Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards to city hotels warning summit guests not to patronize Danish sex workers during the upcoming conference. Now, the prostitutes have struck back, offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the warnings.
What does it say about me as a crusty cynic that my first thought on reading this story is to picture summit guests paying off Mayor Bjerregaard and saying, “Thank you for getting us the free sex”?
No, I’m not saying I think it’s a likely hypothesis – just that it’s the first thing I thought of.
My second thought, of course, was that there’d be a boom in counterfeit warnings.
Loss leader perhaps?
I think it’s a sign you’ve been following government politics too closely.
The point of the Danish protest was to push back against the state’s official treatment of its country’s sex industry as a shame deserving of an international apology. States which officially stigmatise minorities are likely to follow with persecutions and pogroms if left unchallenged. This was a conscious and organised action to defend sex workers’ social citizenship by people willing to literally put their own bodies on the line for the sake of their freedom and dignity.
Libertarians should have been the first to stand in our defence, Austro-Athenians most especially.
If it was Germany maybe, but this is Denmark we’re talking about – when has there ever been a pogrom in Denmark against any minority group?
Thanks for the solidarity. I’ll remember it.
Anon73,
I’m not sure what you mean by a “pogrom,” but the decriminalization of prostitution in Denmark is only about 10 years old now — prior to 1999 women in sex work faced the violence of the state, and the partial decriminalization that was put through in 1999 still hurts sex workers by legally constraining their options for work (e.g. by prohibiting brothels). Sex workers in Denmark are, in the very best of circumstances, precariously grey-market workers who have faced centuries-old organized government repression right up into the past decade, who face unjust legal restrictions right now, and who have every reason to worry about facing a return to full-on government prohibition in the future if patriarchal politicians are allowed to have their way with the terms of the debate, I’d say there’s every reason to worry about persecutions, prisons, and pogroms. It’s not exactly unusual for governments — the Danish government included — to go around ruining peaceful sex workers’ lives or to abduct them off the street and lock them in cages against their will.
Hence, solidarity.
I inferred it from what Aster said when she mentioned “minorities” (during WWII Denmark was one of the less hostile places for Jews in Europe). Thanks for bringing the fact that the legality of sex work in Denmark is only 10 years old, that gives a much clearer context for the event.
Anon73:
Well, Aster mentioned the word “pogrom” before you did, so it’s natural you would repeat it. But I asked because I am unsure about what would count as a “pogrom” in your light.
E.g. would a pogrom against women in prostitution have to involve large-scale murders and massacres (which certainly has happened, many times, but is rarer than other forms of mass violence against women in prostitution)? Or would it be enough if large numbers of women in prostitution were being forcibly rounded up, restrained, beaten or tortured, forced out of their homes and livelihoods, and locked away in prison camps for months or years at a time? If the latter sort of dispossession and terrorization counts, then that’s been the official policy and program of countless patriarchal states throughout the world — among them the state of Denmark until the 1999 partial decriminalization.
Aster,
My cynicism was directed against the government, not against the sex workers!
Oh, I didn’t mean to criticise you, and apologies if it came out that way. I came to my own position on cultural issues by way of your writing along with that of Ellen Willis.
I do criticise a contemporary libertarianism which often treats sex workers as marginally human punchlines whose dignity and rights deserve fifth priority treatment if not sublegal social ostracism.
Agreed.
Also demeaning to sex workers is the common tendency to use prostitution-metaphors when describing politicians’ activities. (Of course, when people use the metaphor they often add, “but that comparison is insulting to prostitutes” — but they generally mean that as an additional, humorous insult to the politicians and not as an acknowledgment that it really is insulting to sex workers).
(Though admittedly I retain a certain fondness for Jefferson’s charge that George III had “prostituted his negative,” if only because the average American reader will have no idea what it means.)
Y’know, a person who doesn’t know your blog so well may come across that post title and think you’re advertising.
Since my picture’s on the page, I think I’m pretty safe.
I’m not so sure. You may remember Lew Rockwell’s recent posting of fan mail, which was a “fuck you” to most LRC contributors, but claimed that it would be an honor to obtain carnal knowledge of some, including a certain Roderick Long.
As for the sex workers, good for them. In a better world professional (and amateur) erotic performers and practicioners would be held in very high esteem. It will be a great day when we stop seeing sex (and commerce) as dirty and shameful.
Charles, Roderick, and Dennis-
Thank you greatly.
I would certainly love to see a world in which sex workers were treated with the same legal and social respect as persons of any profession, and judged as individuals. It can happen. Wellington’s social climate is within sight of this ideal.
I merely wish that libertarianism could have been on the avant garde of this progress, as it should have been on the avant garde of the civil rights and feminist revolutions.
as it should have been on the avant garde of the civil rights and feminist revolutions
Well, we were!
But … um … in the 19th century.
However, in the 20th century we were GREAT on the tax cut issue!
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