Nordic Model Now!
Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution
The text of the Nordic Model Now! submission to the UK Government’s recent consultation on its proposed Domestic Abuse Bill, without the questions we did not answer and those for which we simply endorsed the responses given by End Violence Against Women (EVAW). Read More
As the five year anniversary approaches of Canada passing its Nordic Model-style Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), Zoë Goodall interviews several activists from the women’s movement to find out what PCEPA has achieved. What she finds is both disappointing and enraging and provides salutary lessons to all who want to see the Nordic Model implemented: passing the legislation is just the first step in the battle. Read More
A motion to the Unison Delegate Conference 2018, seeks to overturn Unison’s longstanding support for the Nordic Model approach to prostitution and replace it with support for full decriminalisation of the sex trade, including profiteers and sex buyers, on the basis that this is safer for “sex workers.” This article goes through the motion showing that it relies on partial facts, poor-quality research, and distortion of the bigger picture. We hope that this will help delegates and Unison members understand what is at stake and why we recommend you vote against the motion. Read More
This article explains briefly what “decriminalisation of prostitution” or “decriminalisation of sex work” means in practice. This supplements the bullet points on our RCN Congress 2019 flyers (and the white flyers we have given out elsewhere) with further information, links to research studies, etc.
We refer to “decriminalisation of prostitution” as “full decriminalisation” to distinguish it from the Nordic Model which decriminalises those (mostly women and girls) who are engaged in prostitution but not the other actors. Read More
The UK government is consulting on a new Domestic Abuse Bill. While we welcome some of its measures, male violence against women and girls is at emergency proportions, and the Bill is too much like a sticking plaster. We need something bigger and bolder – for the government to also urgently address the worsening inequality between the sexes, the low pay and precarious nature of so much work, the lack of affordable housing, and to implement a mandatory gender mainstreaming approach in all government departments. Read More
This is the written evidence that Nordic Model Now! submitted to the Women & Equalities committee in the UK Parliament in response to its 2016 inquiry into the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5) in the UK. Read More
This article (written in late 2016) by Alice Glass gives an insightful analysis of the 2016 Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) inquiry into prostitution and how it shamefully privileged pro-sex industry voices. She calls for higher standards of honesty and integrity among our politicians. Her arguments are as relevant to the current debate as they were to the specific situation she describes. Alice was herself in prostitution for a decade. Read More
This article, which originally appeared in the Morning Star on International Women’s Day, asks why the government can respond so quickly to the news of European men renting young women and girls for sexual use in Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake but find it so hard to respond appropriately to the coercion and inequality of prostitution here in Britain. Read More
The London Mayor’s VAWG strategy no longer commits to targeting men’s demand for prostitution and does not even mention sex buyers once in its 100 pages. Meanwhile the men who bought children to rape and sexually abuse in Telford are mostly excised from the media reports. How can we address the heinous crimes of CSE, sex trafficking, and the pimping of women in prostitution if we refuse to look at the men who drive it and the culture that creates this behaviour and gives it impunity? Read More
Some of the ways you can work with Nordic Model Now! to spread the word about the effectiveness of the Nordic Model approach to prostitution. Read More
This piece, by Alice Glass, is timely in the light of the recent cancelling of an event about prostitution that was to be co-hosted by a UK university and an organisation that provides services to people involved in prostitution, after complaints from students that it didn’t feature “sex worker” voices – even though a woman who had experienced many years of prostitution was billed to speak. Alice Glass, who herself survived ten years in prostitution, asks who are the “sex workers” who must be allowed to speak? Read More
There is a long history of women who speak out on behalf of vulnerable girls and women being harassed and silenced. We are disappointed that the Women’s Equality Party has seen fit to censure Heather Brunskell-Evans for expressing concern that adolescent girls are being fast-tracked into life-changing treatments and surgery that cause sterility and which some are likely to grow up to regret. Read More
Drawing on testimony from women survivors of the sex trade, German feminist activist, Manuela Schon, writes about mechanisms women use to survive prostitution and why exiting can be so hard, why we need to hold the perpetrators accountable, and how prostitution has a key role in maintaining male supremacy and the second class status of all women and girls. The article was first published in German on the Abolition 2014 website. The English translation is by Elisabeth Lauer. Read More
The Women and Equalities Committee in the UK parliament has launched an inquiry into male sexual harassment of women and girls in public places and are calling for written submissions. Anyone can send a submission and we would encourage you to do so. Alternatively, feel free to share your experiences with us and we will use them to inform our submission. You can do this in the comment section below the post or by emailing us in confidence. Read More
Prostitution survivor, Alice Glass, reflects on punters (sex buyers) and their apparent absence from the ‘sex work’ debates. Read More
A chance encounter with a homeless man in a coffee shop, lead Alice Glass, recently exited from prostitution, to reflect on poetry, prostitution and the nature of work. Read More
We are calling on men to join a #CoolMenDontBuySex social media campaign to raise awareness that prostitution-buying is damaging and drives the vast prostitution industry, most of whose $186 billion annual global turnover goes into the pockets of pimps and traffickers. This article introduces the campaign, explaining some of the background and why it is in everyone’s interests, including men’s, to end prostitution. Read More
This is the text of our submission to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade’s inquiry into ‘pop-up’ brothels. We argue that pop-up brothels are not a new phenomenon, permanent brothels are operating with impunity all over the country, prostitution is damaging to both individual and community, the UK is not meeting its international obligations in this area, the police too often pursue vulnerable women involved in prostitution rather than the ruthless profiteers, and we provide 13 recommendations for a complete overhaul of the law and policy. Read More
Francine Sporenda interviews Manuela Schon about the legalised sex industry in Germany and the impact of new regulations. Manuela is a sociologist and political activist in Germany. She co-founded “Abolition 2014 – Für eine Welt ohne Prostitution” and “LINKE für eine Welt ohne Prostitution.” She is a blogger at the radical feminist blog “Die Störenfriedas.” Read More
In this article, Alice Glass brilliantly challenges three common myths in the prostitution debate: that “once the industry is fully decriminalized, prostitutes will form unions in order to fight for their workers’ rights”; that “if we don’t decriminalize prostitution it will be pushed further underground”; and that “only contemporary prostitutes should have a say in the debate, former prostitutes should not, it is no longer their business.” Read More
This article explains how a Nordic Model approach to tackling prostitution was implemented in Ipswich, UK, after a series of brutal murders of prostituted women in the town. It includes an interview with Helen Hepburn, who was a project manager with a social work background, who managed the exiting services that were put in place. Read More
The viral spread of the #MeToo hashtag over the last few weeks and the accompanying avalanche of women’s testimony of sexual harassment has spread to the British political establishment. In this article we draw parallels and connections between sexual harassment and assault, and prostitution, and we call for a new code of conduct for MPs and parliamentary staff that includes a prohibition against prostitution-buying as well as sexual harassment and assault, just as the UN does for its staff. Read More
In response to a number of requests, this page provides a model (template) motion (resolution) calling for support for the Nordic Model. It is suitable for bringing to your local Constituency Labour Party (CLP). Although designed for use in the Labour Party, you could adapt it for use in a trade union or other organisation. There is also a briefing paper packed full of facts and information you can use to back up the motion and include in any speech you give in support of the motion. Read More
Huschke Mau is a survivor of Germany’s legalized prostitution system. In this article, Francine Sporenda interviews her, focusing on the recent changes in the prostitution law in Germany and why Germany is known as the “bordello of Europe.” Read More
This guest post responds to Juno Mac’s 2016 “The Laws that Sex Workers Really Want” TED Talk, showing that her insistence that ALL “sex workers” want the blanket decriminalisation of the entire sex industry is only believable if you are irritatingly shallow in your analysis. It shows how such blanket decriminalisation leads to an upsurge in the sex trade and sex trafficking, and takes us on a whirlwind tour of the economic disaster that engulfed the former Warsaw Pact countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and shows how this disproportionately hit women. In their efforts to escape the direst poverty, many women and girls fall victims to traffickers and become ensnared in the sex industry – particularly in the decriminalised brothels of Western Europe. The result is tragedy on a vast scale. Read More
We report from the ASLEF fringe meeting on Motion 39 to decriminalise “sex work” at the TUC Congress 2017. Fortunately the motion was defeated later in the week. In this article we deconstruct some of the arguments put forward at the fringe meeting, showing that, like the motion itself, they do not stand up to scrutiny and are in fact misleading and sometimes downright dishonest. Read More
The agenda for the 2017 TUC Congress has been published. It includes a motion from ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, calling for the full decriminalisation of “sex work.” This approach implicitly decriminalises pimping, profiteering and related activities that are currently considered to be exploitation. The motion is worded in such a way that on a superficial level it appears to be in the interests of the women and children who are involved in prostitution. However, that simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Read More
The law in England and Wales prohibits brothel keeping; a brothel being defined as premises that two or more persons use for the purposes of prostitution. Many people call for this law to be changed so that small groups of prostituted women can operate together; the argument being that this would provide “safety in numbers.” They often cite the fact that female estate agents and police officers work in pairs, and call for the New Zealand approach that allows up to four women to operate from the same premises. At first sight, these arguments might appear persuasive. However, when you look more deeply, it becomes clear that things are not as straightforward as they might at first seem. Read More
On Tuesday 11 July, I was fortunate to attend the launch of Nia’s “I’m No Criminal” report, which examines the impact of prostitution-specific criminal records on women seeking to exit prostitution, and their campaign for such criminal records to be erased. The room was electric with passion at the injustice that women who are (or have been) involved in prostitution face and the warped system that makes disadvantaged women pay for the damage that men cause. Read More
A report on efforts to bring some balance into the British Medical Association (BMA) debate on decriminalising the sex trade. Read More
This article looks at legal and policy approaches to prostitution and why the Nordic Model is the human rights and equality-based approach. Read More
A hard look at prostitution, and how it affects people, taking in its intrinsic links with porn, sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation, its inherent racism, and why we should hold those who drive it accountable. Read More
In January, we posted about a motion being brought to the Amnesty UK AGM in April 2017. The motion called for Amnesty’s current policy of lobbying for the full decriminalisation of the sex trade (including pimps and brothel owners) to be reviewed. This article explains what happened at the AGM and afterwards. Read More
We talk with Dr Kathleen Richardson, Senior Research Fellow in the Ethics of Robotics at De Montford University, about what the idea of “sex robots” can tell us about prostitution.
The artwork is by Suzzan Blac, a survivor of child abuse, prostitution and sex trafficking, who through her art sheds light on the violence, objectification and dehumanisation that is intrinsic to the commercial sexual exploitation industry. Read More
Alice Glass reflects on how when male artists create works that dehumanise women it is taken to be a comment on society as a whole, while women’s resulting brutalisation, isolation and objectification is seen as little more than a sideshow. She compares this with the powerful art of Suzzan Blac who mines her own traumatic memories of abuse and prostitution to create a blistering commentary on pornographic, female objectification and paedophile culture. Read More
This is a response from Nordic Model Now! to the report of the research commissioned by the Scottish Government on the available knowledge and evidence on prostitution in Scotland. Read More
This is a response from Nordic Model Now! to the report of the research commissioned by the Scottish Government on the Impacts of the Criminalisation of the Purchase of Sex. Read More
The Scottish Government commissioned two pieces of research related to prostitution. Nordic Model Now! has responded to that research separately. This paper responds to some additional additional points raised by a policy adviser. Read More
More than 30 organisations and 290 individuals have signed an open letter to the British Medical Association (BMA) calling on them to reject a new Junior Doctors’ policy backing the full decriminalisation of the sex trade as implemented in New Zealand. The motion was passed after less than 20 minutes of “debate” at the BMA Junior Doctors’ conference on 13 May. Read More
More than 30 organisations and nearly 300 individuals have added their name to an open letter calling on the British Medical Association (BMA) to reject a new policy passed by junior doctors backing the full decriminalisation of the sex trade (including of pimps and brothel owners) as implemented in New Zealand. Read More
Not even that hot night when I was 19 and slept with the door to my stuffy windowless room open to catch the breeze caused the blinkers to fall from my eyes. The blinkers that blamed my recklessness in leaving the door open and not the man who walked by and saw my smooth body lying there in all its youthful sweetness. He knew he was the only one in the building still awake and so there was a high chance he could get away with it. As indeed he did. Read More
There is much that Britain can learn from Ireland’s adoption of the Nordic Model and commitment to tackling male demand for prostitution. Read More
All brothels are illegal in the UK. Many people argue that legalising them would make the women safer and prevent the involvement of criminal gangs. However, experience where the sex trade has been legalised tells a different story. Here Jacqueline Gwynne reports on the illegal brothels in Melbourne in the State of Victoria in Australia where the sex trade is legalised. Read More
At the 2017 Unison Women’s Conference, we ran a stall for Nordic Model Now! We got a great reception and many women stopped to find out more, or to tell us how happy they were to see us there. Several women told us that they encounter women in prostitution through their work in rape crisis, domestic violence, addiction or children’s services, and how the devastating effects are self-evident: bruises, chronic abdominal pain, anxiety disorders, addictions developed as a way of enduring the unendurable, the fear of the pimps, who sometimes could be seen waiting outside. Read More
The Nordic Model Now! slideshow is a fully scripted presentation that activists can download and present to local women’s, community, political, social, church, and similar groups. Read More
Frankie Green argues that by not taking a stand against prostitution, the Labour party leadership, leftwing parties and organisations have alienated and angered people. By condoning prostitution, they send out the message that it is acceptable to purchase women’s bodies, licensing a sexist, predatory masculinity. She argues that the Labour Movement must recognise prostitution as abuse and support the Nordic Model approach. Read More
This is the text of a written submission to the MOPAC consultation on its Draft Police & Crime Plan for London 2017-2021. It was submitted by Nordic Model Now! jointly with thirteen other groups that work for women’s rights and development, and/or to resist the objectification of women and girls, and male violence against women and children. Read More
Dr Anna Cleaves has proposed a motion to Amnesty International UK (AIUK) asking the International Secretariat to re-evaluate its policy on prostitution. The resolution has been accepted and it will be debated at the AIUK Conference in Nottingham on 8 and 9 April 2017. Read More
Heather Brunskell-Evans examines options for prostitution law reform in the UK. She argues that full decriminalisation is predicated on outdated notions of the inevitability of men’s ‘need’ for sex and their concomitant ‘right’ to pay for the sexual use of women (or other men) as if they were a commodity, and that full decriminalisation’s vocal proponents make several erroneous claims. Instead she concludes that the Sex Buyer Law (aka the Nordic Model) is in line with 21st century ideals of equity and social justice. Read More
This is the text of an open letter to the Home Secretary from Nordic Model Now! with 14 other groups and organisations and 35 individuals in response to the UK government response to the interim report of the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry into Prostitution. Read More