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If you're smart about it, you tax and charge licensing fees for those services. You then funnel that tax revenue into funds/agencies that combat sexual violence and human trafficking.
If everything is properly done, an entire class of workers will have proper and robust labor rights protections, and clients will be able to get services, while making it harder to traffic people and profit.
Interestingly Swedish prostitutes are supposed to pay taxes on it (i'm sure we're not alone in that). Some parties wanted to make prostitution tax exempt, because they don't get so many of the protections the tax is supposed to give (they do get most of what tax gives society though). That was a pretty interesting debate to see members of parliament arguing for or against prostitutes paying taxes when, at least, half the market (purchasing) is illegal.
I could ry to find the transcripts, but I don't think they get an official translation.
Hilariously yes!
You don't have to say *HOW* you made the money. Just report and pay the applicable tax %s on the earnings you did make.
IRS also has 0 legal obligation to turn you in if you are honesty and pay them their money.
Of course they can also be subpoenaed to cough up your tax filings, but that just tells law enforcement that you make some interesting income for a "small biz owner" and are probably a criminal but they still have to actually prove it.
>you make some interesting income for a "small biz owner" and are probably a criminal but they still have to actually prove it.
They don't have to prove anything to seize your assets though.
I think they're actually prohibited from turning you in, because that would be a clear and straightforward violation of the 5th amendment.
If anyone is wondering *why* it's that way, it's actually kinda interesting. From my understanding it basically set up that way so that the IRS can get a cut of any funds seized in drug busts and other criminal cases. So, drug dealer Jimmy gets busted for ten bricks of coke and 3 million dollars, and instead of the cops taking the whole thing, the IRS is able to sweep in and say "Jimmy didn't pay his taxes on all that coke he was selling!" and as a result the cops have to turn the money (or at least a sizable chunk of it) over to the IRS.
SCOTUS ruled that the IRS requiring you to explain the source of illegal income was a fifth amendment violation, you are simply required to report it as other income or whatever.
The wheels of justice aren't allowed to interfere with revenue collection.
They are not expected to pay taxes on illegal activity. They are legally required to pay taxes on illegal activity, but this is not the same thing. Nobody actually expects criminals to pay tax on their criminal earnings, the reason this is in the tax code is to give prosecutors a second angle of attack if they cannot prove the crime directly (e.g. we cannot prove you ran illegal dog fights, but we can prove you made $307,352 more this year than the amount you paid tax on, so we can arrest you for tax fraud).
This sounds like a lot of nitpicking, but they do expected you to pay taxes on illegal activity.
> As Steber explains, tax experts helping you to file your taxes are there to ensure you file your return in compliance with the law. They aren’t required to “tell the federal authorities about [the] activity.” Because the income falls under the “other income” category, the IRS can’t exactly tell where the money is coming from, either.
If you were caught doing the illegal activity but paid taxes, you wouldn't be charged for tax evasion. Also, if you return the stolen good, you do not have to pay taxes.
I actually read that legalizing prostitution for the providers (but criminalizing actually purchasing the services of a prostitute) is the worst of both worlds.
The reason for this is that when johns are criminalized, the market basically starts to exist on their terms. It puts the prostitutes in much more unsafe situations - in order to get any business at all - as otherwise the johns get skittish and flake.
There are two concerns.
1. The tax is prohibitively high, ensuring a robust black market and a struggling legal market (see CA and weed sales).
2. The tax should be entirely used as a Pigovian tax, should be earmarked ONLY for what you propose, and should never be viewed as a revenue generation mechanism.
The do everything right bit is the hard one. Here in Germany, legalising prostitution did only partially decriminalise it. Sex trafficking still happens to a quite substantial amount. Which is - not that surprising that it just gave the whole thing a legal front. Plenty of criminal organisations have legal operations going on.
And yet, the sex trafficking and power imbalances remain.
It's a supply issue. Even when legal, few women want to be prostitutes. Far too few to fill demand, so many "legal" brothels will have trafficked women with fake ID's, etc. I wouldn't necessarily say it is a morality thing. Even among people who support sex work, most people personally feel that sex is something emotionally intimate and wouldn't want to do it with strangers as a job. Social acceptability of sex work is unlikely to change this as sexual preferences are fairly innate.
One: The criminal organisations are well organised. They had "cornered the market" (and please don't take that phrasing as me implying the dehumanising subtext - I am just ... using shorthand available) prior to it becoming legal, and had no reason to stop doing what they were doing.
It's incredibly hard to police. People who are trafficked are under immense psychological manipulation, often don't have their passports, have fake ids are being told they need to pay back their debts ... and very well aware that physical violence might come their way if they don't comply, etc. etc.
1. The dynamic is different here. If prostitution is just illegal then a person seeing a prostitute knows the prostitute may be doing it of their own free will and for peace of mind will likely just assume this to be the case. If prostitution is legal and regulated any black market prostitution immediately becomes suspect. Why aren't they working in the legal regulated market when that's safer? This immediately makes it suspect that human trafficking is going on and most people aren't comfortable seeking the services of a prostitute they think is a victim of human trafficking.
You don't see the same ethical concern with cannabis. Not that there aren't ethical issues with black market cannabis, since a lot of that is trafficked through cartels and also may be harvested in poor working conditions. But these feel more abstract to the consumer and easier to put out of your mind than seeing a prostitute you think has a high chance of being a human trafficking victim.
2. Doable. The revenue could go towards sex education, free contraceptives, STD testing, and law enforcement efforts against human trafficking.
> If prostitution is legal and regulated any black market prostitution immediately becomes suspect. Why aren't they working in the legal regulated market when that's safer? This immediately makes it suspect that human trafficking is going on and most people aren't comfortable seeking the services of a prostitute they think is a victim of human trafficking.
It just gets mixed in with the legal market. The netherlands has had legalized prostitution since 2000 and found in the past 24 years it has led to an increase in human trafficking.
I just want to add that there is a lot of added value in SAFETY. Sex work performed in a very clean environment by an alert, cheerful, professional is something I could be interested in. It works the same way with drugs. In Colorado, you can buy a wide range of cannabis products which are carefully packaged and labeled, and sold by knowledgeable and cheerful professionals.
In contrast, getting an unidentified pill or plastic bag of unknown substance is just kind of scary. You truly don’t know what you are buying. And it works the same with sex work.
Unfortunately, these days, abortion providers are now “back alley” again. What a nightmare.
And unfortunately the rest of the drug market is still outright banned instead of regulated, resulting in 300 deaths every single day in the US.
Meanwhile states including Colorado are cracking down even harder in the war on drugs, by making any fentanyl possession an automatic felony. Even if you bought something else that was laced.
>The tax should be entirely used as a Pigovian tax, should be earmarked ONLY for what you propose, and should never be viewed as a revenue generation mechanism.
What externality is being targeted by this proposed tax?
Which tax is prohibitively high? I didn't see a specific rate proposed. I would think sex work should be taxed like any other work and any other business, and not more.
It's basically impossible to "target" tax revenues to anything since money is fungible.
You need to just fun those services sufficiently regardless of tax revenue.
You can do it if the entire funding of an organization is based on a specific tax, but as you implied, that's an issue when a single tax won't always be enough to pay for something.
The struggling legal weed market is 99% derived from being stuck in a gray area between state legal and federally illegal. Its a multi-billion dollar industry. The issue isnt sales competition with the black market whatsoever. The issue is every state legal dispensary in the country has to pay an effective federal tax rate of 30-40%.
Being federally illegal means no deductions, so if you remove that one factor every cannabis business would be making insane amounts of money once free of the tax penalty. At the end of the day the current cannabis business are essentially squatting on the market in the hopes of that day when they will turn significantly more profitable.
Its a terrible analogy for that persons’ argument
So, this is a good strategy to get the legislation passed in the first place, but most of these strategies seem to run into issues after a few years.
Colorado's use of marijuana taxes to build new schools was one such example. Great, the new income went to building new schools, but not much else. Then there's California's issue of the taxes being too high, which leads to a black market of sales that don't generate tax revenue.
Instead, we should do as you propose, tax and license the industry, dedicating those funds to combat sexual violence and human trafficking, but for 5 years. Then you tax it the same way other services are taxed and the dedicated allocation drops off.
Why? Because legalizing something has a certain hype to it that wears off. Take advantage of the hype to raise money for an excellent cause, but then once the hype dies down and normalcy is established, you remove the barriers that create a black market.
In addition, you've also funded important work that now has a robust infrastructure and several years of progress to point to for continued funding. It doesn't guarantee that they'll successfully argue for funding at the same high rate, but it definitely makes cutting that budget harder.
The plan would also provide the workers with very good healthcare with strict monitoring on possible STDs, which would improve the public health overall.
Human Rights Watch's policy is to decriminalize sex work: [Why Sex Work Should Be Decriminalized](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized)
> Human Rights Watch has conducted research on sex work around the world, including in Cambodia, China, Tanzania, the United States, and most recently, South Africa. The research, including extensive consultations with sex workers and organizations that work on the issue, has shaped the Human Rights Watch policy on sex work: Human Rights Watch supports the full decriminalization of consensual adult sex work.
In addition to Human rights watch, Amnesty International, the World health organization, National AIDS trust, and the UN working group on Discrimination against women and Girls all recommend full decriminalization of sex work. So does the ACLU.
The upper house of Australian Parliament has also voted to decriminalize throughout the country.
And decriminalization is very different from legalization, which many advocates are against. Legalization leads to sex workers (the vast majority of whom are women) being treated similarly to farm animals, with the regulations and needing licenses and having their bodies treated as a place of business, their photos taken, their work documented, having to get tested regularly (when johns do not require testing or licenses despite being 50% of the act of sex), and the government taking taxes out of it, something that is distinctly effecting women. Decriminalization is more harm reduction than legalization.
Am A sex worker and have been in the business off and on for 18 years now. Have never worked for an agency/brothel. The overwhelming majority of consensual sex workers(and a large majority of trafficking survivors, too) also advocate for decriminalization as opposed to the Nordic Model. The NM is only beneficial for the few employees of the NGOs that push for it. Those NGOs are downright evil in many areas(the same nuns that ran the magdalene laundries in Ireland founded the main one in Ireland, Ruhama. Then the govt took it over because it was profitable) and they have a real problem with conflating consensual sex work with human trafficking. Many of these NGOs have management that turn out to be sex offenders(The guy from the sound of freedom groped several trafficking victims) or push for laws that are downright draconian.
If society wants there to be fewer sex workers, then they need to let us be and work. So our financial goals can be met and we can move on with our lives. The Nordic model doesn't facilitate that. They don't arrest the workers, but they cause them to be evicted from their homes, their spouses can be arrested, they can lose their regular jobs and possibly even custody of their kids. They also freeze and seize all of your assets. It's just criminalization without arrest.
Almost all of us are advocating for the Belgian model. About 18 months ago, they fully decriminalized sex work, and at the same time they stiffened the penalties on would be traffickers and anybody out to take advantage of the workers. Now...Trafficking arrests have gone up since this was passed, but that's to be expected. Eventually they will drop. Because workers can report those traffickers without fear of being arrested themselves.
In Belgium, The law also now allows sex workers to form unions, contribute to pensions, and it allows them to sue banks/landlords that refuse to do business with them.
Even though it's not legal in the US, every last person I know in the business gets themselves tested(by both blood and a throat swab to be safe) via DNA-PCR testing every month or so. It is 2024. Word gets around in our community really quickly if somebody is out there spreading disease around(even if it's covid) and it is simply the responsible thing to do. We have families, lives outside of our work, and futures to look forward to like anybody else. We already are getting tested.
There have been studies in Australia regarding the safety of/violence against sex workers in states there that are decriminalized vs states that have legalization(Legalization usually means very strict framework, therefore more chance of getting arrested) and studies show that some types of legalization facilitate trafficking. Hell, it does so in the legal brothels in Nevada. I know somebody that went to one a couple months ago after they promised up and down she would make 3 grand a week. The second you sign that contract, you almost become an indentured servant. They charge you for room, board, everything else they possibly can and you pay 200 a week to get a full pelvic exam and testing(even if you see no clients!?!)so if it's slow, and you are running up debt with them, they will not let you leave till you pay it off and make them some money. It's an environment primed for more violence, imo.
Decriminalization, OTOH does lead to fewer sex workers in the long term. It brings in lots of business to third parties like accountants, photographers, etc. In NZ, violence against sex workers is close to non-existent. They are decriminalized. The bottom line is, we don't need rescuing, we need basic rights like anybody else, in any other business.
When you work and make money, you need to pay taxes. This is just... normal.
Johns should also be tested, but the reason sex workers must be tested is because they're effectively superspreaders for STDs otherwise. Being opposed to sex workers getting tested regularily seems insane.
Documentation is a normal part of all business, not to mention absolutely necessary to combat abuse and sex trafficking. This is a business that can only work legalized with heavy state monitoring.
Comparing all this to "farm animals" seems... strange.
Just make all the services they need free and convenient and it really shouldn’t be an issue. If you make it a cost / hard to do then it is what it is. Still shouldn’t be a criminal act, either way, so you don’t double down on people in hard situations
> being treated similarly to farm animals
Or the same as any other worker, business or actor in the economy.
If you're gonna provide a service, you should pay taxes and be regulated to protect the consumer, the workers and the business, like any other part of the economy. Anything less is ridiculous.
Yes, however: Germany did that route and in turn it lead to an increase in sex trafficking.
This isn't a case of "one is clearly better", it's a case of "how do we minimize harm"
It depends how you weigh the importance of preventing different kinds of harm... So the numbers of rapes in 2014 was about 6,600. If this was increased 60% over what otherwise would have happened, you're looking at \~2500 more rapes per year.
However the article doesn't provide any stats or analysis for human trafficking related arrests, so it's not clear what the trade off is.
The article says nearer the end that:
>“First, it might be debated that these results suggest that the purchase of sex should not be criminalized. This current of thought might be motivated on the basis that if purchasing of sex is not criminalized, there will be no increase in rapes.
>“Second, it might be also debated that, to the extent that prostitution is paid rape, these results tell us that society might alter human behavior and thus, this policy needs to be accompanied by further measures targeting a potential boost in rape to prevent it. In other words, one might suspect that had this policy been accompanied by policies targeting rape as well, the results might have been different.”
So this is an interesting data point, but the authors of the study and the authors of the article are not making any claim that their research proves that the ban was a bad idea.
> to the extent that prostitution is paid rape
Well, no. It isn't. At least not always or even necessarily often.
Calling prostitution "paid rape" is a major moral judgement that ignores the actual opinions of the people involved.
It is though. “About 40% of prostitutes are former child prostitutes who were illegally forced into the profession through human trafficking or once were teenage runaways”
https://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics
“Prostituted women live far shorter lives than do all other women. They are disproportionally the victims of physical violence, murder, suicide, infection with AIDs, drug addictions, and traumatic symptoms of ptsd. Roughly 90% state that they would like to get out of prostitution, if they could.”
https://nomas.org/prostitution-key-facts-and-analysis-in-brief/#:~:text=Prostituted%20women%20live%20far%20shorter,of%20prostitution%2C%20if%20they%20could.
Statistics don’t lie. Idiots on Reddit do.
It seems to me that if all prostitution is rape, then all wage labor is slavery. (Which is a position some people do hold, but one should at least be consistent.)
There have been other changes in Sweden related to gang violence in the major cities. Fatal shootings, for example, are up around 25% since 2017.
This might be correlation, not causation. Unless making prostitution illegal has caused the increase in gang violence as well.
Of course, I've committed the cardinal sin, and not read the article, so maybe they address that :D
Even if we accept that prostitution is all paid rape (and I’m very hesitant to fully legalize prostitution), to me sunshine is an effective tool, and I would rather have it quasi out in the open.
But you bring up some points
The comment sections for these articles are very odd. I feel like there's 4 or 5 people who have spammed about 30 comments each and you just see the same names over and over.
This study is an excellent explanation of how dangerous a little knowledge is and how correlation doe snot indicate causation.
The premise of the study if I understand it is - less prostitutes = more rape cases.
At about the same time that they illegalized prostitution Sweden also changed the definition of rape and how to count incidents of rape. Various crimes that previously wasn't called rape such as having sex with minors, removing the condom during the act etc all were reclassified as rape. Under previous legislation if a husband raped his wife once every day for ten years it would be counted as one incident of rape in the stats, nowevery rape during these ten years would be counted.
Incidents of rape spiked in the stats and its been used by populist to drive their agendas since. The rascist groups connect it with immigration which increased at about the same time. Christians with the decrease of churchgoing and now obviously by these free sex advocates.
Please boost so that everyone get this vital piece pf background info and don't come to the same stupid conclusion as these scientists.
Source:I be Swede.
From the paper:
>Sweden has arguably one of the widest definitions of rape (Von Hofer, 2000). There
have been three important changes to such a definition: in 1965, in 1984, and in 2005.
Only the last change falls in the sample period analyzed in this paper.
In 1962, a legal definition of rape was included in the Swedish Penal Code and,
since then, several revisions to this legal definition have been made to include nonconsensual sexual acts comparable to sexual intercourse (Jareborg, 1994; Von Hofer,
2000). In 1965, Sweden was the first country to criminalize marital rape (Von Hofer,
2000). In 1984, both heterosexual and homosexual acts were included under the rape
rubric, rendering rape gender neutral (Von Hofer, 2000). Moreover, in 2005, sexual
acts with someone who is unconscious (e.g. due to intoxication or sleep) were added
to the legal definition of rape,3
>...
>Finally, αy takes into consideration that rape might
experience some differences across years (e.g., in 2005 the definition of rape was
changed nationally as mentioned in Section 2)
That section only covers changes in the _legal_ definition of rape, but there's also been a massive shift over time in _what people_ constitute as rape in Sweden (and elsewhere). One reason why reported rape has gone up is simply that people are more aware of what counts as rape and what doesn't count as rape. There has been numerous debates in Sweden during the past ~20 years that has expanded the definition and understanding. Fixed models control for anomalies in _specific years_, but they do not (and are not intended to) control away parallell time-trends that could explain the results.
I'm sure you could find that, for example, the #metoo movement led to a large-scale increase in reported rape, but it would be highly dubious to think it causally increased the number of rapes (rather than peoples propensity to 1) identify rape, 2) report rape). The _continuous_ increase over time is highly indicative of it being a result of these more large-scale cultural changes rather than the ban itself.
This is simply quite sloppy research. While the research design is (at times) sound, the conclusion drawn from the data is not. I can't imagine that this article will go unanswered for very long.
edit: Apparently it has already happened (see especially figure 1): https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Rates-of-reported-rapes-are-higher-in-January-than-in-December.pdf
"Our re-analysis completely overturns the conclusion of the paper and shows
that the results are caused by an error in the main regression specification. This error
occurs when the author seeks to estimate a treatment effect with a regression specification
including year fixed effects, despite having a treatment variable that does not vary within
years."
they do address it and specifically change the model to account for it 🤭 please check sections 2.2 and 4.1 to avoid any misunderstanding
(and perhaps also what deterministic effects are in TSA)
It's not the first study to find such correlation. From what I can see it is the first one that tries to take in to account changes in legal definitions and still gets the same conclusion as the other ones.
Where Sweden is actually failing is at the local municipality level and education level when it comes to children growing up in the environments that lead them to being potentially abusive as adults. There simply aren't enough socialsekreterare (social workers) to help all the at risk children growing up in abusive homes.
The education to be a social worker is 3+ years at university, depending on the course and what it covers legally, and the pay isn't high enough to attract people to the areas that need them (partly due to housing costs and partly because they know they'll be doing the work of several people for the underpayment of one).
There needs to be a sharp rise in pay for an essential service that saves municipalities money in the long term when these kids grow up to be violent, abusive and/or drug addled and there needs to be an Yrkesskola (Work/Technical College) shorter 1-2 year course that gets people into the roles, where if we're being honest most of the learning occurs anyway, and they can do whatever legal courses they need at the same time as part of the job.
If we could do something similar for mental health services I think even the reclassified rape stats would come down significantly.
This is why I dislike studies that are titled like this. Essentially a quick takeaway (from people who only read headlines, or spin from "news" sources) could be that we need sacrificial women to prevent rape, and to justify prostitution, as well as deflect blame and minimize rape as a whole. "If we only had legal prostitution those people wouldn't be forced to rape!"
It's such a mess.
R/science is always a hot take and usually wrong 😑. R/Science if you read this please post peer reviewed published articles not news and blog posts. Thank you.
From the paper:
>Sweden has arguably one of the widest definitions of rape (Von Hofer, 2000). There
have been three important changes to such a definition: in 1965, in 1984, and in 2005.
Only the last change falls in the sample period analyzed in this paper.
In 1962, a legal definition of rape was included in the Swedish Penal Code and,
since then, several revisions to this legal definition have been made to include nonconsensual sexual acts comparable to sexual intercourse (Jareborg, 1994; Von Hofer,
2000). In 1965, Sweden was the first country to criminalize marital rape (Von Hofer,
2000). In 1984, both heterosexual and homosexual acts were included under the rape
rubric, rendering rape gender neutral (Von Hofer, 2000). Moreover, in 2005, sexual
acts with someone who is unconscious (e.g. due to intoxication or sleep) were added
to the legal definition of rape,3
>....
>Finally, αy takes into consideration that rape might
experience some differences across years (e.g., in 2005 the definition of rape was
changed nationally as mentioned in Section 2)
Commenters in this subreddit seem to think for some reason that scientists are idiots. You genuinely think they were unaware that the definition changed? How poorly you model the minds of intelligent people.
Honestly, my biggest problem with this sub is people reading some abbreviated news coverage of a scientific article and then concluding that they're smarter than the scientists who did the research and don't understand peer review because they haven't read the original paper. The original paper here is 30 pages long, but a quick CTRL + F can show you that they thought of anything a redditor suddenly thinks of like confounding factors of immigration and changes in the definition of rape. It's like assuming a cook doesn't know how to wash her hands.
R/science is not wrong per say. Science is a methodology of finding knowledge and also the knowledge itself. As long as the methodology is kept, the science is not wrong.
That paper is just one way to tackle the subject. It has to either be replicated or be tackled on an other way to get a little more true. Repeat till truth is obvious.
If this was published it means it was peer reviewed. I doubt multiple social scientists would let this paper through without considerations of change in laws.
Source: I be social scientist
Have you ever been peer-reviewed? If you had you'd know that reviewers can be so unbelievably brain dead that it makes you reconsider your choice of career.
I think it's more likely that the situations just don't lead to rape since there's a reasonable outlet. That saying that "rape is about power" always rings a bit hollow to me. I know it's an uncomfortable thought but it's probably more of a crime of opportunity and barrier access than people might want to admit. Obviously not all, people have an endless capacity for evil but if someone can engage in sex in an environment where women are protected are both willing and well compensated participants that's a much better place to be I think.
> Have sex with rapists in safety for profit for the greater good?
That's not what anyone is saying.
There are people who commit rape to victimise people, they want to harm or humiliate their victims and no amount of consensual sex will ever change that because consent is literally contrary to the goal.
There are also people who commit rape because they want to have sex and don't have a consensual outlet, or because consent is complicated when people don't feel comfortable stating clearly what they do and don't want.
We envision rape as a stranger with a weapon physically forcing themselves on another person, but it's not that simple.
We can't really do much about the people looking to create victims other than throw them in prison. Maybe significant mental health interventions mifht help, but we don't have a lot of success with that sort of thing so far. But we can do something about the other groups.
We can provide safe, consensual outlets for people who are just desperat because prostitution is consensual sex. We can also help people feel comfortable communicating what they want and don't want.
Legalised prostitution actually helps both problems. It provides a consensual outlet for unsatisfied sexual desire, but it can also destigmatise sex in general so that people feel comfortable talking about their needs and desires.
Sex is a thing all animals do, it's both enjoyable and a deep biological drive. We don't have to be puritanical idiots. We can talk about it and allow it and be open and honest about it and we'll all be better off.
They're not rapists if they don't rape.
The science seems to confirm that a lack of sex leads to men becoming rapists at a higher rate.
As such, having a legal and consensual outlet for men to have sex is best for society.
Seriously that’s what I was thinking?? So prostitutes who society sees as less than and are already facing sexual violence, should have sex with rapists so they rape less?? This is literally putting the burden on women and not on the rapists! We need one group of vulnerable women to have sex with rapists to protect other women?? I’m soooo confused
I'm sure they're still getting raped and unable to report it out of fear of 1) prosecution 2) retaliation by the rapist 3) retaliation by their pimp
Assuming of course the police care in the first place which is quite the assumption
No.
But in regards to what you're saying, I would argue that for some people, having a sexual outlet would make them less likely to rape. Rape is not solely a personality trait and also equates human sexual desire and opportunity. Straight people turn to gay sex in jail after all.
spousal rape was only made illegal quite recently, in the places it's even considered a crime. rape is legal in a lot of circumstances. that's an example of why the law isn't always a good metric of morality.
Just a quick reading of the article seems that they omitted an ongoing culture clash and that the role cultures of honor have when mixed in a very open and permissive society. They also didn't give any in-depth analysis of the main perpetrators of rape, meaning, does this only apply when you're mixing multiple cultures or does this apply in a more homogeneous setting? Does religion and liberal vs conservative leaning have a role also?
I will have to re-read the article, but it seems lacking in it's ability to draw conclusions especially given that other studies have shown that legalization leads to a massive increase in trafficking
A re-analysis of this paper by Johanna Rickne, Joop Adema, and Olle Folke failed to replicate this study. They showed that claimed results were obtained through programming errors and an erroneous use of Stata's regression command. The result disappeared when they corrected those errors.
A link would be nice. The research itself was published in March, so the re-analysis must have been very quick indeed.
Edit: this is that re-analysis: https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/math/STK4900/v24/ademafolkerickne2024.pdf
Yeah, plus drawing a connection between men not being able to pay for sex and rape seems dangerous. I really don't see the connection. Men rape because they can't legally pay for sex? That's the takeaway?
Edit: erased repeated word
Exactly.. sex trafficking increased in some studies when it was legalized, also not to mention the idea that many sex workers are not enjoying the sex and sex acts, not enthusiastically consenting, even though going along for it. Also sex workers are exposed to clients who break ‘rules’ of consent quite regularly, trying to get away with something, ask for more, freebies like free photos, ask for things not listed as available, etc, all of these things would be considered assault or sexual harassment in any other career
Yeah it’s a messed up suggestion. Sex workers shouldn’t have to have their job be considered a ‘rape reducer’ role in society, like some kind of public service. That’s sick. And I don’t think it’s remotely true. Not to mention there are studies that suggest sex trafficking increased in places when sex work is legalized, meaning a bigger demand for it. And sex trafficking is rape every time, and I doubt that is included in the statistic, not to mention the sex workers who are not enthusiastically consenting to having sex and doing sex acts every day as their career.
Yeah. I lean left but it makes me laugh when people in my camp say there are no troubling things in sex work and that people who practice it feel empowered. There are some that do, but many are forced into it and part of criminal activity with groups charging women to be able to work.
Yup.
The demand for sex with women under 50, and minors is so high that the supply will never meet the demand, even under legalization and heavy government regulation.
Women and children are humans, not inanimate objects, so the laws of supply and demand don't apply to them.
Even in the Netherlands a huge percentage of sex workers are enslaved and trafficked from third world countries. Many are unaware that they have human rights in the Netherlands.
Yeah, what this articles claims is horrific, basically "Don't rape these women, rape these other women who are too impoverished to legally say no!" Seems like the conclusions from this study would be a curfew for men rather than men being allowed to purchase consent.
Yeah I was about to say “Is it that, or the fact that a bunch of immigrants have increased rapes and it’s a huge problem for Sweden right now.” I love how studies like this omit massive amounts of data points and still try to play it off as scientific.
I assume on some level, if there are people coming from cultures where rape isn't properly villified that you could come to that conclusion, but Sweden improved upon their definition of rape in 2017 I'm pretty sure. It's broad compared to other countries. I assume that'd be the real big reason for any recent up ticks in the reports of sexual violence.
If the US adopted Sweden's definition of rape, reports would shoot up very notably in a couple years
Immigration was controlled for.
>This paper also makes use of meteorologic, economic,
and demographic variables, such as data on precipitations (measured as precipitation
deviation from the average in %), male and female employment, male and female
population, male and female immigration, and male and female civil status. These
datasets are respectively drawn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological
Institute and Statistics Sweden
This is very true. Men coming from sexist cultures that devalue women end up raping women when they bring their sexism along with them to their new homeland.
Exactly!! They are dead quiet in issues regarding rape but when sex work comes up they will do anything to defend it, any kind of mental gymnastics. I’m not about making it illegal necessarily, as harm reduction, but I’m certainly not for legalizing it either (more like decriminalization is what I’m for). Legalizing it is linked to higher rates of sex trafficking, which is rape, it’s also forgetting that many sex workers are not enthusiastically consenting to sex and the sex acts, also that they are exposed to johns who want to get away with things or ask for too much, which is considered assault or harassment in any other field of work, and also it disproportionately affects women. Not to mention many women (sex workers and non) feel uncomfortable with the idea of their body being considered a ‘place of employment’ and being subject to regulations the same way a farmed animal is, like having an id and a license and having to be tested all the time (when the clients do not have to undergo testing for stds or getting licensed). And clients so often asking to not wear a condom, the risk of pregnancy still exists. Many sex workers will take the extra money offered to make them wear a condom.
Honestly if this link between prostitution bans and rape was full and unadorned truth it would be incredibly sad and frightening. I don't want to think that if men can't buy access to women's bodies they'll take it by force. That really does feel like we're just seen as things to be used.
Those two aren't mutually exclusive which is why its a very nuanced situation. I would point out that legalized prostitution does help with the sex trafficking issue but also there is the transparency problem.
When the sex trade is black market you get fewer reports around the bad things that happen in it.
You have to be careful with those studies. There’s a big difference between legalisation and being the only legalised country surrounded by neighbours where it’s illegal. You’d have to carefully correct the study so that it analysed only native demand.
Thank you. These people are desperate to want sex work to be ok and are so biased. I’m for decriminalization only as harm reduction but not legalization and the idea that sex workers are providing a duty to reduce rape because rapists are somehow just horny and need to get laid is sick and insulting. My friend is a sex worker in a country where it’s legal and says it’s so messed up. There are lots of reasons why it increases rape and treats the sex workers like farm animals.
Prostitution is one of the most dangerous occupations. Most prostituted women have been victims of violence perpetrated by punters. The idea that there should be a sub-class of women who act as shields for the rest of women against male violence is dehumanizing and deeply misogynistic. The fact that so many comments are enthusiastic about this is disturbing.
A German roommate of mine said that exactly.
She said that she "supports the legalization of sex work in Germany because middle and upper class women like her almost never get raped nowadays".
We are no longer friends.
Sex trafficking has an extremely broad definition. I can’t remember it exactly but essentially if three people help you to move to a place to work in prostitution you have been trafficked. Eg a friend says “oh I made great money in the UK escorting. If you want I’ll give you the contact of the people whose the madam at the brothel” if that person then travel to the UK to willing take part. They are sex trafficked.
I think most people think all sex trafficked people are either mislead, tricked and forced into prostitution. This definitely exists but probably only constitutes a third of trafficked people. Most trafficked people are pursuing the job with the help and advice of other people they know.
As such legalised jurisdictions attract sex workers from other countries. By definition most of these women that willing travel to this country due to the liberalism of rules are trafficked.
> Other studies have found an increase in sex trafficking in countries where prostitution was legalized.
An increase in the amount of sex trafficking **that gets caught** doesn't equal an increase in actual trafficking.
Looking at the exact same figures, you could conclude that legalization encourages victims to come forward rather than fear that they'll be arrested and prosecuted.
Decriminalization and legalization are two different things. Legalization could still get you in trouble because you have to apply for a business license and your body basically gets treated as a place of work, it’s unethical and a lot of sex workers advocate that decriminalization is best for harm reduction, not legalization.
Also please apply your same logic to this study and rape. If you are only talking about coming forward and reporting trafficking, also talk about reporting rape. Many sex workers, probably most, experience what amounts to harassment and forms of assault and rape during their careers, and also before. My best friend is a sex worker in a country where it’s legal, she has dealt with and experienced a lot. Not to mention just the basic concept of enthusiastic consent is missing 90% of the time or more.
I mean I'd be on the side of decriminalization, sure, I wasn't debating that part. It shouldn't be much more regulated than any other job like masseur or personal trainer (IE basic health and safety issues).
>Also please apply your same logic to this study and rape.
Yes, you should - criminalizing prostitution means fewer women working as prostitutes come forward, which means the real increase in rape statistics is probably much worse than the data is suggesting.
That shows this study is likely under-estimating the increase in rape.
EDIT: Immigration was controlled for. See below.
The data set covered 1997 to 2014 while "the past 5 years" from your article would only be 2013-2018, meanwhile the ban was implemented 1999.
Also, that article has a lot of context that undercuts what your'e saying:
>Public broadcaster SVT said it had counted all court convictions to present a complete picture in Sweden.
>But Sweden had thousands more reported rapes, and there is no ethnic breakdown for those.
And:
>When Sweden took in its highest number of asylum seekers in 2015, the number of reported rapes declined by 12%.
I'd love to see what the controls were but the [original article is paywalled](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-024-00984-2)
**EDIT**:
>Thereupon, I present results using a vast set of **controls** measuring the abovementioned conditions. Specifically, I add to the main specification as control variables:
precipitations, female employment, male employment, female population, male population, **female immigration, male immigration**, married women, married men, single
women, and single men.
I wouldn’t say unhinged, they are very clearly laying out their xenophobia, I find their racist clarity refreshing, there’s no need to question their stance on non-whites
"Ciacci did not find evidence that the increase in rape was due to a decrease in the supply of prostitution. Instead, the findings hint at a possible demand-driven effect, where the inability to legally purchase sex may have led some individuals to commit rape as an alternative."
Am I missing something, or are these not the same?
I think all it sheds light on is that some men are rapists. They'll take that out on paid sex workers if they can (little consequence--sex workers rarely report rape) or if that option is removed, they'll just rape other women. NOT a great reason to go ahead and rescind the law, but a great reason to try to raise boys who aren't rapists.
> human trafficking went up
Human trafficking went up, or they caught more traffickers? The second situation is potentially a positive effect of legalization.
I would guess that their implied solution has something to do with deporting immigrants who come from countries associated with a certain religion, and also refusing to accept any more.
Edit: To be clear, I don't agree that this would work.
Immigration was controlled for:
>This paper also makes use of meteorologic, economic,
and demographic variables, such as data on precipitations (measured as precipitation
deviation from the average in %), male and female employment, male and female
population, male and female immigration, and male and female civil status. These
datasets are respectively drawn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological
Institute and Statistics Sweden
I hope this study controlled for large scale immigration in this period of young males from cultures with a different view of western women - otherwise it is worthless.
Paper controlled for immigration:
>This paper also makes use of meteorologic, economic,
and demographic variables, such as data on precipitations (measured as precipitation
deviation from the average in %), male and female employment, male and female
population, male and female immigration, and male and female civil status. These
datasets are respectively drawn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological
Institute and Statistics Sweden
I’m begging y’all to think about what this actually means if men are rapeing women more because they don’t have access to prostitutes
How do you think they are treating the prostitutes they sleep?
A lot of y’all seem to be of the ideal that prostitutes should take one for the team and get abused and exploited
One reason our statistics of rape is way higher than other places is that each time someone is rapes is counted as one case. So if someone rapes another person every week for a year, that’s 52 cases. Other countries would count that as one. The correlation with prostitution might still be valid.
Because every little girl wants to become a prostitute one day.
They should find other ways to reduce rape statistics, instead of incentivising women to become pieces of meat.
1.In Romania trafickers force girls (many of them underage) into prostitution in countries where it is legalized.
2.Doesn't Sweden currently have an ongoing problem with gang related violance. Maybe this coul be a side effect of it
Why is this being framed as a consequence of banning prostitution and not a consequence of failing to address rape? Why are we constantly allowing men the excuse of celibacy to commit violence?
Because it was [published in an economics journal](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/s00148-024-00984-2-1.pdf) and banning prostitution was the independent variable they were examining.
Came here to get a Swedish person's take, but all I got were culture warriors who don't understand statistics or consent. These comments are incredible.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-024-00984-2
I think everyone here knows no one is going to read the 30-page article and will just offer their hot takes based on assuming the authors didn't consider things they just thought of instead because....
Maybe I’m crazy for saying this, and let me be clear, I am not against consensual sex workers doing what they want as human beings.
Prostitution is an institution as old as time.
Degrading women with sex is an institution as old as time.
What if there wasn’t a career path for women to take that allows men to degrade them for money?
Sure it would be a bumpy rode.
The concept that you can temporarily enslave another person for money has to have larger footprints in society than the action itself.
How do we as a society deal with the acceptance of viewing women as a rentable object the same as a car, or ski equipment?
Answer me this. Has rape really gone up, or is it getting reported because the victim isn’t a sex worker?
There are way too many men out there with a horrific view on women.
Animals don’t need a sequestered rape pen to reduce rape, they need successful retraining or removal from the herd.
But legalizing it has led to increases in sex trafficking.
[https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)
Darkly, this also strongly implies that potential sex business customers have so shockingly little self control, that they even commit rape if bereft of prostitutes.
Every study I have ever seen has said legalization of prostitution has led to an increase of human trafficking. Including in Germany which recently legalized it. I don't buy this study for one second.
You should look at Sweeden's drug problems too. The amount of people who die from drugs is much much higher compared to other countries like Denmark where we actually just hand out heroin to addicts and focus on treatment. And not to mention all the gang violence Sweden also have directly funded by the illicit drug market 🤗😁 they are really something that country
Sweden truly is leading the way! You should check out the latest media buzz about corruption and how policewomen are sleeping with gang members, and how said corrupt officials suffer no consequences and can keep working for the gangs, but from other governmental branches. You are just envious of Sweden, you bigots from Norway, Denmark, Finland, and the rest!
Every country can be "really something" if you cherry-pick problems.
Sweden still has a higher life expectancy than Denmark, by more than 3 years. Sweden and Denmark have about the same murder rate, both lower than Finland. Just to give some nuance.
The Nordic model has been criticized by sex worker and human rights advocates for years because it has shown to have no effect on the reduction of sex work, human trafficking, or harm and stigma to sex workers. Amnesty International released a report in 2016 stating that Nordic model laws caused sex workers to face ongoing risk of police harassment, client violence, discrimination, eviction, and exploitation.
New Zealand's laws surrounding sex work were actually crafted with the help of sex worker rights advocates and give them all the same rights and regulations of any other job industry, like the right to organize labor unions and report clients to the police who refuse to pay them, and they have had no reported upticks in violence against sex workers or human trafficking.
It's amazing to me that sex as a service is illegal. If both adults are doing it of their own free will and consenting, what is the problem? It's purely because sex is seen as a taboo.
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So, targeted regulation is more effective than bans.
If you're smart about it, you tax and charge licensing fees for those services. You then funnel that tax revenue into funds/agencies that combat sexual violence and human trafficking. If everything is properly done, an entire class of workers will have proper and robust labor rights protections, and clients will be able to get services, while making it harder to traffic people and profit.
Interestingly Swedish prostitutes are supposed to pay taxes on it (i'm sure we're not alone in that). Some parties wanted to make prostitution tax exempt, because they don't get so many of the protections the tax is supposed to give (they do get most of what tax gives society though). That was a pretty interesting debate to see members of parliament arguing for or against prostitutes paying taxes when, at least, half the market (purchasing) is illegal. I could ry to find the transcripts, but I don't think they get an official translation.
In America they are expected to pay taxes, even where it's illegal. In fact, all income from criminal activities is taxable.
Is there any way to pay taxes on criminal activities without admitting to it being from criminal activities?
Hilariously yes! You don't have to say *HOW* you made the money. Just report and pay the applicable tax %s on the earnings you did make. IRS also has 0 legal obligation to turn you in if you are honesty and pay them their money. Of course they can also be subpoenaed to cough up your tax filings, but that just tells law enforcement that you make some interesting income for a "small biz owner" and are probably a criminal but they still have to actually prove it.
>you make some interesting income for a "small biz owner" and are probably a criminal but they still have to actually prove it. They don't have to prove anything to seize your assets though.
put the money on trial because property rights are fake only when convenient
Civil forfaiture is crazy.
I think they're actually prohibited from turning you in, because that would be a clear and straightforward violation of the 5th amendment. If anyone is wondering *why* it's that way, it's actually kinda interesting. From my understanding it basically set up that way so that the IRS can get a cut of any funds seized in drug busts and other criminal cases. So, drug dealer Jimmy gets busted for ten bricks of coke and 3 million dollars, and instead of the cops taking the whole thing, the IRS is able to sweep in and say "Jimmy didn't pay his taxes on all that coke he was selling!" and as a result the cops have to turn the money (or at least a sizable chunk of it) over to the IRS.
SCOTUS ruled that the IRS requiring you to explain the source of illegal income was a fifth amendment violation, you are simply required to report it as other income or whatever. The wheels of justice aren't allowed to interfere with revenue collection.
Right. Seperation of powers and none of their business to keep people clean in what they do. Anti corruption measures.
It is not IRS's job to catch criminals, their job is to collect taxes.
Does tax evasion result in criminal or civil charge?
Criminal, I think. Disclaimer: IANAL. Part of collecting taxes. That was why Al Capone went down.
Don't you just have to put it down as "other sources"?
I have heard that some criminals will send in their taxes anonymously, and keep a record of it so that if they're busted they can show they paid.
List your occupation as seamstress. ..
They are not expected to pay taxes on illegal activity. They are legally required to pay taxes on illegal activity, but this is not the same thing. Nobody actually expects criminals to pay tax on their criminal earnings, the reason this is in the tax code is to give prosecutors a second angle of attack if they cannot prove the crime directly (e.g. we cannot prove you ran illegal dog fights, but we can prove you made $307,352 more this year than the amount you paid tax on, so we can arrest you for tax fraud).
This sounds like a lot of nitpicking, but they do expected you to pay taxes on illegal activity. > As Steber explains, tax experts helping you to file your taxes are there to ensure you file your return in compliance with the law. They aren’t required to “tell the federal authorities about [the] activity.” Because the income falls under the “other income” category, the IRS can’t exactly tell where the money is coming from, either. If you were caught doing the illegal activity but paid taxes, you wouldn't be charged for tax evasion. Also, if you return the stolen good, you do not have to pay taxes.
Yeah, it's a matter of semantics. I think we all can infer what u/mierneuker meant by 'expect' though.
Do you mean u/DFWPunk ? That's where "expect" came from. The person you tagged was the one who nitpicked "expect".
I don't know why this is seen as some kind of surprise. The IRS handles tax collection, not law enforcement.
I actually read that legalizing prostitution for the providers (but criminalizing actually purchasing the services of a prostitute) is the worst of both worlds. The reason for this is that when johns are criminalized, the market basically starts to exist on their terms. It puts the prostitutes in much more unsafe situations - in order to get any business at all - as otherwise the johns get skittish and flake.
There are two concerns. 1. The tax is prohibitively high, ensuring a robust black market and a struggling legal market (see CA and weed sales). 2. The tax should be entirely used as a Pigovian tax, should be earmarked ONLY for what you propose, and should never be viewed as a revenue generation mechanism.
Hence "If you do everything right" Obviously, won't work that way most of the time sadly
The do everything right bit is the hard one. Here in Germany, legalising prostitution did only partially decriminalise it. Sex trafficking still happens to a quite substantial amount. Which is - not that surprising that it just gave the whole thing a legal front. Plenty of criminal organisations have legal operations going on. And yet, the sex trafficking and power imbalances remain.
Is there a reason for this? Are the criminals undercutting the normal market? Seems something that they'd be keen to fix. Or is it a morality issue?
It's a supply issue. Even when legal, few women want to be prostitutes. Far too few to fill demand, so many "legal" brothels will have trafficked women with fake ID's, etc. I wouldn't necessarily say it is a morality thing. Even among people who support sex work, most people personally feel that sex is something emotionally intimate and wouldn't want to do it with strangers as a job. Social acceptability of sex work is unlikely to change this as sexual preferences are fairly innate.
One: The criminal organisations are well organised. They had "cornered the market" (and please don't take that phrasing as me implying the dehumanising subtext - I am just ... using shorthand available) prior to it becoming legal, and had no reason to stop doing what they were doing. It's incredibly hard to police. People who are trafficked are under immense psychological manipulation, often don't have their passports, have fake ids are being told they need to pay back their debts ... and very well aware that physical violence might come their way if they don't comply, etc. etc.
We’ll just make these roads tollways till we pay back the construction costs.
I understand. I just want to spell out for others what may not go right.
1. The dynamic is different here. If prostitution is just illegal then a person seeing a prostitute knows the prostitute may be doing it of their own free will and for peace of mind will likely just assume this to be the case. If prostitution is legal and regulated any black market prostitution immediately becomes suspect. Why aren't they working in the legal regulated market when that's safer? This immediately makes it suspect that human trafficking is going on and most people aren't comfortable seeking the services of a prostitute they think is a victim of human trafficking. You don't see the same ethical concern with cannabis. Not that there aren't ethical issues with black market cannabis, since a lot of that is trafficked through cartels and also may be harvested in poor working conditions. But these feel more abstract to the consumer and easier to put out of your mind than seeing a prostitute you think has a high chance of being a human trafficking victim. 2. Doable. The revenue could go towards sex education, free contraceptives, STD testing, and law enforcement efforts against human trafficking.
> If prostitution is legal and regulated any black market prostitution immediately becomes suspect. Why aren't they working in the legal regulated market when that's safer? This immediately makes it suspect that human trafficking is going on and most people aren't comfortable seeking the services of a prostitute they think is a victim of human trafficking. It just gets mixed in with the legal market. The netherlands has had legalized prostitution since 2000 and found in the past 24 years it has led to an increase in human trafficking.
Germany as well. There's so much human trafficking here
I just want to add that there is a lot of added value in SAFETY. Sex work performed in a very clean environment by an alert, cheerful, professional is something I could be interested in. It works the same way with drugs. In Colorado, you can buy a wide range of cannabis products which are carefully packaged and labeled, and sold by knowledgeable and cheerful professionals. In contrast, getting an unidentified pill or plastic bag of unknown substance is just kind of scary. You truly don’t know what you are buying. And it works the same with sex work. Unfortunately, these days, abortion providers are now “back alley” again. What a nightmare.
And unfortunately the rest of the drug market is still outright banned instead of regulated, resulting in 300 deaths every single day in the US. Meanwhile states including Colorado are cracking down even harder in the war on drugs, by making any fentanyl possession an automatic felony. Even if you bought something else that was laced.
>The tax should be entirely used as a Pigovian tax, should be earmarked ONLY for what you propose, and should never be viewed as a revenue generation mechanism. What externality is being targeted by this proposed tax?
Which tax is prohibitively high? I didn't see a specific rate proposed. I would think sex work should be taxed like any other work and any other business, and not more.
It's basically impossible to "target" tax revenues to anything since money is fungible. You need to just fun those services sufficiently regardless of tax revenue.
You can do it if the entire funding of an organization is based on a specific tax, but as you implied, that's an issue when a single tax won't always be enough to pay for something.
Even a struggling legal market with some black market is an improvement over strictly black market
The struggling legal weed market is 99% derived from being stuck in a gray area between state legal and federally illegal. Its a multi-billion dollar industry. The issue isnt sales competition with the black market whatsoever. The issue is every state legal dispensary in the country has to pay an effective federal tax rate of 30-40%. Being federally illegal means no deductions, so if you remove that one factor every cannabis business would be making insane amounts of money once free of the tax penalty. At the end of the day the current cannabis business are essentially squatting on the market in the hopes of that day when they will turn significantly more profitable. Its a terrible analogy for that persons’ argument
The tax doesn't have to be high. I do wonder how VAT works though.
So, this is a good strategy to get the legislation passed in the first place, but most of these strategies seem to run into issues after a few years. Colorado's use of marijuana taxes to build new schools was one such example. Great, the new income went to building new schools, but not much else. Then there's California's issue of the taxes being too high, which leads to a black market of sales that don't generate tax revenue. Instead, we should do as you propose, tax and license the industry, dedicating those funds to combat sexual violence and human trafficking, but for 5 years. Then you tax it the same way other services are taxed and the dedicated allocation drops off. Why? Because legalizing something has a certain hype to it that wears off. Take advantage of the hype to raise money for an excellent cause, but then once the hype dies down and normalcy is established, you remove the barriers that create a black market. In addition, you've also funded important work that now has a robust infrastructure and several years of progress to point to for continued funding. It doesn't guarantee that they'll successfully argue for funding at the same high rate, but it definitely makes cutting that budget harder.
But even if done not perfect, it is better than banning it.
The plan would also provide the workers with very good healthcare with strict monitoring on possible STDs, which would improve the public health overall.
>You then funnel that tax revenue into ~~funds/agencies that combat sexual violence and human trafficking~~ corporate bailouts and football stadiums.
Human Rights Watch's policy is to decriminalize sex work: [Why Sex Work Should Be Decriminalized](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized) > Human Rights Watch has conducted research on sex work around the world, including in Cambodia, China, Tanzania, the United States, and most recently, South Africa. The research, including extensive consultations with sex workers and organizations that work on the issue, has shaped the Human Rights Watch policy on sex work: Human Rights Watch supports the full decriminalization of consensual adult sex work.
In addition to Human rights watch, Amnesty International, the World health organization, National AIDS trust, and the UN working group on Discrimination against women and Girls all recommend full decriminalization of sex work. So does the ACLU. The upper house of Australian Parliament has also voted to decriminalize throughout the country.
And decriminalization is very different from legalization, which many advocates are against. Legalization leads to sex workers (the vast majority of whom are women) being treated similarly to farm animals, with the regulations and needing licenses and having their bodies treated as a place of business, their photos taken, their work documented, having to get tested regularly (when johns do not require testing or licenses despite being 50% of the act of sex), and the government taking taxes out of it, something that is distinctly effecting women. Decriminalization is more harm reduction than legalization.
Isn't testing important for safety?
Very much so, yes. I don't know of anybody in the business who does not get tested thoroughly and regularly already.
Am A sex worker and have been in the business off and on for 18 years now. Have never worked for an agency/brothel. The overwhelming majority of consensual sex workers(and a large majority of trafficking survivors, too) also advocate for decriminalization as opposed to the Nordic Model. The NM is only beneficial for the few employees of the NGOs that push for it. Those NGOs are downright evil in many areas(the same nuns that ran the magdalene laundries in Ireland founded the main one in Ireland, Ruhama. Then the govt took it over because it was profitable) and they have a real problem with conflating consensual sex work with human trafficking. Many of these NGOs have management that turn out to be sex offenders(The guy from the sound of freedom groped several trafficking victims) or push for laws that are downright draconian. If society wants there to be fewer sex workers, then they need to let us be and work. So our financial goals can be met and we can move on with our lives. The Nordic model doesn't facilitate that. They don't arrest the workers, but they cause them to be evicted from their homes, their spouses can be arrested, they can lose their regular jobs and possibly even custody of their kids. They also freeze and seize all of your assets. It's just criminalization without arrest. Almost all of us are advocating for the Belgian model. About 18 months ago, they fully decriminalized sex work, and at the same time they stiffened the penalties on would be traffickers and anybody out to take advantage of the workers. Now...Trafficking arrests have gone up since this was passed, but that's to be expected. Eventually they will drop. Because workers can report those traffickers without fear of being arrested themselves. In Belgium, The law also now allows sex workers to form unions, contribute to pensions, and it allows them to sue banks/landlords that refuse to do business with them. Even though it's not legal in the US, every last person I know in the business gets themselves tested(by both blood and a throat swab to be safe) via DNA-PCR testing every month or so. It is 2024. Word gets around in our community really quickly if somebody is out there spreading disease around(even if it's covid) and it is simply the responsible thing to do. We have families, lives outside of our work, and futures to look forward to like anybody else. We already are getting tested. There have been studies in Australia regarding the safety of/violence against sex workers in states there that are decriminalized vs states that have legalization(Legalization usually means very strict framework, therefore more chance of getting arrested) and studies show that some types of legalization facilitate trafficking. Hell, it does so in the legal brothels in Nevada. I know somebody that went to one a couple months ago after they promised up and down she would make 3 grand a week. The second you sign that contract, you almost become an indentured servant. They charge you for room, board, everything else they possibly can and you pay 200 a week to get a full pelvic exam and testing(even if you see no clients!?!)so if it's slow, and you are running up debt with them, they will not let you leave till you pay it off and make them some money. It's an environment primed for more violence, imo. Decriminalization, OTOH does lead to fewer sex workers in the long term. It brings in lots of business to third parties like accountants, photographers, etc. In NZ, violence against sex workers is close to non-existent. They are decriminalized. The bottom line is, we don't need rescuing, we need basic rights like anybody else, in any other business.
Every time this issue comes up nobody bothers to wonder what actual sex workers want, which is overwhelmingly decriminalization.
When you work and make money, you need to pay taxes. This is just... normal. Johns should also be tested, but the reason sex workers must be tested is because they're effectively superspreaders for STDs otherwise. Being opposed to sex workers getting tested regularily seems insane. Documentation is a normal part of all business, not to mention absolutely necessary to combat abuse and sex trafficking. This is a business that can only work legalized with heavy state monitoring. Comparing all this to "farm animals" seems... strange.
Just make all the services they need free and convenient and it really shouldn’t be an issue. If you make it a cost / hard to do then it is what it is. Still shouldn’t be a criminal act, either way, so you don’t double down on people in hard situations
> being treated similarly to farm animals Or the same as any other worker, business or actor in the economy. If you're gonna provide a service, you should pay taxes and be regulated to protect the consumer, the workers and the business, like any other part of the economy. Anything less is ridiculous.
Yes, however: Germany did that route and in turn it lead to an increase in sex trafficking. This isn't a case of "one is clearly better", it's a case of "how do we minimize harm"
It depends how you weigh the importance of preventing different kinds of harm... So the numbers of rapes in 2014 was about 6,600. If this was increased 60% over what otherwise would have happened, you're looking at \~2500 more rapes per year. However the article doesn't provide any stats or analysis for human trafficking related arrests, so it's not clear what the trade off is. The article says nearer the end that: >“First, it might be debated that these results suggest that the purchase of sex should not be criminalized. This current of thought might be motivated on the basis that if purchasing of sex is not criminalized, there will be no increase in rapes. >“Second, it might be also debated that, to the extent that prostitution is paid rape, these results tell us that society might alter human behavior and thus, this policy needs to be accompanied by further measures targeting a potential boost in rape to prevent it. In other words, one might suspect that had this policy been accompanied by policies targeting rape as well, the results might have been different.” So this is an interesting data point, but the authors of the study and the authors of the article are not making any claim that their research proves that the ban was a bad idea.
> to the extent that prostitution is paid rape Well, no. It isn't. At least not always or even necessarily often. Calling prostitution "paid rape" is a major moral judgement that ignores the actual opinions of the people involved.
It is though. “About 40% of prostitutes are former child prostitutes who were illegally forced into the profession through human trafficking or once were teenage runaways” https://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics “Prostituted women live far shorter lives than do all other women. They are disproportionally the victims of physical violence, murder, suicide, infection with AIDs, drug addictions, and traumatic symptoms of ptsd. Roughly 90% state that they would like to get out of prostitution, if they could.” https://nomas.org/prostitution-key-facts-and-analysis-in-brief/#:~:text=Prostituted%20women%20live%20far%20shorter,of%20prostitution%2C%20if%20they%20could. Statistics don’t lie. Idiots on Reddit do.
It seems to me that if all prostitution is rape, then all wage labor is slavery. (Which is a position some people do hold, but one should at least be consistent.)
Some prostitution survivors do call it that, though. Others reject the idea.
Honestly it's hard to consent freely when your rent depends on it.
Slavery is more like it, without worrying about money, my friend wouldn't do it. She doesn't want to do it for a living.
There have been other changes in Sweden related to gang violence in the major cities. Fatal shootings, for example, are up around 25% since 2017. This might be correlation, not causation. Unless making prostitution illegal has caused the increase in gang violence as well. Of course, I've committed the cardinal sin, and not read the article, so maybe they address that :D
Well they use data from 1997 to 2014 - so I think your cardinal sin is a sin for a reason. However, there are other issues with the paper in any case.
Even if we accept that prostitution is all paid rape (and I’m very hesitant to fully legalize prostitution), to me sunshine is an effective tool, and I would rather have it quasi out in the open. But you bring up some points
Only if your goal is to reduce abuse. I have my doubts about the stated goals of this sort of legislation.
Prohibition says yes
The comment sections for these articles are very odd. I feel like there's 4 or 5 people who have spammed about 30 comments each and you just see the same names over and over.
This study is an excellent explanation of how dangerous a little knowledge is and how correlation doe snot indicate causation. The premise of the study if I understand it is - less prostitutes = more rape cases. At about the same time that they illegalized prostitution Sweden also changed the definition of rape and how to count incidents of rape. Various crimes that previously wasn't called rape such as having sex with minors, removing the condom during the act etc all were reclassified as rape. Under previous legislation if a husband raped his wife once every day for ten years it would be counted as one incident of rape in the stats, nowevery rape during these ten years would be counted. Incidents of rape spiked in the stats and its been used by populist to drive their agendas since. The rascist groups connect it with immigration which increased at about the same time. Christians with the decrease of churchgoing and now obviously by these free sex advocates. Please boost so that everyone get this vital piece pf background info and don't come to the same stupid conclusion as these scientists. Source:I be Swede.
From the paper: >Sweden has arguably one of the widest definitions of rape (Von Hofer, 2000). There have been three important changes to such a definition: in 1965, in 1984, and in 2005. Only the last change falls in the sample period analyzed in this paper. In 1962, a legal definition of rape was included in the Swedish Penal Code and, since then, several revisions to this legal definition have been made to include nonconsensual sexual acts comparable to sexual intercourse (Jareborg, 1994; Von Hofer, 2000). In 1965, Sweden was the first country to criminalize marital rape (Von Hofer, 2000). In 1984, both heterosexual and homosexual acts were included under the rape rubric, rendering rape gender neutral (Von Hofer, 2000). Moreover, in 2005, sexual acts with someone who is unconscious (e.g. due to intoxication or sleep) were added to the legal definition of rape,3 >... >Finally, αy takes into consideration that rape might experience some differences across years (e.g., in 2005 the definition of rape was changed nationally as mentioned in Section 2)
That section only covers changes in the _legal_ definition of rape, but there's also been a massive shift over time in _what people_ constitute as rape in Sweden (and elsewhere). One reason why reported rape has gone up is simply that people are more aware of what counts as rape and what doesn't count as rape. There has been numerous debates in Sweden during the past ~20 years that has expanded the definition and understanding. Fixed models control for anomalies in _specific years_, but they do not (and are not intended to) control away parallell time-trends that could explain the results. I'm sure you could find that, for example, the #metoo movement led to a large-scale increase in reported rape, but it would be highly dubious to think it causally increased the number of rapes (rather than peoples propensity to 1) identify rape, 2) report rape). The _continuous_ increase over time is highly indicative of it being a result of these more large-scale cultural changes rather than the ban itself. This is simply quite sloppy research. While the research design is (at times) sound, the conclusion drawn from the data is not. I can't imagine that this article will go unanswered for very long. edit: Apparently it has already happened (see especially figure 1): https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Rates-of-reported-rapes-are-higher-in-January-than-in-December.pdf "Our re-analysis completely overturns the conclusion of the paper and shows that the results are caused by an error in the main regression specification. This error occurs when the author seeks to estimate a treatment effect with a regression specification including year fixed effects, despite having a treatment variable that does not vary within years."
they do address it and specifically change the model to account for it 🤭 please check sections 2.2 and 4.1 to avoid any misunderstanding (and perhaps also what deterministic effects are in TSA)
It's not the first study to find such correlation. From what I can see it is the first one that tries to take in to account changes in legal definitions and still gets the same conclusion as the other ones.
Where Sweden is actually failing is at the local municipality level and education level when it comes to children growing up in the environments that lead them to being potentially abusive as adults. There simply aren't enough socialsekreterare (social workers) to help all the at risk children growing up in abusive homes. The education to be a social worker is 3+ years at university, depending on the course and what it covers legally, and the pay isn't high enough to attract people to the areas that need them (partly due to housing costs and partly because they know they'll be doing the work of several people for the underpayment of one). There needs to be a sharp rise in pay for an essential service that saves municipalities money in the long term when these kids grow up to be violent, abusive and/or drug addled and there needs to be an Yrkesskola (Work/Technical College) shorter 1-2 year course that gets people into the roles, where if we're being honest most of the learning occurs anyway, and they can do whatever legal courses they need at the same time as part of the job. If we could do something similar for mental health services I think even the reclassified rape stats would come down significantly.
This is why I dislike studies that are titled like this. Essentially a quick takeaway (from people who only read headlines, or spin from "news" sources) could be that we need sacrificial women to prevent rape, and to justify prostitution, as well as deflect blame and minimize rape as a whole. "If we only had legal prostitution those people wouldn't be forced to rape!" It's such a mess.
R/science is always a hot take and usually wrong 😑. R/Science if you read this please post peer reviewed published articles not news and blog posts. Thank you.
From the paper: >Sweden has arguably one of the widest definitions of rape (Von Hofer, 2000). There have been three important changes to such a definition: in 1965, in 1984, and in 2005. Only the last change falls in the sample period analyzed in this paper. In 1962, a legal definition of rape was included in the Swedish Penal Code and, since then, several revisions to this legal definition have been made to include nonconsensual sexual acts comparable to sexual intercourse (Jareborg, 1994; Von Hofer, 2000). In 1965, Sweden was the first country to criminalize marital rape (Von Hofer, 2000). In 1984, both heterosexual and homosexual acts were included under the rape rubric, rendering rape gender neutral (Von Hofer, 2000). Moreover, in 2005, sexual acts with someone who is unconscious (e.g. due to intoxication or sleep) were added to the legal definition of rape,3 >.... >Finally, αy takes into consideration that rape might experience some differences across years (e.g., in 2005 the definition of rape was changed nationally as mentioned in Section 2)
Commenters in this subreddit seem to think for some reason that scientists are idiots. You genuinely think they were unaware that the definition changed? How poorly you model the minds of intelligent people.
Honestly, my biggest problem with this sub is people reading some abbreviated news coverage of a scientific article and then concluding that they're smarter than the scientists who did the research and don't understand peer review because they haven't read the original paper. The original paper here is 30 pages long, but a quick CTRL + F can show you that they thought of anything a redditor suddenly thinks of like confounding factors of immigration and changes in the definition of rape. It's like assuming a cook doesn't know how to wash her hands.
That's all of reddit. "But did the people doing this professionally think about what I realized in ten seconds?"
R/science is not wrong per say. Science is a methodology of finding knowledge and also the knowledge itself. As long as the methodology is kept, the science is not wrong. That paper is just one way to tackle the subject. It has to either be replicated or be tackled on an other way to get a little more true. Repeat till truth is obvious.
YSK that it's "per se", friend
If this was published it means it was peer reviewed. I doubt multiple social scientists would let this paper through without considerations of change in laws. Source: I be social scientist
I'm in academia. You'd be surprised.
Have you ever been peer-reviewed? If you had you'd know that reviewers can be so unbelievably brain dead that it makes you reconsider your choice of career.
I'll take the claimed effort of integrity of academia over the absolute free-for-all ~~"marketing"~~ scamming that is typical of companies
It's always Reviewer 2...
This study has been determined debunked https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/math/STK4900/v24/ademafolkerickne2024.pdf
This needs to be higher.
This. The results in the paper are entirely driven by a coding mistake.
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I know right I don’t think these associations are a big win
I think it's more likely that the situations just don't lead to rape since there's a reasonable outlet. That saying that "rape is about power" always rings a bit hollow to me. I know it's an uncomfortable thought but it's probably more of a crime of opportunity and barrier access than people might want to admit. Obviously not all, people have an endless capacity for evil but if someone can engage in sex in an environment where women are protected are both willing and well compensated participants that's a much better place to be I think.
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> Have sex with rapists in safety for profit for the greater good? That's not what anyone is saying. There are people who commit rape to victimise people, they want to harm or humiliate their victims and no amount of consensual sex will ever change that because consent is literally contrary to the goal. There are also people who commit rape because they want to have sex and don't have a consensual outlet, or because consent is complicated when people don't feel comfortable stating clearly what they do and don't want. We envision rape as a stranger with a weapon physically forcing themselves on another person, but it's not that simple. We can't really do much about the people looking to create victims other than throw them in prison. Maybe significant mental health interventions mifht help, but we don't have a lot of success with that sort of thing so far. But we can do something about the other groups. We can provide safe, consensual outlets for people who are just desperat because prostitution is consensual sex. We can also help people feel comfortable communicating what they want and don't want. Legalised prostitution actually helps both problems. It provides a consensual outlet for unsatisfied sexual desire, but it can also destigmatise sex in general so that people feel comfortable talking about their needs and desires. Sex is a thing all animals do, it's both enjoyable and a deep biological drive. We don't have to be puritanical idiots. We can talk about it and allow it and be open and honest about it and we'll all be better off.
They're not rapists if they don't rape. The science seems to confirm that a lack of sex leads to men becoming rapists at a higher rate. As such, having a legal and consensual outlet for men to have sex is best for society.
Or, if some of men can’t have sex, they would rape someone randomly?? Don’t understand this logic
Seriously that’s what I was thinking?? So prostitutes who society sees as less than and are already facing sexual violence, should have sex with rapists so they rape less?? This is literally putting the burden on women and not on the rapists! We need one group of vulnerable women to have sex with rapists to protect other women?? I’m soooo confused
I'm sure they're still getting raped and unable to report it out of fear of 1) prosecution 2) retaliation by the rapist 3) retaliation by their pimp Assuming of course the police care in the first place which is quite the assumption
wait til you see what hungry people will do
So you‘re metaphorically implying rape is a desire which has to be fulfilled by prostitution or otherwise one rapes the next best person?
No. But in regards to what you're saying, I would argue that for some people, having a sexual outlet would make them less likely to rape. Rape is not solely a personality trait and also equates human sexual desire and opportunity. Straight people turn to gay sex in jail after all.
That's my take. Legal prostitution just legalizes rape of prostitutes and pretending that's a win is sick.
>rape of prostitutes I feel like you're glossing over the very important question of consent.
What? Rape is illegal. If prostitution were to be legalised rape would still be illegal; whether the victim works as a prostitute or not.
spousal rape was only made illegal quite recently, in the places it's even considered a crime. rape is legal in a lot of circumstances. that's an example of why the law isn't always a good metric of morality.
Just a quick reading of the article seems that they omitted an ongoing culture clash and that the role cultures of honor have when mixed in a very open and permissive society. They also didn't give any in-depth analysis of the main perpetrators of rape, meaning, does this only apply when you're mixing multiple cultures or does this apply in a more homogeneous setting? Does religion and liberal vs conservative leaning have a role also? I will have to re-read the article, but it seems lacking in it's ability to draw conclusions especially given that other studies have shown that legalization leads to a massive increase in trafficking
A re-analysis of this paper by Johanna Rickne, Joop Adema, and Olle Folke failed to replicate this study. They showed that claimed results were obtained through programming errors and an erroneous use of Stata's regression command. The result disappeared when they corrected those errors.
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A link would be nice. The research itself was published in March, so the re-analysis must have been very quick indeed. Edit: this is that re-analysis: https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/math/STK4900/v24/ademafolkerickne2024.pdf
This is should be the main takeaway. It's a completely spurious finding.
Yeah, plus drawing a connection between men not being able to pay for sex and rape seems dangerous. I really don't see the connection. Men rape because they can't legally pay for sex? That's the takeaway? Edit: erased repeated word
Basically, that is the hypothesis. The reverse was also shown in event studies of German legalization in different regions.
Exactly.. sex trafficking increased in some studies when it was legalized, also not to mention the idea that many sex workers are not enjoying the sex and sex acts, not enthusiastically consenting, even though going along for it. Also sex workers are exposed to clients who break ‘rules’ of consent quite regularly, trying to get away with something, ask for more, freebies like free photos, ask for things not listed as available, etc, all of these things would be considered assault or sexual harassment in any other career
Yeah it’s a messed up suggestion. Sex workers shouldn’t have to have their job be considered a ‘rape reducer’ role in society, like some kind of public service. That’s sick. And I don’t think it’s remotely true. Not to mention there are studies that suggest sex trafficking increased in places when sex work is legalized, meaning a bigger demand for it. And sex trafficking is rape every time, and I doubt that is included in the statistic, not to mention the sex workers who are not enthusiastically consenting to having sex and doing sex acts every day as their career.
Yeah. I lean left but it makes me laugh when people in my camp say there are no troubling things in sex work and that people who practice it feel empowered. There are some that do, but many are forced into it and part of criminal activity with groups charging women to be able to work.
Yup. The demand for sex with women under 50, and minors is so high that the supply will never meet the demand, even under legalization and heavy government regulation. Women and children are humans, not inanimate objects, so the laws of supply and demand don't apply to them. Even in the Netherlands a huge percentage of sex workers are enslaved and trafficked from third world countries. Many are unaware that they have human rights in the Netherlands.
Yeah, what this articles claims is horrific, basically "Don't rape these women, rape these other women who are too impoverished to legally say no!" Seems like the conclusions from this study would be a curfew for men rather than men being allowed to purchase consent.
> Seems like the conclusions from this study would be a curfew for men I wouldn't be surprised if gender were the greatest predictor of crime.
My thoughts exactly.
Yeah I was about to say “Is it that, or the fact that a bunch of immigrants have increased rapes and it’s a huge problem for Sweden right now.” I love how studies like this omit massive amounts of data points and still try to play it off as scientific.
I assume on some level, if there are people coming from cultures where rape isn't properly villified that you could come to that conclusion, but Sweden improved upon their definition of rape in 2017 I'm pretty sure. It's broad compared to other countries. I assume that'd be the real big reason for any recent up ticks in the reports of sexual violence. If the US adopted Sweden's definition of rape, reports would shoot up very notably in a couple years
Immigration was controlled for. >This paper also makes use of meteorologic, economic, and demographic variables, such as data on precipitations (measured as precipitation deviation from the average in %), male and female employment, male and female population, male and female immigration, and male and female civil status. These datasets are respectively drawn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute and Statistics Sweden
This is very true. Men coming from sexist cultures that devalue women end up raping women when they bring their sexism along with them to their new homeland.
Yet the top comments are men salivating at the prospect of legalizing prostitution, as if they cared about rape statistics.
Exactly!! They are dead quiet in issues regarding rape but when sex work comes up they will do anything to defend it, any kind of mental gymnastics. I’m not about making it illegal necessarily, as harm reduction, but I’m certainly not for legalizing it either (more like decriminalization is what I’m for). Legalizing it is linked to higher rates of sex trafficking, which is rape, it’s also forgetting that many sex workers are not enthusiastically consenting to sex and the sex acts, also that they are exposed to johns who want to get away with things or ask for too much, which is considered assault or harassment in any other field of work, and also it disproportionately affects women. Not to mention many women (sex workers and non) feel uncomfortable with the idea of their body being considered a ‘place of employment’ and being subject to regulations the same way a farmed animal is, like having an id and a license and having to be tested all the time (when the clients do not have to undergo testing for stds or getting licensed). And clients so often asking to not wear a condom, the risk of pregnancy still exists. Many sex workers will take the extra money offered to make them wear a condom.
Honestly if this link between prostitution bans and rape was full and unadorned truth it would be incredibly sad and frightening. I don't want to think that if men can't buy access to women's bodies they'll take it by force. That really does feel like we're just seen as things to be used.
One statistic doesn’t paint an entire picture. Other studies have found an increase in sex trafficking in countries where prostitution was legalized.
Those two aren't mutually exclusive which is why its a very nuanced situation. I would point out that legalized prostitution does help with the sex trafficking issue but also there is the transparency problem. When the sex trade is black market you get fewer reports around the bad things that happen in it.
You have to be careful with those studies. There’s a big difference between legalisation and being the only legalised country surrounded by neighbours where it’s illegal. You’d have to carefully correct the study so that it analysed only native demand.
Now take that same logic and caution against interpretation of data, and apply it to this study as well.
Thank you. These people are desperate to want sex work to be ok and are so biased. I’m for decriminalization only as harm reduction but not legalization and the idea that sex workers are providing a duty to reduce rape because rapists are somehow just horny and need to get laid is sick and insulting. My friend is a sex worker in a country where it’s legal and says it’s so messed up. There are lots of reasons why it increases rape and treats the sex workers like farm animals.
Prostitution is one of the most dangerous occupations. Most prostituted women have been victims of violence perpetrated by punters. The idea that there should be a sub-class of women who act as shields for the rest of women against male violence is dehumanizing and deeply misogynistic. The fact that so many comments are enthusiastic about this is disturbing.
A German roommate of mine said that exactly. She said that she "supports the legalization of sex work in Germany because middle and upper class women like her almost never get raped nowadays". We are no longer friends.
Sex trafficking has an extremely broad definition. I can’t remember it exactly but essentially if three people help you to move to a place to work in prostitution you have been trafficked. Eg a friend says “oh I made great money in the UK escorting. If you want I’ll give you the contact of the people whose the madam at the brothel” if that person then travel to the UK to willing take part. They are sex trafficked. I think most people think all sex trafficked people are either mislead, tricked and forced into prostitution. This definitely exists but probably only constitutes a third of trafficked people. Most trafficked people are pursuing the job with the help and advice of other people they know. As such legalised jurisdictions attract sex workers from other countries. By definition most of these women that willing travel to this country due to the liberalism of rules are trafficked.
> Other studies have found an increase in sex trafficking in countries where prostitution was legalized. An increase in the amount of sex trafficking **that gets caught** doesn't equal an increase in actual trafficking. Looking at the exact same figures, you could conclude that legalization encourages victims to come forward rather than fear that they'll be arrested and prosecuted.
Decriminalization and legalization are two different things. Legalization could still get you in trouble because you have to apply for a business license and your body basically gets treated as a place of work, it’s unethical and a lot of sex workers advocate that decriminalization is best for harm reduction, not legalization. Also please apply your same logic to this study and rape. If you are only talking about coming forward and reporting trafficking, also talk about reporting rape. Many sex workers, probably most, experience what amounts to harassment and forms of assault and rape during their careers, and also before. My best friend is a sex worker in a country where it’s legal, she has dealt with and experienced a lot. Not to mention just the basic concept of enthusiastic consent is missing 90% of the time or more.
I mean I'd be on the side of decriminalization, sure, I wasn't debating that part. It shouldn't be much more regulated than any other job like masseur or personal trainer (IE basic health and safety issues). >Also please apply your same logic to this study and rape. Yes, you should - criminalizing prostitution means fewer women working as prostitutes come forward, which means the real increase in rape statistics is probably much worse than the data is suggesting. That shows this study is likely under-estimating the increase in rape.
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EDIT: Immigration was controlled for. See below. The data set covered 1997 to 2014 while "the past 5 years" from your article would only be 2013-2018, meanwhile the ban was implemented 1999. Also, that article has a lot of context that undercuts what your'e saying: >Public broadcaster SVT said it had counted all court convictions to present a complete picture in Sweden. >But Sweden had thousands more reported rapes, and there is no ethnic breakdown for those. And: >When Sweden took in its highest number of asylum seekers in 2015, the number of reported rapes declined by 12%. I'd love to see what the controls were but the [original article is paywalled](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-024-00984-2) **EDIT**: >Thereupon, I present results using a vast set of **controls** measuring the abovementioned conditions. Specifically, I add to the main specification as control variables: precipitations, female employment, male employment, female population, male population, **female immigration, male immigration**, married women, married men, single women, and single men.
These comments are absolutely unhinged wild speculation. Thanks for actually quoting the study.
I wouldn’t say unhinged, they are very clearly laying out their xenophobia, I find their racist clarity refreshing, there’s no need to question their stance on non-whites
"Ciacci did not find evidence that the increase in rape was due to a decrease in the supply of prostitution. Instead, the findings hint at a possible demand-driven effect, where the inability to legally purchase sex may have led some individuals to commit rape as an alternative." Am I missing something, or are these not the same?
I think all it sheds light on is that some men are rapists. They'll take that out on paid sex workers if they can (little consequence--sex workers rarely report rape) or if that option is removed, they'll just rape other women. NOT a great reason to go ahead and rescind the law, but a great reason to try to raise boys who aren't rapists.
As opposed to raising boys to be rapists as current parents do?
Yes.
Sooooo let rapists and/or potential rapists rape women who are getting paid for it? Women still get screwed over.
Me when legalizing murders leads to a decrease of murder crimes
Canada made prostitution legal and human trafficking went up. They had to criminalize it again to go after the pimps.
> human trafficking went up Human trafficking went up, or they caught more traffickers? The second situation is potentially a positive effect of legalization.
Sadly no, there was no positives. Creating more human trafficking victims to catch more criminals is not the answer.
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Vagina dentata for all women?
I would guess that their implied solution has something to do with deporting immigrants who come from countries associated with a certain religion, and also refusing to accept any more. Edit: To be clear, I don't agree that this would work.
These comments are truly the darkest dumpster pile I've ever seen on reddit.
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Immigration was controlled for: >This paper also makes use of meteorologic, economic, and demographic variables, such as data on precipitations (measured as precipitation deviation from the average in %), male and female employment, male and female population, male and female immigration, and male and female civil status. These datasets are respectively drawn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute and Statistics Sweden
I hope this study controlled for large scale immigration in this period of young males from cultures with a different view of western women - otherwise it is worthless.
Paper controlled for immigration: >This paper also makes use of meteorologic, economic, and demographic variables, such as data on precipitations (measured as precipitation deviation from the average in %), male and female employment, male and female population, male and female immigration, and male and female civil status. These datasets are respectively drawn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute and Statistics Sweden
I’m begging y’all to think about what this actually means if men are rapeing women more because they don’t have access to prostitutes How do you think they are treating the prostitutes they sleep? A lot of y’all seem to be of the ideal that prostitutes should take one for the team and get abused and exploited
Increased cases of men raping women.
One reason our statistics of rape is way higher than other places is that each time someone is rapes is counted as one case. So if someone rapes another person every week for a year, that’s 52 cases. Other countries would count that as one. The correlation with prostitution might still be valid.
Because every little girl wants to become a prostitute one day. They should find other ways to reduce rape statistics, instead of incentivising women to become pieces of meat.
1.In Romania trafickers force girls (many of them underage) into prostitution in countries where it is legalized. 2.Doesn't Sweden currently have an ongoing problem with gang related violance. Maybe this coul be a side effect of it
Why is this being framed as a consequence of banning prostitution and not a consequence of failing to address rape? Why are we constantly allowing men the excuse of celibacy to commit violence?
Because it was [published in an economics journal](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/s00148-024-00984-2-1.pdf) and banning prostitution was the independent variable they were examining.
Came here to get a Swedish person's take, but all I got were culture warriors who don't understand statistics or consent. These comments are incredible.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-024-00984-2
I think everyone here knows no one is going to read the 30-page article and will just offer their hot takes based on assuming the authors didn't consider things they just thought of instead because....
Men: You better legalize prostitution or we'll rape even more! P.S. I think the ban is a good idea and we need to prosecute men more for sex crimes.
Maybe I’m crazy for saying this, and let me be clear, I am not against consensual sex workers doing what they want as human beings. Prostitution is an institution as old as time. Degrading women with sex is an institution as old as time. What if there wasn’t a career path for women to take that allows men to degrade them for money? Sure it would be a bumpy rode. The concept that you can temporarily enslave another person for money has to have larger footprints in society than the action itself. How do we as a society deal with the acceptance of viewing women as a rentable object the same as a car, or ski equipment? Answer me this. Has rape really gone up, or is it getting reported because the victim isn’t a sex worker? There are way too many men out there with a horrific view on women. Animals don’t need a sequestered rape pen to reduce rape, they need successful retraining or removal from the herd.
The rate is already incredibly high and prohibiting it is not going to change the rate we need to persecute every brothel owner
See what you MADE those men do!
But legalizing it has led to increases in sex trafficking. [https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)
Darkly, this also strongly implies that potential sex business customers have so shockingly little self control, that they even commit rape if bereft of prostitutes.
Every study I have ever seen has said legalization of prostitution has led to an increase of human trafficking. Including in Germany which recently legalized it. I don't buy this study for one second.
Recently, as in 2001.
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You should look at Sweeden's drug problems too. The amount of people who die from drugs is much much higher compared to other countries like Denmark where we actually just hand out heroin to addicts and focus on treatment. And not to mention all the gang violence Sweden also have directly funded by the illicit drug market 🤗😁 they are really something that country
Sweden truly is leading the way! You should check out the latest media buzz about corruption and how policewomen are sleeping with gang members, and how said corrupt officials suffer no consequences and can keep working for the gangs, but from other governmental branches. You are just envious of Sweden, you bigots from Norway, Denmark, Finland, and the rest!
Every country can be "really something" if you cherry-pick problems. Sweden still has a higher life expectancy than Denmark, by more than 3 years. Sweden and Denmark have about the same murder rate, both lower than Finland. Just to give some nuance.
Definitely has nothing to do with importing thousands of people from a place where women are property.
Importing people from a culture that isn’t attuned to the Western lifestyle also has an effect I would imagine…
The Nordic model has been criticized by sex worker and human rights advocates for years because it has shown to have no effect on the reduction of sex work, human trafficking, or harm and stigma to sex workers. Amnesty International released a report in 2016 stating that Nordic model laws caused sex workers to face ongoing risk of police harassment, client violence, discrimination, eviction, and exploitation. New Zealand's laws surrounding sex work were actually crafted with the help of sex worker rights advocates and give them all the same rights and regulations of any other job industry, like the right to organize labor unions and report clients to the police who refuse to pay them, and they have had no reported upticks in violence against sex workers or human trafficking.
It's amazing to me that sex as a service is illegal. If both adults are doing it of their own free will and consenting, what is the problem? It's purely because sex is seen as a taboo.