When I was a young teenager, the first letter in Scandinavia stood for ‘sex’. Birth control pills freed women from the inhibition of pregnancy and Sweden raised the flag of sexual liberation with such crusading films as I AM CURIOUS YELLOW and 1973’s SWEDISH NYMPHET in which a hippie attempts to cure a nymphomaniac (this plot was recently stolen without any credit for the Hollywood version BLACK SNAKE MOAN). Stockholm’s theaters hosted live sex shows and sex tourists spearheaded mostly by French-Canadian women flocked to Sweden to reap the benefits of an open society only to discover reality was not as adventurous as portrayed by the myths of cinema. Swedes are traditionally conservative and the pendulum swung the other way without ever looking back at the past.
Sex is still a subject on which the Swedes can speak freely, however phone sex or online porno are the only sex available in the Nordic nation, as the government intensifies its battle against prostitution. Paying for sex has been illegal for over ten years and the country’s public health minister, gender equality minister, and justice minister have been granted extra funding to combat the threat of human trafficking by Eastern European sex gangs. The trio of female politicians are also seeking the right to bug individual phones and confiscate profits from anyone selling or buying sex.
Paying a whore can earn an offender jail time up to six months, although judges are wont to hand down this sentence to convicted johns. Undeterred by the courts’ leniency the justice minister thinks the penalty for buying sex should be increased to one year. The government is waiting for an inquiry into the impact of the ten year ban before changing the existing laws, since opposing opinion contends that the harsh laws are detrimental to the health of sex workers and have done little to curtail violence against women and child pornography.
Of course no one would have to pay for sex if Swedish women were remaining in relationships rather than leading the world in single-mom families, as if a man was a third wheel on a bike.
The sexual revolution has been long over in Sweden and men are doing what they always do in the face of non-performance by women.
Masturbate or turn gay.
The revolution lives, for as Gore Vidal said, “The reading of pornography only leads to the reading of more pornography.”
Same goes for sex.
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