Nordic Model Now!
Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution
We’ve launched a petition calling on the University of Leicester to scrap its student sex work toolkit – which reads like a guide to getting into the sex industry. Read More
Male-pattern violence is never merely an individual act. It sends out a message to those nearby: This is what happens to women and girls who do not submit. It therefore serves to uphold the power of other men and of men as a class… Read More
A critical review of ‘The Service’ by Frankie Miren, which was published by Influx Press on 8 July 2021. Read More
Andrea Heinz wrote this moving poem soon after exiting seven years in the commercial sex trade. Read More
Audio and video recordings of our ‘Trauma and prostitution’ webinar that was held on 6 June 2021. Read More
What the University of Leicester’s response to our FOI request reveals about whether their student ‘sex work’ policy and toolkits comply with UK equality legislation. Read More
Today we heard the welcome news that Leeds City Council has announced that it is to scrap the so-called legal red-light zone in Holbeck. Read More
This is the Nordic Model Now! response to the British government’s consultation on its Women’s Health Strategy. Read More
From the 1970s, the sex industry fought back against the radical feminist analysis of prostitution as a key part of the patriarchal system that subordinates women. Read More
This is the Nordic Model Now! response to the British government’s consultation on its ‘New Plan for Immigration.’ Read More
The full text of an open letter that we organised to the UK Secretary of State for Justice. Read More
My story started when I met my first proper boyfriend. The one to whom I lost my virginity. He had very odd sexual fantasies that I complied with because I had never really known love… Read More
A BBC short film about prostitution in Germany under the Covid shutdown of the industry makes a mockery of the BBC’s editorial standards and stated mission. Read More
Our letter to the Vagina Museum in response to the letter they sent to Keir Starmer MP asking him to support the full decriminalisation of the sex trade. Read More
Powerful and moving pieces sent to us through our Share Your Story page, which provides a space for women to tell of their experiences in their own words. Read More
Sara, who was herself in prostitution, talks of her work in a care home and spells out some likely consequences of the recent Court of Protection ruling. Read More
A summary of the ruling and the contradictions and hypocrisies it exposes. We argue that the only way to resolve these is to ban the purchase of sex for everyone. Read More
While it doesn’t explicitly promote prostitution as a reasonable response to students’ economic hardship, that’s the implicit message – along with the suggestion that buying sex is an ethically neutral activity… Read More
This post provides access to the audio and video recording of our ‘Talking with men and boys’ webinar that was held on 11 April 2021. Read More
First published in the Morning Star, this is a blistering response to DecrimNow’s open letter to MPs calling on them to block attempts to introduce the Nordic Model. Read More
“Is this really what we should be aiming for? A world where poor women and girls have no alternative but to prostitute themselves in order to survive? … Read More
Female asylum seekers in the UK are extremely vulnerable to sex trafficking and exploitation. Recent reports have revealed the horrific reality of the official systems that are meant to protect them and yet new immigration laws are likely to make this situation far worse. Read More
I did not choose as a child to be a prostitute and then as an adult I had no other opportunities and then I was in a foreign country and since I was a putanna I had to continue even if it was not what I dreamed of being… Read More
We need to ask, what is it in our culture that gives men and boys the entitlement and impunity to treat women and girls as second class, as less than human, as ‘other’? Read More
In this searing article based on her own experiences, ‘Alice’ brilliantly articulates the disturbing reality of girls growing up in the failing British ‘care’ system and why they make such easy prey for pimps. Essential reading. Read More
This is our response to the Jacob Hawley: On Love podcast, “‘It’s Just Sex’ – Sex Work and the Law.” Read More
In this poem Andrea Heinz, an exited woman and sex trade abolitionist, speaks to a woman actively selling sex and professing joy with her participation in the industry. Read More
Based on decades of policing Germany’s legalised prostitution system, Helmut Sporer blasts claims against the Nordic Model out of the water. This article summarises his arguments and explains why they are relevant to the UK and elsewhere. Read More
This is an edited transcript of the webinar we held on Sunday 24 January 2021. Read More
This article, by Esther, who was herself in prostitution, explains the law relating to prostitution in England and Wales, and the stomach churning hypocrisy that accompanies it. Read More
Powerful feminist critique from Monica Mazzitelli of Ninja Thyberg’s new film “Pleasure”. Read More
This article explores what it means when young women are targeted on social media with adverts encouraging them to ‘donate’ their eggs or undergo surrogacy for the benefit of strangers and the big fertility industry. Read More
Open letter to Freedom United asking it to rethink its support for the full decriminalization of the sex trade. Read More
Luba Fein presents an overview of the services that are provided in Israel under the new Nordic Model law to people who have experienced prostitution, along with data about the service users from a recent study. Read More
Voice of Holbeck, a coalition of community groups, has today released its ‘Listening Well’ report about local residents’ experiences of the decriminalised red-light area in Holbeck, Leeds. The area is also known as the ‘Managed Zone’ because it is part of the Leeds-wide ‘Managed Approach’ to prostitution, but as one young person who contributed to the report, said: “It is not managed at all, we are approached.” Read More
This page provides access to the recording and transcript of our ‘Prostitution policy: The Nordic Model or full decriminalization? What do sex trade survivors say?’ webinar that was held on 24 January 2021.
The theme of the webinar was the debate about the Sexual Exploitation Bill that Dame Diana Johnson recently tabled in the UK Parliament. If passed, this would establish a Nordic Model approach to prostitution legislation and policy in England and Wales. Read More
‘Alice’ sent this harrowing testimony about growing up in a UK children’s home through our Share Your Story page.
“A lot of the time surviving in the care system prepares girls for prostitution later. We all allowed degrees of sexual access to adult men for basics like food or clothing. Even beyond that most girls acquiesce to men’s sexual demands in return for things that make you feel like a ‘normal’ young teenager, but aren’t necessities…” Read More
This article provides a very brief introduction to Dame Diana Johnson’s Sexual Exploitation Bill, which if passed as planned would introduce a Nordic Model approach to prostitution law and policy in England and Wales. The article then delves into some of the negative assertions about the Nordic Model that Lyn Brown MP made in the debate on the Bill’s first reading and shows that many are oversimplifications and/or are contradicted by the evidence. Read More
I have worked as a hairdresser for 20 years and for all that time I’ve had women involved in prostitution among my clients. Women who are so mentally and physically broken that everyday life can only be endured with drugs, which brings them into the next vicious circle. Women who are often in need of a hug and a listening ear… Read More
In this insightful article, Esther, who was herself in prostitution, reflects on the finding of the Médecins du Monde study that the income of people involved in prostitution in France has reduced since the Nordic Model law was introduced there in April 2016. She explains how such a reduction in income has been observed in several European countries and suggests it is related to the increase in the number of women entering the sex industry through “choice,” coercion, trafficking, and the fallout from the banking crisis from 2008 and the subsequent implementation of “austerity” policies – and the normalisation of BDSM practices through the mainstreaming of porn. Read More
In April 2018, Médecins du Monde published a study they had conducted into the operation of the Nordic Model-style law that was passed by the French National Assembly two years earlier. The 80-page report was entitled ‘What do sex workers think about the French Prostitution Act’ and it has been widely quoted as showing that the Nordic Model doesn’t work and makes things worse for “sex workers.” This post provides an English translation of a detailed critique of the study by Amicale du Nid, a French NGO. Read More
Dame Diana Johnson MP has introduced a Sexual Exploitation Bill into the British Parliament. If passed, this would establish a Nordic Model approach to prostitution law and policy in England and Wales. The Bill passed its first reading on 9 December 2020 and the second reading is scheduled for 29 January 2021.
If you live in the UK, please contact your MP to ask them to support women and VOTE FOR this Bill. We have created two options to help you do this… Read More
This article, by a group of people who have experienced prostitution in Sweden, explains why they formed the organisation #intedinhora (#notyourwhore) and why they back the Nordic Model approach to prostitution policy.
“We see prostitution as neither work nor sex, but as an oppression built upon oppression based on gender, race, class and/or age. We believe this, not despite our own experiences of being in the sex industry, but because of them.” Read More
In 2020, the UK Law Commission ran a consultation on “reforms to hate crime laws to make them fairer, and to protect women for the first time.” It also included a question about whether the hate crime legislation should be extended to include “sex workers” as a protected characteristic. Nordic Model Now! responded to the consultation and this post provides our full response.
Read More
This is an edited transcript of the discussion part of the ‘Prostitution: Work? … Or exploitation?’ webinar on Sunday 22 November 2020.
Siobhan: I just want to introduce our panel members. First we have Rebecca Mott. Rebecca used to do indoor prostitution of various types, all of which allow punters to be violent. She is now an Abolitionist, and has been blogging about her experiences for more than 12 years, explaining the conditions of prostitution and the impact of having trauma as an exited woman… Read More
This page provides access to recordings and transcripts of the talks from our ‘Prostitution: Work? … Or exploitation?’ webinar on 22 November 2020.
We hear over and over again that “sex work is normal work.” But is this really true or is the reality in fact much darker? In this webinar, women who have lived experience of prostitution examined this claim. Read More
This is a transcript of Megan King’s presentation at our ‘Prostitution: Work? … Or exploitation?’ webinar on Sunday 22 November 2020.
“I’m going to talk about the Nordic Model as the best approach to tackling prostitution. I’m Megan King. I speak as a survivor of the sex trade myself, initially being coerced into the trade and then I continued to sell sex off street independently, glamourizing my situation as a high-class escort, for a period of eight months across the south of England… Read More
New rules have come into force in the UK that will make life much easier for large numbers of women who have experienced street prostitution and are trying to rebuild their lives.
Provided she didn’t serve a custodial sentence and the convictions are more than 11 years old, criminal records for soliciting to sell sex under Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 will no longer be automatically disclosed to employers – even on an enhanced DBS check… Read More
“I’m a survivor of familial sex trafficking. My father started sexually abusing me before I was even two years old and by age six, he was selling me to strangers for sex. This went on until I was about 16 years old.
He threatened my younger brother and me, saying he would kill our mother if we ever told anyone what he was doing… Read More
The Scottish Government is running a consultation on its prostitution policy. We would like to encourage all our supporters to respond to this consultation. You do not need to live in Scotland to respond.
This post provides two options to make it as easy as possible for you. You can either use a two-minute option to send a template response, or you can use our crib sheet to fill in the full consultation.
The deadline for responding is: Thursday 10 December 2020. Read More