In 2013, a documentary called "Sex: Made in Germany" was quietly released.
The whole film is less than 45 minutes long, but it is the inside story of the German sex work industry recorded by the filming team for 2 years in many brothels in Berlin, Germany, with hidden cameras.
Since the introduction of the Sex Trafficking Act in Germany in 2002, the sex industry has gradually become a special and important industry in Germany, and the debate over whether it is reasonable to legalize the sex trade has never stopped.
1. "European brothels"
In 1927, during the Weimar Republic of Germany, the government promulgated the "Sexually Transmitted Disease Act", the first statute in the modern legal sense to "decriminalize the sex trade".
The legalization of the sex trade in Germany is not a new product of modern capital, and it has been traced back to the Holy Roman Empire.
Sexual desire in the West is not like the ancient East as "shame", on the contrary, the West admires the beauty of the flesh, looking directly at the desire between the opposite sex, Rome was a densely populated city at that time, and where there are people, there is fertility and reproduction, followed by venereal diseases that cannot be treated because of backward medical conditions.
In order to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the Roman government began to establish government-run brothels, which not only had higher health and security measures and greater secrecy, but also brought a certain amount of revenue to the government.
Such a "good thing" soon spread on the European continent, and people in many surrounding countries would secretly go to Rome to "buy spring" in order to escape the eyes of their families or churches.
This tradition of government-run brothels has been promoted throughout the country and passed down due to considerable profits.
By the time of modern warfare, in order to solve the problem of soldiers' sexual needs, Germany would not only establish government brothels in its own country, but also in occupied countries.
According to statistics, by 1942, Germany had established about 500 brothels on the European continent, with more than 30,000 female workers.
In 2000, at the turn of the century, the Netherlands announced a decision that shocked the world: allowing the opening of sex trade venues publicly, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to "legalize the sex trade", and Amsterdam's "red light district" began to become the most impressive Dutch business card.
With the Netherlands "leading the way", Germany also introduced the "Sex Trade Act" just two years later, and "sex trade" began to become a legitimate profession with legal protection in Germany.
The experience of government-run brothels has made it possible for German society not to exclude sex workers, and it is only a matter of time before legalization is under the operation of capital, but more than 20 years later, it is still debatable whether the benefits of "sex trafficking" outweigh the disadvantages.
Second, the German model
After the introduction of the "Sex Trafficking Act", Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and other metropolises in Germany have opened eye-catching red light districts.
Countless graceful girls, strange bedding, and a selection of price ranges from high to low, the praise of "Made in Germany" in the industrial field began to be replicated in another field.
Before the legislation regulated the sex industry, the places where sex trade could be carried out were ostensibly under the guise of massage, and if they were reported or investigated by the police, those who "bought sex" and "sold sex" would be punished accordingly, but compared with those who "bought sex", the situation of "prostitution" girls was even worse.
According to statistics, the risk of death of sex workers is 40 times higher than that of ordinary people, and the probability of death from murder is also more than 18 times that of ordinary people, and the death methods such as alcoholism, accidents, sexually transmitted diseases, and drugs are no stranger to the sex work industry.
The legalization of the sex trade and the sex industry had led to the elimination of illegal sex dens in poor conditions, all openly operating brothels had to obtain business licences, sex workers had to be registered and contracted, and sex workers had access to national health insurance and social welfare in accordance with the law as all normal professions.
In 2006, Germany hosted the World Cup, and visitors from all over the world enjoyed football matches while pushing Germany's reputation as the "European brothel" to the top.
According to the owner of a brothel in Berlin, before the World Cup, the brothel welcomed about 150 people a day, but after the World Cup, the brothel was not only open 24 hours a day, but the number of customers remained between 300 and 500 every day.
As of 2013, there were more than 5,000 sex trade establishments in operation in Germany, making it the "largest brothel in Europe".
In addition to the profits created by the sex industry itself, the income of the German tourism industry brought by it is also very considerable, and some tourists from American and European countries have the practice of "regularly organizing" groups to "travel" to Germany.
In addition to monetary gains, the probability of sex workers getting sick in areas where the sex trade is legal is only 0.42%, and the infection rate of STDs in areas where sex trade is prohibited is more than 16%, so after Germany has benefited from the legalization of the sex trade, neighboring countries including Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Turkey, etc., have begun to implement the "German model": legal but regulated.
In addition to the "German model", the "Nordic model" pioneered by Sweden in 1999 is more recognized in France, Ireland, Norway, Iceland and other countries.
The "Nordic model" promotes a ban on the sex trade, and controls the proliferation of the sex trade industry by severely punishing "prostitutes", i.e. prostitutes, and causing demand to dry up.
In 2015, Germany added new rules to investigate and punish "forced sex trafficking", the German police have the right to visit and check the sex worker's license at any time, during the transaction, sexual violence is prohibited, "security measures" must be used, and sex workers require a "medical consultation" once a year.
Uninformed people only think that the adjustment of the law is in the maintenance industry, but in fact, the introduction of laws and regulations often occurs after an accident.
Since the legalization of the sex trade in 2002, the German sex industry has appeared to be thriving, but in fact it has been secretly breeding for all kinds of illegal activities, the most obvious of which is "human trafficking".
3. Deviating from the original intention
In 2000, Aphrona, a 17-year-old girl from Belarus, wandered around the Fengyue place in Berlin, Germany, and began to "take orders privately" and met many people with different statuses.
After the sex trade was legalized in Germany, she opened a brothel in Berlin's red-light district and became a professional bustard.
After just six months, there were more than 100 women working under her, of whom only a quarter were native Germans, and the rest were from Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Aphrona's brothel is a strictly managed brothel on the main street of Berlin's red-light district, with special security guards who guard against not only customers who are picking quarrels and provoking trouble, but also foreign women who have been trafficked to Germany in an attempt to escape.
The legalization of the sex trade has made "sex workers" a tradable commodity, and as Germany's red-light districts have become famous and in demand, so has the number of prostitutes working in this work.
Since 2002, the number of sex workers in Germany has surged from 200,000 to 800,000, with 80% of them being foreign women.
Although there are legal norms on the surface, capital has formed a whole set of mutual protection systems in order to make crazy money. Using Germany's economic development and superior working conditions as a gimmick, traffickers deceive young women in backward areas and then forcibly traffick them to brothels in Germany's red-light districts.
After the brothel owner accepts these "inexpensive" women, he does not register them, because every time he registers a girl, he pays an extra tax and an extra insurance.
In a single apartment building rented by a large brothel in the suburbs, each room may be crowded with four or five foreign women at the same time, who have no passports, no professional qualifications, and their daily income will be squeezed by the brothel.
These girls are like prisoners, with 24-hour security guards on duty in apartment buildings, and even if they are lucky enough to escape the clutches and get free, they will either be deported for "illegal smuggling" or they will be sent back to the brothel again at the police station that has already been cleaned up by the brothel.
The average age of sex workers in Aphrona's brothel is 22, with the youngest being 15.
This kind of recruitment of minors for prostitution will be severely punished in any country, but the brothel owners in Germany's red-light districts have "policies and countermeasures".
The big brothels have a network of contacts within the government and regularly pay into the accounts of their collaborators. Once someone visits the house, the brothel will hide the illegal foreign women, leaving only the registered employees, and for young women, falsifying their identity and age are very common methods.
In 2014, a Russian woman named Ayana was tricked by her online boyfriend into going to Munich, Germany, and was then locked up in a suburban apartment building, where she was "forced to go for business" until she was rescued from the apartment four years later.
According to her confession, in this small three-story apartment building, each floor is divided into 10 rooms by partitions, and the girls in each room do not come to "work" voluntarily, and once a girl escapes and is caught, the alternating sounds of whipping and cries for help can be heard in the apartment building until the beaten party loses consciousness.
Ayana picks up about 30 people a day, and there are no holidays or weekends, and as long as she is healthy, she will be brought in one client after another in her cubicle, and such apartment buildings, which exist even in the German capital Berlin, are legal establishments with official licenses.
Fourth, a dilemma
The legalization of the sex trade has brought more than 10 billion euros to Germany, but it has also made transnational human trafficking the norm in Germany.
The German weekly "Focus" once published a report on the changes in the proportion of women of different colors in some brothels in Germany, and the number in Asia has increased significantly.
With the advent of the Internet era, illegal websites such as the dark web are flooded with all kinds of violent and illegal information, which makes the methods of transnational human trafficking more hidden and difficult to investigate.
In order to satisfy the curiosity of "spring buyers" and to grab huge profits, brothels have become the biggest breeding point for illegal and criminal behaviors.
According to the documentary "Sex: Made in Germany", after a girl provides a service, the remuneration is 49 euros (equivalent to 380 yuan), and with the increase of foreign women, the "industry competition" increases, and the average sex worker is only paid 10 euros (equivalent to 80 yuan) each time. ）
In 2014, the European Parliament called on member states to introduce the "Nordic model", and more and more international human rights workers began to expose the darkness of the German sex industry.
However, despite the protests and demonstrations, not a single party in the German Bundestag has included a bill related to the "prohibition of sex trafficking" in the plan.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, the German Social Democratic Party called for a crackdown on the sex industry under the slogan of social distancing, "the state should not use taxpayers' money to support brothels that violently force women into prostitution", but did not want to anger the operators of more than 50 large brothels across Germany, and sued the SPD spokesman in German courts.
After the capitalists took the SPD to court for defamation, embezzlement and other crimes, the topic of whether the "legalization of the sex trade" should continue to exist has once again become the pinnacle of German public opinion.
Ironically, when Germany officially introduced the Sex Trafficking Act in 2002, the SPD was the biggest driving force behind it.
After Germany fell into a difficult period of epidemic prevention and control, the government announced the temporary closure of all kinds of entertainment venues, and due to the special nature of the sex trade, the red light districts of major cities have become the most strictly controlled and hard-hit places.
The big bosses at the top of the brothels have enough capital to live on, but the sex workers at the bottom have lost their direct source of income and are either looking elsewhere or living on the streets.
With the help of the months-long epidemic, the German government originally wanted the sex industry to "collapse" on its own, and after announcing the reopening of the national economy in July 2020, it also deliberately avoided the sex industry and still maintained the epidemic control policy in the red light district.
In February 2021, the European Parliament unanimously voted to pass a resolution requiring member states to crack down on human smuggling and sexual exploitation.
epilogue
At any time in history and in any cultural system, sex workers are considered to be the lowest industry, and the act of selling their bodies in exchange for material things, tying people to the industry, once they enter this abyss, is regarded as a black spot that cannot be erased for a lifetime.
The original intention of Germany's "legalization of sex trafficking" was to protect sex workers and achieve a balance between "buying sex" and "selling sex".
However, the reason why "sex trafficking" is listed as a forbidden area by various countries is precisely because it challenges human nature and desires, and prostitution will not be justified by a law, but will only breed endless violence, drugs, human trafficking, as well as the annihilation of morality and the trampling of human rights.