Challenging Production, 1993–2005

The chapter analyzes Swedish legislative attempts to challenge pornography production with laws against pimping/procuring. Minority parliamentary motions and the 1993 Prostitution Inquiry’s proposal to extend prostitution laws to cover pornography producers are considered. The 1998 Sexual Crimes Committee’s rejection of this proposal is scrutinized. Its attempts to invoke the legislative history of media antitrust and bankruptcy law, child pornography and child molestation amendments, as well as distinctions between content and underlying criminal conduct, are rebutted by legal analysis based on the primary sources. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that case law on analogous issues disproves the Committee’s position, including decisions on violent resistance and dishonest conduct during artistic film projects, filmed sexual crimes, amateur pornography, and purchasing/possessing illegal weapons as an integral means of otherwise legitimate news reporting. It is concluded that decisions not to apply prostitution laws to pornographers are based on ideology, not law, political ideas, not legislated rules.

Men, Masculinities, and the Politics of Sexual Control

This chapter examines men's reactions to prostitution legislation. Different contours of masculinities informed by location and by political and economic power influenced the degree of condemnation of or support for anti-prostitution laws. Men's reactions also differed depending on the age of prostitutes. A question that seemed relevant for this discussion of men's sexual politics is what it might take for moralists to become defenders of prostitutes' rights. The change of identity from being a moralist to an advocate for prostitutes' rights underscores the fluidity of debates about prostitution and the shifting positions of moralists. In “defending” prostitutes' rights against the injustice of the colonial state, men deployed the vocabularies of political and cultural nationalism, as they highlighted the integrity of “traditional” customs or criticized the British for imperial failure.

Lagos Elite Women and the Struggle for Legitimacy

This chapter focuses on Lagos elite women's sexual politics. Lagos elite women were the first to insert illicit sexuality into their long list of projects aimed at improving women's sociopolitical and economic visibility. Like the male nationalists, they expressed optimism that the 1940s prohibitionist regime would help curb the menace of prostitution, especially the trafficking of girls. With time, the elite women would be disappointed by the paradoxical situation resulting from anti-prostitution laws: on the one hand, they fulfilled the demand for policing prostitutes and controlling the influx of girls into Lagos, but on the other hand, they opened up new arenas for the violation of women's rights.

Violence and Entry in Prostitution Markets

This chapter explores three issues in prostitution markets and their implications for prostitution law: bargaining, coercion, and entry. The discussion is organized around three different views on violence: prostitution as a product of violence, voluntary entry into prostitution markets, and transactional coercion. The chapter pays special attention to transactional coercion, which acknowledges the fact that violence against prostitutes is not restricted to pimps and traffickers. A simple model of bargaining and coercion in prostitution markets is proposed, and the various types of coercion that arise in this model are analyzed within the context of prostitution laws. More specifically, the chapter considers how prostitution laws affect coercion and bargaining between prostitutes, johns, pimps, and law-enforcement officers. It also examines which law reduces overall transactional coercion, irrespective of whom it is exercised by, and thus improves the work environment and safety of prostitutes.

The Expressive Effect of the Athenian Prostitution Laws

This article argues that attention to the expressive function of law suggests that the Athenian laws prohibiting former prostitutes from active political participation may have had a much broader practical impact than previously thought. By changing the social meaning of homosexual pederasty, these laws influenced norms regarding purely private conduct and reached beyond the limited number of politically active citizens likely to be prosecuted under the law. Some appear to have become more careful about courting in public while others adopted a conception of chaste pederasty that would not run afoul of the law. The prostitution laws may also have provoked resistance among a particular subset of elites, the apragmones, contributing to this group's deliberate disengagement from public affairs.