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Looking at the map of countries that legalized prostitution one can see a paradox - Sweden seems to be one of the harsher countries in Europe, even though they're leading the world in terms of overall liberalism. Why is this the case? Is there something in Swedish culture that strongly disapproves of "sinful" entertainment?

Golden Cuy
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JonathanReez
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    Comments deleted. Whether or not prostitution should be legal and how it affects human trafficing (just one sub-aspect of many) is not the subject of this question. An answer to this question should be mostly about the arguments proponents of the prostitution ban in Sweden used to justify the law. – Philipp Dec 25 '17 at 20:43
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    I don't understand why you named the link to the social progress index to "overall liberalism". There is not a single mention of liberalism in that wikipedia page. – Alex Dec 25 '17 at 21:14
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    Also the notion of liberalism is probably different in the US than in other parts of the world. – jjack Dec 25 '17 at 22:01
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    The question's presupposition that progressiveness and the legalization of prostitution go hand in hand is unfounded, to put it mildly. As a result, answers will be oblique. Questions are better formed when they avoid making such presuppositions and simply ask "Why?" – Luke Sawczak Dec 26 '17 at 17:58

3 Answers3

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There are of course general concerns regarding prostitution, like trafficking and bad social implications, different countries has reached different conclusions here.

The thing with Sweden is that we have a strong culture, at least in regards of media, to search for injustices and oppression. Strongly connected to this is the common view that women in general are victims of male privilege and oppression, where for example phenomena like the #metoo campaign gain huge traction and is on the front page of news papers for months.

In this context, the idea that women can be seen as a sexual commodity to be bought by men is often seen as a preposterous. The gender factor in regards of prostitution is also a contributing factor to why it is illegal to buy but not to sell sex in Sweden: Male buyers are seen as taking advantage of vulnerable and distressed women, while female prostitutes are seen as victims of male privilege and oppression.

Simply put, prostitution is strongly looked down upon in Sweden specifically because we have strong feminist movements (in different flavors and types) while prostitution is seen as both symptomatic and reinforcing of a structural male oppression and sexualization of women.

Alex
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    This argument is invalid because male prostitution in Sweden is also illegal for the buyer. –  Dec 26 '17 at 13:40
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    @DraifKroneg Yes, but due to the nature of us humans, the buyer is almost always male and the seller is most often female. I wouldn't expect the lawmakers to think that the nuance here would motivate a law that explicitly makes a difference based on gender. Laws that make something illegal or not depending on what gender you belong to are difficult in many aspects. – Alex Dec 26 '17 at 14:50
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    The main flaw in this logic is the presumption that once something is made illegal, it won't exist. Prostitution will always exist because there are always woman who want to do it and there are always man who want to buy. By making it illegal you only promote organized crime. Legalization would bring benefits to both state and prostitutes (e.g. health care, HIV prevention). The main argument against this is tradition and morality. – Sulthan Dec 26 '17 at 19:15
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    The same argumentation can be seen with the drug use, which is illegal in most countries but the main result is the existence of drug gangs. Compare with countries that made drug use legal. – Sulthan Dec 26 '17 at 19:17
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    I believe it's important to emphasise that Sweden punishes the solicitor, not the sex-worker. In many other countries where prostitution is unlawful, the sex-worker or both are prosecuted, which is a different attitude. This would clear the confusion of the OP's question IMO – PeteW Dec 26 '17 at 20:18
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    @Sulthan That might be the case, and I want to make it clear that I'm only trying to explain how the issue is perceived in Sweden. It's not nesessarily my own personal opinion. – Alex Dec 26 '17 at 21:25
  • @Sulthan You're confusing this with the influence on the market situation. Regulation will have a strong influence on supply or demand or both. – jjack Dec 26 '17 at 22:27
  • @jjack That's where you are mistaken. Studies (for both prostitution or drug use) have shown that regulation does not really affect them. Even when prostitution is illegal, it is usually tolerated. – Sulthan Dec 26 '17 at 22:41
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    @Sulthan You'll be another one claiming "studies" and then not providing them. – jjack Dec 26 '17 at 22:42
  • Are you guys talking about prohibition (as practiced in Sweden) or regulation (as practiced in most EU countries)? – janh Dec 27 '17 at 14:52
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The Wikipedia article Feminist views on prostitution summarizes the position of those who are opposed to prostitution as follows:

Anti-prostitution feminists hold that prostitution is a form of exploitation of women and male dominance over women, and a practice which is the result of the existing patriarchal societal order. These feminists argue that prostitution has a very negative effect, both on the prostitutes themselves and on society as a whole, as it reinforces stereotypical views about women, who are seen as sex objects which can be used and abused by men.

(Other views exist, too – see the article for more details. Furthermore, there are of course positions on prostitution that are not feminist in nature.)

It is this view, of prostitution being harmful to prostitutes and to society as a whole, that dominates in Swedish politics. Accordingly, paying for sexual acts (Swedish sexköp) is considered behaviour comparable to assault and is therefore banned. (Note that offering sexual acts for payment is not a crime.) It is no matter of liberalism, because there is no right to harm others.

chirlu
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The core problem with legalizing prostitution is that in countries like Germany that have legalized prostition a significant portion of the prostitutes are still victims of human trafficing. The German newspaper Spiegel describes the situation:

According to various studies, including one by the European Network for HIV/STI Prevention and Health Promotion among Migrant Sex Workers (TAMPEP), 65 to 80 percent of the girls and women come from abroad [to Germany]. Most are from Romania and Bulgaria.

[...]

Axel Dreher, a professor of international and development politics at the University of Heidelberg, has attempted to answer these questions, using data from 150 countries. The numbers were imprecise, as are all statistics relating to trafficking and prostitution, but he was able to identify a trend: Where prostitution is legal, there is more human trafficking than elsewhere.

[...]

The Netherlands chose the path of legal deregulation two years before Germany. Both the Dutch justice minister and the police concede that there have been no palpable improvements for prostitutes since then. They are generally in poorer health than before, and increasing numbers are addicted to drugs. The police estimate that 50 to 90 percent of prostitutes do not practice the profession voluntarily.

Similar observations that a significant amount of the prostitutes in Sweden get mistreated led Sweden to forbid prostitution again in 1999 after having allowed it before 1999.

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Christian
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    Human trafficking has always been an issue in Germany, before legalization and after. What seems (at least has a stronger correlation to my untrained eye) to strongly have increased human trafficking cases is the addition of Romania and Bulgaria to the EU, not the legalization, which made the trafficking easier, see stats for Germany: https://imgur.com/a/wz4Cl – janh Dec 27 '17 at 14:45
  • @janh : The stats you cite show how many cases the police could go after. Legalization made it a lot harder to go after human trafficking for the police because trafficking is a lot harder to prove than prostitution. – Christian Dec 27 '17 at 15:24
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    note that these are not indictments, but cases worked by the police: they don't require any proof, only reasonable suspicion (mostly: somebody to report it). There is, to my knowledge, no data available on how many of these went to trial and how many of those ended with a guilty verdict. Also note that you had to prove trafficking before legalization as well, so legalization didn't really change anything on that front. – janh Dec 27 '17 at 15:36
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    Out of interest, I looked at other Western European countries. The Netherlands legalized p. in 2000 and saw little to no increase in trafficking until the EU expansion starting in 2004 with strong increases after 2007 (source page 92). Denmark hadn't criminalized prostitution, so you'd expect no changes in human trafficking. Alas, the same pattern as in Germany and the Netherlands arises: strong increase since 2007 – janh Dec 27 '17 at 17:03
  • I could not find any statistics from Sweden, but I found a talk by a swedish official tasked with reporting on h.t. from 2009, who said that human trafficking has been virtually unknown pre 2000 (prohibition on prostition started in 1999), but has become a significant problem since with hundreds of victims in 2007 alone. – janh Dec 27 '17 at 17:26
  • What could "no increase in trafficking noticed after legalization, only after EU expansion" mean? Open borders help in human trafficking. The preexpansion EU was more homogenous than it is now. Until the east joined, no one felt the need to look into it? What else? – jjack Dec 27 '17 at 22:50
  • @janh : It's quite easy to witness the necessary evidence to report prostitution but harder to witness the evidence to report trafficking. When the policy takes apart a brothel because it's illegal and imprison the owners they can get all the books and use the evidence contained in them for trafficking cases. They can also give people guilty of facilitating prostitution plea deals for providing evidence that other people in the organisation engaged in trafficking. – Christian Dec 27 '17 at 23:17
  • @Christian That's pure speculation and does not at all explain that human trafficking was rising regardless of prostituion legal status in Northern/Western Europe. The EU expansion is much more plausible as a cause, and consistent with the data. – janh Dec 28 '17 at 00:06
  • @jjack: I think you're on the right track. It's probably about the height of the income differences and the ease of access. Prohibition status seems not to be a deciding factor. – janh Dec 28 '17 at 00:10
  • @janh I think prohibition is a deciding factor, because it changes the market for prostitution. No prohibition means more demand and trafficking to meet this increased demand. And legalization was already present when the eastern European countries were allowed to join. So there is no comparison of trafficking with the eastern countries present and prostitution being illegal. – jjack Dec 28 '17 at 02:30
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    @jjack It was not legal in Sweden when the EU expanded, yet they saw the same increase. I understand your reasoning, but the data does not support it. It's not possible to deduct causation from statistics, obviously, but at least we can see the lack of a strong relationship between legalization and human trafficking in NW Europe. This might be different for other parts of the world, though. – janh Dec 28 '17 at 02:44
  • @janh Absolute numbers might not say much here. There could be a leverage effect for countries in which prostitution is legal. – jjack Dec 28 '17 at 03:08
  • What also bothers me is that there seems to be little overlap in time for the data cited in the paper you found. It could just have been a dynamic effect. And does Sweden really enforce the prohibition on the demand side? There are laws and "laws". – jjack Dec 28 '17 at 03:13
  • Yeah, that's all hard to answer, and it might, or might not be, some completely different cause. What I had read in passing was that the prohibition had reduced the number of prostitutes by something like 30% and considered that a success. Since there are lots of factors, there won't be simple answers. I was just interested whether the strong cause and effect is correct, and am quite convinced that it is not. And I lost more trust in the media's quality while looking into it. – janh Dec 28 '17 at 03:33
  • I’ve looked at the Wikipedia entry on the subject, it says that the law works, even having a positive effect on trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Sweden – jjack Dec 28 '17 at 20:06