Session Four: Prof Catharine MacKinnon and Prof Max Waltman

Some countries have long legalized or fully decriminalized all actors in prostitution, including pimps and sex buyers. Other countries continue to actively consider this approach in the name of reducing harm and granting labor rights to prostituted people. In their recent article, the first in a series, Catharine A. MacKinnon and Max Waltman demonstrate that this approach is deeply misguided. Under these regimes, the harms intrinsic to prostitution metastasize to constitute crimes against humanity under international law.

In a telling contrast, countries that adopt the Nordic/Equality Model, which decriminalizes the bought and sold and penalizes their exploiters—notably the sex buyers, whose demand drives the industry—and offers exit support to those in prostitution if they so choose, shows dramatically decreased harms in countries that have adopted it.

The authors aim to deter officials from effectuating the damaging legal prostitution policies, or hold them accountable for the widespread and systematic atrocities they cause, by showing the applicability of stringent international criminal standards to domestic prostitution policy.

Watch the recording to hear Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon (Michigan, Harvard) and Assistant Professor Max Waltman (Halmstad, Sweden) in discussion with Purna Sen.