- Women who suffer additional oppression, such as racism, are overrepresented
in the global prostitution industry. In societies where the status of women has
improved, prostitution has fallen. - The fact that an exchange relationship operates – sex for money – does not justify
the relationship, because there is an immense imbalance in the power relation of
buyer to seller. - It is important to ‘motivate persons in prostitution to attempt to exit without
risking punishment’ (note: the seller of sexual services is not prosecuted). - Because it is assumed that men who buy sex are acting from a natural, male
drive, their ‘underlying motives have seldom been studied or even questioned’. - By adopting these measures Sweden has ‘given notice to the world’ that it regards
prostitution as a serious form of oppression of women. - Since the Act came into force there has been a ‘dramatic drop’ in the number of
women in street prostitution, and the number of men who buy sexual services
has also fallen. - Public support for the law is ‘widespread and growing’: an opinion poll in 1999
revealed 76 per cent supported the law, and 15 per cent opposed it. In 2001 the
figure in favour was 81 per cent, with 14 per cent against. (http://myweb.dal.ca/
mgoodyea/Documents/Sweden/prostitution_fact_sheet_sweden_2004.pdf).
The first point to make is that critics of the law would argue for a distinction between
public and private: it is possible to disapprove of prostitution but believe that
consenting adults should have the right to make choices. This is a development of
the argument for toleration, but here extended far beyond religious toleration. It
may appear that the Swedish state has simply rejected toleration but, in fact, the
language used to justify the law is an implicit acknowledgement that the limitation
on the purchaser’s freedom requires justification: ‘in any other context, [prostitution]
would be categorized as sexual abuse and rape’ and ‘the fact that these acts are
committed in exchange for payment does not in any way diminish or mitigate the
immense physical and mental damage inflicted on [prostitutes’] bodies and minds’.
The power imbalance between prostitute and client is so great that the former cannot
be deemed to be a consenting adult. Obviously one can disagree with this assessment,
but the debate over the harm caused by prostitution, and whether prostitutes can
really consent, is fought out on liberal terms.
Several of the arguments set out in the Swedish government’s defence of the Sexual
Services Act make reference to the good consequencesof banning the sale of sexual
services. It is often commented that Sweden has a particularly strong idea of the
‘common good’, and this has sometimes resulted in laws which seem to impinge on
individual freedom. There are a number of reasons for this, one being the dominance
of the centre-left Social Democrats in post-war Sweden. The general point is that
utilitarian – or consequentialist – reasoning is clearly evident in the justification of
the anti-prostitution law. The harm caused by prostitution is harm to ‘society at
large’; the law is part of a package aimed to promote gender equality; the operation
of the law has resulted in a dramatic drop in prostitution. In addition, the high
level of public support is taken as a justification for the law. Obviously, in a
democracy you have to win support for laws, but quite often legislatures will pass
laws that are unpopular, or decline to pass laws which would be popular. As we
have argued in previous chapters liberalism and democracy should not be run
Chapter 8 Liberalism 189