Università degli studi di Milano Università degli studi di Torino Dip. di Scienze Sociali e Politiche Dip. di Culture, politica e società PhD PROGRAM SOCIOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY OF SOCIAL RESEARCH – 30th cohort Consumerism, Moralism and the Law Governmentalities and spatial displacements of men who pay for sex in Sweden and the Netherlands Doctoral dissertation by Merel Arianne van Mansom Supervisor: Prof. Luisa Maria Leonini Co-Supervisors: Prof. Jens Rydström Giulia Garofalo Geymonat Director of Doctoral Program: Prof. Mauro Barisione Consumerism, Moralism and the Law Governmentalities and spatial displacements of men who pay for sex in Sweden and the Netherlands Merel Arianne van Mansom PhD Program Sociology and Methodology of Social Research – 30th Cohort Università degli studi di Milano - Dip. Di Scienze Sociali e Politiche Università degli studi di Torino - Dip. Di Culture, politica e societa Table of contents Acknowledgements The time given 3 Preface The right time 5 Abbreviations, acronyms and sex work jargon 7 Part 1 Chapter 1. Sex Work Research Introduction 9 1.1 Assumptions and binary positions 9 1.2 Limitations and inaccuracies 15 1.3 International prostitution policy models 25 1.4 Practicing sex work research 33 Chapter 2. Sex, Power and Norms Introduction 36 2.1 Governmentality 36 2.2 Heteronormativity 43 2.3 Sexual Scripts 47 Chapter 3. The Politics of Prostitution Introduction 51 3.1 The Netherlands: Pragmatism and regulated tolerance (1960s – 1990s) 51 3.2 The Netherlands: Licensing, enforcement and monitoring (2000s – 2010s) 58 3.3 Sweden: The welfare state and gender equality (1960s – 1990s) 65 3.4 Sweden: The social – the individual – the world (2000s – 2010s) 72 Chapter 4. Methodological implications and considerations Introduction 81 4.1 A feminist methodological approach 81 4.2 Approaching the Swedish and Dutch research fields 86 4.3 The research participants 94 4.4 Reflexive accounts on the approaches made 102 Part 2 Chapter 5. Displacements, expansion and diversification of the sex industry Introduction 108 5.1 First time experiences 108 5.2 The role of the Internet 119 5.3 The globalization of the sex market 134 5.4 Concluding Remarks: Breaking barriers breaking borders 152 Chapter 6. Unlocking desires and conventional relationships Introduction 154 6.1 Becoming a regular and other trajectories 154 6.2 Emotional labour and the Girlfriend Experience 2.0 166 6.3 Commoditzation versus commodification 177 6.4 Concluding remarks: Unbridled ethics of sexual consumption 186 Chapter 7. Pathologization, stigmatization and criminalization Introduction 187 7.1 Taboos and stigma 187 7.2 Getting caught 200 7.3 Rehabilitation of the client 215 7.4 Concluding remarks: Create, maintain and control 224 Part 3 Chapter 8. Clients’ reflections on policy developments Introduction 225 8.1 Regulated market 225 8.2 Partially criminalized market 231 Chapter 9. Conclusion and Summaries 9.1 Conclusion 235 9.2 English Summary 247 9.3 Dutch Summary 252 9.4 Swedish Summary 257 9.5 Italian Summary 262 Appendixes 267 Endnotes 274 Bibliography 280 Acknowledgements The time given There are not enough words to describe the many processes I have been through during the becoming of this doctoral dissertation and the emotional and intellectual developments I have made. First and foremost I have my male interviewees to thank for this. Before we met I was told I was ‘brave’ for meeting ‘these specific men’, I was told I was in need for ‘protection’. Yet it is was not my personal safety that needed to be protected, in many if not all cases, I needed to protect you all from possible harm. I therefore want to thank you for your trust, mutual respect and confidence you have shown. It was for many of you not easy to contact me in the first place, I respect you for your courage and the time it took for some of you to take the first steps approaching me. It was also not easy to talk about a taboo topic like paying for sexual services, especially when you never had the opportunity to talk about it and you were now almost ‘forced’ by me to reflect upon years of knowledge about visiting sex workers. The ability to share your deepest feelings, desires, as well as your emotions when talking explicitly about your sexual acts were not easy tasks. Yet I thank all of you for succeeding to be able to use those – often very explicit – words in front of me. This not only contributed to the country- specific insights that will be shared in this doctoral thesis, but you gave me the confidence needed to write this dissertation. Writing is a lonely process; thank you men who kept in contact, whether to share newspaper articles or specific music streams. Thank you Sam for keeping me up to date and all your creative reflections. In these first words of this doctoral dissertation I would like to thank the Network for the Advancement of Social and Political Studies (NASP) and the University of Milano, specifically the department of Political and Social Sciences, which granted me the scholarship to be able to carry out this research in the first place. Three supervisors, whom I appreciate extensively, have supervised this specific study. I am grateful for all your distinctive contributions. Thank you Professor Luisa Leonini for keeping me on track and for trying to get the best out of these three years that enabled me to grow personally and academically. Thank you for your trust and confidence in my abilities. Thank you Jens Rydström for sharing with me all your historical knowledge to make me feel at home in Sweden, and make me understand the context that I was indulging myself in. I will never forget your deep concerns for my health in Sweden when I was hospitalized. You are a star. Dearest Giulia Garofalo Geymonat, besides opening an academic door for me, you paved a path, allowed me to walk on it and many times I felt as if I was holding your hand 3 gracefully while merging academia and activism. Thank you for letting me be part of the family. Marie-Louisse Janssen, if it was not for you forwarding me a call for applicants for this doctoral scholarship I would not be able to thank you on this page in the first place. You are my mother in the Social Sciences. Thank you for your mental support, your time, the giggles and wine, which I hope we will continue to share in the future. I am forever in debt to all the social scientists in sex work research who have crossed my path these last three years, from being star-struck at the COST Prostitution and Policy conferences in Europe to our discussions in the USA. This work builds on all previously generated knowledge that you have built, re-shaped and are extremely critical about. I hope that I am not only doing right to all the knowledge you have generated but generate new additional insights for the course of sex work research. Dear SOMET family of the 30th cycle, Nermin Aga, Colette Santah, Arianna Maria Piacentini Bambini, Marco Bacio, Asya Pisarevskaya and Eugenia Mercuri; we have all gone our separate academic ways, divided throughout the world, but I am grateful to have met you and I hope whatever the future holds we will stay in contact. Laura Zambelli and Francesco Piraino you are stars and I cannot wait to see you soon. Maria Tonini, I will open that bottle of wine soon, promised. Anna and Alma, my two best friends, thank you for your patience and unconditional love and stability. To all I have loved or love, I am sure you contributed to my being, my becoming and coming to terms with this dissertation. My aunt Olga and my grandmother Mien, thank you for all your hospitality, faith and support. Mum, there are not enough words to describe the admiration I have for all your time in which you have shown support and empathy or just gave me a listening ear, somebody to talk to in all highs and lows. I grew but you grew with me. Jort, you asked if this dissertation changed the way I think about men. Being a social scientist will always have an influence on my worldly perspectives. Not necessarily in a negative way. Thank you for being you and letting me be me. Zwolle, 23rd of March 2018 4 Preface The right time In the acknowledgements I have thanked those who gave their time to me, by means of an interview, their guidance, or their unconditional support. In this preface I want to address the time in which this thesis has been written, both within academia and in the social and political field of sex work. When I arrived for my fieldwork in Sweden in the summer of 2015, Amnesty International had just published their report on the protection of sex workers’ human rights.1 Amnesty made recommendations to decriminalize consensual sex work and made suggestions to reduce or remove all other punitive laws and activities that violated the human rights of sex workers. These recommendations were addressed to all world nations. The Swedish section of Amnesty International was one of few member states that voted against these recommendations, with the effect that many of their members revoked their membership, since: ‘buying sex cannot be a human right’.2 Despite the recommendations of Amnesty International and protests of sex workers right organizations France partially criminalized the purchase of sex in 2016. Their prostitution policy model shows similarities with the Swedish sex purchase ban (sexköpslagen) where the payment for sexual services was made illegal in 1999.