Brave new man

It should not be a surprise that feminist fighting about sexuality is about things other than gender equality. Norms and patterns of thought are not changed over night, but instead return in a new guise time and time again until weak, concrete changes can be discerned. In the case of Swedish policy on commercial sex, I demonstrated in my book Porr, horor och feminister [‘Porn, whores and feminists’] how traditional norms of sexuality and gender were both expressed and concealed in Swedish policy, despite the radical feminist rhetoric. Good sexuality is still traditional heterosexual intercourse that takes place in a close, loving and mutually rewarding relationship. And whereas male sexuality is portrayed as aggressive and uncontrollable, female sexuality is seen as peaceful and intimacy-oriented.

Furthermore, discourses about the body often express concern at various social levels. Mary Douglas argues in Purity and Danger that the body, which is the same for all people, must be seen as a metaphor for society. There is a link between how we view our bodies and society. Society, like other connected groups, is at its most vulnerable where it intersects with other groups, so groups that think it important to maintain their separateness are also careful about guarding their boundaries. This can be symbolised by the taboos on food and sex, Douglas argues. People pay a good deal of attention to body cavities because that is where things pass in and out.

Many anthropologists, using Douglas’s theories, have demonstrated that it is women’s bodies in particular that are made into social symbols. There are studies about how Roma (gypsy) identity is maintained through strict rules on purity and impurity, with the greatest burden placed on women, and there is research on “shame and honour” in Mediterranean countries and the Middle East showing how important it is for the group that women’s sexuality is controlled, while genital circumcision and mutilation in some African cultures are usually seen as more extreme expressions of this control. From a similar perspective, Western phenomena too, of course, can be seen from a similar perspective – like the Swedish Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services.

The Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services seems to have multiple and at times conflicting functions in Sweden. On one hand, it is used to reinforce existing norms and ideologies. On the other hand, it is used to change traditional gender patterns and power structures – and sometimes in an unpredictable way.

I have already mentioned aspects of gender and sexual normativity. These are found in the preparatory work for the act and in the arguments presented by the act’s proponents. It should also be remembered that prostitution has never been a sanctioned or accepted activity among the masses. It may have been tolerated under state control in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but this order was soon opposed by various women’s associations. The Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services is thus part of a long-term repressive prostitution policy.

Another application of the law, one that has been written about previously, is how it can reinforce national identity. There are a number of related, enduring self-images of Swedishness, argues the socioanthropologist Don Kulick, self-images that are linked to the whole notion of the Swedish welfare state. One of these is that of moral justice. Sweden’s policy of neutrality, opposition to the war in Vietnam, support for the Cuban government and ANC gave an entire generation of Swedes the feeling that they were more politically aware, humane and moral than people in other countries. However, this self-image ended up in crisis when the Swedish economy deteriorated, neutrality was called into question and the welfare state began to be dismantled. People needed something new to be proud of, something that was not as costly.

In Kulick’s view, Sweden’s Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services may be seen in part as a response to the country’s entry into the EU. If the EU is a “political body”, then Sweden wants to be the conscience of that body. With the help of this act, Sweden can fall back into the role of promoting a certain moral conduct. By identifying certain issues as morally unambiguous (like prostitution) and staking a position, the country can be portrayed as a kind of moral beacon that other countries can consider emulating. He also shows how sellers of sexual services were portrayed in the media before Sweden entered the EU as embodying precisely the qualities people thought characterised Sweden in relation to the EU – a slightly weak, innocent victim that risks being exploited by a dirty, masculinised foreigner. The only protection against this was a stringent policy against prostitution.

In Germany, prostitution was being regulated at roughly the same time the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services was being introduced in Sweden. In her dissertation on the history of ideas, Är sex arbete? (’Is Sex Work?’], Susanne Dodillet uses the two poles of tension, communitarianism and anarchism, to explain why the two countries’ radical and feminist politics resulted in such different laws. Dodillet argues that, while Germans were influenced by strong autonomous movements that were critical of the state in the 1970s, Swedes were acting within a communitarian tradition of ideas.

This in turn is connected to the history of these countries, Dodillet says. Germans tend to have greater fear and suspicion of a totalitarian state, whereas Swedes instead see the state as the protector of citizens. Radical feminism, which has been the dominant feminist ideology in Sweden, is also in harmony with the communitarian notion that it is possible, for an instant, to have an overview of the entire social structure and determine what is good for every individual – and, it could be added, the notion that it is right to formulate measures that are considered to favour the majority but are to the disadvantage of the minority, where the remaking of humankind is allowed to claim its victims.

Let me take an example from the reactions to Porr, horor och feminister. In a review in the paper Aftonbladet, Ann-Charlotte Altstadt defends the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services with the following argument. She writes that she is happy to live in a society without the natural john-whore culture, where her son’s first sexual contact will not take place in a brothel. Not because she was an “anti-sex moralist” but because she thinks that both society and her son’s future partners benefit from this. She realises that the fact that Sweden is gender-equal compared to other countries is due to this restrictive view of sex trafficking. So it is of minor importance that some women willingly prostitute themselves and are happy, she argues. This activity should not be made easier but rather more difficult with the help of the act. She concludes her argument by saying that there may be a few thousand prostitutes in Sweden who are thus sacrificed on the alter of gender equality.

Altstadt’s argument is based on what I think is one of the main functions of the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services: it is part of the project to model a new, modern, gender-equal man. Through the act, men are supposed to learn that it is not right to “buy women’s bodies for money”, but also through changes, for instance in parental leave, men should be induced to assume greater responsibility as fathers. So the act is used not just to reinforce or express existing norms of sexuality and gender, but also change them. Through artistic on-line projects like Han i hennes ögon [‘Him in her eyes’], women’s photographs are supposed to free men from their macho role. The project has been depicted in the documentary Den gode mannen [‘The Good Man’], and on the website, viewers can read that men’s warmth and sensuality are to take precedence over aggressiveness and coldness.

Perhaps most of all, the act helps out in this project by creating a figure that can function as the dark shadow of the new man. If a gay man was once the perverted type that the normality of heterosexual man could be set in opposition to, the purchaser of sexual services now seems to have taken over the role. The gay man no longer serves this function because he is now the one today’s heterosexual men turn to in order to get a grip on their home, relations and appearance.

Mary Douglas argues that change in a social order requires new, powerful symbols. During the first century of Christianity, for example, women’s chastity was assigned great importance. The fact that these new types of Swedish man have become fixed in the collective psyche is perhaps reflected in the success of Katarina Wennstam’s best-selling book Smuts [‘Dirt’]. The women who sell sex do not feel well and are subjected to force and violence. The men who pay are callous, or at least unaware of the women’s suffering, induced by sexual abuse, disdain for women and the Madonna-whore complex. These stereotypical notions of prostitution can be explained in part by Wennstam not having done any of her own research in the sex industry but instead relying on second-hand sources (police officers, social workers, lawyers and trial material) and fantasising the rest. The book has sold 300,000 copies in Sweden.

Smuts is the story of Jonas and Rebecca, who on the surface lead the perfect life. He is a lawyer, handsome and fit, she a journalist with a top position in television. They live with their son and teenage daughter in a lovely house in the suburb, but behind the façade is concealed a dark secret: Jonas is a sex addict and buys sex indiscriminately. Nonetheless, he agrees to comment on a trial involving human trafficking and pimping on TV. The turning point in the novel is a scene in which Jonas and Rebecca have anal sex for the first time. The next morning, Jonas vomits in the toilet. He has “dirtied” his wife, and the two worlds he lives in have converged. He sees his wife’s horny look, her porn expression, before him. Rebecca is confused and ashamed. That same morning, one of her colleagues finds evidence that Jonas buys sex, indeed, in the very case he is commenting on. It is the beginning of the end of his career and their marriage.

The juxtaposition of good and evil men in Smuts is obvious. In contrast to Jonas is Rebecca’s sister’s boyfriend, István. He not only is a wonderful lover but also has a brilliant mind and is cultivated. Whereas he gives his in-laws The Nutcracker as a Christmas present, Jonas makes no effort at all. István is considerate and massages the sister’s feet on Christmas Eve while Jonas is at a strip club. And then István is good father material; he plays football with Rebecca’s son without grumbling, something Jonas refuses to do. The sister also has a torrid sex life with István, but even though she may wake up in the middle of the night, overcome with lust for István’s muscular, sensuous body (he is a dancer), it is his brain that turns her on most.

It is too soon to say how readers will react to Wennstam’s latest novel, Alfahannen [‘The Alpha Male’], but media coverage has been lukewarm about the book’s language and stereotypes. Among the major newspapers, not only does Åsa Linderborg in Aftonbladet note the fine lines that sex entails, but Magda Gad in QX confronts Wennstam’s underlying sexual moral: women in healthy relationships engage in traditional intercourse while those subjected to abuse engage in more unusual acts.

Recently, the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services has taken on a new function – to serve as a battering ram in the relationship between the state and the individual. Last spring, the Centre Party’s youth league, with Hanna Wagenius leading the way, decided to work for the abolition of the act, and last autumn Fredrick Federley submitted a Parliamentary bill to abolish the law, the first of its kind. The Liberati network has the same item on its agenda, and the subject often comes up among the many free-thinking, liberal participants in the blogosphere. The main argument is that agreements between consulting adults must be respected and the state should not get involved in what people do with their bodies.

There are also parallels in popular culture to the political protests against the act. The stand-up comedian Magnus Betnér provides dogged resistance to the act and the Swedish nanny state mentality, while Svante Tidholm does not make his documentary Som en pascha [‘Like a Pasha’] about men who buy sex at a German brothel into Lilja 4-ever, a hit Swedish film depicting the victimisation of a young woman. Instead he shows that, for many men, buying sex is about intimacy, security and the opportunity to show their emotions.

I believe that this new calling into question of the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services is one of a number of expressions of an anti-authoritarian, or liberal wave, which is undulating through debate in Swedish society and cutting across political blocs. In this current, which is critical of the state, the act is simply one of many issues of principle. That is because previous arguments against the law, that those buying and selling sex can be harmed, no longer have the same dignity.

First out of the starting block in this new wave were the debates over file sharing and the enormous opposition to FRA (a Swedish law that legalised wiretapping). Then came the arguments against the current anti-drugs policy and models to reduce the harmful impact of drugs as well as arguments in favour of people’s right to use the drugs they choose, not just those approved by the state. There have been Parliamentary bills to legalise euthanasia – or entitle people to determine the end of their own life, as it is worded – and to allow surrogate maternity/ host maternity because people believe that women who want to “share the joy of having a child” should have the right to do so.

There is widespread frustration over the way Swedish debates on gender equality are carried out. Yet the radical feminist theory that prevails on issues concerning violence and sex in Sweden was already being questioned by feminists and academics as much as thirty years ago. However, the alternative theories that developed as a result of this criticism have not circulated much in Sweden. That is a shame, because they can be useful for creating a deeper understanding of why the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services has been such a key demand for Swedish feminists and others involved in gender equality.

Feminist academics, writers and activists gathered at the Barnard Conference in the US to challenge the predominant position that the radical feminist anti-porn movement had achieved. The challengers thought that the radical feminists had wrongly made use of the women’s movement bringing sexual violence to the fore. By interpreting accounts of abuse, rape and incest as a sign that women were more sexually vulnerable than ever, they recreated the premises for the old sexual order. The radical feminists focused on danger instead of pleasure, urged caution and censorship, and wanted to make women feel shame about certain kinds of sexual behaviour.

The Barnard Conference participants instead wanted to investigate how sexual danger could be reduced while at the same time women’s sexual pleasure could be increased. They also questioned in what other ways sex could be analysed. Feminism, Gayle Rubin for example argued, is perhaps not the best approach to study sexuality: automatically assuming that a theory of gender oppression is the same as a theory of sexual oppression is a failure to discern between gender and erotic desire.

Carol Vance, the anthropologist who initiated the Barnard Conference, argues that the anti-porn movement’s demand to ban pornography entails an agreement that women are forced to make with men. This agreement is based on a cultural line of argument predicated on the assumption that man’s sexuality is by nature violent and uncontrollable and that women are incapable of protecting themselves. Moreover, if a woman is “good”, that is, sexually cautious, then she enjoys male protection, whereas if she is bad, she risks men assaulting her and punishing her.

This is an attitude that women probably pick up when they are young, Vance argues, whether they want to or not. As part of this agreement, women must also limit men’s sexual impulses, because these in and of themselves constitute a danger to women. Women assume great responsibility given this line of reasoning. They are supposed to control their own sexuality, serve as guardians of men’s sexuality and ensure that public expressions of sexuality are limited.

Vance uses the example of pornography, but her thesis can be translated directly to the Swedish situation and the Act Prohibiting the Purchase of Sexual Services, and can also make demands to counter “the sexualisation of public space” easier to understand. Despite the frustration, it is thus not a question of ill-will on the part of those involved in gender equality but rather an attempt to create security for the larger female collective. Unfortunately, this security is a chimera and also seems to reinforce the cultural patterns that many people want to change.