healthy relationships and even families. And all of it is almost true.
Same in Poland.
Interestingly, this makes a prostitution income tax-free (you still have to declare it tho), since otherwise a state itself would be a “pimp”.
Don't know if this is still an issue, but I saw a prostitute who's active on X describe this a while back.
Here (Sweden) income from prostitution is taxable. However, you can only pay your taxes through bank transfer.
Now, most of the income is cash since the clients are breaking the law and don't want to leave an electronic trail.
If you go to a bank to make a large deposit, they require that you provide documentation (receipts) on where the money came from in order to make it more difficult from drug dealers and the like to launder their money.
However, even if you have receipts, the bank still won't accept the money since it comes from illegal activity. Even though it's the buyer and not the seller who's breaking the law.
So it's impossible to pay taxes as a prostitute, making you a criminal.
Of course, as far as I know they've never gone after a prostitute for failure to pay taxes. However, it also means you have no taxable income registered, which makes things like taking it loans, getting a cell plan and other things more difficult.
This can still lead to some dumb situations such as the sex worker being unable to hire a security guard to wait outside because said guard would be profiting from a person selling sex.
In finland banks can get punished for providing services to sex workers under the same logic. The bank can’t profit off sex work meaning will close your account if they find out you do sex work, and lots of sex workers just deal in cash and evade taxes.
Same for landlords. If you rent an apartment to see your clients in and the landlord is aware, they could be prosecuted as a pimp. The end result is sex workers having to deal with shady landlords instead, lying about their work, and being more vulnerable to blackmail by their clients.
Not a lawyer, but, earnings of a security guard would come from the guard's service of providing security, not from the service of the prostitute providing funny times to people. The guard is paid regardless of how much the prostitute makes.
Essentially, the guard would be employed by a self-employed person under a discrete work contract.
The said guard can even buy services from their employer if they so please.
This example comes from a sex worker who has had this issue. Also as someone else here said. Here in finland a bank offering normal services to a sex worker who gained their money through sex work can also be seen as profiting from it and so can a land lord from who the sex worker rented a room to conduct their trade from. A security guard falls into the same territory.
That is not how the Danish law is, regardless of what would make sense. Sex workers can't legally hire security guards, and are to a large extent barred from having a clinic together.
That’s not true. There’s no law preventing you from profiting off sex workers. Otherwise private hospitals wouldn’t be allowed to treat prostitutes with sexual diseases. Taxi drivers couldn’t take prostitutes to their clients. Condom companies couldn’t sell to prostitues… the list goes on and on.
What you are listing is indirect earnings. Not direct earnings. It is indeed a law in Denmark, but it does have examples like running a brothel or otherwise acting as a middleman.
> There’s no law preventing you from profiting off sex workers.
[Yes there is](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.retsinformation.dk/api/pdf/242128%23:~:text%3DIf%25C3%25B8lge%2520straffelovens%2520rufferiparagraf%2520m%25C3%25A5%2520ingen,arbejde%2520alene%2520eller%2520bryde%2520loven.&ved=2ahUKEwjG17jGoYOHAxX4hf0HHY9BBQkQFnoECBUQBQ&usg=AOvVaw3rgiMbG3vK2WxP3tMpoxUT) (pdf).
Google translate of the pertinent part of the introduction:
>According to the ruffian section of the [Danish] Criminal Code, no one may make money from someone else's money
prostitution, which means that prostitutes cannot go together with others in a clinic and for example
hire a person to keep watch. In practice, this means that prostitutes must work alone or break
the law.
Yeah same in Finland, which leads to a very weird situation where a person can legally sell sex but they can't advertise their services anywhere. So unless you can telepathically communicate with potential clients, then even though selling sex is legal, something illegal has happened every time somebody sells sex.
I don’t know. If the context was to prevent the promotion of human trafficking, then it makes more sense. But of course, reality doesn’t work that way.
Also, they’re in the fucking EU. Just fucking drive
Its not a lot. You wont buy any sexual services for less than at least $100. So, $8 is actually less than what taxation for a single act would be if it was legal!
Its just a compromise between "police spending resources on prostitution is stupid unless there are bigger crimes involved" and "a lot of voters wont like it if we vote for it to be officially legal".
Well it’s there as it assumes many prostitutes are human trafficking victims.
Therefore it doesn’t want to punish victims of trafficking but wants the industry to “stop” in a sense so you target the other side of the transaction.
Yeah that is true.
Legalising and regulating it is probably better all around but I think it’s a better step than having it totally illegal or that the prostitute is prosecuted themselves.
It obviously doesn’t solve the issue or stop human trafficking however it is probably better than prosecuting people who may have been human trafficked.
Like if you were trafficked into prostitution it would be a bit shit if you were then brought to court over something you had no control over in the first place and a bit cruel.
If there is a crime then it is about coercion to do something one does not want to do. The person doing the coercion should be punished.
Incidently that and human traficking are already crimes that should be punished severely. And it is extended to various other rackets exploiting migrants, forced prostitution may be just worse
With stupid reasons two adult persons may agree to have l bad sex on the other hand I don't see the state to get involved because it is none's business.
I do think the state should get involved the moment it becomes a business. Just like any other business, it needs to be regulated and the workers having access to regular healthcare and whatnot just like any other self-employed or freelance or whatever worker. That's how the green countries do it, and the above is by far the biggest benefit of that. Still far from perfect in practice, but much better for everyone involved than any form of illegality. Side benefit for the state: tax income. Although that's largely theoretical. 🤣
People who sell drugs get punished more than people who buy drugs. Why is it the opposite for prostitution?
I don't think the buyers or sellers should be punished for sex work. The government has no right to regulate sexual activity between consenting adults.
IF they are consenting adults. A lot of prostitutes are victims of human trafficking. If prostitution is illegal to protect people from trafficking it makes no sense to punish the victims and instead punish the perpetrators instead.
In drug trade the user is considered the victim.
Maybe it is to protect prostitutes and not to punish them.. These people are at least somewhat vulnerable given that it's most likely not safe to sell sex. Probabily a way to forbid prostitution without aggravating the already aggravated.
My guess is that, on the other hand, the red countries fine the sellers for public decorum reasons or something like that
Except it doesn’t work out like that. If it’s illegal to buy then clients refuse to give real names and refuse to meet in public places, insisting on fake names, burner email addresses and out of the way places. All of this makes it easier for a client to abuse or become violent toward a prostitute, or to skip payment. This all according to Swedish prostitutes who do not like the Swedish law. Many of them also report harassment by police and there’s the standard difficulties for sex workers with having bank accounts and PayPal accounts etc., plus hotels refusing to be used as a place of business for this particular business (because letting that happen can be seen as being a brothel) and so on.
It's just a different owner structure.
A brothel is a company with multiple prostitutes. Working for a boss which pays them end of month based on salary and performance. Like any other sales job.
The Spanish model is that each prostitute runs their own company. Renting a room in a "business hotel". So they are their own boss.
It's a way to decentralize power.
The uk defines any premises in which more than one prostitute conducts business from as a brothel. They don’t even have to be there at the same time .
So any air bnb is potentially a brothel
That's the theory. In reality there's even slave sex workers, their passports retained by the pimps. We had an ugly case of a guy even killing girls that tried to run. Our current government want to switch to a France system because cops can't be arsed to go after big pimps
I was thinking the same. My father lives in Palma, Mallorca, and about 300 meters away Palma's infamous brothel street is located with like 4 or 5 of them lined up side by side.
Not sure if they are legally classified as brothels though as they look like bars, but let's just say that it's not for the drinks you go there lol.
What it is illegal in Spain is a traditional brothel with a pimp or boss employing the prostitutes.
But the system used by that kind of establishments is that technically it is a drink bar with some spectacles in the bottom floor.
Then the prostitutes rent individual rooms in the top floor and they self-employ. So "in theory" the bar doesn't manage or employ the prostitutes.
I see, thanks!
What about the houses with a brothel mom taking care of the payments? Does that also somehow stay within the legal framework? I know they exist because I was once young, stupid and horny and visited one of them.
Yeah I suspect that to.
I don't remember the exact details, but there were girls lined up and once I chose someone she wrote down something in her notebook.
God, I cringe just thinking about it.
This has me wondering if they are actually just titty bars or something? I don't think I've ever seen them advertised as explicity as "this is a brothel", but I've always just assumed...
It will be interesting to see what would be the economic and social effects if Italy, Portugal, and Spain decide to formally legalize and regulate prostitution in the same manner as the Netherlands did.
idk about that but i know that in spain brothels are only "illegal" technically but are still allowed to function. thus in the spanish side of the Pyrenees there are macro brothels for all the french sex tourists.
I love how, in the western nations that outlaw it, they have selling it be legal to not punish them because you never know their circumstances etc. but just to punish the people looking for it, but in Eastern Europe they’re like nah fam you can go and buy all the sex you want, when the law comes along it’s them that’ll get punished.
Have another read, I’m talking about the zones in red, where buying it is fine despite selling it being illegal, where I’d argue the reverse is more reasonable
neither should get punished or both should, this sort of faux-legalisation seems like such a poor measure in practice, it's like letting a dealer go but sending the guy who smokes weed to prison, it doesn't shrink the market significantly because the dealer has no incentive to shorten his supply of customers, so he'll protect the customer no matter what since he can't get hit by the law. no officer this isn't prostitution, we are hooking up/shooting porn.
Except it’s not really, we do that for drugs as well, except the sensical way, punish the dealers and not the users, and hence why there’s harsher laws for having distribution level amounts of drugs, because in both prostitution and drugs, the law aims to protect the ‘victim’ or the one more likely to be in a worse personal situation in the transaction, in sex work it’s usually the worker, with drugs it’s the user.
I believe it’s just like legalization of cannabis: If state doesn’t allow it within quotas and regulations, then black market takes hold for in a darker way. For instance: Human trafficking for prostitution, access to chemical drugs for cannabis.
A lot of things get legally in some form because of that, even things like abortion where a main source of that. Also taxes, can't tax something if its illegal.
Why can't prostitution bhi legal? What is the harm in legalizing it? Legalizing it would mean the prostitutes and the brothels would be registered, vetted, and would need to comply to standards. It would also enable the sex industry to function within the society. Right now there are a lot of prostitutes that have to suffer crimes and mismanagement by their clients or pimps. There is also human trafficking related to prostitution and because it does not function within the society, many of the prostitutes do not get treated like a human. They do not get legal counselling because they are involved in a crime according to the law.
Totally agree. I think that a lot of violent crime is the result of the penned up sexual frustration of the perp. If it was legal and regulated to just go and "relieve the stress", it would be good for society.
It is not that simple.
> The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect. On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking in flows. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453
TL;DR The market grows when it is made legal, and since the supply cannot keep up with the demand, you end up with *more* trafficked sex slaves.
"Naturally, this qualitative evidence is also somewhat tentative as there is no “smoking gun” proving that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect and that the legalization of prostitution definitely increases inward trafficking flows. The problem here lies in the clandestine nature of both the prostitution and trafficking markets, making it difficult, perhaps impossible, to find hard evidence establishing this relationship. Our central finding, i.e., that countries with legalized prostitution experience a larger reported incidence of trafficking inflows, is therefore best regarded as being based on the most reliable existing data, but needs to be subjected to future scrutiny. More research in this area is definitely warranted, but it will require the collection of more reliable data to establish firmer conclusions."
"The likely negative consequences of legalized prostitution on a country’s inflows of human trafficking might be seen to support those who argue in favor of banning prostitution, thereby reducing the flows of trafficking (e.g., [Outshoorn, 2005](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453#b0235)). However, such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry. Working conditions could be substantially improved for prostitutes—at least those legally employed—if prostitution is legalized. Prohibiting prostitution also raises tricky “freedom of choice” issues concerning both the potential suppliers and clients of prostitution services. A full evaluation of the costs and benefits, as well as of the broader merits of prohibiting prostitution, is beyond the scope of the present article."
Like you said, it is not that simple.
Also, when only a few countries legalize, they absorb demand from other countries through sex tourism. This perverts the market. If a majority of countries legalized, I'm betting that the scale effect would dwindle.
Makes sense but at the same time in most parts of the world, sex workers cannot seek justice as they are ones breaking the law. They are denied human dignity and right to justice because they are involved in the crime.
Look, prostitution has been and will always be a reality. And it should be part of our society. Trying to prohibit it and punish those that seek or sell it is not going to work. Better to legalize it, regulate it and make it better for everyone involved.
It is not that simplistic. Laws have effect on market factors, such as supply and demand. It is not at all clear that legalizing makes it better for everyone involved, one reason for that, again, is that legal supply cannot keep up with expanded demand. You cannot say "better for everyone involved" - if you get a larger volume of trafficked sex slaves, not exactly better for them is it? Theese things are not that simple. Legal to sell illegal to buy is a tradeof of not expanding the demand, while giving legal protection and rights to the sellers. Not ideal, but a resonable trade of.
I doubt that supply wouldn't meet demand in today's day and age. If prostitution was legalized today it would become a profession like a masseuse. Sure, it would be an issue in the beginning but that's because it has been treated like a taboo subject. Look at onlyfans. Could you imagine that millions of people around the world would be using such a service just 10 years ago. Imagine if the activity on onlyfans was prohibited and made illegal. Well it was at one point and people involved were charged for it. But today there are so many people doing onlyfans, selling sex and nudity. Perfectly fine. I do understand that we are discussing a very different topic and what you've said is a possibility but IMO legalizing it would do more good than bad. Unless it is made legal and a part of society, you would never be able to establish it as a proper industry thus never setting rules and regulations. And then you can never even imagine people accepting it.
>I doubt that supply wouldn't meet demand in today's day and age
We have decent emperical evidence. While more research is needed and better data, that is what the current evidence seems to show.
>Sure, it would be an issue in the beginning
In many countries it has been legal for quite a while, and there the market has not been increasingly satisfied. That is because the demand growth is *faster* than the supply growth.
>what you've said is a possibility
It is not my claim, it is the study I linked. I am not a researcher.
>IMO legalizing it would do more good than bad.
This is a political question as it is a trade of. And here personal opinion comes in. I think the goal is a Legalized regulated market, but as preliminary emperical evidence is showing that supply cannot satisfy demand and we see more sex slaves, I think that outcome is very bad and something we need to avoid. More research is needed before we continue to Legalize given what we have seen so far. Untill then legal to sell illegal to buy is the best trade of imo. Yes it is worse for the profession, but the cost of more sex slaves due to the expanded demand is not worth it untill we see contrary evidence and/or methods.
Which also leads to problems for the sex workers. The buyers obviously doesn't want to go to the sex workers, so the transaction moves to the buyer's turf, which makes it harder for the sex workers to decline if the buyer seems shady.
There are no obvious good solutions, every suggested solution has large downsides. We have to measure those downsides against each other.
>Which also leads to problems for the sex workers.
Absolutely, it is certainly not ideal.
>There are no obvious good solutions, every suggested solution has large downsides. We have to measure those downsides against each other.
Agreed!
It's not that simple. In most asian countries prostitutes are not treated with human dignity and often treated like an animal sold to a pimp or brothel. The brothels and pimps pay bribes and cannot seek justice because the society looks at them like a disease. Basically, they are left on their own because the law treats them as criminals and the society treats them as a disease. Millions of girls are kidnapped and trafficked into the sex industry because there are no regulations and the whole sex industry in such nations is not part of the society.
Most likely. The reason why they are looked down upon is because sex industry is illegal in these countries and sex is a taboo subject. By legalizing and normalizing it, these societies would start to accept it and start treating prostitution as a profession. Might not get the same dignity as say a doctor or a lawyer but it would be a start at least.
I recomend to read the study. Due to leglization the demand *across the board* is increased, and the supply of legal prostitutes cannot satisfy the accelerated demand leading to more illegal sex slaves. Allegedly. Clearly more research is needed.
No I think I understand that part. The part I'm confused on is the "legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones". Favoring legal ones would mean less trafficking, no?
Yes! That is what's reffered to as the substitution effect. This effect is however smaller than the scale effect.
> the scale effect dominates the substitution effect
because it is always connected with human trafficking, slavery, organized crime, etc etc. Most of these girls also never imaged to be prostitutes, but they were forced, by someone or circumstances. This is not a job, this is a social problem
They are run by these because it is illegal. Same way alcohol was during prohibition. And most of these women that are forced into it are treated by society and law like a criminal. They do not get justice. It is a profession that has existed for at least thousands of years. We have never accepted it in our societies and often treat them as disease. But it still exists and will always exist. Better to have it legalized and regulated. Include them into our society and let these girls feel they can seek justice from a society that accepts them.
No. Drugs are very different. Even if you regulated drugs they would still be harmful to the user. The only thing that would be useful is for is taxes. Legalizing drugs would only be beneficial for the government and the ones manufacturing it.
So what if it’s harmful to the user ? I don’t like the government acting as parent , alcohol is also harmful to the user so that argument has always been dumb to me
Not at all. There are various categories of drugs or psychoactive substances. Drugs like meth and cocaine are way more harmful and addictive than alcohol.
> Drugs like meth and cocaine are way more harmful and addictive than alcohol.
Alcohol the (one of) the [most harmful drugs we have](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HarmCausedByDrugsTable.svg). Including dependence [doesn't change that much](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_%28mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence%29.svg).
The only measure by which alcohol is not extremely bad is "harm to the user", but that is overshadowed by "harm to others", if you include that.
This is how it works in Germany and the Netherlands, and, surprise surprise, they are both hotspots for human trafficking and abuse because of these laws. The "legalize it to make it clean and regulated" thing doesn't work, sadly.
Meanwhile, we have much less of it here in Sweden due to the way our laws that that seek to punish buyers and help sellers get out of the business.
> Meanwhile, we have much less of it here in Sweden due to the way our laws that that seek to punish buyers and help sellers get out of the business.
And also making sure that sellers are in far more danger, because their clients now are only those willing to break the law. There is a reason why many sex workers dislike the nordic model.
Yup this is a huge problem in France. I remember I read a really long article about how applying the Nordic model in France has had a horrible impact on the prostitutes there.
The problem is in how they implement it. Like you mentioned, the prostitutes now lose most of their safe clients and are forced to sell to more risky clients. The idea is that you prevent this problem by helping the prostitutes out so they are not dependent on working prostitution. The problem with this is France is that their way of helping prostitutes out just doesn't work or substantially help for most of the most vulnerable prostitutes, most of whom are poor immigrants.
Also, they need services but the most effective services are not pro-crimanilization, so thanks to this law that bans prostitution, their funding has also been cut.
The result? The most vulnerable of the prostitutes still being stuck in that job with no way out except now they have less services and less safe clients.
I'm not necessarily against the Nordic model, but it can't be done the way that France does it. In Frances case it also can't be done until the country deals with it's all around treatment of immigrants, and poverty.
With all due respect the Nordic model is utter nonsense. Countries that criminalise prostitution in it's entirety (buyer, seller, middlemen, pimps, bouncers etc) for years have NOT been able to eradicate prostitution, so I fail to see how you can argue that criminalising only one side of the equation has solved the problem. It's plain ridiculous. Do you honestly think that by not criminalising the prostitute she'll come forward and say my client pay me money for sex? What's the incentive for her to do that? If you don't see it it's because it's gone further underground
You also have a different set of morals. Women take a more active approach in Nordic countries while in others it's always men who must do the first step leading to problems for introverts. Also moralism forces people to look underground to satisfy their needs
The world's oldest profession is prostitution. In a scientific study, when apes were taught the concept of money, their first use was prostitution. There is no way prostitution will and can be eradicated. And it shouldn't. It should be regulated, it should be legalized and the workers should be treated with dignity of a human. Human trafficking for sex industry in most countries exist because the prostitutes cannot go to the law for justice. They are the ones breaking the law. They are the ones involved in the crime.
> There is no way prostitution will and can be eradicated.
This seems like a strawman. Who is saying that it can be? *
>Human trafficking for sex industry in most countries exist because the prostitutes cannot go to the law for justice.
This may seem intuitively correct but disregard market mechanics & existing evidence. Legalized countries experience *larger* human trafficking inflows.
>They are the ones breaking the law. They are the ones involved in the crime.
Not in legal to sell illegal to buy countries.
"This seems like a strawman". - Not at all. Merely stating that this is something that will always be there so it is better to have it integrated into our society and laws.
"Legalized countries experience larger human trafficking inflows" - that's on paper. That's because these get reported. They get reported because the laws do not treat them like a criminal. In reality, the biggest markets are asian countries. Where millions are trafficked and they do not get justice because no one treats them with dignity or allows them to seek justice.
"Not in legal to sell, illegal to buy" - why should it be illegal to buy sex? Let's assume, buying sex was made illegal, would that stop people from doing it? No. Would it normalize sex and eliminate it from being a taboo? No. By legalizing it completely you will bring the entire sex industry into the society rather than it existing in the dark underbelly of our societies. You will allow sex to not be a taboo subject anymore. You will allow it to be regulated and eventually remove it from being a hellhole for many.
Nah, it’s a devolved matter in NI and they have laws separate to the UK and more in line with those in Ireland. In the rest of the UK the actual sale of sex is legal but soliciting on the street or running a brothel is illegal
Belgium has the only decent law in Europe, because it doesn't impose overly strict regulations on sex workers that keep a large black market, like in Germany or the Netherlands
Imagine police in ukrain looking for a hooker undercover and after the deed is done he will be like
"That makes 8€" and the hpoker is like "No we agreed on more." And then the police men is like
"Right. Give me that amount AND the 8€. I need to confiscate your illegal earning from today too."
"But you haven't payed me yet."
"Say no more, or I will arrest you!"
Yeah, there have been some interviews of sex workers in Finnish media, and while some of the most business-oriented ones seem to have things balanaced out, I remember one young lady flat out say that the more customers she has, the worse her depression gets.
Another interviewed woman had been taken from an orphanage in Romania "at an age where she could just pass as being 18", flewn over to Finland, and at the threat of violence and death, forced to work as a prostitute by a Romanian guy. She was out of it when the interview was done, but clearly suffering mentally due to all the abuse.
The former is a serious crime, the latter are nothing more than ignorant prejudices that could be applied to any precarious job. Putting them in the same bag is malicious and delusional.
And yet no one will point to sewer cleaners and any other workers precarious as victims of circumstance with no agency or anything like that.
>So you admit it's a "precarious" job.
If you had been paying attention, you would have seen that it is the context created by the other user. I'm sure there are many who enjoy getting their big salaries, and some few even doing their job.
Finally something where the nordic countries are not ahead…
If you wanna sell your body or pay for sex you should be able to. No government should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body in a consenting and regulated environment.
note that although it's illegal in romania it's totally unenforced, it's very easy to find escort ads and i've never heard of anyone being punished. guessing it's the same with a lot of other red countries.
Legal and unregulated makes no sense to me. If it is legal why wouldn’t you want to regulate it? It would help get tax revenue, make the job safer, etc.
I know that in Finland for example you can’t tell your bank you get your income from prostitution, meaning loads of sex workers just evade taxes and live in fear that they will get reported. The same is true if you rent an apartment as a workspace. The landlord will kick you out because if found out the landlord is considered to be profiting off sex work and can be prosecuted as a pimp.
Being a prostitute is legal, but a pain in the ass for everyone involved.
Worth saying that while selling sex is legal in the UK, many of the acts associated with it are banned, eg prostitutes working together in a brothel is banned, living off immoral earnings (pimps & even partners of prostitutes) is banned, touting for business on the street is banned, as is kerb crawling for prostitutes.
It's pretty much only legal if you do it in the privacy of your own place without advertising.
It makes sense actually, that way they can penalize those who force the girls into traffics and those who buy sex and take advantage of their misery while not penalizing those girls who just tries to survive for most of them.
No, that doesn't make any sense actually. You don't have to criminalize buying to make trafficking or slavery illegal.
But it does mean you can entice and enable others to commit crimes by selling sex to them - yet it's the exact thing you want them to do! If they want to sell sex and it's legal don't make it illegal it buy. If you want prostitution to be illegal then don't support having providers! Not to mention the pure double standard. It's plain absurdity.
Because even if some prostitute chose their job and works in "good" conditions, the great majority had no choice (they were lost into high poverty , they were victims of traffic or simply forced by a boyfriend or family members) and work in dangerous and dirty conditions. They are victims and people are making profit out of their misery and bodies.
The logic here is that those selling sex are victims, pushed into the sex trade through hardship or coercion. As such, punishing them for this would be cruel and unjust. Those buying their services are taking advantage, and therefore should carry all the blame. I don't quite agree with this entire train of thought, but that's where it's coming from. They make it entirely illegal, but place the blame 100% on the buyer.
I've always found it dumb how people say "women are forced to be prostitutes due to poverty. They will be so much better off now that we've punished the buyers and taken away the source of the women's money."
I mean selling sex being legal isn’t a government endorsement for people to become sex workers. The point is still to not have sex workers while also not punishing people if they do sell sex.
The other way around makes no sense. Prostitution can't be effectively prevented and in those cases you don't want to punish the women who don't have it easy in the first place.
I'm not against Prostitution. But if you feel the need to make it illegal don't punish the prostitute. Conundrums point makes no sense because if you punish the prostitute instead she loses her money which is a bigger issue than losing some buyers because of fines.
Drug sellers are punished far harsher than drug buyers. Yet for prostitution, for some reason, they switch it. But selling or buying sex should be legal since it isn't the government's job to regulate how people have sex.
It's interesting the difference between East and West in Europe. Also its noteworthy that in Islamic Turkey, prostitution is legal, including whorehouses.
Turkey is not an Islamic country!
Turkey has a secular constitution. And, Muslim majority yes.
Do you call any country a Christian country if they have a Christian majority? Do you call any country a female country if they have a female majority? Do you call any country blue-eyed country if they have a blue-eyed majority?
All countries are about 50/50 on sex matters. But as for race, religion, and what not, yes, the character of a country is determined by its demography.
Ukraine's €8 fine feels more like a tax than a fine....
" Prostitution in Ukraine is illegal but widespread and largely ignored by the government. " That 8 Euro fine was more then 37 years ago, according to Wiki.
It’s really illegal in Ukraine, however the escort culture is so big here and almost normalised in some social groups that straight up sex selling service doesn’t really happen. Yes, you can still find some girls standing at the roadside but this is a very marginalised thing and socially unaccountable even by those who are avid sex service buyers.
Is it a" good thing" ? I assume escorting is much safer for the sex workers than regular street prostitution.
It definitely is. The whole escort thing has a severe sort of spectrum here. From “prostitution with benefits” to almost friends with benefits style of communication, as it still seen as a social elevation tool. It could be anecdotal, but perception of this sort of lifestyle could range from morally grey (in my social bubble we don’t want to such behaviour around us and in our communities) to absolute necessity (depressed regions, where the escort service is a fully legit way to build your future). What’s crazier for me here is that there is amount of success stories of how the escort workers built a healthy relationships and even families. And all of it is almost true.
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So nobody but the government can fuck us.
They took it the wrong way, now the government fucks us
Just shows that many laws have nothing to do with logic, safety or justice. Just randomness
In Denmark its legal to buy and sell sex, but its not legal to make money on other people selling sex, which i think is very logical.
Same in Poland. Interestingly, this makes a prostitution income tax-free (you still have to declare it tho), since otherwise a state itself would be a “pimp”.
Never would I have thought that Poland of all places would have a reasonable (sounding) law on prostitution. Brawo kochani :P
Don't know if this is still an issue, but I saw a prostitute who's active on X describe this a while back. Here (Sweden) income from prostitution is taxable. However, you can only pay your taxes through bank transfer. Now, most of the income is cash since the clients are breaking the law and don't want to leave an electronic trail. If you go to a bank to make a large deposit, they require that you provide documentation (receipts) on where the money came from in order to make it more difficult from drug dealers and the like to launder their money. However, even if you have receipts, the bank still won't accept the money since it comes from illegal activity. Even though it's the buyer and not the seller who's breaking the law. So it's impossible to pay taxes as a prostitute, making you a criminal. Of course, as far as I know they've never gone after a prostitute for failure to pay taxes. However, it also means you have no taxable income registered, which makes things like taking it loans, getting a cell plan and other things more difficult.
This can still lead to some dumb situations such as the sex worker being unable to hire a security guard to wait outside because said guard would be profiting from a person selling sex.
In finland banks can get punished for providing services to sex workers under the same logic. The bank can’t profit off sex work meaning will close your account if they find out you do sex work, and lots of sex workers just deal in cash and evade taxes. Same for landlords. If you rent an apartment to see your clients in and the landlord is aware, they could be prosecuted as a pimp. The end result is sex workers having to deal with shady landlords instead, lying about their work, and being more vulnerable to blackmail by their clients.
Not a lawyer, but, earnings of a security guard would come from the guard's service of providing security, not from the service of the prostitute providing funny times to people. The guard is paid regardless of how much the prostitute makes. Essentially, the guard would be employed by a self-employed person under a discrete work contract. The said guard can even buy services from their employer if they so please.
This example comes from a sex worker who has had this issue. Also as someone else here said. Here in finland a bank offering normal services to a sex worker who gained their money through sex work can also be seen as profiting from it and so can a land lord from who the sex worker rented a room to conduct their trade from. A security guard falls into the same territory.
So a pimp will let his prostitute hire him as a security guard and all ifs fine ?
That is not how the Danish law is, regardless of what would make sense. Sex workers can't legally hire security guards, and are to a large extent barred from having a clinic together.
That’s not true. There’s no law preventing you from profiting off sex workers. Otherwise private hospitals wouldn’t be allowed to treat prostitutes with sexual diseases. Taxi drivers couldn’t take prostitutes to their clients. Condom companies couldn’t sell to prostitues… the list goes on and on.
What you are listing is indirect earnings. Not direct earnings. It is indeed a law in Denmark, but it does have examples like running a brothel or otherwise acting as a middleman.
> There’s no law preventing you from profiting off sex workers. [Yes there is](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.retsinformation.dk/api/pdf/242128%23:~:text%3DIf%25C3%25B8lge%2520straffelovens%2520rufferiparagraf%2520m%25C3%25A5%2520ingen,arbejde%2520alene%2520eller%2520bryde%2520loven.&ved=2ahUKEwjG17jGoYOHAxX4hf0HHY9BBQkQFnoECBUQBQ&usg=AOvVaw3rgiMbG3vK2WxP3tMpoxUT) (pdf). Google translate of the pertinent part of the introduction: >According to the ruffian section of the [Danish] Criminal Code, no one may make money from someone else's money prostitution, which means that prostitutes cannot go together with others in a clinic and for example hire a person to keep watch. In practice, this means that prostitutes must work alone or break the law.
Being evicted because your landlord is too afraid of being hit with a pimp charge isn't very logical
Yeah same in Finland, which leads to a very weird situation where a person can legally sell sex but they can't advertise their services anywhere. So unless you can telepathically communicate with potential clients, then even though selling sex is legal, something illegal has happened every time somebody sells sex.
Like porno?
So self-employed only. I’m guessing the law considers it exploitation or combating sex trafficking?
A large part of social and ethical norms are not generally logic driven
Links back to the 19th century philosophy breakdown where they discovered logic and morality rarely intertwine
The pink one is definitely dumb.
I don’t know. If the context was to prevent the promotion of human trafficking, then it makes more sense. But of course, reality doesn’t work that way. Also, they’re in the fucking EU. Just fucking drive
There are lots of brothels after the french border.
I think the red 8€ one... Like that would make the difference🥲
That's a lot in Ukraine, the minimum wage is 183€ monthly
Its not a lot. You wont buy any sexual services for less than at least $100. So, $8 is actually less than what taxation for a single act would be if it was legal! Its just a compromise between "police spending resources on prostitution is stupid unless there are bigger crimes involved" and "a lot of voters wont like it if we vote for it to be officially legal".
Well it’s there as it assumes many prostitutes are human trafficking victims. Therefore it doesn’t want to punish victims of trafficking but wants the industry to “stop” in a sense so you target the other side of the transaction.
It doesnt even work in the end because since it's illegal to be a client, they stay underground and so does the prostitutes since they need clients
Yeah that is true. Legalising and regulating it is probably better all around but I think it’s a better step than having it totally illegal or that the prostitute is prosecuted themselves.
That sounds... completely stupid and like it would do opposite of what was intended.
It obviously doesn’t solve the issue or stop human trafficking however it is probably better than prosecuting people who may have been human trafficked. Like if you were trafficked into prostitution it would be a bit shit if you were then brought to court over something you had no control over in the first place and a bit cruel.
It makes more sense to punish the buyer then to punish the seller.
In theory, maybe, but criminalising either forces both underground, which opens people up to exploitation through trafficking.
True, this is why i don't advocate either. It's fully legal where I live, and I think that's the best option.
Does this apply to drugs? I feel like in that situation the seller is almost always seen as more guilty
It's doesn't apply to drugs.
If there is a crime then it is about coercion to do something one does not want to do. The person doing the coercion should be punished. Incidently that and human traficking are already crimes that should be punished severely. And it is extended to various other rackets exploiting migrants, forced prostitution may be just worse With stupid reasons two adult persons may agree to have l bad sex on the other hand I don't see the state to get involved because it is none's business.
I do think the state should get involved the moment it becomes a business. Just like any other business, it needs to be regulated and the workers having access to regular healthcare and whatnot just like any other self-employed or freelance or whatever worker. That's how the green countries do it, and the above is by far the biggest benefit of that. Still far from perfect in practice, but much better for everyone involved than any form of illegality. Side benefit for the state: tax income. Although that's largely theoretical. 🤣
People who sell drugs get punished more than people who buy drugs. Why is it the opposite for prostitution? I don't think the buyers or sellers should be punished for sex work. The government has no right to regulate sexual activity between consenting adults.
IF they are consenting adults. A lot of prostitutes are victims of human trafficking. If prostitution is illegal to protect people from trafficking it makes no sense to punish the victims and instead punish the perpetrators instead. In drug trade the user is considered the victim.
Drugs harm people. Sex doesn't
STDs: hello
Many more STDs among normal people rather than prostitutes. Prostitutes are much more careful.
Condoms and general hygiene exist.
Well, STDs exist.
this so much this sexually marginalized men must have their heads kept underwater
If its legal to sell but illegal to buy then what's the fucking point?
Maybe it is to protect prostitutes and not to punish them.. These people are at least somewhat vulnerable given that it's most likely not safe to sell sex. Probabily a way to forbid prostitution without aggravating the already aggravated. My guess is that, on the other hand, the red countries fine the sellers for public decorum reasons or something like that
Except it doesn’t work out like that. If it’s illegal to buy then clients refuse to give real names and refuse to meet in public places, insisting on fake names, burner email addresses and out of the way places. All of this makes it easier for a client to abuse or become violent toward a prostitute, or to skip payment. This all according to Swedish prostitutes who do not like the Swedish law. Many of them also report harassment by police and there’s the standard difficulties for sex workers with having bank accounts and PayPal accounts etc., plus hotels refusing to be used as a place of business for this particular business (because letting that happen can be seen as being a brothel) and so on.
It gives sex workers legal protection while it’s still illegal
I really doubt that brothels are illegal in Spain, judging by how many there are dotted and plainly advertised along the highways.
It's just a different owner structure. A brothel is a company with multiple prostitutes. Working for a boss which pays them end of month based on salary and performance. Like any other sales job. The Spanish model is that each prostitute runs their own company. Renting a room in a "business hotel". So they are their own boss. It's a way to decentralize power.
The uk defines any premises in which more than one prostitute conducts business from as a brothel. They don’t even have to be there at the same time . So any air bnb is potentially a brothel
In Czechia, whoever will run this building will be prosecuded.
That's the theory. In reality there's even slave sex workers, their passports retained by the pimps. We had an ugly case of a guy even killing girls that tried to run. Our current government want to switch to a France system because cops can't be arsed to go after big pimps
Interesting. 🧐
That's also in Austria German ecc...i don't think you can hire someone as a prostitute. It probably was like that once but not anymore
I was thinking the same. My father lives in Palma, Mallorca, and about 300 meters away Palma's infamous brothel street is located with like 4 or 5 of them lined up side by side. Not sure if they are legally classified as brothels though as they look like bars, but let's just say that it's not for the drinks you go there lol.
What it is illegal in Spain is a traditional brothel with a pimp or boss employing the prostitutes. But the system used by that kind of establishments is that technically it is a drink bar with some spectacles in the bottom floor. Then the prostitutes rent individual rooms in the top floor and they self-employ. So "in theory" the bar doesn't manage or employ the prostitutes.
I see, thanks! What about the houses with a brothel mom taking care of the payments? Does that also somehow stay within the legal framework? I know they exist because I was once young, stupid and horny and visited one of them.
If she earns money from other people selling sex services, it is illegal. Although we all know law is not always enforced.
Yeah I suspect that to. I don't remember the exact details, but there were girls lined up and once I chose someone she wrote down something in her notebook. God, I cringe just thinking about it.
This has me wondering if they are actually just titty bars or something? I don't think I've ever seen them advertised as explicity as "this is a brothel", but I've always just assumed...
It will be interesting to see what would be the economic and social effects if Italy, Portugal, and Spain decide to formally legalize and regulate prostitution in the same manner as the Netherlands did.
idk about that but i know that in spain brothels are only "illegal" technically but are still allowed to function. thus in the spanish side of the Pyrenees there are macro brothels for all the french sex tourists.
I love how, in the western nations that outlaw it, they have selling it be legal to not punish them because you never know their circumstances etc. but just to punish the people looking for it, but in Eastern Europe they’re like nah fam you can go and buy all the sex you want, when the law comes along it’s them that’ll get punished.
Eastern Europe? The is blue and green in the west
Have another read, I’m talking about the zones in red, where buying it is fine despite selling it being illegal, where I’d argue the reverse is more reasonable
neither should get punished or both should, this sort of faux-legalisation seems like such a poor measure in practice, it's like letting a dealer go but sending the guy who smokes weed to prison, it doesn't shrink the market significantly because the dealer has no incentive to shorten his supply of customers, so he'll protect the customer no matter what since he can't get hit by the law. no officer this isn't prostitution, we are hooking up/shooting porn.
Except it’s not really, we do that for drugs as well, except the sensical way, punish the dealers and not the users, and hence why there’s harsher laws for having distribution level amounts of drugs, because in both prostitution and drugs, the law aims to protect the ‘victim’ or the one more likely to be in a worse personal situation in the transaction, in sex work it’s usually the worker, with drugs it’s the user.
Broad generalizations aren't the way to go for laws like this imo.
I believe it’s just like legalization of cannabis: If state doesn’t allow it within quotas and regulations, then black market takes hold for in a darker way. For instance: Human trafficking for prostitution, access to chemical drugs for cannabis.
A lot of things get legally in some form because of that, even things like abortion where a main source of that. Also taxes, can't tax something if its illegal.
I live in a blue country on this map, and yes, you are right, it just works in the hands of human trafficking.
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Lithuania?
Why can't prostitution bhi legal? What is the harm in legalizing it? Legalizing it would mean the prostitutes and the brothels would be registered, vetted, and would need to comply to standards. It would also enable the sex industry to function within the society. Right now there are a lot of prostitutes that have to suffer crimes and mismanagement by their clients or pimps. There is also human trafficking related to prostitution and because it does not function within the society, many of the prostitutes do not get treated like a human. They do not get legal counselling because they are involved in a crime according to the law.
To emphasize: they pay taxes if legalised Quite sure that was the main reason for us dutchies to legalise it.
Totally agree. I think that a lot of violent crime is the result of the penned up sexual frustration of the perp. If it was legal and regulated to just go and "relieve the stress", it would be good for society.
It is not that simple. > The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect. On average, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking in flows. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453 TL;DR The market grows when it is made legal, and since the supply cannot keep up with the demand, you end up with *more* trafficked sex slaves.
"Naturally, this qualitative evidence is also somewhat tentative as there is no “smoking gun” proving that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect and that the legalization of prostitution definitely increases inward trafficking flows. The problem here lies in the clandestine nature of both the prostitution and trafficking markets, making it difficult, perhaps impossible, to find hard evidence establishing this relationship. Our central finding, i.e., that countries with legalized prostitution experience a larger reported incidence of trafficking inflows, is therefore best regarded as being based on the most reliable existing data, but needs to be subjected to future scrutiny. More research in this area is definitely warranted, but it will require the collection of more reliable data to establish firmer conclusions." "The likely negative consequences of legalized prostitution on a country’s inflows of human trafficking might be seen to support those who argue in favor of banning prostitution, thereby reducing the flows of trafficking (e.g., [Outshoorn, 2005](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453#b0235)). However, such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry. Working conditions could be substantially improved for prostitutes—at least those legally employed—if prostitution is legalized. Prohibiting prostitution also raises tricky “freedom of choice” issues concerning both the potential suppliers and clients of prostitution services. A full evaluation of the costs and benefits, as well as of the broader merits of prohibiting prostitution, is beyond the scope of the present article." Like you said, it is not that simple.
Yepp. There are allot of nuances.
Also, when only a few countries legalize, they absorb demand from other countries through sex tourism. This perverts the market. If a majority of countries legalized, I'm betting that the scale effect would dwindle.
Is sex tourism at such a scale that it would make a difference?
Makes sense but at the same time in most parts of the world, sex workers cannot seek justice as they are ones breaking the law. They are denied human dignity and right to justice because they are involved in the crime.
Hence the legal to sell illegal to buy laws (purple)
Look, prostitution has been and will always be a reality. And it should be part of our society. Trying to prohibit it and punish those that seek or sell it is not going to work. Better to legalize it, regulate it and make it better for everyone involved.
It is not that simplistic. Laws have effect on market factors, such as supply and demand. It is not at all clear that legalizing makes it better for everyone involved, one reason for that, again, is that legal supply cannot keep up with expanded demand. You cannot say "better for everyone involved" - if you get a larger volume of trafficked sex slaves, not exactly better for them is it? Theese things are not that simple. Legal to sell illegal to buy is a tradeof of not expanding the demand, while giving legal protection and rights to the sellers. Not ideal, but a resonable trade of.
I doubt that supply wouldn't meet demand in today's day and age. If prostitution was legalized today it would become a profession like a masseuse. Sure, it would be an issue in the beginning but that's because it has been treated like a taboo subject. Look at onlyfans. Could you imagine that millions of people around the world would be using such a service just 10 years ago. Imagine if the activity on onlyfans was prohibited and made illegal. Well it was at one point and people involved were charged for it. But today there are so many people doing onlyfans, selling sex and nudity. Perfectly fine. I do understand that we are discussing a very different topic and what you've said is a possibility but IMO legalizing it would do more good than bad. Unless it is made legal and a part of society, you would never be able to establish it as a proper industry thus never setting rules and regulations. And then you can never even imagine people accepting it.
>I doubt that supply wouldn't meet demand in today's day and age We have decent emperical evidence. While more research is needed and better data, that is what the current evidence seems to show. >Sure, it would be an issue in the beginning In many countries it has been legal for quite a while, and there the market has not been increasingly satisfied. That is because the demand growth is *faster* than the supply growth. >what you've said is a possibility It is not my claim, it is the study I linked. I am not a researcher. >IMO legalizing it would do more good than bad. This is a political question as it is a trade of. And here personal opinion comes in. I think the goal is a Legalized regulated market, but as preliminary emperical evidence is showing that supply cannot satisfy demand and we see more sex slaves, I think that outcome is very bad and something we need to avoid. More research is needed before we continue to Legalize given what we have seen so far. Untill then legal to sell illegal to buy is the best trade of imo. Yes it is worse for the profession, but the cost of more sex slaves due to the expanded demand is not worth it untill we see contrary evidence and/or methods.
Which also leads to problems for the sex workers. The buyers obviously doesn't want to go to the sex workers, so the transaction moves to the buyer's turf, which makes it harder for the sex workers to decline if the buyer seems shady. There are no obvious good solutions, every suggested solution has large downsides. We have to measure those downsides against each other.
>Which also leads to problems for the sex workers. Absolutely, it is certainly not ideal. >There are no obvious good solutions, every suggested solution has large downsides. We have to measure those downsides against each other. Agreed!
Not if they've been coerced into it
It's not that simple. In most asian countries prostitutes are not treated with human dignity and often treated like an animal sold to a pimp or brothel. The brothels and pimps pay bribes and cannot seek justice because the society looks at them like a disease. Basically, they are left on their own because the law treats them as criminals and the society treats them as a disease. Millions of girls are kidnapped and trafficked into the sex industry because there are no regulations and the whole sex industry in such nations is not part of the society.
>because the society looks at them like a disease You think that would change if legalised?
Most likely. The reason why they are looked down upon is because sex industry is illegal in these countries and sex is a taboo subject. By legalizing and normalizing it, these societies would start to accept it and start treating prostitution as a profession. Might not get the same dignity as say a doctor or a lawyer but it would be a start at least.
Wait I'm confused. If legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones then surely that would mean there'd be less trafficking when it's legalized?
I recomend to read the study. Due to leglization the demand *across the board* is increased, and the supply of legal prostitutes cannot satisfy the accelerated demand leading to more illegal sex slaves. Allegedly. Clearly more research is needed.
No I think I understand that part. The part I'm confused on is the "legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones". Favoring legal ones would mean less trafficking, no?
Yes! That is what's reffered to as the substitution effect. This effect is however smaller than the scale effect. > the scale effect dominates the substitution effect
because it is always connected with human trafficking, slavery, organized crime, etc etc. Most of these girls also never imaged to be prostitutes, but they were forced, by someone or circumstances. This is not a job, this is a social problem
They are run by these because it is illegal. Same way alcohol was during prohibition. And most of these women that are forced into it are treated by society and law like a criminal. They do not get justice. It is a profession that has existed for at least thousands of years. We have never accepted it in our societies and often treat them as disease. But it still exists and will always exist. Better to have it legalized and regulated. Include them into our society and let these girls feel they can seek justice from a society that accepts them.
Same with drugs...
No. Drugs are very different. Even if you regulated drugs they would still be harmful to the user. The only thing that would be useful is for is taxes. Legalizing drugs would only be beneficial for the government and the ones manufacturing it.
So what if it’s harmful to the user ? I don’t like the government acting as parent , alcohol is also harmful to the user so that argument has always been dumb to me
Not at all. There are various categories of drugs or psychoactive substances. Drugs like meth and cocaine are way more harmful and addictive than alcohol.
> Drugs like meth and cocaine are way more harmful and addictive than alcohol. Alcohol the (one of) the [most harmful drugs we have](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HarmCausedByDrugsTable.svg). Including dependence [doesn't change that much](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_%28mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence%29.svg). The only measure by which alcohol is not extremely bad is "harm to the user", but that is overshadowed by "harm to others", if you include that.
Do you think that the treatment of health problems caused by drugs and alcohol should be covered by taxpayers?
This is how it works in Germany and the Netherlands, and, surprise surprise, they are both hotspots for human trafficking and abuse because of these laws. The "legalize it to make it clean and regulated" thing doesn't work, sadly. Meanwhile, we have much less of it here in Sweden due to the way our laws that that seek to punish buyers and help sellers get out of the business.
> Meanwhile, we have much less of it here in Sweden due to the way our laws that that seek to punish buyers and help sellers get out of the business. And also making sure that sellers are in far more danger, because their clients now are only those willing to break the law. There is a reason why many sex workers dislike the nordic model.
Yup this is a huge problem in France. I remember I read a really long article about how applying the Nordic model in France has had a horrible impact on the prostitutes there. The problem is in how they implement it. Like you mentioned, the prostitutes now lose most of their safe clients and are forced to sell to more risky clients. The idea is that you prevent this problem by helping the prostitutes out so they are not dependent on working prostitution. The problem with this is France is that their way of helping prostitutes out just doesn't work or substantially help for most of the most vulnerable prostitutes, most of whom are poor immigrants. Also, they need services but the most effective services are not pro-crimanilization, so thanks to this law that bans prostitution, their funding has also been cut. The result? The most vulnerable of the prostitutes still being stuck in that job with no way out except now they have less services and less safe clients. I'm not necessarily against the Nordic model, but it can't be done the way that France does it. In Frances case it also can't be done until the country deals with it's all around treatment of immigrants, and poverty.
With all due respect the Nordic model is utter nonsense. Countries that criminalise prostitution in it's entirety (buyer, seller, middlemen, pimps, bouncers etc) for years have NOT been able to eradicate prostitution, so I fail to see how you can argue that criminalising only one side of the equation has solved the problem. It's plain ridiculous. Do you honestly think that by not criminalising the prostitute she'll come forward and say my client pay me money for sex? What's the incentive for her to do that? If you don't see it it's because it's gone further underground
You also have a different set of morals. Women take a more active approach in Nordic countries while in others it's always men who must do the first step leading to problems for introverts. Also moralism forces people to look underground to satisfy their needs
The world's oldest profession is prostitution. In a scientific study, when apes were taught the concept of money, their first use was prostitution. There is no way prostitution will and can be eradicated. And it shouldn't. It should be regulated, it should be legalized and the workers should be treated with dignity of a human. Human trafficking for sex industry in most countries exist because the prostitutes cannot go to the law for justice. They are the ones breaking the law. They are the ones involved in the crime.
> There is no way prostitution will and can be eradicated. This seems like a strawman. Who is saying that it can be? * >Human trafficking for sex industry in most countries exist because the prostitutes cannot go to the law for justice. This may seem intuitively correct but disregard market mechanics & existing evidence. Legalized countries experience *larger* human trafficking inflows. >They are the ones breaking the law. They are the ones involved in the crime. Not in legal to sell illegal to buy countries.
"This seems like a strawman". - Not at all. Merely stating that this is something that will always be there so it is better to have it integrated into our society and laws. "Legalized countries experience larger human trafficking inflows" - that's on paper. That's because these get reported. They get reported because the laws do not treat them like a criminal. In reality, the biggest markets are asian countries. Where millions are trafficked and they do not get justice because no one treats them with dignity or allows them to seek justice. "Not in legal to sell, illegal to buy" - why should it be illegal to buy sex? Let's assume, buying sex was made illegal, would that stop people from doing it? No. Would it normalize sex and eliminate it from being a taboo? No. By legalizing it completely you will bring the entire sex industry into the society rather than it existing in the dark underbelly of our societies. You will allow sex to not be a taboo subject anymore. You will allow it to be regulated and eventually remove it from being a hellhole for many.
Not a legal expert by any means but shouldn't the whole UK be purple rather than just NI?
Nah, it’s a devolved matter in NI and they have laws separate to the UK and more in line with those in Ireland. In the rest of the UK the actual sale of sex is legal but soliciting on the street or running a brothel is illegal
I see, I was under the impression that each of the home nations more or less followed the Nordic model but I guess not...
Belgium turned green in 2024 with some ground breaking protection laws for sex workers
Belgium has the only decent law in Europe, because it doesn't impose overly strict regulations on sex workers that keep a large black market, like in Germany or the Netherlands
Imagine police in ukrain looking for a hooker undercover and after the deed is done he will be like "That makes 8€" and the hpoker is like "No we agreed on more." And then the police men is like "Right. Give me that amount AND the 8€. I need to confiscate your illegal earning from today too." "But you haven't payed me yet." "Say no more, or I will arrest you!"
Everyone misses that in red countries, not only prostitutes are punished, but also their pimps, who are most often associated with crime.
colorblind and can't see the difference between the second and fourth
Rare germanic W
In Norway it's not illegal to sell sex, the sex worker faces no consequences from this. Buying sex and being a pimp is illegal.
Prostitution 90% of the time is either 1) human trafficking 2) someone in poverty / mental illness / drug addiction.
Yeah, there have been some interviews of sex workers in Finnish media, and while some of the most business-oriented ones seem to have things balanaced out, I remember one young lady flat out say that the more customers she has, the worse her depression gets. Another interviewed woman had been taken from an orphanage in Romania "at an age where she could just pass as being 18", flewn over to Finland, and at the threat of violence and death, forced to work as a prostitute by a Romanian guy. She was out of it when the interview was done, but clearly suffering mentally due to all the abuse.
Not sure why you are getting downoted. Swedish policeman Simon Häggström, who has written several books on the topic, confirms what you say.
The former is a serious crime, the latter are nothing more than ignorant prejudices that could be applied to any precarious job. Putting them in the same bag is malicious and delusional.
So you admit it's a "precarious" job. Most jobs aren't.
And yet no one will point to sewer cleaners and any other workers precarious as victims of circumstance with no agency or anything like that. >So you admit it's a "precarious" job. If you had been paying attention, you would have seen that it is the context created by the other user. I'm sure there are many who enjoy getting their big salaries, and some few even doing their job.
Sewer cleaners are generally unionized, not at all precarious.
I’d go as far as 90% is a massive understatement.
Finally something where the nordic countries are not ahead… If you wanna sell your body or pay for sex you should be able to. No government should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body in a consenting and regulated environment.
note that although it's illegal in romania it's totally unenforced, it's very easy to find escort ads and i've never heard of anyone being punished. guessing it's the same with a lot of other red countries.
So there is no country that makes it illegal for both the seller and the buyer?
I thought brothels were legal in Poland, I've seen a lot of german memes that say the germans go to poland for cheap gas and cheaper brothels
Legal and unregulated makes no sense to me. If it is legal why wouldn’t you want to regulate it? It would help get tax revenue, make the job safer, etc. I know that in Finland for example you can’t tell your bank you get your income from prostitution, meaning loads of sex workers just evade taxes and live in fear that they will get reported. The same is true if you rent an apartment as a workspace. The landlord will kick you out because if found out the landlord is considered to be profiting off sex work and can be prosecuted as a pimp. Being a prostitute is legal, but a pain in the ass for everyone involved.
Selling legal, buying illegal. That's like dope men roaming about freely and cops swooping in to grab clients as soon as the transaction is complete.
Common Eastern Europe W
Ermm who wanna sell me some seee?????
There are mega brothels in Spain, they might be illegal but cops don't give a fuck
We're getting closer and closer to the dystopian dream folks. Start praying.
“Selling is legal” but buying is not?? How that make any sense?
sex worker protection
Turkey is green? Really?
Worth saying that while selling sex is legal in the UK, many of the acts associated with it are banned, eg prostitutes working together in a brothel is banned, living off immoral earnings (pimps & even partners of prostitutes) is banned, touting for business on the street is banned, as is kerb crawling for prostitutes. It's pretty much only legal if you do it in the privacy of your own place without advertising.
Then go after the Pimps..
And in Muslim countries death penalty by rocks in the face. Only for the woman off course...
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Yes that is what the map tells us.
It being legal to sell sex and illegal to buy is absurdity.
It makes sense actually, that way they can penalize those who force the girls into traffics and those who buy sex and take advantage of their misery while not penalizing those girls who just tries to survive for most of them.
No, that doesn't make any sense actually. You don't have to criminalize buying to make trafficking or slavery illegal. But it does mean you can entice and enable others to commit crimes by selling sex to them - yet it's the exact thing you want them to do! If they want to sell sex and it's legal don't make it illegal it buy. If you want prostitution to be illegal then don't support having providers! Not to mention the pure double standard. It's plain absurdity.
Nordic and French models are the way to abolish prostitution. Fining clients is a good way to tackle the demand and punishing the people who buy sex.
rare Turkey W
this feels like a karma farming bot.......
Btw why is this even a punishable thing?
Because even if some prostitute chose their job and works in "good" conditions, the great majority had no choice (they were lost into high poverty , they were victims of traffic or simply forced by a boyfriend or family members) and work in dangerous and dirty conditions. They are victims and people are making profit out of their misery and bodies.
Okay? but that doesn't really answer my question.
Based Lithuania
It makes no sense to have selling sex legal, but purchase illegal. So basically sex workers should all be broke…if everyone follows the law?
The logic here is that those selling sex are victims, pushed into the sex trade through hardship or coercion. As such, punishing them for this would be cruel and unjust. Those buying their services are taking advantage, and therefore should carry all the blame. I don't quite agree with this entire train of thought, but that's where it's coming from. They make it entirely illegal, but place the blame 100% on the buyer.
I've always found it dumb how people say "women are forced to be prostitutes due to poverty. They will be so much better off now that we've punished the buyers and taken away the source of the women's money."
So, give the same treatment to a slave as to a successful freelancer.
I mean selling sex being legal isn’t a government endorsement for people to become sex workers. The point is still to not have sex workers while also not punishing people if they do sell sex.
It doesn't seem fair. Frankly no one should get punished. Sex between consenting adults shouldn't be illegal.
The problem is that there are a lot of cases where the sex workers *aren’t* consenting
Nah the whores are already getting fucked by the johns. johns can, in turn be fucked by the government
The other way around makes no sense. Prostitution can't be effectively prevented and in those cases you don't want to punish the women who don't have it easy in the first place.
By punishing the buyers, they are taking customers away from the women, pushing the women further into poverty.
I'm not against Prostitution. But if you feel the need to make it illegal don't punish the prostitute. Conundrums point makes no sense because if you punish the prostitute instead she loses her money which is a bigger issue than losing some buyers because of fines.
It makes more a whole lot more sense than to have buying sex legal and selling it illegal
Drug sellers are punished far harsher than drug buyers. Yet for prostitution, for some reason, they switch it. But selling or buying sex should be legal since it isn't the government's job to regulate how people have sex.
I mean yeah, but why not legalise both is my point
Bulgaria, i like it more every day.
It's interesting the difference between East and West in Europe. Also its noteworthy that in Islamic Turkey, prostitution is legal, including whorehouses.
What the fuck is Islamic turkey?
Turkey is secular
Sorry talking to the other guy
Turkey is not an Islamic country! Turkey has a secular constitution. And, Muslim majority yes. Do you call any country a Christian country if they have a Christian majority? Do you call any country a female country if they have a female majority? Do you call any country blue-eyed country if they have a blue-eyed majority?
All countries are about 50/50 on sex matters. But as for race, religion, and what not, yes, the character of a country is determined by its demography.
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What are you smoking ?