It’s moving in that direction:
On December 4th, the lower house of parliament voted [268 to 138] to make prostitution a crime for those who pay for sex, subject to a fine of €1,500 ($2,030) for a first offense and €3,750 thereafter. “I don’t want a society in which women have a price,” said Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the women’s minister. She wants nothing less than to “abolish” prostitution in France. With Germany having second thoughts about its decision over a decade ago to liberalize the world’s oldest profession, the French have decided to follow Sweden, Finland and Norway in restricting prostitution. Paying for sex is not now illegal, although brothels, soliciting and pimping are.
The bill must still pass the Senate and be signed by the president before it becomes law, a process that could take several months. Christopher Dickey calls the debate “ferociously ideological in ways that are very French indeed”:
While just about everyone denounces the trafficking of women and men treated as virtual slaves, much of the most passionate debate has focused on the cases of independent sex workers, a relatively small minority, and whether they have the right to use their bodies – and sell their services – as they see fit. The free-wheeling publication Causeur provoked sensational headlines when it issued a manifesto signed by hundreds of self-proclaimed “bastards” – all men – warning the government, “hands off my whore.” “We love liberty, literature and intimacy,” it claimed, “and when the state concerns itself with our asses, all three are in danger. … Against the ‘sexually correct,’ we intend to live like adults.”
But the most intense debate is not so much with or against macho posturing, it is among France’s feminists. The daily Le Monde discerned four or five distinct currents:
the prohibitionists, who want to forbid prostitution and consider everyone involved to be criminal; the abolitionists, like Vallaud-Belkacem, who want to do away with prostitution but don’t want to treat the prostitutes themselves as criminals; the libertarians, who argue that the state has no business interfering with whatever a woman wants to do with her own body; and the rule-makers, who take a similar position but think some regulation is necessary.
As Le Monde points out, these positions start to get confused when the same feminists are asked to address other issues. Thus Elisabeth Badinter, one of France’s wealthiest citizens and one of its most influential intellectuals, defends the right of women to sell their sexual services but opposes the right of Muslim women to wear the veil if they choose. (Merteuil of STRASS, by contrast, proclaims that her organization is “pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-whores, and for the freedom to wear the veil.”)
Feargus Sullivan looks at the trend across Europe:
France’s neighbor Germany, meanwhile, will be watching its plans closely. … The incoming coalition government plans to revise prostitution laws, and have just agreed to ban flat-rate brothels, where customers can purchase unlimited sex during a single visit for a fixed fee. They are also making it a crime to buy sex from someone who has been trafficked.
Meanwhile in Ireland, a consortium called Turn off the Red Light is campaigning for law changes similar to France’s. Irish public opinion is being swayed by a series of high profile exposés of the sex trade’s international reach, pushing the issue up the public agenda. Even in the famously permissive Netherlands, Amsterdam is reining in its red light district.
The issue seems to be human trafficking:
According to a EU-funded report, over 23,000 people were trafficked in Europe between the years 2008 to 2010, and 62 percent of them for were destined for sexual exploitation. While pro-prostitution debate often focuses on a hypothetical free woman making an entirely unforced choice, the reality is that many European prostitutes have no such freedom. According to anti-trafficking campaigners, legal prostitution is making this situation worse, giving pimps and traffickers ways to operate further and hide their victims in plain sight.
Abolishing legal prostitution does seem to reduce trafficking. In Sweden, prostitution has plummeted since a 1999 ban on buying sex. In 2007, Der Spiegel reported a maximum of 130 prostitutes working in Stockholm, compared to 5,000 in its smaller Norwegian neighbor Oslo (which in 2009, followed Sweden’s ban with its own). And while an estimated 600 women are believed to be trafficked into Sweden every year, this number pails in comparison to the 15,000 trafficked annually to Finland, a country with a population half the size.
But of course, no one can verify how much prostitution and trafficking continues undetected. The amount may have drastically fallen, but occasional cases such as that of a judge fined for visiting a brothel suggest that a prostitution underworld does persist in Sweden.
Recent Dish on prostitution in Europe here.
(Photo: A prostitute dances during a demonstration of sex workers in Paris on December 4 after French lawmakers approved a controversial bill that will make the clients of prostitutes liable for fines starting at 1,500 euros ($2,000). By Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)
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