Report abuse »

Report abuse »

Report abuse »

Gabriela Leite gets this all the time in Brazil. Because she’s managed – against the odds- to make herself heard, our own home-grown Jeffreys state that she shouldn’t be listened to.

Report abuse »

Not sure “paternalistic” is really the best word for something with such deep roots in feminist thought, though. Also, I’d dispute the conclusion that it’s “not about saving women”. It is – just not the women who are prostitutes. It’s about saving respectable women like Sheila Jeffreys from association with those evil, anti-women women who work in the sex trade.

Report abuse »

Report abuse »

This is why I find the Swedish model to be absolutely hypocritical.

In every other struggle for justice on the planet, it is clearly seen and noted that the main problem is empowering the oppressed. In every other struggle for justice on the planet, this means bringing the oppressed into institutional decision-making structures.

We have no trouble seeing this dynamic when the oppressed are landless peasants, urban squatters, ethnic minorities, workers, or indigenous groups. But suddenly, when the supposed oppressed are prostitutes, their so-called “allies” revert to a “noblise oblige” model where all power should be STRIPPED from the “victimized” group and placed in the hands of authorities who will supposedly act in their best interests – despite never having done so before.

It is amazing to me that supposedly left, feminist – even marxist – thinkers cannot see this contradiction.

If prostitution is indeed a social evil which oppresses women, then the very first step towards eliminating it would be, in my mind, to give as much power as possible to the women working in it AS A CLASS and let them do as they see fit with this power. If they are indeed oppressed, they will quickly dismantle their structures of oppression as much as feasible.

And yet from Rio to Beijing, almost every single state-supported activity that’s geared towards “helping” prostitutes is geared towards maintianing them in subordinate, powerless positions. “Victimization” discourse is just another riff on this well-established theme.

What I’m truly beginning to believe is that most men and women are actually SCARED of prostitutes, seeing them as fundamentally “out of control” women. It is the prostitute’s potential rejection of one of the west’s fundamental myths (to wit, that women’s bodies must be controlled by society) that is really the target for most repressive activities and not prostitution itself.

In the Swedish case, repression is given just a bit more “oomph” by the fact that these potentially rebellious female bodies are also foreign.

I know this may sound rather anarco-weird, but really, it’s the only theory I have to discuss why anti-prostitution repression almost always starts by repressing those women who are relatively the most free and most in control of their destinies and bodies within the sex trade. Otherwise, the patterns of repression simply make no sense. If the State was truly interested in squelching sex slavery, you’d think they’d start at the very well-known bottom of the barrel with venues that are often mafia controlled. But almost without exception, they start by closing and harassing with those venues where women mostly control the conditions of their labor.

Report abuse »

Also this Swedish way of live it really get into people because I have brazilian friends living in Sweden repeating it as well, that prostitutes are victims.

Report abuse »

These individuals seemed to have a very strict agenda regarding gender which absolutely precluded any opinions other than their own. Prostitution, according to them, was an unmitigated evil which was synonymous with human trafficking and rape. Pretty much anything was justified in the name of prohibiting prostitution. (It was also interesting to note that to these Swedes, prostitution was something which could only occur between a female prostitute and a male client – the reverse was pretty much unthinkable).

Now, self-prostituion by adults is considered legal in Brazil and many of us in the audience begged to differ from the opinion that comercial sex in any form inevitably led to the degradation of women. Others in the audience commented that it might be all well and good for 1st world Sweden to take what they considered to be “the high road”, but in Brazil – where salaries earned for the sale of sex routinely outstrip the minimum wage earned by the majority of female workers by a factor of 4 to 6 to one – things were different.

All of these opinions were hand-waved away as so much uncivilized barbarian malarkey. Rarely have I seen representatives from a foreign nation so openly embrace a social darwinistic rationale for justifying why their country’s laws and customs were different from Brazil’s. For a moment, it was if I haad been time-warped back to the beeginning of the 20th century.

What really appalled me, however, was the Chief’s report that the most useful technique that the Gothemberg Police had developed to combat trafficking and prostitution was ethnic profiling.

At that point I began to feel that I’d fallen down the White Rabbit’s hole.

I mean, here were the designated representatives of “liberal, progressive, human rights supportive” Sweden in the anti-trafficking struggle cheerfully affirming that an incredibly injust and racist repressive tactic needed to be used “in the name of the common good” to fight the evil scourge that was prostitution.

The Chief topped it all off with the following rather stunning observation: “I’ve never met a foriegn prostitute who WASN’T a trafficking victim”. When asked to explain this comment further, he let it be known that it was standard policy in his department to hold suspected foreign prostitutes in jail UNTIL they were willing to sign a confession that they had been trafficked and were willing to testify to that effect in court.

In other words, while prostitution is supposedly not illegal in Sweden (technically, as far as I understand it, only being a prostitute’s client is illegal), if the prostitute is foreign and picked up in a vice raid, she will be held under any other charge that can be dreamed up (usually immigration related) until she’s willing to cop a plea as a trafficking victim.

In this way, Gothemberg actively TRANSFORMS foreign sex workers into trafficking victims.

The Swedes wrapped up their dog-and-pony show with a rather stunning demonstration of how they were completely unable to follow even their own affirmations to their logical conclusion. They’d been telling us for the whole evening that unless they pressure women to accept the label “trafficking victim” and turn State’s evidence against clients and brothel owners, the women wouldn’t do this “because they are so terrified of the horrible reprisals they would suffer for such an act in their home country”.

I mean, the poor women, right? Coming from those barbarous, mafia-controlled nations which do not have the benefit of Sweden`s enlightened government, of COURSE they`d be leary to turn State`s evidence because we all know that their mafia handlers will kill them if they do so.

So given this logic, what does Sweden see fit to do with these women AFTER they testify? Why deport them right back to their countries of origin where, if we are to believe the Swedes` arguments, they are in mortal danger from mafia hitmen. And all this in the name of ~protecting women~…

After the presentation, I walked up to the Ambassador and asked her if she was aware of the fact that she was advocating a legal structure which rewarded false witness and actively fabricated charges of trafficking.

“Think about it,” I said. “If I’m a Brazilian woman caught turning tricks in Gothemberg, I have basically two choices. I can stick to my guns and say I’m a self-employed prostitute and see nothing wrong with this. In this case, I will be held in jail until I am deported for violating Swedish work and immigration laws. Or I can break down and claim to be a trafficking victim. In this case, I’m released from jail and can stay in the country for up to six months more while the trial against my supposed oppressors is being prepared. Furthermore, at the end of this period, I will be ‘repatriated’ and not deported, which is an important distinction in Brazil, given that Brazilian deportees lose all future right to a passport.”

The Ambassatrix flatly admitted that, yes, manufacturing of false witness was a problem with the Swedish system but, on the whole, the good in the process far outweighs the bad.

I was flabergasted. The Swedes were basically saying that, in their police-political structure that dealt with prostitution, there was no need for checks and balances or even for the oversight of human rights because we should basically just ttake the nation at its humanitarian intentions and presume that, by and large, Swedish police officers wouldn’t abuse their legal powers, even wheen they had every human incentive to do so.

This was exactly the same sort of repressive, traditionalist and – dare I say it? – paternalist view of vice operations thhat Brazilian prostitute leaders like Gabriela Leite revolted against in the closing days of our country`s military dictatorship.

Needless to say, I left the event with an extremely negative view of the Swedish laws regarding prostitution and an even more negative view of Swedish views of their country`s cultural and legal competence.

If Sweden seriously believed its own official BS about prostitution and trafficking, then any foreign prostitute’s testimony against traffickers or clients would IMMEDIATELY be accompanied by political asylum and an offer of permanent residency. I suspect that if this were to be made part of Swedish law, however, the number of trafficking prosecutions would drop drastically.

Until Sweden changes its laws to reflect what they claim “the real situation” of trafficking is, no one out here in the rest of the world should tkae their anti-trafficking policy to be anything more than a politically correct and particulalry noisome and hypocritical form of immigration control.

Report abuse »

What happens if you ask an American ( I am one by the way) in America about what they think about much higher taxes and a social welfare system to support almost everyone? My experience is the debate is cut pretty quickly. People are willing to debate certain issues, and other issues are, in a way taboo. This condition exists everywhere.

Just a few questions: Do you read newspapers in Swedish? Living here for 1 year, have you learned the language and do you watch the debate programs on tv?

S

Report abuse »