Sex slavery (i.e. sex trafficking) has become the Satanic Panic of the 2010's. Politicians have gone insane screaming about it and passing laws and both sides of the aisle have embraced the hysteria.
What's sad is why many say they've embraced it. Oh sex trafficking exists. Lots of it involves voluntary adults who go across state lines. Or even kids who runaway and become prostitutes to survive. Even if no force or fraud is used, such kids are, by law, victims of sex trafficking. Which should be the case.
But while it is a major problem in our country it doesn't really affect the people that both sides of the aisle care about.
If most people in society knew who those involved in sex trafficking really are, many would not care. They'd turn their backs:
"It happens every year. First, comes January’s Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and
a spate of
flawed articlesdepicting
the issue of commercial sex in the broadest of terms. Then, in February, Super Bowl “sex slavery” hysteria kicks into full gear. Even though the idea that the championship game sparks an epidemic of sex trafficking
has been debunked, sensational media coverage of the non-issue persists (
here’s another story published just this week).
As a person with experiences in the sex trades, and someone that has worked for more than five years teaching memoir-writing at various agencies around New York, including organizations that provide services to victims of commercial sexual exploitation, I can say with certainty that commercial sexual exploitation differs from the stereotypes often perpetuated by these campaigns.Hyperbolic coverage does more harm than good.
Victims don’t look like the girls in the posters.
When we hear “human trafficking” we have an image — thanks in great part to faith-based nonprofits — of thin, white women plucked from their perfect homes, blindfolded and gagged, chained to beds in sexually provocative poses.Sometimes, the pictures feature kids who are shockingly young.
According to the experts who help them, most kids involved in commercial sexual exploitation are runaways or “throwaways” — homeless youth that are otherwise already in a negative situation and in need of help.GEMS founder Rachel Lloyd says the overwhelming majority of commercially exploited girls and women her organization services are “low-income young women of color, over 70% of whom have been in the foster care system and all of whom have histories of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and/or neglect prior to their recruitment.”
Covenant House confirms, human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation disproportionately affect people of color, and other minorities, including LGBTQ youth.
Not all victims of commercial sexual exploitation are women or girls, nor are all victims youth. So why the pictures of white children clinging to teddy bears? Why
terrifying articles
warning parents how to
protect their kidsfrom getting abducted? Do white women really only care when it threatens our literal daughters or girls that look like us?"
4 Things To Know About Human Trafficking
