Brott utan målsägande
En diskursanalys av lagtexter om prostitution
Prostitution has been intensely debated in Sweden for nearly four decades. Two major investigations have so far been initiated by the government and numerous propositions have been put forward in the Swedish parliament resulting in the sexköpslag from 1999 that criminalizes purchase of sexual services. The law aims at punishing the buyer and protecting the women in prostitution, thus making it possible for women to be helped by various social interventions rather than punished. Swedish society has undergone major changes in these decades. Globalization, the internet and the membership in the EU have changed the Swedish society and influenced the discourse on prostitution.This paper has a twofold aim, on the one hand investigating if and how these changes have had an impact on the prostitution discourse in texts produced by the government and analyze how female and male sexuality in connection to prostitution is constructed. I have done so by analyzing texts spanning from 1981 to 1998. Texts produced by the government have a direct impact on the community in terms of defining what is legal and what is not, but also have a normative function and a direct impact on social work and in the end, the wellbeing of individuals. I therefore argue that it is of importance to critically analyze and question these texts.My conclusion is that cultural and social construction and stratification of perceived deviant sexuality in the form of prostitution in the period I studied has on the one hand undergone a profound change focusing on female prostitutes as both the root of a problem and its victims, and the other hand further cementing existing gender patterns prevalent in Swedish society for centuries.