Why is paying for sex legal in so many countries? Because the laws are made by men

[ismnotwasm]

Why do parliaments reject legislation to criminalise those who pay for sexual access to female bodies? Because of the deep misogyny carved into the male power structures of our world. No wonder the second class status of women is upheld, when the spurious idea that we exist for the use and entertainment of men is promoted at governmental level.

Like many campaigners who have personal experience of prostitution, I support the "Nordic model", which criminalises the demand for paid sexual access to people, decriminalises those who are so exploited, and offers exit routes including education and training. It can only be objected to from a standpoint that refuses to view women as fully viable humans on a par with men. The reason for this is simple: the overwhelming majority of those exploited in prostitution are female. Added to that, many are adolescent girls below the age of consent. I know from first-hand experience that very often females are prostituted before they've even reached the age of sexual consent. That was the case for me also; I was 15 years old when I was coerced into prostitution by an adult male.

From my the seven years I spent in prostitution, I also know is that most women and girls are there because of social marginalisation - with the causes ranging from educational disadvantage to outright destitution. I and the other teenage girls who prostituted themselves alongside me in the early 1990s would sometimes, but rarely, talk about how we might get out of that life. The conversations were rare because it was generally accepted that there was no way out. Had the Nordic model existed in Ireland of the 1990s, along with decriminalising us, it would have offered us help with housing, childcare, addiction and the all-important education and training so that we would have had a real and viable way out. It is both saddening and disturbing to see the level of political opposition to the only legal framework that has ever sought to address prostitution from a human rights perspective. This is simply the only law on earth that assumes, as a starting point, that prostituted persons are worth more than what the circumstances of their lives have forced them to accept.

The Nordic model is also a gender-neutral law, and rightly so. It recognises prostitution as a system of exploitation generally entered into under extreme coercion and that such exploitation should is never acceptable, regardless of a person’s biological sex. This is fair and just. Prostitution is simply incompatible with the dignity of human beings. But while we are talking about biological sex, let’s not forget which sex is responsible for the demand for prostitution in the first place. According to Detective Inspector Simon Haggstrom of the Stockholm Police Prostitution Unit, in the 15 years since the sex buyers law has been implemented in Sweden, not one woman has been found paying for sex. Not one.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/why-paying-sex-legal-so-many-countries-because-laws-are-made-men