A new law in Sweden makes it illegal to buy custom adult content

As a Swede, I can see how this law was created as a modern branch from the trunk that is criminalizing purchasing sex, but not selling it, in order to protect the sex worker. You see, in Sweden, all sex workers are seen as victims and those who insist they aren't are not listened to or seen as necessary collateral in order to protect the vast majority who are.

So this is to protect all the victims on OnlyFans, for example.

You'll be allowed to subscribe to them alright, but it will not be legal for a service provider to offer Swedes the ability to purchase custom content from them. Which is of course the _actual_ income stream from sex workers on OnlyFans.

So that means Swedish sex workers can't raise a full income on OnlyFans anymore. In fact, OnlyFans has already disabled the DM system for all Swedish creators.

Now, will this law care for where they have to go then? No, of course not. The law stops caring about them as soon as they've been thrown under the bus.

I can understand the reasoning, but it's just halfway there. I think a more complete line of thought WOULD have raised the issue that these workers don't show themselves naked on OnlyFans just for fun, like instead of working in retail or in a comfy office gig. OnlyFans is not typically a first choice. In that sense, the Swedish law follows. Most there are probably "victims". BUT here's the deal; they're _victims of society_. They obviously need the cash for some particular reason and this way somehow works out for them better than others even if it means exposing themselves. And now this unusually safe haven (in these circles) that is OnlyFans where they are distanced from their buyers, even anonymized, is taken away from them. The platform where THEY dictated how far they'd want to go.

Now they need to seek out shadier platforms. Shadier outlets. Apartments? Or maybe just do more drugs to dull their anxiety over not being able to provide for their kids or whatever.

I'm sorry but I can't see much good come out of this.

Fully agreed. Norway has this same legislation. It's the kind of thing that only makes sense if you only look at it for 2 seconds, through a thick fog of radical sex-negative feminism.

Yes, it is true that the pimps and human traffickers are the real criminals, and that the vast majority of prostitutes are in fact victims. And yes, it's a good thing not to prosecute them. But when you make buying illegal, you force prostitutes away from the safety nets that could help them anyway. If you're the police, how do you catch johns? Follow the prostitutes, of course. So they're forced to avoid the police, lest they're unable to meet demands from their pimps, and get punished, often violently. And in avoiding the police, they also become more vulnerable to abuse by johns.

The real world just doesn't work like this. You can't nearly separate these things into legal/not legal bins. They're entangled and can't be unentangled merely by way of ideology or wishful thinking.

The other issue is of course, is it wrong to buy sex? If you're a sex-negative feminist, the answer is yes, because your ideology rests on projecting your own sex-negative outlook onto all women, which to me seems hilariously and ironically sexist. Personally I believe women have very diverse attitutes to sex and should have autonomy to do whatever the hell they please with their lives and bodies.

To me, the only thing that really matters if whether the sex is consensual, without clear-cut coercion. Is it wrong to buy sex from someone who is clearly a victim of human trafficking? Absolutely, I think so. This is basically slavery.

Is it wrong to buy sex from someone who's selling it, because it's their only option? This one is trickier, but I think it's about as wrong as getting your iphone screen fixed by someone who couldn't cut it in "real" IT work. Or getting your garbage picked up by someone whose only marketable skill is emptying a bin into a truck. Society is full of people doing jobs they hate because it's all they got. And that sucks, but criminalising their customers doesn't seem like a reasonable solution. It's a systemic issue.

Is it wrong to buy sex work from someone who does it because they genuinely love it(yes, they do exist, though they are awfully rare)? How the hell could it be?

So in summation, it seems to me human trafficking is the real problem. Criminalising johns seems like a stupid way to tackle it, and it demonstrably does not work. Extending it to the online sphere makes even less sense.

Most of what you are saying makes sense, except this:

> I think it's about as wrong as getting your iphone screen fixed by someone who couldn't cut it in "real" IT work. Or getting your garbage picked up by someone whose only marketable skill is emptying a bin into a truck. Society is full of people doing jobs they hate because it's all they got.

Selling sex for money is not in the same bin as other jobs people hate. Sex is an intimate act for humans, like it or not, and being coerced into sex, whether physically or economically, is especially toxic. Like long-term PTSD toxic.

This is not the same as cleaning latrines or collecting garbage (which yes, can be a foul work experience). Although as I'm thinking about it, there are other jobs which have a similar soul-toxicity as sex work, like industrial animal slaughter or mass executioner (e.g. in a concentration camp). Jobs that require you to give up your humanity in exchange for a paycheck.

> This is not the same as cleaning latrines or collecting garbage

> Although as I'm thinking about it, there are other jobs which have a similar soul-toxicity as sex work

It’s not as clear cut as one might think.

What makes sex work different and why? Garbage collection, and many other jobs, expose people to disease or hazards. What makes sex work special?