Through the Prism of Prostitution: Conceptions of Women and Sexuality in Sweden at Two Fins‐de‐Siècle

Implicit conceptions of women's sexuality rest on long historical traditions, and their formation show both stability and change. Women have gained a number of citizen rights in society, but where women's rights to bodily integrity are concerned these have been harder to attain. For more than a hundred years feminists have questioned a constitutive norm which states that men's sexuality is women's responsibility, and demanded changed state laws on prostitution and sexual violence. Sweden has a radical law which criminalizes the purchase of sexual services. Still, however, men's sexuality is by some seen as women's responsibility.