That prostitution has re-emerging onto the political agenda in Finland is hardly a surprise. Both policymakers and the public in general have much criticized the current ban for its inefficiency to prosecute human traffickers, panderers and customers of sexual services and its incapacity to protect victims. Law enforcement officials have claimed that they lack sufficient resources to deal with prostitution, a crime that a significant part of the population still does not consider a crime at all, but a private agreement between two consenting adults that the society has no right to intrude on. Still, differences in attitudes towards commercial sex exists also within the police, illustrated by that at least the police in Helsinki has recently stepped up their control on public prostitution that’s considered disturbing, criminalized in the Public Order Act from 2003. Others have proposed a wider criminalization of the customers of sexual services as a measure to lessen the demand for prostitution, and to make the line between criminal and non-criminal buying of sex clearer.

The suggestion to expand the criminalization of customers is fairly expected considering the context where the current, limited ban to purchase sexual services was negotiated in the spring 2006.  Facing the widespread opposition to the government bill that proposed a criminalization of sex customers in every situation, the majority of the MPs advocating the ban felt compelled to compromise to a limited criminalization of customers. This action was taken in order to guarantee that the government bill would not be entirely rejected, and, thus, sending a message that the purchase of sexual services is never exploitation and acceptable in every occasion[1]. The compromise ban was viewed as a first step in legislation, ensuring, if later deemed necessary, a gradual advancement to a potential “Swedish style” full-blown criminalization of the johns in every situation.[2]

In the face of it, the 2006 compromise ban appeared as just as good as the Swedish ban for some of its supporters. The main drafter of the compromise ban, Greens MP Tuija Brax who chaired the Legal Affairs Committee in 2006 was one of them.  By 2006, the Swedish ban had been enforced for close to seven years, and all the verdicts based on the ban had come from cases that would also be criminal accordingly to the Finnish, limited criminalization, that is, in cases of pandering and human trafficking.[3] Therefor, for the proponents of the compromise ban, the criticism towards the criminalization has rather been focused on the problems enforcing the ban and prosecuting customers, as the courts have interpreted the evidence criteria very strictly.[4]

Consequently, those interested in prostitution politics have for some time now waited patiently on a coming Supreme Court decision which is to decide if the evidence criteria as stated in the law is sufficient. Meanwhile, central political actors have this year taken stances within the debate on the legislations, implying a possible shift in prostitution policy. The new Ministry of Justice Anna-Maja Henriksson (Swedish People’s Party) has recently acknowledged that the current legislation on prostitution simply does not work. In an interview in the beginning of October, Henriksson suggests that her preferred revision would ban the purchase of sex entirely.[5] Not such a surprising opinion, given that Henriksson has a Party Congress decision from 2000 backing her opinion[6]. The parliamentary group of the Swedish People’s Party has also criticized the current compromise ban,[7] claiming that a general criminalization of the purchase of sexual services would have passed the vote in 2006.

Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen holding a poster with the words "Home, Religion and Fatherland - that's what it's all about"

Earlier this fall, Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen from Christian Democrats made a statement where she called for a general criminalization of the customers of sexual services.[8] Räsänen is the first Minister of the Interior supporting the criminalization of customers and is also in an important position to do so, given that she should be able to influence the law enforcement units. Prostitution has been a chosen topic for Räsänen for close to two decades already. In the 1990s, she made several initiatives to restrict and control commercial sex industry and protect minors[9], and, in 2000s, she proposed a general criminalization of those both selling and buying sexual services.[10]

Additionally, as a carryover from the previous parliament, the Legal Affairs Committee remains charged with evaluating the respective Finnish and Swedish legislation regarding the purchase of sexual services[11]. Thus, there are again several reasons to believe that prostitution policy will rise to the political agenda. Yet, one can ask whether there will be any new substance in the debate. Jaana Kauppinen, director of Pro-Tukipiste does not appear to think so. On a seminar in Nordic Network on Prostitution in September this year, she summarized that prostitution is raised to the public debate from time to time, but the arguments are the same.

The battle over criminalizing prostitution in 2006 has, somewhat misleadingly, been perceived as one between radical feminists on one side, and Finnish sex workers, their aid organizations and men defending the(ir?) right to purchase sexual services. Today, many of the feminists supporting the wider ban in 2006 are still in prominent places within Finnish politics, while several of those male MPs that were most vocal in opposing the ban have left the parliament. Also, Finnish Sex Workers’ Association Salli that was founded in 2002 to oppose the criminalization of sex customers and to bring forth the opinions of sex workers is now defunct. However, the rights of sex workers will not be left undefended as the former vice president of Salli, Left Alliance MP and prostitution researcher Anna Kontula holds a seat in the Finnish Parliament. Additionally,  one should not forget that the well-regarded civic organization Pro-Tukipiste that gave the most objective and convincing argument against a general criminalization in 2006 is still very active. Their arguments that a criminalization of the customers would only worsen the situation of those engaged in prostitution was difficult to trump.

On the other hand, a change in prostitution politics is not written in the government programme and it is unlikely that a majority of the MPs in the current Legal Affairs Committee favor a tightening of the sex purchase ban. Previous Minister of the Interior and National Coalition Party MP Anne Holmlund who chairs the current committee has a reputation of not placing the chase of customers of sexual services high on her list of priorities. The house of parliament is also filled with new MPs, whose opinion on the purchase of sex is unknown. Except for one new MP whose stance on commercial sex is well known. Left Alliance MP Anna Kontula, who wrote her PhD dissertation on commercial sex in Finland was already in 2006 a much referred to expert in the Finnish parliament on sex work in Finland.[12] As an MP she is currently in prominent place to affect the debate on prostitution policy, if she chooses to.

Apart from the wishes of a few political heavyweights, has anything changed in the Finnish political climate since 2006 that would suggest a possible change in prostitution politics? Yes and no. For one thing, the Swedish ban has been enacted long enough to provide information on whether the ban has resulted in its desired effects: a lessening of the demand for prostitution. Additionally, the ban is no longer a Swedish oddity, as both Norway and Iceland have adopted similar legislation, keeping in mind a possible turn in Danish prostitution policy after the recent parliamentary election. Yet, the criminalization of customers of sexual services is first and foremost a legislation based on values and attitudes, which appear to have become harsher in Finland in the last year. The economic crisis within the Euro area and a possible forthcoming recession is the main subject of debate in the Finnish parliament at the moment, which might also influence the prostitution policy. Commercial sex industry blossomed in the early 1990s harsh economical recession in Finland, apparently increasing both the customers and the sellers. Yet, what is most important, a shift in prostitution policy was not debated during the parliamentary elections this spring and the large political parties still do not have an official stance in the question, making it risky for any political actor to push forward a change in the current policy on the purchase of sexual services.

[2] Interview with Janina Andersson 16.6.2011, former MP of the Greens.

[3] Interview with Greens MP Tuija Brax 16.9.2011.

[4] Venla Roth, Defining Human Trafficking, Identifying its Victims (Turku 2010)

[5] MTV3 Uutiset 7.10.2011, ‘Oikeusministeri vauhdittaisi seksin oston kieltämistä’, http://www.mtv3.fi/uutiset/kotimaa.shtml/2011/10/1404616/oikeusministeri-vauhdittaisi-seksin-oston-kieltamista.

[6] Hufvudstadsbladet 13.6.2006, ‘Intervju: Sfp:s kvinnobas saknar radikalism i partiet “Man ska göra som det sägs för att få vara med“’.

[7] Swedish People’s Party MP and parliamentary group leader in 2006, Christina Gestrin on plenum 20.6.2006, PTK 75/2006 vp http://www.eduskunta.fi/faktatmp/utatmp/akxtmp/puh_75_2006_vp_2_22_22_p.shtml.

[8] Helsingin Sanomat 30.8.2011, ‘Ministeri Räsänen väläyttää seksinostokieltoa Ruotsin malliin’ http://www.hs.fi/politiikka/artikkeli/Ministeri+R%C3%A4s%C3%A4nen+v%C3%A4l%C3%A4ytt%C3%A4%C3%A4+seksinostokieltoa+Ruotsin+malliin/1135268943600.

[9] TA 26/1995 vp, KVN 45/1995 vp, SKT 127/1995 vp, LA 16/1996 vp, KK 616/1996 vp, KVN 50/1997, KVN 63/1997, TA 149/1997 vp, TA 201/1999 vp, KK 299/1999 vp,

[10] SKT 251/2000 vp, LA 46/2002 vp , LA 52/2004 vp, LaVM 10/2006 vp, KK 50/2007 vp

[11] Interview with Janina Andersson 16.6.2011, former MP of the Greens and chair of the Legal Affairs Committee 11.9.2009–19.4.2011.

[12] Anna Kontula, Punainen eksodus: Tutkimus seksityöstä Suomessa (Helsinki 2008)

Related posts:

1. The impact of Finnish parliamentary election results on prostitution policy
2. Swedish attitudes towards the purchase of sexual services
3. Evaluating the Swedish Ban on the Purchase of Sexual Services: The Anna Skarhed Report

Castle Hill, Budapest. Photo by Bruce Tuten.

The chair and discussant for the panel, Sexuality and the State: Comparative Perspectives, was Professor Joyce Outshoorn (University of Leiden).  Additional papers were presented by Isabelle Engeli (University of Geneva) as well as David Paternotte (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Manon Tremblay (University of Ottawa).

Our paper, “The Same Policy, But Different Ideas: The Ideational Underpinnings of the Norwegian and Swedish Bans on the Purchase of Sexual Services”, can be downloaded here.  As this paper represents a work in progress, we appreciate comments and critique.

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A heated debate over pornography sparked in 2000, following the anti-pornography documentary Shocking Truth which was displayed to the government and in Swedish cinemas. Following this debate, the Social Democrat Minister of Culture Marita Ulvskog proposed an extension of the censorship law. Censors had their periods of employments cut by half, on the ground that they were thought to gradually become insensitive by watching pornography. It was decided that Swedish prisons should be able to prevent sex criminals from watching pornography in prisons. Margareta Winberg, Minister of Equality, tried to ensure that hotels didn’t show pornographic movies if they wished to receive municipal contracts. An epistemic community of feminist debaters, experts, journalists and politicians (from now on referred to as debaters) shared a consensus that pornography constituted men’s violence against women. However, a crucial difference to the Swedish prostitution debate is that not all pornography is perceived as bad. While debaters are working hard to ban one kind of pornography, another kind is not only accepted, but also promoted: in 2009, the Swedish film institute (SFI) decided to finance the making of the feminist pornographic movie Dirty Diaries, which did not engage any of the anti-pornography debaters heard in the Shocking Truth debate. How can this be explained?

Identities, defined as the terms and labels used by debaters to describe those individuals producing and consuming pornography, seem to be crucial in understanding the respective policy debates and decisions following Shocking Truth and Dirty Diaries, not least because of the general quality of a label to simplify and homogenize. Debaters were employing identities and subjective emotion as evidence, rather than hard facts, in order to further their discourse, which frequently lead to the disregard of nuances. The most common identities found in both debates were female victims and male perpetrators. These identities functioned mainly as a widely accepted argument as to why pornography constituted men’s violence against women.

A frequent strategy in the Shocking Truth debate was that scripted pornographic scenes were perceived as documentary in order to fit the anti-pornography debaters’ arguments. Hence, in one scene that director Alexa Wolf picked out for her film, a woman is having sex with five men, wearing animal masks. In a following scene the woman is telling the camera that her dad’s friends did the same to her when she was 11 years old. This scene is dramatised and not documentary. However, Wolf and many others in the debate stressed that the scripted scenes should be seen as documentary. The argument was that sexual abuse is driving people into the porn industry; Wolf estimated that 95 % of the people acting in porn movies have been subject to sexual abuse in their childhood. However, in an interview with Svenska Dagbladet she admitted that there is no scientific proof for this claim.[1] Helena Karlén from ECPAT Sweden reproduced the view that the above mentioned scenes are documentary in a debate article: “[t]he fact that the porn industry is making an incredible amount of money on the humiliation of women who have been raped when they were children is unacceptable”.[2] This quote is representative for a large part of the debate; the line between what is reality and fiction is consistently ignored as irrelevant. Debaters defending the victim – perpetrator identity formation tend to argue that pornography in general, and the debated scene in particular, is documentary.

Identities simplify and homogenize in order to be rendered meaningful, which can explain why the debate came to focus almost exclusively on the categorisation of women as victims and men as perpetrators. The Minister of Culture Marita Ulvskog argued in an interview that “the women [in porn films] are portrayed like dead meat with body openings and the men like sex machines.”[3]

The view that women are victims for men’s sex drives, rather than sexual subjects, eventually lead to the connection between group sex and group rape. Just a few days after Shocking Truth, a range of politicians, experts and newspapers started to connect pornography with a recent occurrence in Rissne, where a girl was raped by a number of young men. Helena Sutorius, lawyer and researcher on sexual crimes argued that “the group rape verdicts I have studied are copies of the acts we have seen in the movies. There are clear parallels between the TV-channels’ pornography and the group rapes that have occurred during the recent years in Sweden.”[4] Inger Segelström from the Social Democrats argued that there had been a large increase in group rapes during the recent years and that there was a strong connection to the gangbang scenes in porn.[5] However, two months later, Ann-Marie Begler, director-general at the Swedish Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet), strongly reacted to this connection and claimed that a consistent decrease in reported group rapes in fact had occurred during the recent years.[6]

So how come many leading experts expressed this view, despite the lack of evidence? This case clearly constitutes an instance of where identities are crucial in providing a simple version of reality and a credible causal story. With the help of the victim – perpetrator identities, this connection could explain the social problem of rape, and at the same time offer a legitimate reason for why pornography had to be banned. The consequence of this view is that the male sexuality is perceived as dangerous and something that has to be stopped, while the female sexuality seems to be drastically different from the male.

Later, it turned out that one of the ’victims’ in Shocking Truth in fact was a business partner of porn companies and had acted in thousands of porn movies. “I suggested the rape scenes myself”, she said to the TV channel TV3; “I wanted to do something sinful, wild and crazy”.[7] None of the actors in the debate chose to comment on this since the identity that this woman expressed did not correspond with the identity of the female victim that they defended. This is only one instance of how debaters sometimes were predetermined to a certain finding and refused to accept counter-evidence that conflicted with the identities. This tendency is described by Becker and Hendriks who argue that a typical attribute of a paradigm, around which epistemic communities gather, is the disregard of nuances: “…disturbing aspects of reality and critical questions are easily ignored.”[8]

The perceptions of the victim – perpetrator identities allowed not only politicians, but also experts to make subjective and normative claims. There was an accepted subjective tone in the debate where emotion was used as evidence. Being inexperienced and emotional was seen as a positive quality when it came to review pornography. The Minister of Culture Marita Ulvskog argued that the Swedish Board of Film Classification (Statens biografbyrå) was not emotional enough when it came to the review of pornography. She claimed to be worried that the censors watched the films “from a professional and analytical point of view rather than based on emotion and experience.”[9] Hence, the emotional element is not only accepted – it is demanded. The executive at the Board of Film Classification, Gunnel Arrbäck, was very critical and pointed to that their mandate required them to be professional and not emotional. Despite this, Ulvskog soon introduced a shorter time limit for the censors’ employment on the grounds that censors become less sensitive the longer they work. Their periods of employment were decreased from 12 to six years.

The emotional tone in the debate allowed for personal and subjective constructions of pornography. Ewa Larsson from the Green Party questioned the Board’s definition of brutal violence and claimed that: “some movies ‘look like’ they are made equally. But then it ends with the man shooting his sperm onto the woman’s face. And what fun is that?”[10] Larsson was expressing her own subjective preferences and emotions as a relevant argument, and this is somewhat representative for the arguments in this debate in general. There is a notion of a common understanding of what sexuality is and should be, rather than a perception of individual taste, not conditioned by sex or gender.

When identities are successfully employed in a debate, they seem to open up for a subjective and emotional tone, as opposed to a focus on professionalism and hard facts that could nuance the picture. Furthermore, when the identity of the female victim who has to be saved from the male perpetrator is translated into policy, it functions to homogenize both female and male sexuality; and stigmatise the male sexuality as inherently dangerous.

The victim – perpetrator identities are reproduced also in the debate about the government’s financing of the feminist porn film Dirty Diaries. Chief Executive at SFI, Cissi Elwin Frenkel was eager to assert that SFI does not support pornography, but a new approach to depict female sexuality. Feminist pornography, expressing a feminist sexuality identity is defended and celebrated in opposition to mainstream pornography, which is seen to express an illegitimate sexuality. This can explain why Dirty Diaries did not spark a big debate. In fact, Dirty Diaries received more attention abroad than in Sweden. The female victim – male perpetrator identities are expressed in both debates. Thus, rather than representing a shift in the pornography discourse, Dirty Diaries seem to be part of the same discourse expressing a view of a legitimate kind of pornography alongside with the notion of an illegitimate mainstream pornography, represented by Shocking Truth.

By isolating the pornography debate from the prostitution debate, an important finding is distinguished: not all sex work is seen as bad. One narrow form of pornography, where feminist women are in charge, is in fact encouraged; moreover empowered by a strong feminist discourse with the interpretive prerogative of sex work in Sweden. While there are close connections between the pornography debate and the prostitution debate, an intriguing question is why similar identities of legitimate feminist sex workers are not found in the prostitution debate.

^[2] Karlén, H., “Alla måste bli förbannade”, Aftonbladet, 21 February 2000.

^[3] Sjödin, S., “Förbjud all porr i tv”, Aftonbladet, 15 February 2000.

^[4] Andersson, E., “Våldtäkter kopieras från tv”, Svenska Dagbladet, 17 February 2000.

^[5] “Tv-chefer hängs ut på internet”, Göteborgs-Posten, 13 February 2000.

^[6] ”Färre anmälda gruppvåldtäkter”, Sydsvenskan, 11 April 2000

^[7] Österholm, U. L., “’Offret’ i Shocking truth: Jag föreslog våldtäktsscenen”, Aftonbladet, 21 October 2000.

[8] Becker, U., Hendriks, C. (2008), “’As the Central Planning Bureau says’. The Dutch wage restraint paradigm, its sustaining epistemic community and its relevance for comparative research”,  Review of International Political Economy, 15:5.

^[9] Persson, A., “Påfrestande vara filmcensor”, Dagens Nyheter, 10 May 2000.

^[10] Mårtensson, M., ”Vad tycker ni om porren, politiker?”, Aftonbladet, 17 February 2000.

Related posts:

1. The rise and fall of the Joint Action in Norway
2. The Happy Whore and the Victim of Human Trafficking – Stereotypes Prevail in Finnish Debate on Sex Work

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2. NPPR is hiring!

Research Assistant

University of Stirling, School of History & Politics

Fixed Term, 12 months

£23,566-£28,983 p.a.

The School of History & Politics, University of Stirling, is seeking to appoint a Research Assistant to work with Dr Gregg Bucken-Knapp on the Nordic Prostitution Policy Reform (NPPR) Project, funded by the Swedish Research Council.

The NPPR Project draws upon ideational approaches in both international and comparative politics to analyse cross-national variation in prostitution policy outcomes in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The Research Assistant will be assigned to the Finnish case.

You will be expected to play a key role in locating relevant material from recent Finnish debates over prostitution policy reform. This includes, but is not limited to, documents and reports from interest groups and organisations, as well as statements made by actors central to the reform process in the Finnish-language print media.  You will be expected to translate material from Finnish into English, and to assist in building up the database of the Finnish case.

Fluent Finnish is essential for the post. The ideal candidate will also have an honours degree in Politics or a cognate discipline and familiarity with scholarly research into sex work. Previous research experience involving collecting and translating Finnish language primary sources is advantageous, as is fluency in Swedish.  While the post will be based in Stirling, it is expected that the Research Assistant will make some data collection trips to Finland.

The post is on a fixed term basis for 12 months, at 0.4 fte, to start in October 2010. The maximum starting salary will be £23,556 pro-rata, (Grade 6, Spine Point 22).

Informal enquiries by email to Dr Gregg Bucken-Knapp at gregg.bucken-knapp@stir.ac.uk

Further particulars and an application form can be found on www.hr-services.stir.ac.uk and are available from the HR & OD Department, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA; tel 01786 467028; fax 01786 466155; email: hr-services@stir.ac.uk.

Please quote ref: 16577/7451

Closing date for applications: Wednesday, 30 June 2010 @ 12 noon

www.hr-services.stir.ac.uk

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES EMPLOYER

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Edinburgh, Prince Street. Photo by VerseVend.

Last week, we presented our paper on Sweden’s trafficking policy at the Political Studies Association conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Providing a case-study of Sweden’s response to trafficking in women for sexual purposes, the paper explains how this policy has evolved from mainly being framed in terms of state security and border-transgressing crime to also include references to gender and human rights. As this paper represents work in progress, we appreciate comments and critique.

Chaired by Kelly Kollman (University of Glasgow), the panel Regulating sex in western Europe also featured a paper on LGBT activism behind same-sex unions policy convergence in Europe by Kollman and David Paternotte (Cambridge University) and a paper by Susanne Dodillet (University of Gothenburg), documenting the roots of Germany’s prostitution policy in the 1970s feminist campaign Lohn für Hausarbeit.

All three papers can be downloaded from the PSA conference website; the NPPR paper is also available here.

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1. NPPR at 2011 ECPG in Budapest
2. NPPR relocates to Scotland and Norway

The NPPR project will henceforth be hosted by the University of Stirling. Photo by Ruminatrix.

Previously at University West, Sweden, Dr. Gregg Bucken-Knapp has taken up a position as Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

Meanwhile, Dr. Johan Karlsson is leaving the University of Gothenburg to accept a position as postdoctoral research fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo, Norway.

The NPPR project, which is funded by the Swedish Research Council, will henceforth be hosted by the University of Stirling.

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Karin has studied Development and International Cooperation and African studies at the University of Gothenburg. She has also studied Chinese and Chinese business culture at Ningbo University, China.  Her internship duties with NPPR will chiefly focus on data collection and analysis for the Swedish case.

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An important feature of all degree programs at University West is the idea of ‘Work Integrated Learning’, in which students receive course credit for real world experience in a profession related to their field of studies.  As part of her internship with NPPR, Linda will play an important role in gathering empirical data for several of our cases, as well as helping us build up the NPPR database.

Linda has also been a cultural studies student at the University of Malmö and has worked as a news editor at several daily newspapers in Sweden, including Skånska Dagbladet and TTELA.

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