This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. On Thursday, police descended on Club Artemis in Berlin, one of the biggest brothels in a country packed with such sex warehouses.
Few industries are as fraudulent and exploitive as prostitution. Are Artemis prostitutes employees? The club, a white barracks of a building near highways and a convention centre, attracts locals as well as men across Europe stopping in for sex with village girls from destitute Eastern Europe. I managed to visit Club Artemis in only because its owners were excited about the possibility of setting up shop in Canada, perhaps near Pearson airport.
The place was harrowing. It was huge, windowless and warm, with strange odours. I still dream about it. The Supreme Court of Canada had given the Harper government one year to come up with a new law to make prostitutes safer. Otherwise it would allow brothels in Canada. So Canada basically adopted the Nordic Model, which penalizes buyers rather than sellers, though Harper offered almost no money to help women escape the trade.
Feminist in intent, the Nordic Model began in Sweden and is being made into law across European nations. The Artemis setup was designed to make the prostituted women look independent, with sex so cheap they were practically volunteering. There are said to be , prostitutes in Germany but almost none have registered as such, fearing that the licence will label and doom them to restrictive life where they will be unable to cross borders.
But Germany as a nation has never treated women well, its rape laws lax and workplace equality still distant. But I notice a pattern in the resistance to the Nordic Model. In these times, the battle is over defining jobs and job conditions. They must charge HST and pay tax on their earnings, which are digitally tracked. The definition of precarious modern jobs — are they permanent, part-time, contract or on-call — is a crucial part of this.
