This open letter, supported by 128 organisations from 27 countries and 630 individuals from 26 countries, calls on the Scottish Ministers and MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) to support Ash Regan’s ‘Unbuyable’ Bill, which, if passed, would bring the Nordic Model to Scotland. The letter provides much needed context to the polarisation of opinion on this issue.

Dear Ministers and MSPs

Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill

It is well known that women who are trapped in a violent and abusive relationship are often reluctant to explain the reality of their situation to others. Intuitively she knows that leaving would put her life in jeopardy as abusive men are most likely to kill or maim their partners when they are leaving or planning to leave. She rightly assesses that the best odds for herself and her children are to stay and try to appease him. To do that and not completely break down, she has to convince herself that she is OK and in control of the situation. She is unlikely to tell anyone the truth of what is happening, apart from perhaps a very close friend.

Should she manage to get away and find a place of safety for herself and her children, she might look back and see that her situation was unbearable and she is more likely to then start telling the truth about what she went through. People used to ask why she didn’t say anything at the time and suggest she must now be making it up or exaggerating how bad it was. Happily, thanks to the women’s movement, there is now a much better understanding of the practical and psychological processes involved.

Unfortunately, there is much less understanding that parallel processes apply to women involved in prostitution: how they can be trapped by a web of forces it can be even harder to escape. Forces like: poverty and a lack of alternative options; drug addiction (often developed to survive the reality of enduring sex with multiple male strangers every day, many of whom might be unattractive, have poor hygiene, or be cruel and believe they have the right to do whatever they want to her); the mainstream propaganda that “sex work” is a normal job making her feel that there is something wrong with her if she isn’t successful in it; her entire social life revolving around the sex industry milieu so that leaving would involve cutting herself off from her entire social network; direct or indirect coercion or even outright violence from a pimp (who might be her intimate partner) or other third parties profiting from her prostitution; and the shame that this is what her life has become and is all she is worth.

This is why there is often such a discrepancy between what women who are currently involved in prostitution say and those who have safely exited and rebuilt their lives outside the industry. When they are trapped inside it and can see no alternative, of course they will only ask for are small changes that they believe might improve their situation. Many cannot envisage any other life for themselves, so why would they ask for something that aims to shut down the industry completely? When they depend on men paying to use them sexually, how are they going to ask for those same men to be subject to criminal sanctions?

But if you ask those same women what they think ten years after they have successfully escaped, they are likely to answer very differently. They are then more likely to look back and see how devastating were the hours and days and weeks and months and years being subjected to random men’s sexual demands and groping and the continual need to massage their egos or risk their fury. With every fibre of their being they don’t want their own daughters or nieces to have to endure that and they wonder what was gained by it. Yes, it put food on the table, but at the price of her soul and increasing men’s unfair advantages and sense of entitlement. Why should men have the “right” to do that to women, women who mostly have no choice but to submit? And if she hears about the Nordic Model and has the independence of mind to see through all the scare stories about it making prostitution less safe and driving it underground, she is likely to say, YES! That is exactly what we need! We need to change men’s behaviour and we need to provide women with better options, so that prostitution is not the only way that they can survive.

Claims that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for women and that it drives prostitution underground are just that, scare stories. But, you may be thinking, Amnesty International and the World Health Organisation (WHO) repeat them and you’ve heard that research backs these claims, so surely they must be true?

It is instructive to understand how Amnesty came to its position of rejecting the Nordic Model and supporting the full decriminalisation of prostitution, including of pimps, brothel keepers and sex buyers. The issue was first raised at the Amnesty UK AGM in Nottingham in 2008, when the Newcastle branch brought a motion calling for full decriminalisation. The motion was the brainchild of Douglas Fox, then a member of the Newcastle branch and founder and business partner of Christony Companions, which at the time was one of the UK’s largest escort agencies. In other words, he was a pimp who had a powerful vested financial interest in the decriminalisation of pimping.

He encouraged his sex trade associates to join Amnesty to lobby for the adoption of the policy from within, and he argued for pimps – third parties like himself who profit from other people’s prostitution – to be redefined as ‘managers’ and ‘organisers’ of ‘sex work’ who should therefore be classed as ‘sex workers’. Such mental gymnastics made it possible for Amnesty to claim erroneously that decriminalising pimping was in line with international law, when in fact several international treaties place a binding obligation on ratifying states to fight pimping.

Clearly Fox’s strategy was effective in convincing the Amnesty leaders, because leaked minutes of a 2013 meeting of its International Secretariat showed it was determined to lobby for full decriminalisation even though it had not yet conducted any research or consulted with members. They did subsequently run a consultation and conduct research in four countries, but these had serious limitations – including that they didn’t do any research in a country, like New Zealand, that had implemented the kind of system they were advocating for. To our knowledge, they have still not done so, more than a decade since the policy was formally adopted.

During its policy development, Amnesty, like the WHO and UNAIDS, was also advised by the Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) under the leadership of Alejandra Gil, who has since been jailed for 15 years for sex trafficking. This is not unlike a tobacco industry mogul advising on smoking policy.

This illustrates the power of those with vested interests in the sex trade and how they use all means to lobby for their financial objectives, regardless of the harm they cause to myriad women and girls and to society as a whole, just like the alcohol and asbestos industries did before them.

The vested interests in the success and expansion of the sexual exploitation industry are not just limited to those who profit directly. There are many other individuals and businesses underpinning it, like the banking and IT industries, taxi drivers, security guards, receptionists, the NGOs who get grants to undertake HIV and “harm prevention” work, the “Belle de Jour” types who carve out a niche for themselves glamorising the reality, the academics and researchers who produce the studies that insist, against all evidence, that prostitution is a form of female empowerment and that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for the women involved. Not to forget the governments who enjoy the tax revenues and increased GDP, and the way that prostitution’s role as last ditch option for destitute women absolves them of providing adequate measures to lift the women and their children out of poverty.

And then there are men. We know that not all men are punters. But all men know that prostitution is available to them any time they need their ego building up, or someone to offload their frustration on. And at some level they know that prostitution shores up the inequality between men and women, from which they derive such benefit – just like the prevalence of rape and sexual harassment does.

Universities and research bodies in the UK are now dominated by the “sex work is real work” ideology and vehement opposition to the Nordic Model. Students and academics report difficulty in getting approval and/or funding for research that takes a neutral or opposite approach. We suspect that this is also true in many other countries. The number of highly publicised research studies that conclude that the Nordic Model approach is a failure and full decriminalisation a success would tend to back this up. Many, if not most, of these studies are of poor quality and often the study data does not back up the headline claims – but they are used repeatedly to justify fully decriminalising the industry and to claim that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for the women directly concerned.

For example, the 2018 Medecins du Monde study into the results of the introduction of the Nordic Model in France makes many alarmist claims that are in fact contradicted by the data. The 2019 report commissioned by the Department of Justice into the Nordic Model in Northern Ireland claims that the Nordic Model doesn’t work and is responsible for increased violence but again it does not stand up to scrutiny. A 2016 study by Amnesty International into the operation of the Nordic Model in Norway is frequently cited to prove that the Nordic Model is a failure. Our review of this study shows that the research was biased and of poor quality, and that there is no justification for using it to claim that the Nordic Model doesn’t work or that it endangers women in prostitution. The modelling studies on which the WHO and UNAIDS claims that decriminalising prostitution reduces HIV transmission are also fatally flawed. Niina Vuolajärvi’s study published by the LSE that promotes full decriminalisation and undermines the Nordic Model has been shown to be limited in a number of ways including that it is based in large part on assumptions, rather than observed outcomes.

We recognise that all of the above makes it incredibly difficult for you as legislators to know who to listen to and which of the conflicting positions to support. We would urge you to go back to basics. To remember what prostitution really is. Andrea Dworkin, who was herself in prostitution, described it like this:

“I want to bring us back to basics. Prostitution: what is it? It is the use of a woman’s body for sex by a man, he pays money, he does what he wants. The minute you move away from what it really is, you move away from prostitution into the world of ideas. You will feel better; you will have a better time; it is more fun; there is plenty to discuss, but you will be discussing ideas, not prostitution. Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one man and then another and then another and then another and then another. That’s what it is.”

The Scottish Government rightly considers prostitution to be a form of violence against women. This begs the question of whether we should give men a free pass to continue this brutal and brutalising behaviour? Do we want our collective children to grow up in a world where this is considered a normal job? Where men’s de facto right to treat women in this way is enshrined in law? Or do you want the law to make it completely clear that this behaviour will not be tolerated in Scotland and to make practical provision so that no woman will be trapped in such a situation?

If so, then please support Ash Regan’s Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill with all your might.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely

Nordic Model Now! and the following organisations and individuals.

Organisations

Organisation, international

• Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
• European Center of the International Council of Women (ECICW) 
• European Network of Migrant Women (ENOMW)
• European Women’s Lobby
• International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (ICASM)
• International Alliance of Women (IAW). IAW has global ECOSOC status. This draft law is better than many since on page 38 it suggests a programme funded by the government on support for prostitutes to exit this sector and this from beginning the law will go into force is absolutely necessary everywhere. Women in prostitution must get assistance in all health services, to find new job and income, to be safe and not be punished too.
• Red Light Exposé. We are a grassroots circle of seven sexual exploitation survivors and two allies raising awareness.
• SPACE International.
• WWAFE (Women Worldwide Advancing Freedom & Equality)

Organisations, Scotland

• A Model for Scotland
• Alloa Women
• CPG for Commercial Sexual Exploitation. The Cross Party Group for Sexual Exploitation in the Scottish Parliament represents 80 organisations and individuals, and 5 MSPs across Scotland fighting to end prostitution.
• For Women Scotland
• Glasgow Tactical Feminists
• Lanarkshire Rape Crisis Centre
• Scottish Feminist Network
• Scottish Women’s Convention
• The Reward Foundation. The Nordic Model is the best solution to help women trapped in prostitution in Scotland.
• Women Won’t Wheesht
• Women’s Alliance Scotland. We are a cross section of Women from Scottish society. Abuse of women is criminal. Prostitution is not a career path and anything other than the “Unbuyable” approach is tantamount to legitimising criminality towards women and offering approval. This would be wholly unacceptable and unpalatable to women and parents of girls vulnerable to the dark side of our society through social media, the glamorisation of porn and ultimately organised crime. Men abusing women for pleasure should not be without consequences in a progressive 21st century society. Support the bill please.

Organisations, United Kingdom

• CAAGe, the Campaign Against Adult Grooming
• CEASE UK
• Diane Wills Therapist, Consultant & Coach Ltd.
• Fantastic Lesbians
• FiLiA. From our work with survivors, it’s clear that most women were there because of poverty, abuse, addiction, coercion, or a lack of safer options. It was not choice; it was a lack of choice and a matter of survival,
• FiLiA Hague Mothers   
• GetTheLOut
• Gloucestershire Women’s Liberation Collective (GlosWomen)
• Kairos Women Working Together
• Kim Sturgeon Counselling & Psychotherapy
• Labour Women’s Declaration. We would applaud Scotland taking action to protect vulnerable women exploited in the sex industry. We hope you have the courage to proceed with the bill, and then hopefully Westminster might follow.
• Lesbian Labour
• Lesbian Strength
• Male Allies Challenging Sexism (MACS)
• Manchester Feminist Network
• Men At Work
• Not Buying It
• Open Minds Drug & Alcohol Rehab
• Stop Surrogacy Now UK
• STREETLIGHTUK
• Twelve0FiveUK
• WOMEN’S LIBERATION ALLIANCE
• Women’s Voices Matter
• You My Sister. We work with survivors – they represent the 90% desperate to escape prostitution. We see first-hand the devastation of this so-called work – even for those ‘lucky’ few who were independent and never had a violent buyer. Look at who supports it as ‘work’ and the false information and research that is being used to justify decriminalising punters and pimps and totally deregulating the sex trade. End this horrific industry now.

Organisations, Other European countries

• KAVOD (Austria)
• isala asbl (Belgium)
• Le Monde selon les femmes asbl (Belgium)
• Bulgarian Platform – European Women’s Lobby (Bulgaria)
• Coordination of Women’s Groups SEKA (Croatia)
• Women’s Network Croatia (Croatia)
• Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (Cyprus)
• Association of Women of Southern Europe AFEM (France)
• CAP International (France)
• CQFD Lesbiennes feminists (France)
• Fondation Scelles (France)
• LIBRES MARIANNES (France)
• Ligue du Droit International des Femmes (France)
• Réseau Féministe “Ruptures” (France)
• REGARDS DE FEMMES (France)
• Bundesverband Nordisches Modell (Germany)
• Netzwerk Ella – Independent advocacy organisation of women from prostitution
• Netzwerk Frauenrechte e.V. (Germany)
• SISTERS – For the exit from prostitution! e.V. (registered association). The widespread legalization of prostitution and, with it, those who profit from this industry—brothel operators, pimps, and sex buyers—has expanded the market in Germany. Young, vulnerable women from Eastern Europe in particular, but also from Third World countries, are trafficked and exploited for prostitution here. Prostitution is violence. Women are not objects to be bought for sexual exploitation. (Germany)
• SOLWODI Deutschland eV (Germany)
• Hungarian Women’s Lobby (Magyar Női Érdekérvényesítő Szövetség) (Hungary)
• Amici di Lazzaro Odv (Italy)
• Associazione Iroko Onlus (Italy)
• Italian Coordination of the European Women’s Lobby (Italy)
• Resistenza Femminista  (Italy)
• Weavers of Hope Aps (Italy)
• YWCA Italia (Italy)
• Lithuanian Women’s Lobby (Lithuania)
• Veda Vidus – VšĮ Klaipėdos socialinės ir psichologinės pagalbos centras (Lithuania)
• Malta Women’s Lobby (Malta)
• Network of East-West Women, NEWW (Poland)
• AFEM (Portugal)
• Associação P de Potência (Portugal)
• EOS – Association for Studies, Cooperation and Development (Portugal)
• Mulher Século XXI (Portugal)
• Associação Mén Non (Portugal)
• Society Kljuc – Centre for fight against trafficking in human beings (Slovenia)
• ASOCIACIÓN LIBERATA (Spain)
• Comisión para la Investigación de Malos Tratos a Mujeres (Spain)
• FEMAB (State Federation of Abolitionist Women) (Spain)
• Frente Abolición Prostitución (Spain)
• Lobby Europeo de Mujeres en España – LEM España (Spain)
• Emargi (Spain)
• Foundation 1000 Opportunities (Sweden)
• The Swedish Women’s Lobby (Sweden)
• Unizon (Sweden)
• Women’s Baltic Peacebuilding Initiative (Sweden)
• Women’s Shelter in Jamtland Sweden (Sweden)
• WoPAI – Women’s Platform for Action International (Sweden)
• End Demand Switzerland. We completely support this open letter as we can observe the exact same in Switzerland: In most cases, only once women have been able to leave the sex industry and have rebuild their lives are they ready to acknowledge the harm it has inflicted on them. (Switzerland)
• Norm182 (Switzerland)
• Stichting Voorzij (The Netherlands)
• WRN Netherlands We as WRN Netherlands fully support the implementation of the Nordic Model approach to prostitution policy and legislation. (The Netherlands)

Organisations, Rest of the world

• Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances (AAWAA) (Australia)
• Equality Model Australia (Australia)
• Feminist Legal Clinic Inc. (Australia)
• FINRRAGE (Australia)
• Women Ending Exploitation by Prostitution Inc (Australia)
• MATRIA – Mulheres Associadas, Mães e Trabalhadoras do Brasil (Brazil)
• Development and Peace Caritas Canada (Canada)
• VCASE (Vancouver Collective Against Sexual Exploitation) (Canada)
• The Beehive (Columbia)
• Apne Aap (India)
• Hope Center (Israel)
• Israeli Gender and Diversity Center (Israel)
• Lo-Omdot Menegged – Assisting women in the cycle of prostitution. (Israel)
• Task forces on human trafficking and prostitution. (Israel)
• Todaa (Israel)
• Turning the Tables (Israel)
• Voices of Israeli Prostitution Survivors (Israel) We have witnessed the shift brought about by the Nordic/abolitionist model in Israel. Sex buyers are more ashamed, sites of prostitution are disappearing from public view, and survivors of prostitution have more support than in the past. It is a long process, but it must begin.
• Jerusalem Institute of Justice (Israel)
• Saleet – The program that helps women in prostitution (Israel)
• People Serving Girls At Risk (Malawi)
• Wahine Toa Rising. Survivor-led organisation. (New Zealand)
• Awareness for Child Trafficking Africa (ACT Africa) (South Africa)
• Alternative Solutions (United States)
• Catherine Tuitt & Co LLP (United States)
• Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited (United States)
• Exodus Cry (United States)
• HDC Ventures (United States)
• Maryland Coalition Against Pornography (United States)
• Sex Trade Survivor Caucus (United States)
• TJP Advocacy (United States)

Individuals

And 630 individuals.

For the full list of signatures, please see the PDF version of the letter.