Sweden’s parliament has passed a law banning the purchase of sexual performances for viewing online, including those on platforms like OnlyFans, marking a major update to the country’s sex purchase legislation.
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So, to clarify. Sweden has for a very long time a system where buying sex is illegal but selling sex is legal. This is to make sure the man buying is considered criminal and the woman selling a victim. This new ban is just a way to keep it that way online as well.
What becomes illegal is paying for custom personalized performances (because a man can say “I’ll give you $1000 if you stick this painful thing up your ass”, which can be a difficult request to deny if you are poor), but selling prerecorded stuff will not be banned.
idc about sex sites but onlyfans gives me brainrot. good one sweden. shame for the other sites that are affected i guess?
Like other censorship efforts, these politicians appear never to have heard of VPNs.
From a purely logical perspective, it isn’t clear how these performers are different from athletes or actors.
Like other censorship efforts, these politicians appear never to have heard of VPNs.
It’s not blocking it, just creating legal risk for someone who does purchase OnlyFans stuff from Sweden. I kind of doubt that Swedish law enforcement is going to be actively looking for this, but I suppose that if they’re looking into someone for some other reason and there are payments to OnlyFans with a payment service in Sweden, that’s probably a way to add more charges.
It’s to use on whistle blowers maybe? Hrrm, Assange hrrm.
Because you aren’t paying actor or athletes to perform acts on your live demands, especially not sexual acts.
I dunno
Some scenes in films and theaters would reach that mark.
And some of the athlete’s outfits too 😁
While viewing and paying for pre-recorded content remains legal, the law targets live, commissioned interactions, which lawmakers argue blur legal and ethical lines.
Interesting distinction they are making there.
California has a history of running a porn production industry but disallowing prostitution, which results in the somewhat-bizarre situation where it’s illegal to pay someone for sex, but that becomes legal if it is being filmed for an audience to watch.
delay == 0.1s
The title doesn’t convey the actual law, thanks for adding description op.
Feels out of character for a Scandinavian country to pass such conservative law.
Belgium actually got social benefits like insurance for people doing sex work (which if you ask me, is work), if I remember correctly.
It’s conservative under a certain pov, or progressive for others.
From a femministic pov is a step forward. Sweden started in '99 to criminalize the sex customers and it’s been followed from the other Scandinavians and France.
On the other end we’ve countries like Germany, Switzerland, Nederland or Belgium which works in kinda opposite direction and allow sex workers to the point of being guaranteed social services.
In Sweden they believe that prostitution always happens due to an abuse of power. The prostitute is somehow always forced to sell sex. It’s kinda tricky point, it never convinced me 100%.
I believe more that people should be allowed to do what they want with their body, so if someone wants to sell sex, the only things to do is to offer some rules and makes it safe for everyone. It’s not surprisingly that countries who cares about safe worker’s safety also allow euthanasia.
And Germany became a haven for human trafficking and organized rape, which forced prostitution is.
Among other things when Ukrainians started arriving in Germany there were cases of people disguising to help to snatch women and girls and force them into prostitution as the enforcement of protection against human trafficking remains lackluster in Germany.
Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_Germany
Germany is a European source, point of transit, organization and destination country for women, children, and men subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution and forced labor.[1][2]
The Government of Germany complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but has not implemented European Union recommendations to reduce sexual slavery.[3] Available statistics indicate the majority of convicted labor and sex trafficking offenders were not required to serve time in prison, raising concerns that punishments were inadequate to deter traffickers.[4] According to Eurostat, during 2022 Germany reported the highest number of victims of all EU countries.
Page 19, 7 Recommendations:
Despite this important progress, considerable efforts are still needed to implement human rights and European standards in the area of trafficking in human beings. This arises in no small degree from the revisions to the EU Anti-Trafficking Direc- tive, which must be implemented rapidly and in full
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2024-001766_EN.html
The Council of the EU has accepted the Commission’s proposal to extend the temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees until March 2026, including access to the labour market and to housing[1]. As of May 2024, Eurostat[2] reported 4.2 million displaced Ukrainians, mainly in Germany and Poland. According to data provided by the Federal Statistical Office in Germany, 70% of refugees are women, and only 14% of them are in employment. German media and NGOs have recently warned about a high number of ‘very young Ukrainian women’ falling victim to human traffickers and ending up in prostitution rings[3], either on the internet or in brothels, owing to a lack of accommodation and employment. There can be little doubt that this prostitution is not voluntary.
Alarm about the increase in sexual exploitation networks involving Ukrainian refugees, including ‘via online platforms’, had already been raised in November 2022, when Valiant Richey of the OSCE[4], said that the DSA[5] was ‘silent on trafficking in human beings’[6].
The Government of Germany complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but has not implemented European Union recommendations to reduce sexual slavery.[3]
That references an article from 2013, the whole article is generally out of date. What’s absolutely true is that Germany is a hub for trafficking in Europe, for the simple reason that it’s a hub for anything in Europe that involves transportation: You can hardly go east to west, north to south, without crossing through Germany.
The article also isn’t particularily good at distinguishing between sex trafficking and for other purposes. Most of the dates (2009) refer to a time barely past regularisation of prostitution, the criminal statistics in the years following 2002 are full of cases that were only brought to light because operating shady brothels became financially untenable.
Then, important to keep in mind about statistics: German law says that it’s illegal to recruit under 21yolds into prostitution. I think it’s a good thing, but OTOH someone driving around in the Romanian countryside asking gals whether they want to make money in Germany shouldn’t be confused, much less equated, with chained to the radiator type of trafficking, but that’s exactly what happens when you just take the “human trafficking” numbers out of the police statistics, both types have the same subheading.
This arises in no small degree from the revisions to the EU Anti-Trafficking Directive, which must be implemented rapidly and in full
The revisions were done July of 2024, the report is from October. No shit Sherlock it can take a couple of months to implement legislation.
The whole thing, the wikipedia article that is not the report, reads like a hitpiece with an agenda… in particular, SWERF. SWERFs also like to ignore any- and everything sex worker unions have to say about this topic (which isn’t kind towards the Nordic model), up to including slandering them as “pimp-run”.
Most of the sources in the article are also before 2017, which saw a law reform, in particular now there’s licensing. Sex worker unions really didn’t like that, I don’t think it’s doing much but OTOH is also not terribly damaging – lots of professions have some kind of licensing regime. I would have rather seen more investment in street work.
IMO it’s fairly understandable for in-person sex work, it has to be fairly hard to navigate that business while avoiding abuse even if you start doing it out of your own free will. But online sex work removes a huge component of what makes in-person sex work so risky, i.e. the physical in-person interaction. IMO, forbidding that as well suggests that the lawmakers not only view sex work as dangerous, but also as immoral.
It is not the physical danger, but the risk of people being manipulated, pressured, or straight up forced into doing it. That can certainly still happen with online content. It may not be the image you have of Onlyfans, but I can’t imagine it not happening to some degree.
Exploitation also happens with foreign workers in the farming and logistics industries though. So under the argument they are making, I recommend also closing the entire farming and logistics industries.
Wasn’t there multiple popular porn formats where it turned out they were human trafficking rings and raped the women for millions of people to view?
Interesting there possibly being a correlation between euthanasia and legal sex work. But it makes sense, as it is both about supporting people to make their own choice. I’ve always found the people who want to ban things that are dangerous a bit condescending, as if people aren’t able to bare the consequences of their choices. But is true that if people have no good options, they will start considering bad options. But by making something illegal, they are not getting better options. Also I don’t think making it illegal will stop the people who are willing to force someone into prostitution. Signing some law to prevent unwanted behaviour seems like a easy choice from a political pov. Real problems need real solutions.
Just listened to the episodes about Andrew Tate on behind the bastards and it seems like there’s a huge potential for ruined lives, so I see why Sweden has taken this step. If they can guarantee a well paid job aside from this and other things that hurt society, I can see why this is a progressive move
Feels out of character for a Scandinavian country to pass such conservative law.
Not for Sweden in the context of sex work.
Wow I thought you were cool Sweden :/
Wait until you discover their politics about drugs.
