The NFB documentary, ‘Buying Sex’ examines different perspectives on the perception and legality of sex work by comparing and contrasting two distinct legal models: the New Zealand model, where sex work is legal, and the Swedish model, where sex work is illegal to buy but legal to sell.  These two perspectives are also echoed in two opposing feminist viewpoints. Within the context of a Canadian framework, this documentary juxtaposes these feminist views against the two legal models.

While New Zealand has legalized sex work with an objective to create a safe working envirnoment for sex workers, the Swedes argue that the male appetite for sex, which compells a man to purchase sex,  is a result of social and cultural conditioning in a patriarchial society where women are exploited and percieved as sex objects, and men are validated by their sexual appetite (machoism). Swedes believe that a society can remove a man’s desire to buy sex by socially conditioning men not to identify their masculinity with sexuality.  This perspective is reinforced throughout other areas of Swedish law, such as ‘equal work for equal pay,’ and mandatory leave from the workplace for fathers of new borns. Street interviews with ‘random’ men apparently demonstrates that Swedish men  are not as interested in buying sex as men in patriarchial societies are (such as Canada, US, and New Zealand).

What do you think? Can a man’s sex drive be socially, culturally and politically controlled, or is it biologically inevitable? Will a male be less inclined to hire a sex worker if he percieves that sex work objectifies the woman? What if the woman chooses sex work and does not feel exploited? Does the Swedish model stigmatize both sex workers and the male sex drive, creating a black market for sex workers that endangers their lives, or is this a model that promotes respect and gender equality?

I felt this was a thought provoking documentary that fairly presented both perspectives.  (To view the film see http://www.nfb.ca/film/buying_sex Available as VOD for $2.95)