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What does decriminalising sex work mean?

Infographic explaining what decriminalising sex work means, how it works in practice, what is the alternative and what are the harms involved, along with background information and full references.

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What does decriminalising sex work mean?

‘Decriminalisation of sex work’, also known as ‘decrim’, means the full decriminalisation of the entire prostitution system. In other words, all aspects of the sex trade are decriminalised and selling sex, buying sex, pimping, brothels and advertising prostitution all become legal.

Sometimes supporters of decrim say that pimping does not become legal under decrim. But this is not true. Frankie Mirren, a high-profile supporter of decrim, explains what decrim means like this:

“Decriminalisation involves the removal of all prostitution-specific laws, although sex workers and sex work businesses must still operate within the laws of the land, as must any businesses.”

This makes it clear that pimps (i.e. third parties profiting from prostitution) are decriminalised. The fact that they are renamed “managers” and similar does not alter this fact.

New Zealand is the longest-running example of full decriminalisation. It was introduced in the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 (PRA). If you follow the link and read the Act, you will see that the PRA decriminalises punters (sex buyers), brothel keepers, and pimps.

Decrim normalises and legitimises prostitution and the commodification of (mainly) women and girls. Again, supporters of decrim sometimes say that it is not true that women are commodified in prostitution because prostitution is just a service, like being a massage therapist or a waitress.

But in any other job, you are paid to use your body and mind to do or create something of value, whereas the essence of prostitution is being paid to endure someone, almost always a man, doing things to you. He penetrates your orifices and ejaculates in or on you. He is paying to use you. For the duration, he has bought the use of your body and soul. You have been turned into a commodity for others to use. This is fundamentally different to any other kind of work and is why we reject the “sex work” terminology.

What happens in practice under decrim?

Rapid expansion. When a country decides to decriminalise the sex trade, it sends out the message that paying to use other people sexually and third parties profiting from that are now considered normal, legitimate, and acceptable things to do. This inevitably leads to more men buying sex more frequently and more third parties wanting to cash in on that extra money. This is standard economic theory and research has shown that a rapid expansion occurred in New Zealand after it decriminalised prostitution in 2003.

The corollary of this expansion is that there is a need for more women to fill the brothels. But women who have genuine choices generally don’t choose to go into prostitution. So the pimps use coercion, force, trickery, or taking advantage of (mostly) young women’s vulnerabilities to recruit and retain women and girls in prostitution. This fits the United Nations definition of sex trafficking.

Lower prices. Anecdotal evidence from survivors in Sweden is clear that the price of prostitution in Sweden (which has the Nordic Model) is much higher than in European countries where the sex trade is legal. “This makes the johns furious”, Lea, a representative of #intedinhora, a Swedish organisation of people with experience of prostitution, said. “You can often see them talking in online forums about how the ‘hookers’ here in Sweden are ‘spoiled’ and how they wish it were more like Germany where prices are less than half what they are in Sweden. This means that we don’t have to see as many johns to survive and can say no when we’re uncomfortable.”

Research confirms that prices are lower under legal or decriminalised systems. Even researchers who are ideologically committed to decrim say this. For example, here is a quote from a (flawed) study that argued for full decriminalisation:

“From the cost perspective, liberalization decreases the cost of commercial sex. Lee and Persson (2018) show that liberalization expands the size of the sex mar­ket, cuts entry costs for sex workers, and lowers prices of sex services. Cunning­ham and Shah (2018) find that transaction prices for sex services decrease by 33 percent after legalization.” 

While women under the decriminalised prostitution systems in New Zealand and Belgium theoretically have the right to refuse specific acts and sex buyers, competition, market forces and the logistics of the prostitution system itself make it hard for women to refuse in practice.

Women who refuse dangerous sex acts (such as anal or fisting) popularised by online porn are likely to find they don’t get many buyers once these have come to be seen as normal services. It is hardly surprising therefore that evidence from New Zealand shows that brothel keepers regularly coerce women into never refusing a punter’s demand.

Increased expectations. Women who have experienced the decriminalised system of prostitution in New Zealand have written about how it has led to lower prices, increased competition and increased expectations from punters.

  • Sabrinna Valisce’s evidence about her experiences in prostitution in New Zealand before and after the PRA
  • Another woman writes about her experiences in a New Zealand brothel
  • Alice Glass interviews survivors of prostitution, including Chelsea, who was also in a New Zealand brothel.
  • Chelsea Geddes writes of her experiences of prostitution in New Zealand.

Worsening sex equality. As mentioned above, prostitution positions women as commodities that men can buy for sexual use and abuse. When governments decriminalise prostitution, this is enshrined in law. Men’s ‘right’ to pay to sexually use and abuse women is considered more important than women’s and girls’ rights to live free from sexual exploitation.

Of course, this reinforces male supremacy and female subordination and inevitably affects how all men see all women and girls, and how women and girls see themselves. It impacts the decisions that officials, legislators, judges, medical professionals, teachers and police make and how they treat women and girls in comparison to how they treat men and boys.

Furthermore, studies of men who buy sex (punters) show that they are significantly more likely than other men to rape and engage in all forms of violence against women. This means that the more prostitution that happens, the more male violence there is likely to be within the general community.

All of this maintains men’s individual and collective dominance and has a catastrophic impact on women and girls’ position in society.

No solution to poverty. Currently in the UK, women are turning to prostitution in increasing numbers out of financial desperation due to years of Government’s austerity measures and the ‘cost of living’ crisis. Full decriminalisation of the sex trade means that the state supports this, and women are implicitly expected to turn to prostitution when they fall on hard times. As a result, prostitution becomes institutionalised as the financial safety net for women, and the Government loses motivation to address women’s poverty and fix the broken benefits system.

What is the alternative?

The Nordic Model, which is a human rights-based approach to prostitution law and policy. It recognises prostitution as part of the structural oppression of women and other marginalised people. It understands prostitution to be harmful, both to the individual and to society as a whole, and that it is both a cause and a consequence of the inequality between women and men.

The Nordic Model has several elements. Firstly, it repeals laws that target those selling sex and provides them with support services and help to leave the industry if they want to. It ensures there are genuine alternatives for making a living.

Secondly, it strengthens laws against trafficking, pimping, brothel keeping and other activities by third parties who profit off other people’s prostitution.

Lastly, prostitution-buying becomes a criminal offence – with the aim of changing social norms and men’s attitudes and behaviour.

Along with all this, there needs to be a public information campaign, education in schools, training for the police, CPS and other front-line staff, long term investment in high-quality services and alternatives for women, and real measures to address poverty and inequality.

This approach was first introduced in Sweden, and has now also been established in Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, France, Ireland, and Israel. Each country has framed the law slightly differently and with different degrees of commitment and success.

The following table provides a comparison of the Nordic Model and full decriminalisation.

Supporters of full decriminalisation often claim that the Nordic Model makes prostitution more dangerous for the women concerned and that it pushes it underground. We dispute these claims:

The harms of prostitution

Health & safety. Workplaces often display health and safety notices that lists the risks that workers can expect to be exposed to.

Health risks that women involved in prostitution face include:

  • Infections: including gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes, hepatitis, HIV and more. Some resistant to antibiotics.
  • Unwanted pregnancy.
  • Injuries: including tears, abrasions, fissures and fistulas to the vagina, anus and rectum. Damage to internal abdominal and pelvic organs caused by prolonged and heavy pounding, which can lead to incontinence, prolapse, pain and infertility. And, not to forget, injuries elsewhere caused by punter violence.
  • Brain injury: including through strangulation and other acts of physical violence, typically at levels comparable to boxers and victims of torture.

In any other occupation where there is a risk of exposure to other people’s body fluids, health and safety regulations require workers to wear masks, gloves, goggles, and protective clothing. Condoms do not come close to reducing risk for those in prostitution to a level comparable with those faced by workers in, say dentistry or nursing, because condoms slip and break, and punters refuse to wear them. And condoms don’t protect the person in prostitution from the punter’s saliva, sweat and other body fluids; or from damage to orifices and internal organs caused by friction and prolonged heavy pounding; or from his violence.

Why should we expect women to be exposed to such risks that no other worker would tolerate? Especially when it serves no purpose other than to feed men’s entitlement and egos.

When it’s not possible to make work safe, industries are often closed down. For example, the asbestos industry was closed because the risks were deemed too great.

The Nordic Model is based on the premise that prostitution can never be made safe and so it aims to reduce the size of the industry and the numbers involved.

Physical harms. As well as the risk of multiple infections and damage to internal organs mentioned above, the natural environment (pH levels, microbiome, and vaginal fluids) of the vagina can be destroyed by frequent rinsing, douching, and use of lubricants, creams, and spermicides. This reduces the body’s natural defense mechanisms and increases the risk of infection.

Many practices that have been popularised by porn are dangerous, especially for women because of their smaller average physical size and strength relative to men. For example, fisting, when practiced by a man on a woman, can result in injuries and even a damaged or broken pelvis. ‘Deepthroat’ can cause fatal asphyxiation and, when performed on a woman whose head is hanging over the side of a bed, can result in spinal injuries or a broken neck.

Strangulation and other practices that reduce the blood flow to the brain are always perilous, even when not fatal, and can cause many problems including brain injury, stroke, seizures, motor and speech disorders, and paralysis. Research has established that brain injury before the brain is fully developed (at around age 25-30) can be more devastating than brain injuries later in life.

Such dangers are increased when certain recreational drugs are used, by anaesthetising you to the levels of harm being inflicted and/or by impeding men’s ejaculation and driving them to more extreme acts in an attempt to resolve this.

In addition, punters are often violent and cause many different kinds of injuries, some of which are more obvious than others. Many women report that punters beat and kick them, including on their heads, and attempt to strangle them. A 2006 study found that women who had lived experience of prostitution have traumatic brain damage at levels comparable to victims of torture. A 2018 study found that 61% had sustained head injuries in prostitution. This is similar to or higher than the rate found in boxers.

A German study based on medical examinations of 1,000 prostituted women found that:

  • Most suffer from chronic lower abdominal pain caused by inflammation and mechanical trauma.
  • Most show signs of premature ageing, a symptom of persistent stress.
  • Most had injuries caused by the overuse of their delicate sexual organs and orifices.
  • Most had injuries deliberately inflicted by punters.

A meta study conducted by UCL found that violence is a prominent part of the lives of prostituted individuals in almost all settings and that “social exclusion is the leading cause of entrance into [prostitution] and exclusion is often deepened as a result of engaging in it.”

It should be obvious from all of this that, even with condom use, full-service prostitution can never come close to conforming to the health and safety standards that apply in normal workplaces.

Mental health. The mental, psychological and emotional impacts of prostitution can be even more devastating than the physical consequences and can last a lifetime.

Dissociation is a common coping mechanism when anyone is exposed to experiences that are so overwhelming that it is not possible to process them in the normal way. This can lead to trauma responses, particularly when such experiences are frequent, as they typically are in prostitution.

Dr Tal Croitoru, an Israeli EMDR therapist who has worked with women who have experienced prostitution, describes how it works:

“When the sexual contact doesn’t happen out of desire but the woman forces herself to do it to make money, she might try to disconnect herself from the situation. This causes a dissociation of the body and the spirit, the memorization of the event is done by abnormal brain circuits, the information of time and space is not recorded and later the person will relive the same panic, the same anxiety at the slightest evocative sensation.”

Croitoru considers PTSD to be so common in women who have lived experience of prostitution that it can be considered the norm.

Judith Lewis Herman is an American psychiatrist who has spent her life specialising in the treatment of trauma and is the author of the ground-breaking book, ‘Trauma and recovery: the aftermath of violence – from domestic abuse to political terror’. In a letter to the New York Times on 9 May 2016, she wrote:

“For many years, I was the training director in a treatment program for patients with psychological trauma. A considerable number of our patients reported histories of having been used in prostitution. These were among the most severely traumatized people we saw, and they suffered from extreme forms of PTSD. The stories they told were horrifying, even to our seasoned clinicians who had borne witness to many horrors.”

Multiple peer-reviewed studies have confirmed this and found a very high incidence of PTSD symptoms among women with lived experience of prostitution – ranging from 47 to 68%.[*] This is double the rate that you would expect to find in soldiers returning from active service in a war zone. In addition, the PTSD that these women suffer is typically more complex than that found in combat veterans.

A Swiss study conducted a standardised assessment of the mental health of women involved in prostitution in a variety of settings. It found very high rates of mental disorders and that these were correlated with the high levels of violence from pimps and punters.

In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. In another report, women involved in prostitution comprised 15% of all completed suicides.[†] 

Women who have been involved in non-contact areas of the sex industry, such as stripping and webcamming, are not immune from such psychological impacts. Presenting yourself as a sex object and being treated as one, enduring harassment from punters and their continuous pressure to do ever more, and the exploitative conditions of the industry can all take a very heavy psychological, mental, and emotional toll.

Social harms. Prostitution is a profoundly gendered phenomenon. It is overwhelmingly men who do the buying and women and those from historically disadvantaged groups who provide the ‘services’ or who, more accurately, are paid to endure being used for someone else’s sexual gratification. This cements the unequal relations between the sexes – men as fully human, women as subhuman; men as masters, women as servants or objects to be used.

When prostitution is decriminalised, this inequality is enshrined in the law and becomes part of the cultural landscape. This affects everyone. Consider what it means for girls growing up. How would walking past brothels on their way to and from school impact them? How would it make them think about themselves? Their bodies? Their aspirations for the future? And what about boys? How would it affect them? How would it make them view women? How would it make them think about themselves?

Prostitution feeds men’s individual and collective sense of superiority and entitlement to sexual access to women. All the myriad forms of the sex industry present a picture of a multitude of interchangeable young women who are sexually available and willing or even desperate to fulfil a man’s every whim. No one explains that the women do not fancy them, that they are simply desperate to be paid.

Is it any wonder then if men come to see themselves as superior and to see women as a lower order of being? Or that they might come to think that women owe them sex. This is the logic that the sex industry teaches boys and young men and that now pervades mainstream culture.

Research has long shown that men believing that they are superior and entitled to sexual access to women is associated with violence against women and girls. We are currently witnessing an epidemic of male violence against women and girls and a rise in extreme misogyny among young men, as epitomised by the ‘incel’ movement documented by Laura Bates.

Fully decriminalising the sex industry would implicitly endorse these attitudes. As a society, can we afford to do this? Really?

International obligations. Full decriminalisation of the sex trade is in clear contradiction to binding obligations placed on the UK through ratification of the CEDAW and the Palermo Trafficking Protocol human rights treaties.

  • CEDAW – the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women – is a UN bill of rights for women. Countries that have ratified it are legally bound to put its provisions into practice. One of its provisions is to suppress the “exploitation of prostitution of women” – in other words, pimping, brothel keeping, and other forms of profiteering.
  • The Palermo Trafficking Protocol – the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children – also places a binding obligation on ratifying states to take measures to crack down on the exploitation of the prostitution of women and children by third parties and to take measures to discourage the demand for prostitution that drives sex trafficking.

We do not believe that full decriminalisation of the prostitution system can ever conform with these obligations.

Further information

[*] Cumulative Violence and PTSD Symptom Severity Among Urban Street-Based Female Sex Workers
Violence and post traumatic stress disorder in a sample of inner city street prostitutes
Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries
Posttraumatic stress disorders in prostitutes: Results of a study in Hamburg in the context of an international project

[†] Letter from Susan Kay Hunter, Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Jan 6, 1993, cited by Phyllis Chesler in ‘A Woman’s Right to Self-Defense: the case of Aileen Carol Wuornos,’ in Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness, 1994, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine.

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