The sale of sexual services has been a legal act in Norway since 1902. With the law reform of 2009, criminalising the purchase of sexual services, politicians once again underlined that the sale of sexual services should not be punishable. But even though selling sexual services in and of itself is not criminalised, some aspects associated with selling sexual services are not legal. One example is that prostitutes are not granted the right to damages for loss of income generated by prostitution.[1] This question has been the focus of some recent court decisions, and there has been an important shift in the way this question has been addressed by the courts.

The right to damages for loss of income generated by prostitution

There has been a series of court cases before the Borgarting County Court (Borgarting Lagmannsrett) regarding damages for loss of income that would have resulted from prostitution. The cases involve prostitutes who have been unable to work after an assault, and where they have claimed damages before the court. Generally, the main rule in the law on damages is that perpetrators must pay damages he or she has caused to another person.[2]

Borgarting County Court (Photo by Anne-Sophie Ofrim)

The first set of cases regarded assaults that had happened before the law criminalising the buying of sexual services came into force. In May 2006, Borgarting County Court ruled that income generated from prostitution was included in the right to damages, and granted four prostitutes damages for loss of income by prostitution.[3]

Similarly, in May 2007, the same court ruled that the law on damages protected income generated by prostitution.[4] The majority stated that there were no reason for excusing the perpetrator from the responsibilities following from having made someone unable to work, simply because the income was generated by prostitution. In its dissent, the minority argued that the law on damages could not protect undocumented income resulting from work performed by an illegal immigrant in a sector that some consider undesirable.

A third case was brought before Borgarting County Court in May 2008, and here too, the court was divided.[5] The majority held that income generated by prostitution was legally protected, granting the two prostitutes damages. By contrast, the minority argued that a contract regarding prostitution was immoral and that damages claim were therefore not legally protected.

Yet, following the adoption of the Norwegian ban on the purchase of sexual services in 2009, the court opted for a different stance when considering similar cases.  The first case to reach the courts following the adoption of the sex purchase ban was in March 2010.[6] Here, the court held that income generated by prostitution would not be included as part of damages, with the court arguing that prostitution was immoral and therefore not protected by the law. The court was unanimous when ruling that income generated by prostitution is not legally protected under the Norwegian law. The case concerned a prostitute who lawfully could reside and work in Norway, who had been assaulted and therefore was unable to work as a prostitute for a period of time. The court argued that even though the sale of sexual services was legal, prostitution as such was seen as an unwanted activity in Norway. The court held that by criminalising the act of buying sexual services, the parliament had highlighted that prostitution was unwanted. The main argument from the court was that a contract regarding prostitution was to be deemed as against honour, or immoral, and thereby not binding between the parties, cf. the Norwegian Act of 1687, section 5-1-2.[7] As such, the court held that if the contract did not have legal protection, and buying was criminalised, it would not be consistent to grant legal protection to the prostitute’s loss of income.

The state as a public pimp

Another interesting aspect with the legal regulation of prostitution in Norway is that the prostitutes are under the duty to pay tax from income generated by prostitution. Under Norwegian tax law, all income and money on bank accounts must be declared for taxation purposes. Where one cannot declare the source of the income, one will have to pay an estimated tax. Income from prostitution is assessed for tax, and prostitutes have to pay tax on the money in their accounts.[8] This is a tricky subject, because by imposing tax on this income, the state profits from their prostitution, not dissimilar to a pimp. In some situations, the prostitutes will have to continue to work as prostitutes to work off the tax[9], making the difference to an ordinary pimp small. Kristin Halvorsen, the Minister of Finance at the time, stated in 2006 that she would consider proposing a tax-exemption for income generated by prostitution. A law reform has not yet been adopted.

None of these subjects, neither taxes nor damages, has come before the Supreme Court yet. The discrepancy of being a legal business on the one hand and the lack of rights on the other hand does create a problematic legal situation. These cases have show that, even though prostitution is legal in Norway, there is a discrepancy in the regulation when it comes to income generated by prostitution. Had the prostitutes generated the said income from other sources, they would have been granted damages for their loss. The person, who assaulted the prostitute, does under the current legal regulation have to pay less in damages for assaulting a prostitute, as someone having income from other sources. A clarification from the Supreme Court, or a clearer regulation adopted by the Parliament would be helpful.

(Sunniva Schultze-Florey has a Masters in Law from the University of Bergen, Norway, and is currently a Ph.D. student at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.  She can be contacted at:  sunniva.schultze.florey (at) gmail.com.)

[2] The Damages Act section 3-1(1), Norwegian name Skadeerstatningsloven.

[3] LB-2005-138054.

[4] RG-2007-1083.

[5] RG-2008-1137.

[6] LB-2009-93028.

[7] Norwegian title, Kong Christian den Femtis Norske Lov, “Alle Contracter som frivilligen giøris af dennem, der ere Myndige, og komne til deris Lavalder, være sig Kiøb, Sal, Gave, Mageskifte, Pant, Laan, Leje, Forpligter, Forløfter og andet ved hvad Navn det nævnis kand, som ikke er imod Loven, eller Ærbarhed, skulle holdis i alle deris Ord og Puncter, saasom de indgangne ere”.

[8] The Tax Assessment Act of 1980 section 8-2, Norwegian name Ligningsloven, cf. the Tax Act of 2000 section 2-1(9), Norwegian name Skatteloven.

[9] Gregar Berg-Rollness Bestikkelser/korrupsjon og uønskede aktiviteter – skatteplikt for ulovlig inntekt, in Skatterett, 2007 number 3, pp 198-215, p 199.

Related posts:

1. Contra bonos mores and the sex purchase ban in Norway
2. Norway bans the purchase of sexual services
3. UK Legal Rulings: Sex Trafficking Victims and Sex Workers

As the second country in the world to ban the purchase of sexual services, Norway stands out as a key case in NPPR’s comparative analysis, not least because of the sudden shift in policy. In late 2004, for instance, a Justice Department Working Group on Legal Regulation of Purchase of Sexual Services advised against criminalising the purchase of sexual services.

Yet, only a few years later, proponents of the ban had achieved the necessary parliamentary majority for criminalisation, the tipping point being the Labour Party congress in April 2007. Two years earlier, the congress had turned down criminalisation. This year, too, party leadership argued against the proposal, suggesting instead to give government more time to consider the issue. Among those who entered the podium during the debate were party heavy-weights such as Knut Storberget (Minister of Justice), Dag Terje Andersen (Minister of Industry), Helga Pedersen (Minister of Fisheries and vice party chairman) as well as Anniken Huitfeldt, leader of the women’s network, who all endorsed postponing the decision.

Eventually, though, 184 out of 300 delegates voted in favour of criminalisation. Press reported it as a victory for the youth wing, influential regional branches of the party, including Oslo AP, and certain members of parliament, who managed to win the support of the congress. As the Labour Party’s coalition partners, the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party, already favoured criminalisation (as did the Christian Democratic party), a broad majority now supported criminalisation. A year later, in April 2008, Storberget presented the bill (Ot. prp. 48 [2007-2008]) which resulted in a sex purchase ban taking effect on 1 January, 2009.

Hence, recent prostitution policy in Norway represents an intriguing shift: How did proponents of criminalisation manage to turn the tide? While there are a number of studies which address, broadly, the shifts in Norwegian prostitution policy over the past decade, few studies of Norwegian prostitution policy have reached English-language academic publications. Most existing studies are written in Norwegian, aimed for a national public debate or commissioned by official or semi-official inquiries, and hence rarely seek a structured explanation of prostitution policy reform.

Casting the net widely, however, we can discern three types of resources to draw upon in the literature, focusing on discourse, agents and regulations, respectively.

• Discourse: One type of studies focus on how prostitution, prostitutes and clients are represented in media discourse and, as a sub-theme, how academic research feeds into those debates.
  • Prominent examples of such studies include Dag Stenvoll’s critical discourse analysis of how Norwegian newspapers construed Russian women in prostitution in rural northern Norway in the 1990s, identifying recurring themes connecting prostitution to organised crime, contagious diseases, moral hazard, social stigma and an outside threat to an established social order.¹ Stenvoll has also written on the representation of clients in media, popular culture and politics.²
  • Similarly, Synnøve Økland Jahnsen analyses how Norwegian newspapers covered Nigerian women in prostitution in Norway in the mid ’00s, arguing that media narratives revolve around three conflicts: the ‘Norwegian prostitution market’, emphasising competition between women of different ethnic origins offering sexual services; the ‘Norwegian lines of tolerance and decency’, describing a conflict between prostitutes and ‘regular citizens’ in the use of public space; and ‘a global sex market’, which emphasises unequal relations between women and men and between Norway and Nigeria. Nigerian women in prostitution are portrayed, paradoxically, as both illegal aliens exploiting Norwegian men and victims of cynical networks of transborder crime.³
  • May-Len Skilbrei, too, discusses how recent public debates, both nationally and locally, have dealt with the phenomenon of Nigerian prostitutes in the streets of Oslo. Skilbrei notes that while traditional discourses victimise prostituted women, the terms of debate shifted in these years, casting “regular Norwegian men” as victims of aggressive marketing of sexual services, while the Nigerian women were singled out and blamed for pushing their trade in the wrong place (the Karl Johan Street) and in the wrong way (too aggressively). In effect, prostitution by Norwegian women was either construed as more orderly and less disturbing, or simply neglected.⁴
• Agents: A second type of studies addresses, instead, the agents engaged in prostitution policy making, such as women’s movements and sex workers’ organisations. Often, such studies are written with from the partisan perspective of a particular movement. This type includes Agnete Strøm’s recent historical account of the Women’s Front and its struggle against prostitution over 30 years⁵. From a different perspective, Astrid Renland and Arne Randers-Pehrson both discuss how sex workers’ groups and the women’s movement have struggled over the privilege to define sex work and sex workers.⁶
• Regulations: A third type of research seeks to describe public policies, legal regulations and their implementation and effects through institutions such as courts, the police and social agencies. May-Len Skilbrei has contributed immensely to documenting prostitution policies, laws and regulations in Norway.⁷ While these studies often provide useful, detailed accounts of the dependent variable (prostitution policy), they usually do not aim to provide theoretically founded explanations of policy change, but are descriptive, historical and atheoretical.

Naturally, a study on any one aspect of prostitution policy will necessarily also touch upon related aspects, and hence these types are not mutually exclusive categories. However, few studies claim to establish causal links between the different aspects, say, how media discourse influences policy, or the other way around, how policy implementation feeds back into public perceptions of prostitution. Additionally, there are a few studies which detail the subjective experience of prostitutes and their clients.⁸ While such studies often give insights into very concrete effects of prostitution policy, they are less useful in explaining it, since, as many of these studies document, sex workers and sex buyers are rarely represented in public discourse and policy making.

While existing research provides knowledge about the input and output of prostitution policy reform, we know less about the mechanisms by which such input is translated into output. ("Albertine" by Alfred Seland at Oslo City Hall. Photo: Margaret Maloney.)

However, few of the existing studies have focused on the political processes through which prostitution policy is made. For instance, although we know that prostitution policy has been debated within and across Norway’s political parties for decades, there are no studies that we are aware of that seek to describe, let alone explain, how and why their positions have shifted, and how such changes, in turn affect the opportunities for prostitution policy reform.

As such, while individual studies shouldn’t be faulted for having a particular, limited focus, collectively they leave the political arena as a blank spot on the map, or a black box.⁹ We know the input in form of media discourse, academic and activist knowledge production and various grassroots and elite organisations participating in such discourses, and we know the output in the form of policies and regulations which produce certain effects on prostitution as such and the various agencies in charge of regulating it. But we know little about the mechanisms by which such input is transformed into such output.

This seems especially puzzling if we’re looking for causal explanations of prostitution policy reform, such as why Norway criminalised the purchase of sexual services as of 2009. While it seems likely that changes in media discourse, corresponding to changes in prostitution markets, did influence policy, that shift is only half the story: the nature of the influence as such must also be documented.

Hence, discourse studies need to be complemented with a careful assessment of, for instance, how various policy entrepreneurs, unlike their competitors, were able to use the discursive shift as an opportunity to achieve legislative success. Such processes are by no means a self-evident or mechanical, and while the outcome, in retrospect, might seem overdetermined, it is produced by active, purposive agents: Policy makers might seek to resist changes in the broader ideational framework or selectively draw on available information in order to maintain their preferred policy stance. Drawing on ideational and constructivist theories, the NPPR project hopes to contribute with such an account of prostitution policy change in the case of Norway.

Footnotes

1. Dag Stenvoll, 2002: “From Russia with Love? Newspaper Coverage of Cross-Border Prostitution in Northern Norway, 1990—2001“, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 9:2, 143–162.
2. Stenvoll, Dag, 2007: “Kundebilder: Representasjoner av menn som betaler for sex”, 113–130, in Jessen, Liv (ed.), 2007: Det ideelle offer – andre tekster om prostitusjon. Oslo: Koloritt.
3. Synnøve Økland Jahnsen, 2007: Women who cross borders – black magic? A critical discourse analysis of the Norwegian newspaper coverage of Nigerian women in prostitution in Norway, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen; cf. Simonsen, Anne Hege, “Ubehaget i journalistikken : verden midt i blant oss” pp. 305–322 in Grenser for kultur? Perspektiver fra norsk minoritetsforskning, Øivind Fuglerud & Thomas Hylland Eriksen (eds.), Oslo: Pax, 2007.
4. May-Len Skilbrei, 2009: “Nigeriansk prostitusjon på norsk: Feil kvinner på feil sted”, in Norske seksualiteter, edited by Wencke Mühleisen & Åse Røthing, Oslo: Cappelen. Cf. Skilbrei, May-Len (2001), “The Rise and Fall of the Norwegian Massage Parlours: Changes in the Norwegian Prostitution Setting in the 1990s” Feminist Review 67, 63–77.
5. Agnete Strøm, 2009: “A glimpse into 30 years of struggle against prostitution by the women’s liberation movement in Norway”, Reproductive Health Matters 17:34, 29–37.
6. Renland, Astrid, 2007: “Fra medsøstre til ofre, horer og streikbrytere”, 29-56; Randers-Pehrson, Arne: “Sanne bilder av prostituerte? Hvilke bilder kan vi tåle?” in Jessen, Liv (ed.), 2007: Det ideelle offer – andre tekster om prostitusjon. Oslo: Koloritt.
7. e.g. Skilbrei, May-Len (1999), “Norsk prostitusjonskontroll på 1990-tallet”, Kritisk Juss 26:1, 59–74; Skilbrei, May-Len (2006),”Prostitusjonslovgivning i Danmark, Norge og Sverige” in Trine Lynggard (ed.): Sex säljer: Kön och makt inom prostitution och pornografi, NIKK-rapport; Skilbrei, May-Len (2008), ”Rettslig håndtering av prostitusjon og menneskehandel i Norge”i Charlotta Holmström og May-Len Skilbrei, red., Prostitution i Norden. Forskningsrapport, TemaNord-rapport; Stridbeck, Ulf (2005): “Prostitusjon i Norge: Realiteter, politikk og regulering”, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab, 92:1, 54–72.
8. e.g., Brunovskis, Anette: “Når ofre for menneskehandel sier nei til hjelp”, in Jessen, Liv (ed.), 2007: Det ideelle offer – andre tekster om prostitusjon. Oslo: Koloritt; cf. Dotterud, Per Kristian: “Prostitusjonsdebatten – en historie om usynliggjøring og undertykking”, in Jessen, Liv (ed.), 2007: Det ideelle offer – andre tekster om prostitusjon. Oslo: Koloritt; Skilbrei, May-Len og Irina Polyakova (2006), “My life is too short; I want to live now”: Kvinner fra Øst-Europa forteller om veien til og livet i prostitusjon i Norge, rapport Institutt for kriminologi og rettssosiologi, UiO; Skilbrei, M-L, M. Tveit and A. Brunovskis (2006), Afrikanske drømmer på europeiske gater. Nigerianske kvinner i prostitusjon i Norge. Fafo-rapport 525.
9. For an exception to this rule, see Skilbrei (2009).

Related posts:

1. Skilbrei on ‘un-Norwegian’ prostitution
2. Prostitution policy change as a problem-driven process
3. The impact of Finnish parliamentary election results on prostitution policy

This phase of feminist activism against pornography and prostitution started in 1977, with the formation of Women’s Joint Action Against Pornography. Formed on the initiative of the Women’s League of the Centre Party, the Joint Action was a broad, makeshift coalition including feminist groups such as the radical feminist Women’s Front, far left parties such as the Maoist Worker’s Communist Party, Christian Democrats and church parishes, trade unions and housewife assocations, joining forces in the struggle against prostitution and pornography. At its peak, it gathered some 30–40 organisations claiming a total membership of ca 500,000 people and local groups across the country.¹

The Joint Action was triggered by a series of events which had put pornograpy on the public agenda in the mid 1970s. For instance, two female train conductors in Oslo were fired after having refused to collect tickets in wagons with advertisement for a pornographic men’s magazine, but were re-employed after public outrage and intense campaigning by various women’s groups. Feminist activists also demonstrated to have strip clubs and massage parlours closed.²

However, pornography had been a hot topic in Norwegian politics for decades.³ Admittedly, these earlier debates had rarely discussed pornography in explicitly feminist terms, but rather in terms of Christian puritanism and traditional values versus sexual liberation and freedom of expression. On the other hand, feminist groups had initially paid little attention to matters of body and sexuality in the early 1970s, but the struggle for abortion rights drew such matters to the forefront, according to Unni Rustad of the Women’s Front.⁴

In the early years, a series of militant direct actions were directed against porn shops and strip clubs. Women’s Front activists would enter porn shops, seize magazines and put them on fire in public places while addressing the public. However, the Joint Action also aimed for broad, mass actions in which all grassroot members should be able to participate, such as postcard campaigns and petitions.

Egertorget at Karl Johans gate, Oslo -- the site of a public porn burning arranged by the Women's Front. Photo: Kjetil Ree.

In 1981, the organisation changed its name to Joint Action Against Pornography and Prostitution (Fellesaksjonen mot pornografi og prostitusjon), which also reflected a partially broadened focus. “We decided to take on prostitution because a study about prostitution in Norway had suddenly made us aware of the conditions that women live under in the prostitution industry”, says Agnete Strøm of the Women’s Front in a speech tracing the history of the Norwegian sex purchase ban. The study by Liv Finstad & Lita Fougner summarised the so-called Oslo Project, which, according to Unni Rustad, “demonstrated how the two themes hung together.”⁵ The Joint Action now also allowed men to become members.

While the members of the Joint Action had different reasons for opposing pornography, they developed a common understanding over time, a process in which the Women’s Front seems to have played a leading role.⁶ The Joint Action’s 1984 platform – a short text, less than a page long – addresses pornography and prostitution in roughly equal length:

“Pornography gives a flawed and superficial view of sex life and love. The basic attitude in pornography is that women are sexual objects for men. Pornograpy has nothing but economic profit as its motive. … The Joint Action wishes to safeguard freedom of the press, but this freedom must be used with social responsibility. The Joint Action cannot accept that press freedom is used to degrade women.”

“Prostitution is a societal evil that must be fought. It is an expression of social problems and misogyni. For prostitutes, it implies a life in degradation and misery. Accepting prostitution strengthens the view of woman as an inferior sex object that can be bought for money, and furthers a use-and-throw-away mentality in relations between human beings.”

In the platform, the Joint Action also embraces criminalisation:

“The Joint Action supports measures to limit the supply of customers. We therefore wish for a legal prohibition against the purchase of sexual services. This would stress that society does not accept the purchase of human beings.”

While making normative assertions and demanding political action, the platform also repeatedly makes factual claims: That pornographic films and magazines show increasing brutality, that the industry is growing rapidly, and that “several recent studies show clearly that violent porn increases violence against women and that child porn inspires sexual abuse of children.” Interestingly, the platform refers twice to the Malmö Project, which was influential in Swedish prostitution policy at the time. Claiming that the Malmö Project demonstrates that prostitution can be fought, the platform demands “support measures for prostitutes similar to the Malmö Project.”⁷

In the struggle against prostitution, too, activists used militant methods, if not mass actions, in order to draw media attention. For instance, in April 1981, radical feminist activists spray-painted “hore client” (“horekunde”) on cars, the drivers of which had attempted to pick up prostitutes in Oslo. Radical newspaper Klassekampen published de-identified photos of the stunt, which sparked a debate on whether such vigilante methods should be used in the struggle against prostitution. In 1986, similar controversy was stirred after Klassekampen had published photos of a prospective client who had been set up by activists at a café. While faces had been covered, the man later sued the newspaper, claiming to have been identified as a someone who buys sex. According to Nilsen, this series of events made it legitimate to talk of men who buy sex as “whore clients” (horekunder).

During the 1980s campaigns, the Joint Action seems to have put both prostitution and pornography on the political agenda. Proposals for criminalising the purchase of sexual services surfaced repeatedly throghout the decade. In 1982-83, the Justice Department evaluated criminalisation, and again in 1986-87.⁸

Members of the Joint Action lobbied within their respective political parties to have the pornography paragraph of the Criminal Code sharpened. In 1985, the law was amended, which seems to have brought some closure to the controversy. The paragraph still referred to pornography in terms of indecency, but also introduced the concept of “degradation of one or both sexes”, seen as a feminist claim.⁹ While partial victory for the Joint Action, the pornography law also signalled the start of the demise of the movement.¹⁰

For one thing, the new law seemed not to have the consequences desired by anti-porn activists. The Joint Action had claimed that the 1985 law would prohibit porn magazines to be put on display in kiosks, such as the partially state-owned chain Narvesen. A set of mass campaigns were directed against Narvesen in the 1980s. For instance, 25,000 postcards were printed to and distributed for people to send to Narvesen, calling on the kiosk chain to “respect the human dignity of women” by neither selling nor distributing pornography. Another action encouraged people to report Narvesen to the police for violating the anti-porn law. Independently of the law, however, many shops stopped selling porn magazines and the Joint Action awarded them stickers praising their contribution to “a porn free neighbourhood”.¹¹

Toward the end of the 1980s, however, the Joint Action was torn by internal division over means and ends. One divisive issue concerned the use of pornographic material in campaigns. In lecture tours, school visits and exhibitions, a key method was to use “porn against porn”, that is, to display pornographic pictures and video clips in order to shock people. Re-evaluating such methods, some leading figures within the Women’s Front came to argue that the female porn models in these materials should be de-identified, so as not to objectify the porn models even further. In the words of Unni Rustad, leader of the Women’s Front:

“It struck me as lightning what I had done, for these women had agreed to have photos taken of them at some point in their life, I knew nothing about these ladies, other than what the porn mafia told me, and I pasted them on the wall in a giant format and let everyone look at them.”¹²

“We used the pictures as they were in pornography until we realised that when we used the pictures in that way, we excluded the women from women’s solidarity, from our community. I would never have used pictures of women I know in such a way that I had been using pornographic pictures for years. When I realised that, I felt ashamed for a long time.”¹³

Others, however, claimed that using porn against porn was an efficient method, and that showing the eyes of the porn models was essential to this strategy. These debates revealed a deeper dispute abouts means and ends in the struggle against pornography, described by Asta Håland & Ane Stø in the following terms:

“in 1989, the new leadership of the Women’s Front became positive both to [erotic magazine] Cupido and ‘feminist porn film’. The leadership of the Women’s Front also distanced itself from the grand alliance with traditional popular organisations. Puritanism and Christian people were again defined as the main enemy. To campaign against porn and prostitution was seen as a violation of the women in the sexual trade, and as an expression of puritanism. at the same time, the main strategy for more than ten years – porn against porn – was rejected by the same leadership. The reason for this was again that the method was seen as a violation of the female porn models, first they were exposed in porn magazines, and then we would divulge them again! … We who support the old line were not willing to give up such an efficient method. We thought that it was important to show the eyes, which show that they often are drugged and scared, rarely happy, and that they are real people. The eye-covering debate [Sladdedebatten] concerned the foundation of our political work, charity or solidarity.”¹⁴

The use of militant action against prostitution was also debated. While the militants claimed to take precaution not to mistake ‘innocent’ men for “whore customers”, some argued that the campaigns affected the innocent anyway, such as the men’s families.

“The Women’s Front emphasised that women should not suffer in these actions, the women should be in focus. But [those who later formed the more radical organisation] Ottar wished to take more drastic measures”, says Liv Finstad.¹⁵

Eventually, these internal differences over means and ends led to the dissolution of the Joint Action in the early 1990s. It would take another two decades before the purchase of sexual services was criminalised in Norway, and then on strikingly different grounds than the ones that moved the Joint Action in the 1980s. A Justice Department working group rejected criminalisation as late as in 2004, but mass media’s sudden attention to Nigerian prostitutes in the streets of Oslo changed the terms of debate. While the anti-pornography law remained in place, the Norwegian Supreme Court struck it down in 2005, making it legal to show uncensored sex between adults in print (though not in cable TV hardcore porn).

The controversy does not end there, though: In early 2010, Ottar called for reviving a broad coalition against pornography, demanding that the purchase of pornography be legally prohibited, per analogy to Norway’s recent sex purchase ban. Unsurprisingly, the Women’s Front disagreed to prohibiting all pornography and instead expressed a wish to invite Mia Engberg, the Swedish director of Dirty Diaries, a feminist porn film.

Still, from the NPPR perspective, the rise and fall of the Joint Action raises a number of intriguing questions.

• The Joint Action seems to have been closely interrelated with experts’ knowledge production, drawing on and acknowledging scholarly research as an important source of information and arguments. As a research report had led the Joint Action to take on prostitution too, scholarly knowledge production served a key role in mobilising the movement and shaping debates.¹⁶ Here, we see the velvet triangle at work, with tight links and sometimes blurred boundaries between activists, politicians and researchers.
• While the Joint Action campaigned against prostitution as well as pornography, the latter seems to have been the key target. Perhaps it was precisely the tight linkage between pornography and prostitution that served to both facilitate and limit legislative success. For one thing, there was already a law in place regulating pornography in Norway, which made it easier for the political establishment to accomodate the anti-porn movement’s demands, whereas criminalising the purchase of sexual services was uncharted territory in the 1980s.
• Interestingly, radical, militant action seems to have been a unifying rather than divisive factor, at least according to radical feminists writing the history of their own movement. While they sought to engage women across the country and to build a mass movement, they were surprised to see militant actions, such as book burnings, draw such a broad appeal among the most different groups of women and men. Naturally, this is history seen from the perspective of radical feminists. Were the militant measures accepted in other parts of the movement against pornography and prostitution?
• Why did the Joint Action fail in reforming prostitution policy? Given the broad, cross-political coalition of organisations representing hundreds of thousands of Norwegians, given the combination of elite and mass action which drew, at times, intense media attention, and given that criminalisation seems to have been considered by the Justice Ministry several times – why did the campaign fail? Who provided resistance and with what arguments?

Footnotes

1. Unni Rustad: Nytter det å slåss mot porno?, excerpt from “Vad tjänar vi på att föra kampen mot pornografi?”, in Pornografi – verklighet eller fantasi, ROKS, 1991.
2. Unni Rustad, 2007: Kampen mot pornografi på 1970-tallet.
3. For instance, having published the novel The Song of the Red Ruby in 1956, Agnar Mykle and his publisher were charged with publishing immoral, obscene material because of the novel’s allegedly pornographic contents. The book was withdrawn from the market, although Mykle and his publisher were eventually acquitted. In 1967, author Jens Bjørneboe and his publisher were similarly put on trial – and found guilty of violating the pornography law – for publishing the erotic novel Uten en tråd. At the peak of the porn debate of the 1960s, evangelical preacher Arild Edvardsen gathered 12,000 people in 1969 in a march under mottos such as “Get rid of the porn plague – love is pure”, “Norway needs old-fashioned child rearing” and “Norway! Remember Sodom and Gomorra”. In the 1970s, Leif Hagen started selling illegal hardcore pornography via post-order and founded the softcore men’s magazine Aktuell Rapport in 1976 – and reportedly drew a lot of controversy in the media. And in 1976, the Norwegian Housewives’ Union, which had campaigned against porn already in the 1960s, demanded a ban against putting porn magazines on display in grocery stores and kiosks.
4. Unni Rustad, 2007: Kampen mot pornografi på 1970-tallet.
5. Unni Rustad, 2007: Kampen mot pornografi på 1970-tallet.
6. Magnhild Nilsen, 2008: “‘Når man gir seg ut for horekunde, får man finne seg i karakteristikken’: Kampar mot prostitusjon 1981–1991“, Rödt! Marxistisk Tidsskrift 2008:1.
7. For an extensive, critical analysis of the Malmö Project, see Susanne Dodillet‘s dissertation Är sex arbete? Svensk och tysk prostitutionspolitik sedan 1970-talet (Vertigo Akademi, 2009).
8. Synnøve Økland Jahnsen, Bergens Tidende 2008-11-04.
9. Strøm, Agnete. “A glimpse into 30 years of struggle against prostitution by the women’s liberation movement in Norway.” Reproductive Health Matters 17, no. 34 (November 2009): 29-37.
10. Five years later, Unni Rustad commented sarcastically on this anticlimax:

    “Since 1985, activity has decreased. In that year, there was an election, and we had grown big, strong and numerous. … Suddenly, Norwegian politicians became very engaged against pornography. There was competition in Parliament who could run fastest with a law proposal in hand, who could be in the biggest photos in the newspapers and make the most serious face, the biggest tears and say that ‘this is horrible’. When this competition had been running for a while, a law was elaborated, even though that had never been our most important demand. Norway already had a law [against pornography]. But a new law was produced, and many people around the country thought that we had finally been heard, after so many years. … And then there was an election, and there was a law, and the law was thrown in the dust bin together with all the speeches that had been held during the election campaign, and then the law was forgotten. One of the activists said that the purpose had never been to stop the porn industry, but to stop us.” (Unni Rustad: Nytter det å slåss mot porno?)

11. Nilsen, 2008. One suspects, though, that the decision not to sell porn magazines coincided conveniently with pornography shifting to video, satellite, and eventually Internet distribution.
12. In Nilsen, 2008.
13. Unni Rustad: Nytter det å slåss mot porno?
14. Asta Håland & Ane Stø, “Kampen fortsetter”, Klassekampen 2005-05-14, cited in Nilsen, 2008. My translation.
15. In Nilsen, 2008. The left radical, activist and militant feminist group Ottar, named after socialist agitator Elise “Ottar” Ottesen-Jensen, was formed in 1991, and it seems that its militant methods still stir up controversy.
16. Four publications seem to have been especially influential:
    • Liv Finstad, Lita Fougner & Vivi-Lill Holter (1982): Prostitusjon i Oslo. Pax Forlag. The book summarised a research project in 1979–81 on young prostitutes in Oslo.
    • Ida Halvorsen (1982): Hard asfalt. Pax Forlag.
    • Liv Finstad & Cecilie Høygård (1986): Bakgater: Om prostitusjon, penger og kjærlighet. Pax Forlag.
    • Annick Prieur & Arnhild Taksdal (1989): Å sette pris på kvinner. Menn som kjøper sex. Pax Forlag.

Related posts:

1. Legitimate and illegitimate sex work – the role of identities in the Swedish pornography debate
2. Contra bonos mores and the sex purchase ban in Norway
3. Race and prostitution in Norway

A year after it went into force, the effects of the Norwegian sex purchase ban are still debated. Newspapers report that prostitution has not ended, but rather taken different, less overt forms, and prostitutes claim that they are now forced to accept a less reliable clientele. Some even report that the sex trade is back in the streets of Oslo, albeit marketed less aggressively than before. However, the number of clients purchasing sex has decreased in Norway, claims Astri Aas-Hansen, State Secretary of the Department of Justice in an interview with Aftenposten.

But the ban has also had some rather unexpected and, presumably, unintended consequences, as a recent court case illustrates.

In October 2008, a woman was assaulted by a prospective client in downtown Oslo. As she could not work for several months due to the injuries inflicted on her, she sued the perpetrator for 100,000 NOK to compensate for her lost income.

Borgarting Lagmannsrett, Oslo, Norway.

Oslo District Court sentenced the man to two years in prison (which included the remainder of a previous prison sentence for rape in 2006) and to pay the woman 30,000 NOK in reparation for her injuries, but rejected the woman’s claim for compensation for income loss.

The woman appealed to the regional appeal court, and while the appeal court raised her reparation for injuries to 50,000, it rejected her claims for compensation – interestingly, referring in its decision to the law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services.

Borgarting Lagmannsrett, Norway’s biggest appeal court, based in Oslo, argued that while prostitution is not prohibited by Norwegian law, it is an activity which society considers unwanted, since the purchase of sexual services was criminalised as of 2009:

“This [the sex purchase law] clearly shows that society regards prostitution as an unwanted activity,” the court writes in its sentence, according to Norwegian daily Dagbladet.¹ The court thus considers contracting to buy or sell sexual services as violating decency – more or less as contra bonos mores. Hence, such contracts are not legally binding or enforceable:

“Such contracts are not binding on the parties and cannot be enforced with the Court’s assistance. When the contracting parties’ rights have no legal protection, and one party’s condition moreover is considered a punishable condition, there would, in the Court’s view, be little consistency in the law, if the prostitute’s revenue would still be safeguarded by tort law rules.”²

While the Appeal Court referred to three similar cases, including one from the same court, which concluded that income of prostitution is protected by tort law, this is the first case of this kind to be dealt with by Norwegian courts after the sex purchase law took effect in January 2009.

Hence, this case indicates how a law can take on a life of its own. While the Norwegian sex purchase act was passed for partly different reasons than Sweden’s similar law a decade earlier, feminist arguments played an important role in both policy settings: Proponents of prohibiting the purchase of sexual services suggested that penalising the clients rather than the prostitutes was an appropriate expression of the notion that buying sex is unacceptable behaviour in a society striving for gender equality. However, once it is in effect, an act passed for noble reasons may serve quite different purposes — and target other people and other acts than those for which it was originally intended. In this case, it seems that the sex purchase act can fill a role similar to decency laws prohibiting prostitution in the old days.

Footnotes

1. Not online. 2010-03-23, p. 6.
2. Our translation of Dagbladet’s quote from the Court ruling.

Related posts:

1. The sale of sexual services in Norway: legal, but still illegal?
2. Race and prostitution in Norway
3. Norway bans the purchase of sexual services

From an outsider’s perspective, it might seem strange to frame the issue of prostitution in terms of race in Norway, since race is usually not a salient category in public debate in the Nordic countries. However, over the past few years, Norwegian media have intensely covered the issue of Nigerian prostitutes in the streets of Oslo and other major cities, and this appears to have reinforced a frame wherein the entire problem of prostitution is largely identified with black women, to the degree that African women feel harassed and stigmatised as prostitutes.

Thus, many Norwegians of African descent seem to regard the ban against the purchase of sexual services both as a symbolic statement and a tool for the police to counter presumptive clients who harass ordinary African women in the streets of Norwegian cities.

Karl Johan Street, Oslo, Norway. Photo by Rsndn

Jimmy Anthony, a West African who last year proposed vigilante groups to scare Nigerian prostitutes and their clients off the streets of Oslo, welcomes the ban: “The Karl Johan is clean as in the old days”, he says to Klassekampen. “African women can walk the streets safely without being taken for prostitutes”. The article also cites Harald Bøhler, leader of the police task force against prostitution, who believes that the harassment of African women will decline as the absence of visible prostitution becomes permanent.¹

Elvis Chi Nwosu, leader of African Cultural Awareness, similarly says that “Many women tell me that they feel better. It has to do with self respect and self esteem. Women must be able to walk down the Karl Johan Street without being regarded as sex workers.”²

Likewise, Victoria Rweikiza, a parliamentary candidate for the Left-wing group Rödt, suggests that the law will improve the situation for black women in Norway. In a letter to the editor, she writes that she doesn’t “like being taken for a prostitute. A month ago, it was impossible to walk down the Karl Johan without ‘getting proposals’. The reason is obvious: I am a woman, and my skin is black.” Welcoming the new law, Rweikiza argues that it gives “me and all women a possibility to walk in the city without being harassed. It’s incredibly liberating!”³

Some, however, raise concerns about the effects of the law. As one of the likely effects of the ban is that prostitution moves indoors, some fear that this, in conjunction with continuing stigmatisation of black women, might lead to discrimination.

Dagsavisen runs a story about Jessica Kiil and Susan Namuddu, two young women of African origin who are both happy for the new law, but also fear that it might lead to intensified discrimination. Shortly after their interview, their fears are confirmed as the women are approached by a presumptive sex buyer, in broad daylight in the Karl Johan Street.

“Imagine being asked ‘how much’ by men each time you move about Oslo city centre, being called whore by doormen and thrown out of night clubs, taxi drivers turning the light off and driving past you when you try to cath a cab. And if you’re a teenager, you’ll have to take detours to school or look into the ground so as not to be harassed. Just because you have the same skin color as Nigerian prostitutes who up until recently dominated the city scene in the capital. Many have also experienced threats from street prostitutes because they are seen as competitors.”⁴

Likewise, a married couple in Bergen reportedly have experienced that men assume that the wife is a prostitute, “just because she is from Thailand”. The husband fears that the new law could make things worse for the couple when they appear together in public places.⁵ Similar fears are voiced by Beate Gangås, ombudsperson for equality and discrimination, who argues that municipalities now are responsible for preventing discrimination in restaurants and bars.⁶

Karl Johan Street by night. Photo by Joaaso.

Klassekampen interviews a hairdresser in an African hair salon, which had been frequented by prostituted women, and a woman running a nearby African deli. Both shops have been subject to raids and surveillance by the police. One of the interviewees seem to suspect that the new law will be directed against the prostitutes rather than against their clients:

“Since they introduced the sex purchase ban, I’ve heard on the news that the police has made several raids. In the last one, it was the women who were caught for violating the Foreigner Act. Why are the women harrassed, and not those who buy sex?”⁷

Others are less sympathetic to the prostituted women. In a letter to the editor, Jessica Kiil suggests that:

“few of us feel sympathy for West African women who have sold sex on the Karl Johan Street. I have African friends who think that it is unjust that the state should help these women with residence permits, a place to live and so on, when other Africans in Norway are struggling with the social consequences of a sex market of which they themselves are not part.” ⁸

However, Kiil also fears that the new law might imply that “regular African women like myself will be met with even more malicious control when we want to get into” a restaurant or bar, as managers and security guards try to protect their establishments against suspicions of sheltering prostitution. In another newspaper, Kiil bears witness about such an experience: “The doorman told us that his boss wanted us to leave because they did not like having Nigerian prostitutes in the discoteque.”⁹

In Stavanger Aftenblad, journalist Isioma Daniel, a Kenyan in exile, writes that she hopes “that the law will liberate the majority of African women in Norway who live under an insanely common stigmatisation as whores.” But she also suspects that the feeling of liberation she experienced on New Year’s Eve might be short-lived, referring to the worries expressed by Jessica Kiil.¹⁰

This illustrates that the public discourse in Norway to a large extent has come to identify the complex phenomenon of prostitution with Nigerian women visibly selling sex in the main avenue of the national capital. Norman Idehen, a newly elected leader of the Nigerian Community and Friends association in Stavanger, testifies that the “large supply” of Nigerian prostitutes has shadowed everyday life among black women in Norway:

“Sex sellers bring both joy and shame to the Nigerian scene. We are glad that there are more Nigerians in Stavanger, but we also feel ashamed for the reason of their presence. My wife has experienced being asked how much she costs when she’s out in the city. Unfortunately, a black woman has come to be synonymous with prostitution.”¹¹

Thus, regardless of their evaluation of the new law, these press stories all testify that prostitution in Norway seems to have been almost exclusively identified with black women offering sexual services in the streets. From the perspective of NPPR, this is interesting for three reasons.

‘First, it highlights that other aspects of the complex phenomenon of prostitution have been eclipsed by the narrative about female Nigerian prostitutes working the streets of Oslo.

Second, it also suggests that it was only once this connection had been established, between the proposed ban and the African women in the streets, that norm entrepreneurs were successful in grafting the ban onto ideational frameworks in Norway. However, it remains to be explained exactly how they managed to achieve that fit between the media coverage of Nigerian prostitutes and the proposed ban.

Third, the Norwegian case also significantly differs from the Swedish prostitution policy reform process a decade earlier, where the ban was rarely advocated as a means of fighting trafficking or cleaning up the streets of foreign prostitutes, and the race dimension was completely absent. While the anti-prostitution laws of the two countries may be similar in ther design, they have come about under radically different circumstances.

Footnotes

1. Klassekampen 2009-01-29
2. Dagsavisen 2009-01-24
3. Aftenposten 2009-02-09
4. Dagsavisen 2009-01-24
5. VG 2009-01-11
6. Dagsavisen 2009-02-02
7. Klassekampen 2009-02-09
8. Aftenposten 2009-01-22
9. Dagsavisen 2009-02-02
10. Stavanger Aftenblad 2009-01-30
11. Stavanger Aftenblad 2009-02-16

Related posts:

1. Skilbrei on ‘un-Norwegian’ prostitution
2. Contra bonos mores and the sex purchase ban in Norway
3. Norway bans the purchase of sexual services

The ban on the purchase of sexual services was framed as necessary because demand for prostitution creates a market for trafficking and because prostitution is unworthy and degrading. Yet, this debate mainly focused only on foreign prostitutes in Norway, Skilbrei argues.

At the same time, “the problem with Nigerian women selling sexual services in Norwegian cities was framed as the women themselves, because their presence and conduct hurt others.” They were portrayed as damaging to Norway’s image by offending tourists, but they were also portrayed as insulting to “regular” men and “family fathers”:

“Male journalists and politicians reported vividly how they were objectified by being approached by Nigerian women. [...] When women offered them sex in front of others in the Karl Johan Street, they felt that it cast suspicion on them as potential ‘whore customers’.”

Skilbrei asks why Nigerian women were scapegoated as the cause of these diverse problems, given that the national understanding of prostitution is that those who prostitute themselves are not responsible for their actions. She concludes that this framing was possible because “the last years’ focus on the otherness of the Nigerian women legitimised demands that they should be treated differently than other women who sell sex.” Simply put, they were being framed as un-Norwegian prostitutes.

Skilbrei’s article is an adaptation of her chapter in the recently published book Norske seksualiteter, edited by Wencke Mühleisen & Åse Røthing (Cappelen 2009).

Photo by Timo Arnall

Related posts:

1. Research on Norwegian prostitution policy
2. Race and prostitution in Norway