Battleangel

Swedish equality ombudsman Claes Borgström suggested that Sweden should boycott the World Cup Finals in Germany this summer because of the related surge in prostitution. While I personally would leave prostitution alone and even try to integrate it better into society seeing as erasing it altogether is a Sisyphean task that may inadvertently infringe on personal liberty as well as add to the stigma that people in the this business have to bear. Needless to say there are also downsides to legalizing prostitution.

But that is hardly the point, nor is it the moral implications of the legal status that prostitution enjoys in Germany per se. The point is that given the legality and the proximity to known sources of trafficking as well as the pull that these events have had in the in the past, some have estimated an influx of 40,000 “sex workers.” Minimum. Many of those coerced to provide their services. Women’s groups in Germany and elsewhere have of course already voiced their objections but to no avail. The German FA dismissed the issue as “tiresome.”
Even though the causal relation between the World Cup and the influx of sex workers is plain as day, many still insist on putting on their logic blindfolds or try to confuse a perfectly simple issue. Others still hide behind their claim that sports isn’t a political phenomenon.

Most commentators have dismissed Borgström as naive and an opportunist, for doing his job. It’s too bad so many consider humanitarianism naive and opportunistic. I would rather call trafficking naive and opportunistic but that’s just me. Obviously sports is closely linked to nationalism so floating the idea of not going to the World Cup is, even in Sweden, akin to an attack on the nation state. There is a history of the USA and the Soviet Union boycotting their respective Olympic games of course but then it actually served a higher ideological interest of the state. Obviously the very real well-being of thousands of women is not as noble a goal as phantasmagorical, and indeed naive and opportunistic, cold war gambits