The Swedish government wants to make paying for sexual services online a criminal offense. The law could have global implications for online services and put creators at risk, warns Yigit Aydin. He fights for the rights of sex workers on behalf of the association ESWA.
We’re not looking for a generalised measure of harm - just one good enough for safe sex work. For which my suggestion works, as it is basically equivalent to consent.
I disagree. We are looking for a generalised measure of harm because… well, because that’s what all politics does, but also because we’re measuring very different interests against each other.
There are people who will argue that while individual choices in sex work are neutral the system in general is patriarchal and harms primarily women with few resources or in vulnerable positions, so right from the jump you need to decide how many babies you’re going to throw with the human trafficking bathwater. Others will argue that sex work carries a moral harm, which I disagree with, but we’re not basing political choices on what I, personally, find acceptable (unfortunately, because I’m good at this).
There are the interests of online platforms, the interests of pornography producers (both mostly financial), the interests of people working in the industry, the interests of consumers of porn and other sex work… There are aguments about the impact of the sex work industry on sex education as online distribution weakens age limits, so by that channel you now also have to weigh online privacy against the ability to distribute properly targeted adult-only content.
It’s a complete mess of interconnected parameteres. Which is exactly why it’s a prime vector for conservative elements trying to attack it for ideological reasons to overlap with left-leaning feminists objecting to it for other reasons.
And if you come at it from an online bro “here’s an easy solution to a complex problem” attitude you’re almost certainly making the whole thing worse, so I’d caution against it.