There is a long history of profound disagreement in the women’s movement on anything that relates to sex, which sits at the trickiest of intersections between the personal and the political — and few issues are quite so emotive and polarising as the exchange of sex for payment.

Seen as emblematic of the dual oppressions of patriarchy and capitalism faced by women as a class, an experience that most of us will never have is situated at the epicentre of an ideological faultline. But as with any topic that becomes characterised by diametrically opposing viewpoints, this only serves to shut down the possibility of productive, good faith discussion.

Too often it seems such conversations start from a place of assuming the worst of others, rather than seeking to identify shared goals and bridge divides. Ultimately, the women who have most to lose from this standoff are those who are most at risk – of poverty, of violence, of criminalisation. And, as ever, these are the women whose voices are least often heard, never mind ­listened to.

So fractious has the debate become that even the terminology is contested, with the use of particular phraseology understood to represent an ideological viewpoint. Some use “sex work”, while others argue this legitimises an industry that should be treated as a form of abuse, not employment. The Scottish Government classifies prostitution as a form of violence against women, while sex worker-led organisations like Scot-PEP and Umbrella Lane say this presents all women who sell sex as victims and denies their ability to speak and act for themselves.

These enduring frictions have come to the fore in recent weeks amid the Scottish Government’s consultation into “challenging men’s demand for prostitution”, which is due to close on 10 December. One question in the consultation asks respondents to choose which of four legal approaches to prostitution would be most effective in preventing violence against women and girls.

One of the four approaches presented in the Scottish Government consultation is the “Nordic model”, which would criminalise the buyer and decriminalise the seller. This model was passed marginally into SNP policy at the party’s Spring conference in 2017, supported by now community ­safety minister Ash Denham, right, who is leading on the consultation.

In this context, opponents of ­further criminalisation are concerned the ­exercise signals an attempt to garner ­support for a legal change down the line.

As it stands, there are several criminal offences associated with the sale of sex in Scotland: soliciting in a public place for the purpose of selling or purchasing sex; brothel-keeping, which covers such a broad definition that it prohibits two ­people selling sex at the same ­property; knowingly being the landlord of a ­premises where this is taking place; and knowingly living wholly or partially off another person’s earnings from the sale of sex — a law intended to target “pimps” but which also criminalises partners and family members.

Anybody looking at the current ­situation from a feminist and human rights perspective and listening to people with experience of selling sex knows that it isn’t working. If the aim is to protect women and the most vulnerable people involved, the effort is an unquestionable failure. I’ve yet to hear anyone seriously engaged in this debate suggest otherwise, so perhaps this is a good place to start in finding common ground.

Despite wildly differing views on the appropriate response, it is broadly recognised that the sale and purchase of sex is a highly gendered dynamic wherein the buyers are predominantly male and the majority of those selling are women. It is also agreed that many women and other marginalised people engaged in selling sex do so in circumstances and ­environments in which they are unsafe, in which their options are limited, in which managers do not have their best interests at heart, and where routes to seek redress for exploitation or abuse are closed off to them.

Such as it is, there are those who view any suggestion of a relaxation of the ­criminal law on the sale or purchase sex, or even opposition to ­additional ­criminalisation, as tantamount to a ­celebration of sexual and economic ­exploitation and a disavowal of feminist or socialist critique.

However, this rests on a presumption that acknowledging a problem can point to only one solution, and that requests to consider other approaches are inherently offensive.

This is not a healthy way to engage with people on complex issues, and it’s c­ertainly not conducive to developing evidence-based, user-led policy. It’s an ­attitude that fails to appreciate that many of those advocating for such changes do so for much the same reason that they want harsher penalisation for buyers: ­because they don’t want to see any woman, any person, in a situation where their survival depends on people who would seek to exploit them and where the system only serves to exacerbate their problems. ­Different views on how that can be achieved in this context are valid and deserve to be heard without hostility and mischaracterisation, particularly the views of people with personal experience of selling sex.

Sex worker rights groups point to the fact that criminalisation of these ­practices does not eliminate them but pushes them further underground into increasingly ­unsafe circumstances, in which they have no legal rights or recourse. Far from ­ reducing harm, it compounds it. This view is based on experience of the current system, in which the most vulnerable are also those worst affected by the criminal law, and on the experiences of other ­countries where the Nordic model has been ­introduced.

Research by Amnesty International in Norway found that criminalising the ­buyer only increased the exploitation faced by marginalised women who were forced deeper into the shadows and who refused to engage with police unless their lives were in imminent danger. The ­involvement of criminal justice from the outset creates a power imbalance which acts as an insurmountable barrier to a ­relationship of genuine trust.

Responding to these concerns, an ­expert advisor to Norway’s ministry of justice and public security told Amnesty International that: “It comes back to the question of ‘is it a problem that people in prostitution are in trouble’. No one has said at a political level that we want ­prostitutes to have a good time while we also try to stamp out prostitution.”

This, surely, is not a view any feminist in Scotland, regardless of their views on this subject, would endorse. Yet this is what people engaged in sex work hear when the Nordic model is championed: that the harm and risk posed to them is a price worth paying for a greater good.

These aren’t the values of the Scotland I know, in which all but one party at ­Holyrood backs the decriminalisation of drug possession so that drug users can be offered help without fear of penalty and be treated with dignity and respect.

This isn’t a question of whether or not you care about violence against women. It need not even be a question of ­whether you personally see the sale of sex as ­inherently harmful. It’s a question of what action we can take, as a society, to make sure people’s safety, health and wellbeing is not put at risk by the very systems that ought to protect them. It’s a question of whether we think a public health ­approach and an anti-poverty ­approach is more suited to addressing the needs of ­potentially vulnerable people than a ­criminal justice one.

And it’s a question of whether we want the support offered to people to be truly person-centred and nonjudgmental — ­because as long as criminal justice ­responses are at the forefront, can we really say we are implementing a truly rights-based approach?

These are questions that need to be asked, and it is as a feminist, first and foremost, that I ask them.