Denmark on path to adopt Nordic model of prostitution

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Denmark on path to adopt Nordic model of prostitution

Postby sam » Sat May 07, 2011 9:23 pm

Another nation takes another step towards women's liberation.

The Social Democrats and the Socialist People’s Party – considered the frontrunners for this year’s election – want to adopt a Swedish-style law criminalising the purchase of sex.


Sex trafficking problem in “the brothel of Scandinavia”
Thursday, 21 April 2011 06:00 Jennifer Buley News
http://www.cphpost .dk/component/content/51474.html?task=view

High tolerance and soft laws on buying sex create easy market for human traffickers in Denmark

In Sweden, if you buy sex from another person, you’re branded a “loser”. In Denmark, you’re just a regular, cool guy.

A recent CNN report, which labelled Denmark the “Brothel of Scandinavia”, compared Swedish and Danish laws regarding prostitution and their relative effects on public attitudes, demand, and sex trafficking.

The report’s conclusion was that Denmark’s tolerance of buying sex had created an easy, high-profit market for pimps and human traffickers.

In Denmark, it is legal to sell or buy sex, as long as both the prostitute and client are over 18, and the prostitute is not being coerced or pimped. By contrast, while selling sex is legal in Sweden, buying it is not.

Though the Swedish law may sound hypocritical, Swedish authorities say it works because it does not punish the prostitutes – who are considered victims of circumstance, if not exploitation – while it succeeds in discouraging the demand for prostitutes.

People caught buying sex in Sweden receive an expensive fine and an embarrassing public notice delivered to their home. Authorities say the criminalisation of the customers – not to mention public humiliation – has had a normative effect.

“You’re a loser if you buy sex in Sweden,” Lise Tamm, a Swedish prosecutor who specialises in organised crime, told CNN.

Sweden’s justice minister Beatrice Ask said the law’s high consequences for customers has the much more important effect of decreasing demand for prostitutes and with it the number of sex traffickers.

In contrast, Denmark’s lack of stigma or punitive measures for people – men, in nearly all cases – who buy sex has resulted in widely visible street prostitution, some 500-700 brothels, and a growing problem with sex trafficking, according to the National Police’s own statistics.

Trine Møller Andersen, who leads the Copenhagen police’s anti-human trafficking effort, said that on any given day 1,200-1,400 prostitutes are working in Denmark. But she does not see sex tourism as a problem. “Apart from the occasional Swede who comes over the bridge to buy sex, the vast majority of the customers are Danish men,” she told The Copenhagen Post.

In other words, sex traffickers in Denmark build their business on the demand – and open attitudes – of Danish men.

According to a recent study from Servicestyrelsen, a division of the Social Ministry, some 24 percent of young Danish men between the ages of 15-19 would consider buying sex, while some 35 percent see nothing wrong with a girl giving oral sex in exchange for money or gifts, according to metroXpress newspaper.

A 2008 campaign by Servicestyrelsen aimed at educating young men about the exploitation of prostitutes appeared in fact to back-fire and resulted in more young men going to brothels.

One 19-year-old interviewed by Servicestyrelsen described his first visit to a brothel as “just like calling and ordering a pizza”.

“Many young men still have the perception that it is legitimate to buy sex,” Kenneth Reinicke, a men’s researcher from Roskilde University, told metroXpress. “They back themselves up with the fact that it is legal, and they don’t see the misery behind the smiling and welcoming prostitutes. If it is illegal, it will force them to think about how legitimate it is to buy another person’s body.”

The Social Democrats and the Socialist People’s Party – considered the frontrunners for this year’s election – want to adopt a Swedish-style law criminalising the purchase of sex.

A range of therapies and social services to help women to leave prostitution would accompany the change of law if the parties come to power and get their way.

But some prostitutes themselves counter that the criminalisation of clients is a “terrible idea” that will only push sex traffickers, and their victims, further underground.

‘Jackie-1’, who has worked as an independent street prostitute in Denmark for more than 22 years, wrote on http://www.sexarbejde.dk, a website by and for Danish prostitutes: “It is certainly because they want to help the foreign women who are being forced to work. But criminalisation won’t help them either – they will just be pulled off the streets and put down in a dark cellar instead.”
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
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Re: Denmark on path to adopt Nordic model of prostitution

Postby MGO » Sun May 08, 2011 1:30 am

:thumbright:

I can't help but think, that due to Sweden's stance, that it has made the problem more visible in Denmark, particularly as far as trafficking.
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