On the suppression of the rewarded sex

Being an issue of controversy and of spit cutting air to fluttering mouths I have so far stayed out of rebelling against my prime love-to-hate parcel of Swedish legislation. But I will not easily sit idly by as the Liberal Women of Sweden (well, the chairwoman at least) have now risen behind the idle calls to extend the ban on rewarding sex workers to every corner of the globe. As if liberal principles had not already determined that the ends does not always commend the means, that Swedish law applies to Swedish soil only, making the calls for such an amendment a cry from the crest, into a wilderness beyond the walls of parliamentary authority, geographical and social. Joint efforts must be made to stem the trade of new slavery, which is truly an abomination, but in this the pitiful law mentioned will play no part. That is not an opinion.

Let me say it once more; I do not condone trafficking, or the domestic use for any purpose of men or women, minor or adults, against their explicit desire. But trafficking was never the spirit of anti-prostitution legislation, and no lawmaker or philosopher adhering to the principles of logic can claim that was the case when the Congress* of Sweden re-introduced the ban on remunerated extramarital sexual favors fourteen years past. Since then, two countries have followed; Norway and Iceland. In the former case, the law explicitly penalizes against offenses committed outside the boundaries of the country which erected the statute. In the latter, taking off your clothes in an erotic, uncasual manner has been banned as well - at least, that is, in a house of public accomodation. Cash is King; King Herod it would seem, by the definition of gracious protectoress Johánna. If the slacker laws of Finland, which only consider sex purchased from victims of trafficking to be suppressible, all the North but jovial Denmark has been cast into an abolitionist kettle along where we have once more rejoined Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the majority of the United States to consider the trade in sexual favours (for bills and coins that is, or dope; food, cigarettes or half a lifetime of increased fiscal security is sort of tolerable) a matter of state. Every one of the countries mentioned have laws against rape and sexual abuse, as do every other country. I would even remark that most countries where rape within marriage, for instance, is legal (Tunisia, for instance) are abolitionist. Criminal behavior is not so much the issue as the prime agent of every piece of anti-sex legislation in history; morality.

French sex workers protesting the Hollande administration's plan to re-criminalize their clients, bringing my interest to the interests of sex workers themselves. Like Prohibition and the Russian revolution, abolition tends to be pushed mainly by an élite with scant regards for wishes expressed by the people concerned.

Morality.
Here is another word; property.
Power entails property, and in my opinion they are inseparable. I also believe, being born post-Enlightenment and two years past President Bush's famous statement of the end of totalitarianism ("blowing away like leaves from of an ancient, lifeless tree") that my body belongs exclusively to me. It is not ours, no more than my rights are our rights. To deem human rights as communal implies they are alienable and can be given away by consensus, a disturbingly authoritarian notion.

Free sexuality, the right of everyone to fuck with with whomever so desirest for any reason, has been suppressed in ink as well as practice since the rise of civilization, but almost nowhere and at no time as much as where Abrahamic religions have prevailed. For the last centuries and decades, it has experienced a renaissance which has since not seen renewed pressure. Religious dogma will not return (for long) in the public sphere, so why should limitations on my right to live and fuck freely? Freedom of information can, roughly, be estimated by the distance to the closest pornographic magazine, divided with the density of population. The adjoined calls for restrictions on pornography and striptease, to mention two activites once commonly attacked by the purposed opponents of equality, now by its most stubborn forebearers, is even more disturbing. The greatest foulness of "right" and "left", fear of free flow of bodily fluids and monetary value, herein joined in unholy matrimony.

The common excuse given for this renewed suppression of this free sexuality of ours is called violence against women. Yet the laws mentioned, tactfully, recognize no specifics of gender on either seller or buyer, nor should any law ever. And as statistics have so often recognized, nor are the buyers or sellers of these favors of a sexual nature solely either men or women. Of young prostitutes in the Nordic countries, males compose a majority. Not a few cases, or a significant minority, but a majority! How can a law ever be based on the claim of an absolute when no absolute exists, or even a generic trend? Prejudice would seem a branding of insufficient heat. I would claim that a 40-year old male, add "millionare" and "teetotaler" to be safely beyond any reasonable discussion of consent, purchasing or selling a night of passion from his absolute equal in these qualities, can impossibly constitute violence on women, nor can it sensibly constitute violence at all, nor could anyone derive its consumption from the need for a higher value; yet, his crime is of equal value to the legislator. How can this be? Have our lawmakers set out to redefine the fairly everlasting boundaries of sex and violence?

Making the act legal. Images such as these, from brothels as well as private homes, were showered by criticism and hushing when unearthed by 19th and 20th century archeologists. Under neo-abolitionist laws, this depiction might have spared the participants of legal proceedings.

Violence is a misnomer, for the heart and soul of the term is force; rape, abuse, torture, assault and homicide are all defined by the singular interest from the act, the reduction of victim into an object whose interests are below the culprit's judgment. Any of these acts carried out between a consenting pair ceases to be an act of violence and, mostly, a crime, as it should it be. The legality of having sex, of killing yourself, of stripping, of slapping or restraining your partner for as long as consent lasts must be fought for towards an everlasting establishment of preservation. Short of permanent bodily harm or the loss of limbs, I think any unenforced sexual pleasure is beyond the reasonable boundaries of government. To consider an act between two (or three, or fourteen) consenting adults by definition inconsensual because of the exchange of a material value is as foolish as to deem it consensual because of the absence of such a compensation, another queer evaluation implied by current legislation. Further to that, if you think the abuse of trafficked women and men is more illegal in Sweden than in Germany, place a camera before the disgusting act you may have in mind, press record, and think again. Or just paint the damn thing. Or be daring and call for the abolition of pornographic images and movies as well, and mind the erection of your spine when you call us all to pause the tape of sexuality and play it in reverse. Consent must govern, alone. That is the spirit of the revolution whose purpose once was to establish the freedom of mind and body on this issue of sex, to which I most strongly adher. The law should not be concerned, politics should not be concerned, was the rallying cry when sodomy laws (solely for men engaged in "carnal knowledge" with other men, like King Gustaf himself) were overturned in Sweden in 1944. This principle was sordidly overlooked when a suppression as old as the "oldest profession" was resurrected in the last year of this century of allegedly unhampered liberation.

My body, my despotism. At least if I am a human being deemed capable of reasonable judgment. Any power infringing on this implies property, and no more than a slave of one who break our laws will I be one of those who make them, or deny that may come to pass in the proudest republic of public consent. The same public consent that has merrily sanctioned, by silent approval, a lot of tyrants, before and evermore.
Non Serviam.


((And please, do not insult your intellect by claiming to yourselves, or me (well, if you'd like to ;) that this is about my personal urges. I have no personal interest in being a sex worker or to benefit one (for the moment), but to suggest that I must support the suppression of activities I may not personally indulge in, or even condone, would mean I have to favor prison sentences just as much for hockey, charter travels to Bulgaria, same-sex sexual activities (thought we were past that one), haggis and most brands of red wine, to mention a few. That sort of thinking sort of digust me, and implies a totalitarian state where all activites must be either enforced or downstruck.))

* = Admitting that I translate "Riksdag" into "Congress"; the literal translation being "Congress of the Reich" or "Congress of the Realm", with the suffix -dag being derived from old German "tagen" which translates as "to gather", "to have congress". An interesting reflection, it would seem now  = )

For a debate (unfortunately rather one-sided) on the topic, click here.

"Why is it a crime to buy or sell something you can give away for free? Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?"

George Carlin