The Paternity of Prostitution

published by AMSA (Alternative Mobile Services Association) on February 4, 2025

I moved to Portland in 2001 as a New York liberal. Witnessing prostitution in Portland eventually made me drop the liberal label and accept I was now a radical.

Radicals go upstream to where problems start and do less damage control on the front lines than liberals. Both advocates are essential, and as an upstreamer invited to speak to first responders about prostitution I’d like to explore alternatives outside the liberal bandwidth.

Portland has several neighborhoods where prostitution is a constant and I live in the city’s worst one. The 82nd Avenue rape neighborhood (“red light district”) has more Asian massage parlors than food stores and men drive there to hunt for prostitutes near my Montavilla home.

My neighbors have stories:

A father stopped at a stop sign had a prostitute try to open his passenger door and get into his car while his two small children were in the back seat.

A mother was walking with her 11-year-old daughter and a man in a car slowed down to proposition her in the middle of the day.

A woman waiting on the sidewalk while her car was serviced had a man in a car pull up and motion for her to get inside, then he sped away as she tried to take his photo.

The sheer amount of strip clubs has long been a warped Portland bragging point, a smirk to an overly romanticized Wild West. Studies show 100% of strippers have been solicited for prostitution, confirming one stripper’s observation, “We’re not showgirls, we’re prostitutes pretending to be showgirls.”

I’m here for alternative solutions, so let’s begin at the beginning—men’s choices.

The Nordic model approach (also known as the Equality Model) decriminalizes people who are prostituting and makes buying sex a criminal offense. It has been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Israel, Canada, France, and Ireland.

The Nordic model is the compromise between legalizing prostitution and not legalizing prostitution. It has been spreading outside Scandinavia because it works marvelously. After only three years, Oslo, Norway saw dramatic drops in all categories of severe violence against prostitutes, and emergency room visits dropped a whopping 79%.

Source

It’s a world-changing idea. Most people understand it should not be a crime to be so desperate that you let someone hurt you, but should be a crime to sexually prey on vulnerable people.

I won’t presume to tell first responders how to incorporate the Nordic model into your daily work, that’s your expertise. Mine is going upstream and relaying what I’ve learned.

1. Decriminalize those who are prostituted

The Nordic model repeals laws targeting those who are prostituted and clears their criminal records of previous convictions for offenses related to their own prostitution.

2. Criminalize those who attempt to purchase sex

Purchasing sex should be an offense punished with public transparency, fines, and the threat of jail. Sweden has a jail sentence of one year, however no one has been sent to jail for buying sex in Sweden. Men who pay for sex are rarely hardened criminals, they’re the ordinary men around us, in our families, our workplaces, our schools. Fines and exposure are more effective at changing the behavior of ordinary sex buyers than jail.

3. Training for service providers

Experience (in Sweden especially) shows the Nordic model is most effective beyond the larger social shift against sex buying when accompanied by in-depth training for police, judiciary, and frontline workers.

Police abuse of prostituted women is a significant problem, with some studies finding as much as 30% of violence can come from police. It’s worth pointing out none of the Oslo violence reported by prostituted women was committed by Norwegian police, not so much as one act of verbal abuse.

4. Exit services for victims

Since a key component is not forcing prostitutes to exit, there must be non-judgmental support (addiction services, education, legal advice, childcare) to meet people where they are and not where others want them to be.

Prostitution can never be made safe and its existence makes women’s human right to equality with men impossible.

Finally, let’s go ALL the way upstream, no bullshit.

If you have never mustered the courage to look at the pornography your husband or sons or other men in your lives masturbate with, I beg you to break the silencing spell pimps have cast over your family. We can no longer continue to ignore the propaganda of prostitution media and how it grooms mainly male consumers to take orgasmic pleasure in violent, life-threatening sex acts.