LAUSR

All research and policymaking on the prostitution system is deliberated and decided in the shadows of fundamentally incompatible positions. We recognize these positions along broadly similar lines as Benoit, Smith, Jansson, Healey, and Magnuson (2018) (although, as we shall discuss, with crucial differences): to legitimate prostitution as a form of labor, or recognize it as a form of male violence against women and girls. Over the past decade, the latter approach has gained significant momentum. The Equality (or Nordic) Model, pioneered in Sweden in 1999, is now in place (with localized variations), in Norway and Iceland (2009), Canada (2014),1 Northern Ireland (2015), France (2016), and the Republic of Ireland (2017) (Bindel, 2017; Tyler et al., 2017). The decriminalization of selling sex, combined with provision of exiting support, criminalization of buying sex, and public education, is rooted in recognition not only that prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation are related systems of male violence against women, but that their very existence reflects and reproduces women’s inequality. Patriarchy, racism, and capitalism require a hierarchy of human value. Feminists who advocate for the abolition of prostitution do so from a position that seeks to end these hierarchies, to challenge male entitlement to profit from women’s bodies and Indigenous lands, and create a world where women and girls can live free from male violence or threat of male violence. In contrast to the Equality/Nordic Model, older systems of legalization (as found in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Australian states of Queensland and Victoria) and total decriminalization (as found in New Zealand) are based around principles of harm reduction, rather than harm abolition. This leads us to ask: How much harm is acceptable for women to live with if harm reduction is the goal? And who decides this? (Graham, 2014). The underlying ideology of sex-as-work does not allow for a challenge to male entitlement or systems of patriarchy and racism, choosing instead to monetize them. We start our response to Benoit et al. (2018) against this background. One of our concerns is their problematic conflation, and therefore obfuscation, of the Equality/Nordic Model with total criminalization (which largely emanates from archaic “decency,” public nuisance or “law and order” approaches that punish prostituted persons). These different approaches, with different philosophical underpinnings, are both categorized by Benoit et al. as “repressive.” There are deep divisions in academic and policy debates about prostitution, but to ignore or misrepresent the basis of differing positions generates more heat than light. Here, we suggest that Benoit et al. do not fully engage the ideological underpinnings of work that promotes total decriminalization and thus tend to overstate the claims of empirical support, while underestimating the possibility of transformational social change to challenge the sex industry on a more fundamental level. We also argue that the separation of gender and sex from “social inequalities” is misleading and confusing. Finally, we note key elements of research on systems of prostitution, in particular the racism inherent in prostitution and men’s entitlement to sex on demand that need to be engaged with further by those promoting total decriminalization. This Commentary refers to the article available at https ://doi. org/10.1007/s1050 8-018-1276-6.