The Norwegian commission report
is about sex crimes in general, but what has dominated the public debate
is the commission’s proposal to decriminalize prostitution in general.
Norway was one of the first countries in the world to introduce a law
criminalizing the purchase in prostitution when they adopted their law
in 2009, ten years after Sweden. Their law is also more comprehensive
than the Swedish one. Our law only applies to sex purchases within Sweden,
but in Norway the law has also criminalized Norwegian men traveling abroad
and exploiting women in prostitution in other countries, regardless of
whether prostitution is criminalized or not in the other country.
JURIDICAL CONSENT
But now the Norwegian commission is pushing for the law to distinguish
between "forced" or "voluntary"
prostitution. It’s like taking both the debate and the development
back to how it was decades ago, before the Sex Purchase Act existed. What
is slightly different in today’s Norwegian debate is that "voluntariness"
now is linked to the idea of statutory consent.
What the commission is proposing is that Norway should decriminalize all
"sex purchases that do not involve sexual
abuse". Of course, this sounds completely wrong to us who
are against prostitution as such – we don’t think there is
any prostitution that doesn’t involve sexual abuse. But the sad
thing is that their reasoning is quite logical, if we examine what consent
laws actually say – and how they can be used in a patriarchy.
LACK OF CONSENT
According to rape consent laws, the actual violation
in a rape is strictly the absence of consent.
What he in fact subjected her to becomes irrelevant when consent is the
sole legal basis of the crime. The only thing that legally characterizes
a rape then is if it can be proven that the perpetrator realized
that she did not want and therefore did not consent
to whatever happened.
If he subjected her to a lot of sexualized violence also becomes uninteresting,
since the commission report for the new rape law, at least in Sweden,
states that things like BDSM 1. is about consensual sex, and therefore the
law should not meddle with that.
 This
is how the focus has shifted from what men in our society actually do
to women to what the individual woman "agreed to".
In practice, statutory consent thus becomes the patriarchy’s daydream
come true. For when there is no other limitation on his actions than her
lack of consent, then there is nothing in the
actual abuse he subjected her to that the court could claim indicated,
or proved, that it was an abuse she
was subjected to. Then women can legally be expected to consent to anything.
TIME FOR THE NEXT STEP
When the sexual assault then has been rephrased to simply a question of
"consent", why would society be against prostitution as
such? If the only thing important here is the woman’s consent?
Moreover, "prostitution" is hardly even talked about anymore.
In the public debate, "buying sex" is discussed, and "sellers"
or "buyers" – as if we were talking about a "service"
among others to "trade" with.
At that point, we have come far way from talking about what
men actually do to women in patriarchy.
I every now and then quote the American feminist Kathleen
Barry, who already at Roks (the
National Organization for Women’s Shelters and Young Women’s
Shelters in Sweden) international conference on porn in 1990 told
us about what happened in the US when feminists tried to highlight how
men abuse women:
"In the United States – the very
symbol of liberal individualism – this development meant that the
more we refused to be sexually objectified, the more society, the law
and public debate came to focus on the issue of consent."
This is how the responsibility for the oppression is shifted onto the
woman. And then it’s time for patriarchy to take the next step.
"THE RIGHT TO CONSENT"?
When consent has become the essential, then they have also gained a new
weapon to silence feminists’ fight against men’s sexualized
violence. Then they can claim women’s right to consent to just about
anything – including severe oppression of women.
It is based on this development we can understand what is happening in
Norway now.
– The Sex Purchase Act is a violation
of the right to consent, is now the claim from several debaters
from PION – a Norwegian lobby organization
similar to the Swedish Rose Alliance. 2.
They also declare that the feminists in Norwegian Kvinnefronten
and Kvinnegruppa Ottar are depriving "sex
sellers" of their "competence to consent". They are supported
in their opposition to the Sex Purchase Act by organizations such as Amnesty
International and several political parties, such as the populist
right in the Fremskrittspartiet and the liberals
in Venstre.
Even in the concerted preparations for the International Woman’s
Day in Oslo, some organizations for several years now have been pushing
for that it is high time for the women’s movement to stop being
against all prostitution – that it is time to skip the demand to
retain the Sex Purchase Act.
CONSENT TO OPPRESSION
I
fully understand everyone who, when they first hear about statutory consent,
lets themselves be fooled. The basis of great sex is that it is reciprocal.
But the thing is that both consent and reciprocity are concepts that must
be problematized in relation to oppression.
The most fundamental part of feminist analysis
is the understanding of gender and power. That we live in a society
built on a gendered power structure. And what consequences this has for
everything in our society – including how the patriarchal legal
system will interpret what women can be expected to "consent"
to.
We are living in a culture that is permeated by stories about how women
want it themselves: consenting
to whatever men want to do to us. Porn is an evient example of this, but
the same is said in books, films, lyrics, and what not. When such a society
imposes a law that says that it doesn’t matter what
someone in power does to someone who is subordinate, the only restriction
being the victim’s consent, then
it is quite obvious that in practice this means that women, without any
other restriction in the law, can be expected to
consent to just about everything.
By even getting some feminists to demand statutory consent, the patriarchy
has tricked all women inte falling for a clever trap.
FOCUS ON THE PERPETRATOR
This is why reading about what’s happening in Norway now makes me
so sad. Because this is exactly the development that we warned about,
when consent was introduced into our rape legislation.
But many feminists didn’t realize it then, and I fear many also
won’t understand how what’s happening in Norway now correspond
to the notion of statutory consent.
So, the fact that patriarchy is constantly trying to conceal what men
actually do to women in our society, and instead puts the responsibility
on the victim, that’s what makes it so incredibly important to defend
our laws "Kvinnofrid" (Gross violation
of a woman’s integrity act) and the Sex Purchase Act, because
those are the only laws that say that regardless
of her eventual consent, the perpetrator may
not do whatever he wants to a woman anyway.
These are laws that focus on what men do to women in patriarchy.
RESISTANCE
Patriarchy has not yet triumphed in Norway. Even in this year’s
March 8 demonstration, they still had the slogan against prostitution:
Consent cannot be bought – strengthen
and use the sex purchase law!
And still a majority of people in Norway do not
want to change the Sex Purchase Law. But almost a quarter do, and quite
a few are hesitant. Among women, of course, only 1
in 10 want to change the law, which has the support of about 7
in 10 women.
But the insight into what statutory consent means can help us understand
that what happens in Norway at any time can happen here too.
It is important that we are prepared for it. Both when it comes to developing
and spreading the feminist analysis of what statutory consent means and
to encourage us to fight hard to retain these laws!
Gerda
Christenson
This article was first published
in Swedish in
Kvinnofronten's Internal Newsletter, no. 1, 2023.
The Sex Purchase Act and the Gross violation of a woman’s integrity
Act are the only two laws that focus on what men actually do to women
in our patriarchal society – they say that regardless
of her possible consent, the perpetrator is not
allowed to do whatever he wants to a woman anyway.
Photo: pexels.com
Listen to the American lawyer
Catharine MacKinnon, who in 15 minutes during
the Nordic Forum 2014 made a feminist
analysis of statutory consent in rape legislation.
Notes:
1. BDSM – bondage, domination, sadism and masochism – is a
heteronormative, gender-conservative sexual practice where men are usually
the "dominant" while women are "submissive" and where
the violence is justified by the submissive’s consent. She wanted
it herself. In this way, all responsibility is placed on her while he
is exonerated, and his violence is not problematized.
2. The article "Rose
Alliance – a fraudulent organization" shows how the prostitution
lobby is bluffing when they claim to fight for the rights of "sex
workers".
This article in Swedish
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