In defence of the Nordic Model

Because the first state to enact the Nordic Model as an approach to prostitution was Sweden, debates about that law are sometimes tied to a discourse of Sweden as a purported “moral super power”. While making none of the latter chauvinist claims, northern Swedish lawyer David Munck and Stockholm law student Martyna Lechowska still defend what’s also called “Sex Buyer Law”. They see a prospect for generational change rather than national boast, and published this article in Stockholm law students’ magazine iusbäraren. Here it is translated and adapted for English-speaking readers, dedicated to the struggle in their countries.

In 1999, Sweden pioneered implementing a nationwide law which criminalizes buyers, but not sellers, of prostitution. Norway and Iceland were first to follow suit; hence the term “Nordic model”. Similar laws have followed in Canada, Northern Ireland, France, Republic of Ireland and, most recently, Israel.

Thus, in Swedish law it is a crime to buy sex. The possible penalty is a fine or up to one year in prison, provided it does not include a graver crime. The latter prospect of harsher punishment was a point made in summer 2020 when famous ex-boxer and restaurant entrepreneur Paolo Roberto, after caught buying sex, said in TV that she was “presumably brought there by force”. After his self-damning confession, lawyer Ingela Hessius commented it might be rape by negligence. Such a charge, which is rape of lower degree than intentional rape but still rape if found guilty, was ultimately not made against Mr. Roberto.

In practice, a convicted punter with no additional charge will merely be fined, and this has some benefits. Police and judiciary are to investigate whether trafficking has occurred but not interrogate every buyer. According to Dennis Martinsson, a Stockholm JD and researcher of penal law, what deters the most is the risk of getting caught. When it happens, the punter can choose to confess on-site and be spared a hearing. Most often they do so, as did Mr. Roberto and nine others caught in the same pinch. After that incident, Swedish government raised the issue of tightening up the law and making prison the regular punishment for future cases. However, no such change was made.

The law is based on knowledge dating back to the public report “Prostitution in Sweden”, which was published in 1981. Women in prostitution were interviewed and spoke of physical and mental harm. They told of estrangement from family, friends and wider society, combined with high exposure to violence and drugs. It was assessed they needed exit help, not additional penance. The presumptive buyer can more easily choose to refrain from doing it. Prohibition was meant to deter and to cultivate a norm. There was also an aim to get at criminality often related to prostitution, such as human trafficking.

Nine years after the law’s enactment, its effects were examined by Gothenburg social work professor Jari Kuosmanen who posed questions to 2500 randomly chosen residents in Sweden. Just over 1100 responded, among which 7.6 % of male respondents and only one female said they had ever bought sex. In a 1996 enquiry by professor Sven-Axel Månsson, 13 % of males had answered yes to the same question. Despite non-response bias and other possible error sources, some change in Swedish behaviour can be concluded.

In a 2011 Linköping study, professor Carl Göran Svedin and associate professor Gisela Priebe did an internet survey where 9999 were asked and 5071 responded. From male respondents, the rate of yes-replies to the question of having bought sex was 10.2 percent (thus a little higher than in the Gothenburg study). Even here, women were a negligible part of the yes-responders. Disaggregated on the basis of age instead of sex, the yes-responders were 0.9 % among the cohort 18–24, 2.4 % among 25–34, 4.9 % among 35–49 and 7.3 % among 50–65. These numbers indicate that among Swedes coming of age in this millennium when the Sex Buyer Law exists, very few did buy sex. Even considering that older people have had more time and more money to buy sex, a generational shift is shown. We do not know if this will last. We know that the once idealized general image of Sweden is jarred by now, possibly forever. Yet we find the Linköping study’s results to be hopeful.

Some EU-countries took the opposite road. Already in 2004 Job Cohen, then mayor of Amsterdam, saw that the aimed sexual entrepreneurship was supplanted by big crime organisations involved in trafficking and drug trade. Germany’s model is evaluated by Manuela Schon in Feminist Current (May, 2016). Among up to one million sex sellers, only a marginal number has registered for tax and social benefits. Hells Angels control red-light districts in Hamburg and Frankfurt. It’s become normal that young men celebrate high school graduation at a brothel, and no big deal that 16-year-old boys buy sex. The opening of brothel “Pussy Club” in Stuttgart, where more than a thousand men were queuing, got headlines in Der Spiegel. At closing time, many women had collapsed from exhaustion, pain, injuries and infections.

Between the German model and the Nordic one there are various degrees of decriminalization, such as in Britain. It means pimps are not legally registered employers, but the state leaves buyers and sellers alone. That is said to respect the sellers’ choice. But what respect are they granted from the buying men? According to a US study (Melissa Farley et al, 2004), interviewing 854 prostitutes in nine countries where no Nordic Model reigned, 71 % had been victims of physical violence by punters and 63 % forced to do sexual acts not included in transaction. Asked whether they would stop selling sex if they saw a way out, no less than 89 % said yes, and 68 % met the criteria for PTSD.

How the buyers regard women can also be seen in customer reviews. In the report MYTH: Punters respect the women they buy, the UK organisation Nordic Model Now has compiled what’s being said on the site Punternet. Two examples might suffice. 1. “Common as fuck, gum-chewing Hungarian whore… Transpired that she had been fucked silly all afternoon and here was I… expecting some type of GFE [girlfriend experience]. So I fucked her as hard as I could in doggy, got a few yelps out of her, but she was well used to it.”. 2. “She started to bleed really badly and covered my towel, bedsheets, pillows etc with blood. Absolutely disgusting… she apologised and said she did not expect this to happen as her period is not due for ages. I gave her the toilet roll and she was using the roll to try and stem her bleeding. It was a sickening experience I would rather forget.”

It is easy to find similar content in Swedish, for example threads on the site Flashback speculating which country will replace Thailand as a “sex paradise”. That some buy abroad what is forbidden at home, can be used as an argument either for or against the Nordic Model. The Guardian (2/3 2019) reports from Angeles City in the Philippines, which is home to many single mothers who were impregnated by sex tourists. Their children are coming of age and seeking their origins. Two fatherless 18-year-old twin girls are interviewed. “Does he ever think about us and consider us as his children?” one of them asks. “Why doesn’t he even try to contact us? We are longing to have a father, to see him and know what’s going on with him.”

Sex trade occurs in different social strata. Sometimes it is literal slavery, as documented by Russian-Swedish author Vera Efron in the book Såld (“Sold”). Natasja, who tells the story, encountered a moral stature from the lonely punter Leif. The men who held her captive displayed contempt also for him. He began to regard Natasja as a human being and helped the police to bust the Stockholm brothel.

In the detailed and very moving book You’ll never make love in this town again, three Hollywood ex-callgirls show how prostitutes get hurt in luxury settings. The buyers have the means to dictate the scenes and live out all their fetishes. Liza Greer describes how she lived in a haze of drugs ever since the debut when abused by a couple: “As soon as the acid hit me, the two of them tried to rape me. She held me down while he tried to enter me. I started kicking and screaming for them to stop. I was also hallucinating from the acid, and the man’s cock looked like a huge snake.” She is thankful for having survived where so many women succumbed, and tries to forgive herself for all the things she let the men do to her body.

Justice minister Morgan Johansson (social democrat) says the goal is that there shall be no sex trade in Sweden. This seems impossible in our lifetime if we don’t want draconian surveillance. But is it all or nothing?

After Covid-19, many young adults in Sweden are unemployed and live with material conditions far below what counts as a successful life. This can make selling sex an alluring option, albeit one which many will come to regret later in their lives. The Nordic Model restricting the demand will likely decrease the number of new recruits to prostitution in Sweden. That’s as good as it can get through legislation. Behaviours and attitudes take generations to change. But we should never stop asking which view of man and woman we desire and how we may possibly achieve it.

David Munck
Martyna Lechowska