Julie Bindel

Julie Bindel is a Radical Feminist and a supporter of the Nordic Model. She has written books where she explains her views on prostitution, surrogacy and the trans issue. One book is Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation.

This is a quote from Feminism for Women.

"After all, socialist men tend not to reduce any other question (such as working conditions) to individual choice. They don't say, 'Soldiers choose to go to war and so we can't critique military action.' Only with women is individual choice the final word, and held up as a smokescreen for the harm done to women."

There are a number of things wrong with this statement. She is misrepresenting the reason why people oppose the Nordic Model. Some people assume that if you ban prostitution then it will disappear. It should be obvious that will not happen. We know that in the countries where they have tried it has not worked. What it does do is it makes the lives of sex workers more difficult and unpleasant.

Socialists can and do 'critique military action' but most of them don't want to abolish armies. Some socialists are pacifists. Some socialists and anarchists want to abolish the army of the capitalist state but that doesn't mean they don't believe in military action. If you believe in revolution then you believe that workers should be armed and prepared to use military action. Socialists might believe that in the long term armies won't be needed but for now armies of some kind are.

There are families where some members are in the armed forces. They don't want to abolish the army obviously but that doesn't mean they don't critique military actions. They would say that they have the right to join the army.

Socialist don't normally want to abolish forms of employment. Usually they try to improve the pay and conditions of workers. Traditionally socialists have wanted to ban prostitution and drugs. If most of them today seem not to want to ban these things it won't be because of individual choice, it will be because bans don't work and make things more difficult.

If you think about the number of people who die of heroin overdoses, you might think that we should renew the war against drugs. Once you understand that most people who die of a heroin overdose do so because it is banned then you'll probably want the ban to end.

Socialists have never been that interested in individual choice. They don't however want to remove the livelihood of large numbers of people. That is what they mean when they say that if a woman (or a man) chooses sex work as their main means of making money then that shouldn't be taken away from them.

Then we get into the '60% of prostituted women are enslaved' territory. I don't think that Julie Bindel has said this in any of her books but this is what is commonly believed by Radical Feminists and anyone else (Evangelicals, Roman Catholics) who want the Nordic Model. It is not true. Most researchers do not say this.

Julie Bindel writes about the 'harm done to women'. Rachel Moran has written about harm done to women. In her book Paid For she wrote that the law change in 1993 in Ireland caused much suffering to women. It harmed her personally. She wrote in the book that she supports the Nordic Model because it won't be like the 1993 law change. She wrote that the Nordic Model has been proved to reduce the amount of prostitution.

Well, the Nordic Model came to Ireland, both North and South. And we know that demand has not decreased in either the North of Ireland or the South. We have studies that show demand has not reduced. The supporters of the Nordic Model are not claiming that it has, they are saying that the law has not been implemented properly.

Ash Regan, who tried to bring the Nordic Model to Scotland, said that the law has not been implemented properly in Ireland but has been in France and Sweden. However, the situation in France is not good (as I have explained elsewhere on my blog) and the statistics for Sweden aren't what they seem.

Ash Regan was told that the Nordic Model would harm women in Scotland. She was told that the Nordic Model would make it more difficult for women to screen potential clients. Her response was that 60% of prostitutes are enslaved so they can't screen, and we have to legislate for the majority not the minority.

So if we're talking about the harm done to women we should consider the harm done to the majority of sex workers if they can no longer screen potential clients. Don't believe people like Ash Regan and Julie Bindel when they say that the Nordic Model reduces the number of murders of prostitutes. In France the murders continued after the introduction of the Nordic Model there. In Sweden there were no murders of sex workers for ten years before the Model was adopted. The Nordic Model doesn't reduce the number of murders.