Prostitution and trafficking – the anatomy of a moral panic

Source: Nick Davies The Guardian

Prostitution and trafficking – the anatomy of a moral panic

There is something familiar about the tide of misinformation which has swept through the subject of sex trafficking in the UK: it flows through exactly the same channels as the now notorious torrent about Saddam Hussein's weapons.

In the story of UK sex trafficking, the conclusions of academics who study the sex trade have been subjected to the same treatment as the restrained reports of intelligence analysts who studied Iraqi weapons – stripped of caution, stretched to their most alarming possible meaning and tossed into the public domain. There, they have been picked up by the media who have stretched them even further in stories which have then been treated as reliable sources by politicians, who in turn provided quotes for more misleading stories.

In both cases, the cycle has been driven by political opportunists and interest groups in pursuit of an agenda. In the case of sex trafficking, the role of the neo-conservatives and Iraqi exiles has been played by an unlikely union of evangelical Christians with feminist campaigners, who pursued the trafficking tale to secure their greater goal, not of regime change, but of legal change to abolish all prostitution. The sex trafficking story is a model of misinformation. It began to take shape in the mid 1990s, when the collapse of economies in the old Warsaw Pact countries saw the working flats of London flooded with young women from eastern Europe. Soon, there were rumours and media reports that attached a new word to these women. They had been "trafficked".

And, from the outset, that word was a problem. On a strict definition, eventually expressed in international law by the 2000 Palermo protocol, sex trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to transport an unwilling victim into sexual exploitation. This image of sex slavery soon provoked real public anxiety.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/trafficking-numbers-women-exaggerated

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hummmm..

there's a pretty damn excellent piece by a woman who works in the sex industry, who explains in unwavering detail how such moral panic has been used as cover for prohibitionist policies which have been the justification for raids and other actions that have harmed the involved women more than they've done anything else- Regardless of anyone's personal feelings about the morality of prostitution, the only real moral issue is that of the well-being of the people involved: Are they being coerced? If so, can they organize openly for solutions? Prohibition laws mean that the answer to the second question is almost always "no". It also throws in the added risk of incarceration and endangerment at the hands of police- and as a feminist, I really see no fucking excuse- no logic other than right-wing religious reaction- for turning the fist of the law against sex workers- for what crime? They are not the ones who commit acts of violence and coercion. Ass-backwards, isn't it?

Unrecommend

Pimps, crooked cops, hotsheet motels - those are exploitation! It is illegality that enables much of the exploitation. Read up on the history of the Mann Act in this country, or look up "White slavery". England is going through the same thing, just a century later.

But if your claims are solid, then you should be able to convince others with evidence and a compelling case. Hyperbole, misinformation and blatant propaganda (which is really what the opening article is about) will have little effect on the well informed. An 'unrecommend' isn't very convincing either.

Who probably make four times what you do in a year.

In one of the 20 brothels that is properly licensed, who often find themselves in what amounts to slave conditions? These women aren't making money - much like waiters or table workers in the casinos, it's the house making money, and then doling out the cash. The women themselves are almost always from poor backgrounds - no woman with an A-level option is going to go into prostitution, you can count on that. The prostitutes do not fully have control over their own lives - Oh, they can always quit... but they can't necessarily leave - As I said, these places are in the low-population places of Nevada, out in the middle of nowhere, and the line of work tends to keep the worker isolated from these communities. Hooker quits, the house withholds wages (and they can find all sorts of legal loopholes for that) and the woman is stuck.

Just because it's legal doesn't mean the system is not abusive and exploitative. Poor women are taking the hits, and the state is raking in lots of tax dollars out of them for it.

of women travel to Nevada each year on their "vacations" to work in brothels.

I know one of those. I am the only friend of hers that knows and accepts it.
She is a dispatcher at a tow company.

She tells her family she wins at gambling.

She will not sell herself anywhere other than Nevada for fear of arrest.
and yes she IS a happy hooker.

you will never win or change minds.
I doubt if there are 5 women on this board who will agree with your position.

I wonder if part of that is fear.

Women use sex as a very powerful weapon against men.

They get what they want most of the time in relatively healthy relationships - and a great many UNhealthy relationships.

If men and women could freely visit a prostitute of their choice in a safe, and legal location, where would their power be? but that's just speculation.

Using a few (ok alot, but also consider the numbers) anecdotal stories vs any actual facts?

Thing is, you are very unlikly to get current escorts or prostitutes to come forward. Especially if they are successful. It's just too dangerous.

Women, hard core feminists, or hard core bible thumpers will attack them. ironic, its the only thin g both sides agree on.

And as the German and Holland examples show, legalization does not lead to improved "working" conditions for prostitutes.

conditions would be better.
Legalized prostitution brings with it Madams, better conditions and higher pay.

Freely chosen profession if fine.
forced into it is not.

and no, I wasn't one of their Johns, just a friend getting the straight dope. Sex hasn't been sacred for me since I let go of sexual jealousy. I've had mercy sex with people and just plain curious and completely unsatisfying sex with people who I have no attraction to and in a society where prostitution has no stigma attached to it, and a country less afflicted by AIDS and other killers (I'm from South Africa) I would have no problem selling my own body for sex, if the conditions were decent and the pay was good.

Denying that people are capable of trading sex for money in any context without psychological scarring, shame et al, is normative dialog along very much the same lines as suggesting gays are psychologically ill. It employs the same circular reasoning as homophobia did in the past. In societies where homosexuality is viewed with near universal horror, homosexuals must be deceptive, circumspect and, when confronted, acknowledge their shame and dysfunction as a way of ameliorating condemnation, thus reinforcing the perception that their sexuality is innately shameful.

Its foisting your sexual boundaries on others and insisting that they're either mentally ill or immoral if they don't share those boundaries. Conversely, claiming anyone who would pay for sex is dysfunctional and cruel and abusive by default is equally presumptious. Hell, I'd pay for sex if it weren't legally risky, medically risky, likely to offend some of my puritanical friends if it got out, and unlikely to be satisfying because the lingering imprint of shame from my Catholic upbringing make me feel more uncomfortable than stimulated in a strip joint (to which I have been twice in my life, for stag nights). And I would respect the sex worker who provided it and not abuse them.

Which is why the sex-negative, prostitution-prohibition position is always so strongly premised on phenomenological arguments like "80% of prostitutes were abused as children". Well colour me surprised. One of the most stigmatised professions attracts a lot of broken humans? One of the least regulated, least protected professions which even where its legal gets little workplace protection and sympathy from inspectors, courts and police, is rife with abuse? People with a strong motive to win pity out of moral condemnation frequently testify to a backstory that may or may not be real but certainly wins them the mantle of victimhood?

On another thread, the claim was made by someone who lived around prostitutes that they all hated their Johns and would get out in the blink of an eye if they could. This said as if such widespread sentiment must be viewed through a lens that does not acknowledge the role of history, religion, sexism and simple, monogamous jealousy in shaping the profession's status. You will hear the same thing from anyone who is in a profession that is not respected, even those that aren't morally condemned.

What is noticeably lacking from both puritanical left and right positions on prostitution is any kind of coherent argument showing why prositution will, under all conceivable situations, involve massive exploitation. The reverse possibility is treated as an impossibility. The assumption is that even in a society that protected its sex workers from abuse, a society that held sex-worker pride parades, a society where someone might even employ a master of the sexual arts to give their spouse of 30 years one night of ecstacy on, say, their birthday (and such an arrangement be perfectly normal), a society where someone might even be famous for their skill - even in such a society, all sex workers would either be in the profession as a result of being broken, or be broken by the profession.

That inability to even conceive of the idea that, in the absence of moral stigma, the perceived threat to monogamy and the puritanical population's presumption of universally common boundaries, prostitution could exist unhampered by disempowerment and exploitation - is quite obviously premised on the idea that no-one can treat sex as a purely physical, commercial act without psychological damage occuring or psychological scar tissue being the reason for indifference, a premise that is monstrously presumptive about other people's sexuality, and hypocritical to boot from those who express horror out the other side of their face that someone could presume everyone that's not straight is sick in the head.

Woman being a prostitute freely on her own = fine by me
Woman being forced into prostitution by human traffickers, criminal gangs, family members, etc. = put a fucking stop to it and hang the enslavers by piano wire.