Four hundred thousand swedish perverts

GLQ

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 205-235

  Kulick, Don ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33747065544     PISSN: 10642684     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10642684-11-2-205     Document Type: Review

References (96)

1. Sven-Axel Månsson, "Den Köpta Sexualiteten," in Sex i Sverige: Om Sexuallivet i Sverige, 1996, ed. Bo Lewin (Stockholm: Folkhälsoinstitutet, 1998), 253.
2. All translations from the Swedish in this essay are my own.
3. Ibid., 238. In a subsequent newspaper report the figure was inflated to 450,000 men ("Att Köpa Sex Är Att Ropa på Hjälp," Dagens Nyheter, October 28, 2003).
4. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, vol. 1 (London: Pelican, 1981), 43.
5. The mass media panic and the subsequent debate focused exclusively on gay saunas; indeed, the name by which the law is commonly referred, Bastuklubbslagen, means "gay sauna club law." It is unclear whether any similar venues existed for heterosexuals at the time that the law was passed. In principle, though, they would have fallen under the law, which prohibited the establishment of venues that "facilitated sexual activity with another visitor" (from law no. 1987:35, cited in Finn Hellman, "Bastuklubbslagen: En Studie av Dess Tillämpning och Konsekvenser" [C-uppsats vid i Kriminologiska institutionen, Stockholm University, 2001], 5). Since the law was passed, a number of heterosexual "swingers' clubs" have been established in Stockholm and Göteborg, Sweden's second largest city ("Hjärterum," Dagens Nyheter, October 3, 2003).
6. Of the four establishments prosecuted during the law's existence, one was a swingers' club where undercover police reported witnessing two women having oral sex on what they described as a stage. The club's owners were sentenced to two months in prison, but the sentence was overturned on appeal. Among the other prosecutions, one resulted in a one year's suspended sentence and fines of 5,600-9,000 kronor (US$750-$l,200), and another in a sentence of one and a half years (in this case, however, contravention of the sauna law was only one of six charges for which the club's owner was prosecuted; see Hellman, "Bastuklubbslagen"). The law was repealed in 2004, when a new package of laws concerning infectious diseases took effect; several of these laws introduced more severe penalties for people who were HIV positive but did not inform their partners (see n. 6). The law prohibiting gay saunas was repealed because it was never proven to help contain the spread of HIV; indeed, evidence presented by gay activists indicated that it may have had the opposite effect, by eliminating a venue where information about AIDS could reach men who did not self-identify as homosexual and hence did not participate in gay information networks. Although the repeal of the law went into effect on July 1, 2004, as of late October 2004 no gay saunas had opened in Sweden.
7. See Jens Rydström, "Tvåsamhetens Brunn: Registerat Partnerskap i Norden," in Queer Sverige, ed. Don Kulick (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, in press);
8. Hellman, "Bastuklubbslagen"; and Benny Henriksson, Fiendebilder: Vinklingar av Homosexualitet i Massmedierna (Stockholm: Institutet för Sociala Studier, 1990).
9. In practice, this law is enforced as follows: Together with patients who test positive, doctors agree on a schedule of regular visits for checkups. The frequency varies, but the most common pattern is once every three to four months. During these visits, questions about sexual activity are asked. If the doctor is not satisfied with the answers, if the patient shows up with a sexually transmitted disease such as gonorrhea, or if the patient repeatedly misses his or her appointment, the patient can be reported to the government's Infectious Diseases Authority (Smittskyddsenheten). In all of the above cases, the doctor is legally obliged to report the patient. In practice, this reporting varies: some clinics immediately report all infractions; more lenient ones deal with patient "lapses" by contacting the patient's sexual partners and by counseling the patient (this happens, for example, with first-time or infrequent lapses when the patient is remorseful and cooperative, helping the doctor track down his or her sexual partners). Once the patient has been reported to the Infectious Diseases Authority, he or she is liable to be condemned to incarceration (tvångsisolering, literally "forced isolation") until doctors decide that the patient understands that he or she must abide by the legal regulations pertaining to persons with HIV. About eighty people have been incarcerated during the past twenty years, the overwhelming majority of them drug users or African immigrants or refugees who, I heard from several people I interviewed on the topic, "don't understand Swedish culture" and have refused to abide by the Swedish regulations. The longest any person has been incarcerated is more than ten years (that person is still there). One woman died during incarceration after having been interned for seven years.
10. Anna-Maria Sörberg, "Hela Skulden?" Kom Ut 8, no. 3 (2003): 9-11.
11. This case later went to the Swedish Supreme Court, where the sentence was reduced to one year and the fine to 152,000 kronor (US$23,000) ("HD Sänker Straff för Hivman," Dagens Nyheter, April 6, 2004). The case is a landmark, because for the first time a court took into consideration the fact that none of the man's sexual partners had become infected with HIV. They also considered the fact that under the current law people with HIV were under significant risk of blackmail by sexual partners who could claim that they had not been aware of their partner's HIV status. The Swedish Federation for HIV-Positive Persons (RFHP) is documenting the content and outcome of legal cases in which HIV-positive persons are charged with breaking the infectious diseases law. See also their report, "Hivman": Brott och Straff, www.rfhp.a.se/folkhalso.htm#hivman.
12. Socialstyrelsen, Kännedom om Prostitution, 1998-1999, report 5 (Stockholm: Social-styrelsen, 2000), 56-57.
13. Don Kulick, "Sex in the New Europe: The Criminalization of Clients and Swedish Fear of Penetration," Anthropological Theory 3 (2003): 199-218;
14. Petra Östergren, "Synden Ideologiserad: Modern Svensk Prostitutionspolicy Som Identitets - och Trygghetsskapare" (MA thesis, Stockholm University, 2003), www.petraostergren.com/svenska/magisteruppsats.pdf.
15. See Margareta Winberg and Louise Eek, "Männen, Makten och Människoföraktet," Expressen, May 15, 2002.
16. Statens Offentliga Utredningar, 1936:59; Betänkande i Sexualfrågan Avgivet av Befolkningskommissionen (Stockholm: Isaac Marcus Boktryckeri, 1936);
17. Lena Lennerhed, Frihet att Njuta: Sexualdebatten i Sverige på 1960-talet (Stockholm: Nordstedts, 1994), 34-36.
18. Lennerhed, Frihet att Njuta, 89.
19. The law authorizes abortion up to the eighteenth week (ibid., 145).
20. Kristina Alhmark-Michanek, Jungfrutro och Dubbelmoral (Malmö: Cavefors, 1962). Alhmark-Michanek's title (Belief in Virgins and the Double Standard) refers to the fact that sex education in Swedish schools was conservative, not progressive, and promoted the idea that sexuality reached its fullest and most mature incarnation only when it was an expression of love. Alhmark-Michanek argued that temporary sexual relations "for friendship's sake" (för vänskaps skull) were valuable and desirable, so long as they were grounded in mutual respect. For a discussion of this book and its significance for the Swedish sexual revolution see Lennerhed, Frihet att Njuta, 99-111.
21. Lennerhed, Frihet att Njuta, 146-52.
22. Ibid., 234-37, 248-51;
23. Jeanette Gentele, "Sexliberalerna Röjer Väg för Pornografi och Prostitution," in Ett Onödigt Ont: En Antologi mot Porr och Prostitution, ed. Gunilla Fredelius (Stockholm: Ordfront, 1978), 56-72.
24. Works that discuss this period in Swedish history and its aftermath include Annika Baude, ed., Visioner om Jämställdhet (Stockholm: SNS Förlag, 1992);
25. Elisabeth Elgán, ed., Kvinnorörelsen och '68: Aspekter och Vittnesbörd (Stockholm: Samtidshistoriska institututet, 2001);
26. Yvonne Hirdman, Med Kluven Tunga: LO och Genusordningen (Stockholm: Atlas, 2001);
27. Lena Lennerhed, ed., Riv alla murar! Vittnesseminarier om Sexliberalismen och om Pockettidningen R (Stockholm: Samtidshistoriska institutet, 2002);
28. Gunilla Thorngren, Grupp 8 och Jag (Stockholm: Pan, 2003);
29. and Petra Ulmanen, (S)veket mot Kvinnorna och Hur Högren Stal Feminismen (Stockholm: Atlas, 1998).
30. For a history of this development in English see Agneta Stark, "Combating the Backlash: How Swedish Women Won the War," in Who's Afraid of Feminism? Seeing through the Backlash, ed. Ann Oakley and Juliet Mitchell (New York: New, 1997), 224-44.
31. See also Susanna Popova, Elitfeministerna: Ett Spel för Gallerierna (Stockholm: Bonnier Fakta, 2004), 99-110;
32. and Ulmanen, (S)veket mot Kvinnorna.
33. Annika Rabo, "Free to Make the Right Choice? Gender Equality Policy in Post-Welfare Sweden," in Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power, ed. Cris Shore and Susan Wright (London: Routledge, 1997), 107, 115.
34. The books on clients that are discussed in this essay, such as Sven-Axel Månsson and Annulla Linders, Sexualitet Utan Ansikte: Könsköparna (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1984), and Göran Sandell et al., Könsköparna: Varför Går Män Egentligen till Prostituerade? (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1996), are typical, drawing on Chodorow, Fromm, and Marcuse to argue that women and men have fundamentally different stances in the world. An increasing number of analyses from diverse disciplines draw critical attention to this dimension of jämstä lldhet. See Fanny Ambjörnsson, I en Klass för Sig: Genus, Klass och Sexualitet Bland Gymnasietjejer (Stockholm: Ordfront, 2004);
35. Ulrika Dahl, "Progressive Women, Traditional Men: The Politics of 'Knowledge' and Gendered Stories of 'Development' in the Northern Periphery of the EU" (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2004);
36. Popova, Elitfeministerna; Bo Rothstein, "Feminister tror inte på jämställdheten," Dagens Nyheter, July 18, 1997;
37. and Håkan Larsson, Iscensättningen av Kön i Idrott: En Nutidshistoria om Idrottsmannen och Idrottskvinnan (Stockholm: HLS Förlag, 2001).
38. Jörgen Eriksson, Svenska Botten: En Debattbok om De Asociala Minoriteterna (Stockholm: Prisma 1965);
39. Lars Ullerstam, De Erotiska Minoriteterna (Göteborg: Zinderman, 1964);
40. Per Ahlmark, Thomas Hammarberg, and Ernst Klein, Många Liberaler (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1966).
41. Ullerstam, De Erotiska Minoriteterna, 122.
42. See, e.g., Ingegärd Waaranperä, "Porr och Prostitution Splittrar Kvinnor och Män," in Fredelius, Ett Onödigt Ont, 120-25.
43. Jan Myrdal, "Tal Hållet vid Opinionsmöte 25/11 1978," in Ta Strid för Kärleken -Kamp mot Porr och Prostitution: En Antologi Utgiven av Aktionen Kamp mot Porr och Prostitution, ed. Jeanette Gentele (Stockholm: Ordfront, 1978);
44. Margareta Garpe and Suzanne Osten, "Förbjud Prostitutionen-Kriminalisera Kunden," in Fredelius, Ett Onödigt Ont, 123-27.
45. See Britt-Inger Lind and Torsten Fredriksson, Karlek för Pengar? En Bok om Prostitutionsprojektet i Malmö, 1976-80 (Stockholm: Ordfront, 1980), 154-68.
46. This report was written by members of a government-appointed committee on prostitution who left the committee prior to the report's publication because of a disagreement with the committee's chair, a member of the conservative party (moderat). Subsequently, these nine committee members published their own text as a kind of antireport (Arne Borg et al., Prostitution: Beskrivning, Analys, Förslag till Åtgärder [Stockholm: Liber, 1981]).
47. According to one member of the committee whose name appears in neither the report nor the antireport, the conflict between the chair and the committee members centered on differences in how prostitution was viewed: "In the contacts that the committee had with prostitutes, who were all of the professional type who emphatically defended what they did, the chair was the one who was most willing to listen to the arguments presented by the prostitutes. When we discussed these contacts in the committee, it emerged clearly that [the chair] saw them as individuals who had made a free choice to prostitute themselves. . . . That she herself personally did not agree with what they did was of lesser importance. . . . Among the other committee members, the views expressed by the prostitutes met with little comprehension" (Leif G. W. Persson, Horor, Hallickar och Torskar: En Bok om Prostitutionen i Sverige [Stockholm: PA Norstedt och Söners Förlag, 1981], 216).
48. The language with which sex workers' nuanced understandings of clients are dismissed is frequently patronizing. In a 1995 government-sponsored report on prostitution, for example, it is asserted that "prostituted women's descriptions of the men . . . are blurred and diffuse. The men are described as unconfident and as confident, as pathetic and as manly, as dominant and as passive. They are described as for the most part normal and pleasant, although there are clients who sometimes subject the women to violent abuse or rape" (Betänkandet av 1993-års Prostitutionsutredning, SOU:I5 [Stockholm: Socialstyrelsen, 1995], 112).
49. Borg et al., Prostitution, 320.
50. Ibid., 282.
51. Ibid., 337.
52. Månsson and Linders, Sexualitet Utan Ansikte.
53. The professor of social work is Sven-Axel Månsson, who wrote, in the study with which I began this essay, that one in eight Swedish men had purchased sex. Månsson also coauthored the pamphlet Brothel Europe, which appeared during the Swedish referendum on EU membership in 1992. The pamphlet argued that a strong reason for Sweden not to join the European Union was that most European countries "actively encouraged" organized trafficking in sex (Sven-Axel Månsson and Maria Backman, Bordell Europa: Nej Till EGs Skriftserie 3 [Göteborg: Nej Till EG, 1992], 15). I discuss this pamphlet in detail in Kulick, Sex in the New Europe. Månsson, who has written about prostitution since the 1970s, continues to be one of the Swedish government's most relied-on experts on the topic.
54. Erik Centerwall, Gunnar Smoliansky, and Ingrid Strömdahl, Mansbilder: Om en Splittrad Verklighet (Stockholm: Liber, 1978), 3, quoted in Månsson and Linders, Sexualitet Utan Ansikte, 27; italics Månsson and Linders's.
55. Ibid., 66-68, 91.
56. Sandell et al., Könsköparna, 89. All the authors worked in a government-funded unit called Prostitutionsgruppen i Göteborg, one of three such units in Sweden that offer support services to sex workers and whose goal is to eradicate prostitution. See www.prostitutionsradgivning.com/emotion/ vadarprost.asp.
57. This view, in some sense, is the opposite of the view of clients that had dominated Swedish social discourse a century earlier. Yvonne Svanström notes that during the 1800s ideas of respectability restricted men's access to marriageable women of their own class. However, men were assumed to need heterosexual outlets; hence prostitution was believed to serve an important social function. Whereas now the idea increasingly is that it is sick men who seek out prostitutes, in nineteenth-century Sweden the idea was that healthy men could become sick if they did not go to prostitutes ("En Självklar Efterfrågan? Om Torskar och Sexköpare Under Hundra År," in Än Män Då? Kön och Feminism i Sverige under 150 år, ed. Yvonne Svanström and Kjell Östberg [Stockholm: Atlas, 2004], 213-39).
58. Sandell et al., Könsköparna, 266, 267.
59. See "Därför Köper Män Sex," Expressen, Exxet Söndagstidning, August 11, 1996; "Därför Köper Jag Sex," Arbetaren, no. 21 (1998): 6-11;
60. "Kränkta Pojkar Söker Tröst i Sex," Dagens Nyheler, October 5, 1998;
61. "Sexmissbrukande Män Får Hjälp," Dagens Nyheter, October 3, 2003;
62. and "Att Köpa Sex Kan Vara Rop på Hjälp," Dagens Nyheter, October 28, 2003.
63. "Att Köpa Sex Kan Vara Rop på Hjälp," Dagens Nyheter, October 2003.
64. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 43.
65. See Janice M. Irvine, "Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sex Addiction," Social Text, no. 37 (1993): 203-26.
66. See the article "Men, Power, and Contempt," published in Sweden's largest newspaper, Expressen, and coauthored by the minister for gender equality at that time, Margareta Winberg, and antiprostitution activist Louise Eek. "In a society with prostitution," they state, "all women suffer from the view that women can be bought. Between the man who buys and the woman who is bought [not 'the woman who sells'; note the passive form] there is a relation of subordination and domination that cannot be ignored. Every 'purchase' reproduces this power structure and in that way legitimates the general patriarchal structures in society" ("Männen, Makten och Människoföraktet").
67. Eva Basch-Kåhre, "Sex Utan Kärlek Ser Jag Som en Allvarlig Psykisk Skada," Ottar, no. 1 (1992): 32, 33, quoted in Sandell et al., Könsköparna, 164.
68. Preben Hertoft, Klinisk Sexologi (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1977), quoted in Sandell et al., Könsköparna, 164.
69. For public statements by the minister for gender equality see Winberg and Eek, "Männen, Makten och Människoföraktet." For letters to the editor see Dagens Nyheter, July 23, 25, and 29 and August 3, 5, and 7, 2003.
70. A small storm erupted in that paper after a male reader asserted that the law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services had adverse consequences for elderly, handicapped, or unattractive men because it limited their access to sexual relief, thereby increasing - the man writes that he heard this on the radio - the risk for prostate cancer. In the ensuing letters, other readers thoroughly ridiculed this view (with one exception; see Dagens Nyheter, August 3, 2003), chastised the man, and told him to seek psychological help. A cartoon that clearly referenced the original letter was published on August 8, 2003. It depicted a fat, drooling, bespeckled, dirty man who had urinated all over himself proclaiming, "I hold that it is my right to continue buying sex!" For a typical example of a discussion with teenagers see Veronica Hedlund, "Tänk Själv!" in Vad Har Mitt Liv med Lilja An Göra? ed. Ola Florin et al. (Stockholm: Svenska Filminstitutet, 2004), a government-subsidized book devoted to Lilja 4-ever (2002), Lucas Moodysson's unrelentingly bleak feature film about a young Russian girl abandoned by her mother, compelled to prostitution, and trafficked to Sweden. The film ends with Lilja committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. Lilja 4-ever received huge publicity in Sweden and is widely promoted by Swedish officials. Government representatives regularly screen it at international conferences on prostitution, and the Swedish Film Institute received 1.5 million kronor (US$200,000) from the government to encourage high school students and members of the military to see the film at reduced prices. Hedlund, a journalist, interviewed eleven seventeen-year-old boys who had just watched the film, and told them: "One reason that I think prostitution is something that we should do everything to prevent is that it promotes a kind of motor sexuality [motorsexualitet - an odd neologism that is equally strange in Swedish] that really isn't a sexuality but that is a kind of lack of genuine sexuality [riktig sexualitet]. As long as there are opportunities to buy sex, there isn't a need to develop a mature sexuality" (107). Vad Har Mitt Liv med Lilja Att Göra? also contains several chapters on prostitutes' clients that portrays them as fundamentally disturbed.
71. "Ulvskog Vill Ha Kabeltv Helt Utan Porr," Dagens Nyheter, February 8, 2002; Kulturminister Marita Ulvskog, Sveriges Riksdag Snabbprotokoll 1999/2000:72, February 24, 2000, Anförande 2.
72. Tanya Tydén, "Kvinnliga Studenter och Sex" (Institutionen för Folkhälso och Vårdnadsvetenskap, Uppsala University, 1998);
73. Ekot, October 28, 1998; Barbro Johansson (member of Parliament), Riksdagens Snabbprotokoll 1998/99:76, March 26, 1999, Anförande 36.
74. Eva Hagström, "Förbjud Samlag på Löpande Band," Dagens Nyheter, September 9, 1997.
75. See Carin Holmberg, Det Kallas Kärlek: En Socialpsykologisk Studie om Kvinnors Underordning och Mäns Överordning Bland Unga Jämställda Par (Stockholm: Alfabeta, 1993).
76. The vote was 56.1 percent against, 41.8 percent for.
77. "Liberal Syn på Prostitution Breder Ut Sig," Dagens Nyheter, May 28, 1994; Månsson and Backman, Bordell Europa, 15. These texts are discussed in detail in Kulick, Sex in the New Europe.
78. The vote was 52.2 percent yes, 46.9 percent no.
79. See "Bakslag for Kampen mot Prostitution," Dagens Nyheter, March 17, 2004;
80. "Genombrott i Porrkamp," Dagens Nyheter, April 8, 2004;
81. "Svensk Sexrapport Ströks från Dagordningen," Dagens Nyheter, April 21, 2004;
82. "Sahlin Besviken över Sexbeslut i EU," Dagens Nyheter, April 22, 2004;
83. and "Mot Sexhandel och Påvemakt," Dagens Nyheter, June 5, 2004.
84. "Sexslavhandel Viktigaste EU-frågan," Dagens Nyheter, June 11, 2004.
85. "Det Är För Mycket Sex i Europa," Dagens Nyheter, April 3, 2004. The EU parliamentarian who said this was Olle Schmidt, from the Swedish Liberal Party.
86. The majority of the young men to whom this label is applied are not themselves immigrants but are the children of immigrants. Most of them have been born and raised in Sweden. See Anna Bredström, "Maskulinitet och Kamp om Nationella Arenor: Reflektioner Kring Bilden av 'Invandrarkillar' i Svensk Media," in Maktens (O)lika Förklädnader: Kön, Klass och Etnicitet i det Postkoloniala Sverige, ed. Paulina de los Reyes, Irene Molina, and Diana Mulinari (Stockholm: Atlas, 2002), 182-26.
87. Jan Guillou, "Medierna Förfalskar Verkligheten," Journalislen, February 3, 2004, www.journalisten.nu/kronika.asp? Article_Id=6451.
88. Bredström, "Maskulinitet och Kamp," 197.
89. Mona Sahlin, comments transcribed by author from Web recording of "Hearing om Sexualiseringen av det Offentliga Rummet," May 12, 2004, www.regeringen.se/sb/d/3709/a/23191. The full quote is as follows: "What is the public domain? You [the previous speaker] made it sound as though everything one does in one's own home by definition isn't part of the public domain. That's not at all my view. Internet, TV, computer games, music videos - whether you watch these at home or somewhere that we call the public domain, that is part of the debate we are having here. That's how I, at any rate, define the public domain" (Vad är det offentliga rummet? På dig lät det som att allt det man gör hemma per definition inte skulle vara en del av det offentliga rummet. Så har jag alls inte tänkt. Internet, TV, dataspel, musikvideos, oavsett om du tittar på de hemma eller någonstans som vi kallar för ett offentligt rum, så är ju detta en del av den debatten som vi har nu. Så definierar jag i alla fall det offentliga rummet).
90. Winberg and Eek, "Männen, Makten och Människofö raktet."
91. Quoted in Dagens Nyheter, May 8, 2001, in a discussion of honor killings. Cited in Bredström, "Maskulinitet och Kamp," 182.
92. See the discussion of these campaigns in Svanström, "En Självklar Efterfrågan?" 216-17;
93. and Maud Eduards, Förbjuden Handling: Om Kvinnors Organisering och Feministisk Teori (Stockholm: Liber, 2002), 108-11.
94. This speech can be accessed at www.helgo.net/enar/politik/talibantalet. html.
95. Rabo, "Free to Make the Right Choice?" 115.
96. I do not focus on Swedish attitudes to sex workers in this essay, but I do in other work, e.g., Kulick, "Sex in the New Europe"; and Kulick, "La penalización de los clientes y 'la política del ahhjjj' en Suecia," in Trabajadoras del Sexo: Derechos, migraciones y tráfico en el siglo XXI, ed. Raquel Osborne (Madrid: Bellaterra, 2004), 223-36.