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On May 20 this year, Sweden expanded its infamous Nordic Model of prostitution into the digital realm, effectively banning the purchase of live and tailored sex content from platforms like OnlyFans. Under the new law, buyers could face up to one year in prison and sellers a whopping four. Welcome to the digital age of criminalised kinks.
The law’s logic mirrors the 1999 Nordic Model, which criminalised buyers, not sellers, framing sex work as the product of systemic inequality and sexual exploitation, predominantly affecting women. Now, paying for a custom video or livestream is treated like soliciting on the street.
Supporters of the act insist this is moral progress, an important step for feminism, which protects the vulnerable against exploitation – especially for young or financially struggling women. The buyer becomes villainised, and the state assumes protection. Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer says anyone buying sexual acts “performed remotely should be penalised in the same way as those involving physical contact”. And this does not mean a complete ban of porn, only porn that is viewer-directed.
Demand for personalised content, however, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by power dynamics that often reinforce inequality, and in this way, the law gains traction. When buyers request specific acts, power is immediately transferred from the creators, irrespective of their free will or bodily autonomy.
Still, creators aren’t celebrating. Amanda Breden, a Swedish OnlyFans model, says the law “takes away the freedom to do what we want with our own lives”. For her, tailored content is a business and career choice. “OnlyFans can actually save many women from the streets”, she adds.
Fellow creator Emma Larsson is equally unimpressed, stressing “our income will decrease so much that we’ll be forced to offer services and fulfil requests we would otherwise never agree to.” And really, they’re not wrong.
By equating consensual digital performance with coercion, the law refuses nuance and dismisses the valuable agency women have fought so hard to secure. Naturally, critics understand this not as feminism, but paternalism cosplaying Sylvia Plath.
Practical questions loom. Pre-recorded and subscription porn remain legal, but how will authorities tell the difference? Monitor DMs for “suggestive intent”? Use facial recognition to spot orgasms on demand? And broader, more ethical concerns, such as privacy violations and the surveillance of a person’s sexual freedom.
Sex workers have been largely excluded from the conversation. The law assumes they’re victims, not consenting adults capable of business discretion. Many now fear financial harm or being pushed underground, into the more illicit, dangerous underbelly of sex work.
Whether the law “works” depends on its goal. If it’s reducing demand, criminalisation could very well be the answer. But if it’s to reduce harm, research from Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand suggests that legal recognition and protection, not punishment, make sex work safer.
Ultimately, this debate is about power: what is exploitation, and who decides? How can we protect women without reinforcing the same gendered power structures that constrain them? And really, can the law effectively limit sex when we are all very much wanting it?
Written by Bree Benbow
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