So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes! Don’t they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!” Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success. – Hans Christian Andersen
In Andersen’s tale the Emperor, his court and his subjects are all taken in by con artists who claim to have made him a suit of magical cloth which is invisible to fools and those unfit for their positions; of course nobody wants to admit that he can’t see the clothes, and so everyone pretends to admire them despite the evidence of his own eyes. The scammers who weave the insubstantial “sex trafficking” fantasy are something like that, except that in this case they claim that those who can’t see their tissue of nothing are “evil” or “sick” or “don’t care about children”. So everyone follows along with the procession, proclaiming how terrible this epidemic is, and how we have to “do something” about it no matter what the cost, despite the fact that they themselves can’t see a scrap of evidence for the existence of this horrible garment. Like the people in the story they all take each other’s word that the thing exists, but unlike those people they ignore the voices shouting “but he has nothing on!” instead of recognizing the truth of the statement.
I’ve run into several examples of the syndrome recently; as you will see, these writers are clearly not entirely devoid of skepticism, yet still refuse to call “sex trafficking” hysteria what it is. The first example appeared two months ago in Gawker; it’s entitled “A Timeline of Moral Panics in the Last Decade”, and though author Max Read clearly understands both the concept of a “moral panic” and the necessity of extraordinary claims being supported by, you know, like evidence and stuff, “sex trafficking” hysteria is conspicuous by its absence. It’s not just that he avoids politically popular scares; he’s perfectly willing to call “cyberbullying” on the carpet. But “trafficking”? Not a whisper.
More recently, Gawker subsidiary Jezebel published “A Complete Guide to Hipster Racism”, whose author lists what she obviously considers ALL the ways (“complete guide”) in which young, middle-class white people display racism while pretending that they’re not racists. Since I don’t have television, don’t read pop-culture magazines like People, don’t live in a city, and don’t go to “hip” places when I visit cities, I honestly have no idea what most of author Lindy West’s examples are even about. But I do know that caring oh-so-much about brown people and following celebrities who “tweet” about “rescuing girls from sex slavery” and shutting down Backpage is practically the definition of “hip”…and it’s entirely based on the incredibly racist premise that brown people are so simple and childlike that if they leave their quaint, picturesque villages to work in nasty, rich white people’s countries or seedy, unwholesome brothels in their own or nearby countries, it must be because their simple, childlike minds were deceived by evil men and they were “trafficked” to those places. The idea that maybe they chose the best available option
(just like white people do) and relocated for more lucrative work (just like white people do) never occurs to these “hipster racists”, nor does the realization that maybe they neither want nor need white saviors to “rescue” them from their own decisions, and that perhaps they might resent their meddling and condescension. But apparently, Lindy feels that pop covers of hip-hop songs are much more racist than infantilization of millions based on the work they choose to do.
But lest you think this refusal to acknowledge reality for fear of what others might think is limited to Gawker bloggers, consider Sex Panic and the Punitive State by Roger Lancaster, a recent work about moral panics that wholly ignores sex trafficking hysteria. Here’s an April 28th review by Dr. Laura Agustín:
…For all Lancaster’s broad inclusivity in his thesis and in his construction of a narrative of sexual crime, he fails to account for the single most widespread sexual-crime issue in the United States: the persecution of prostitutes/sex workers, treated as anti-social offenders, in virulently punitive, long-infamous legal policy. Where are the figures on arrests of prostitutes in the panoply of ills Lancaster reveals? Is this egregious injustice deemed somehow different, and if so, why?…In the current anti-trafficking hysteria in the United States, lawmakers and activists alike conflate trafficking with prostitution as a tactic to promote abolitionism. Women who sell sex are divested of will and figured as helpless children in a deliberate attempt to provoke further panic. Does this scenario not fit into Lancaster’s narrative, or how does it fit?
…Leaving aside adults, child sex trafficking surely constitutes the most vibrant panic of the last few years, despite a lack of evidence that it actually exists (what does exist are teens who leave home)…Law enforcement chiefs from numerous states have joined the targeting of online classified advertising services like Craigslist and Backpage, with the justification that minors are being sold there by traffickers. Simultaneously, everyone ignores the palpable harm for adult female sex workers caused by these campaigns; apparently no one is bothered. The absence in Lancaster’s account of the adult woman who sells sex reproduces the social death society inflicts continually on this group, as though prostitution were obviously different, separate, real, or intransigent–having nothing to do with the history of panic at hand…
I suspect Lancaster is silent on the issue for the same reason the others listed here and so many journalists are: though they may perceive the Imperial nudity, they are afraid of admitting it for fear of moral censure. And until the mainstream media are willing to join us in announcing the truth, the ridiculous procession will continue on just as if the garments existed.
One Year Ago Today
“Harm Magnification” explains how laws against consensual behaviors invariably inflict harm both on those they restrict and on society in general.
They’re “self-licking ice cream cones” and it’s too bad most humans aren’t capable of immediately spotting them. The whole trafficking meme is a self-licking ice cream cone because the problem is so infinitesimal yet it requires a leviathan law-enforcement system to handle it and minions of Hollywood actors to make themselves feel good by making the rest of us feel guilty about a problem that doesn’t require as much attention as it gets. Of course – if someone gets tired of fighting the problem they can simply throw up their hands and declare victory since there was no problem to begin with.
But there’s hundreds of these self-licking cones out there that simply sap our resources and give government another excuse to take our money. Production electric vehicles – self-licking. Production solar-power – self-licking. Michelle Obama’s dietary education programs – self-licking. I dare say state vehicle inspections on any car less than 10 years old is a self-licking shenanigan. I could go on and on.
I saw an escort a while back and somehow we got to the subject of trafficking. I told her that it was something that is greatly over exaggerated and I also told her about how you had traced down the 100,000-300,000 numbers you normally hear about. I don’t think she really believed me about child trafficking not being a big problem though.
If it really was as common place as it’s made out to be where are all the news reports on the daily news about the latest busts being made? After all sex stories are always popular.
As I discussed in “Rhinoceros“, you’d be amazed how many escorts believe in it, and how few recognizes what it pretends about us and our clients.
To me the most amazing thing is how many people in our society think that adult men want to have sex with children. I mean there’s this author, Gail Dines, who basically says it’s the reason women Brazilian wax (I know that sounds insane, but believe me I’m not making it up. I wish I were.)
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. What kind of mind believes that huge numbers (enough to support big-money businesses and justify major risks) of men want to have sex with traumatized little girls? People who believe such things are projecting the ugliness of their own souls onto the world.
Ted-If you see that escort again, tell her to gor to my OpEdNews article in late March 2012 (I think it was the 24th) “Making Sex a Crime,” where I lay out in 7000+ words of detail WITH CITATIONS the lies of the establishment on sex trafficking.–Richard Girard
The Emperor’s New Clothes: I got so frustrated with this, when working in the NHS, that I called it the “ENC Syndrome”, with me as the little boy. Nobody listened to me or believed me. A legalistic version is “willful blindness”.
There’s an apposite aphorism, though its provenance is uncertain; it may come from Andrew Carnegie’s library, it may be from the Scot William Drummond. I first say it on a church noticeboard in Belfast, N Ireland, of all unlikely places. Other versions are slightly different:
He that can not think is a fool,
He that will not think is a bigot,
He that dare not think is a slave.
I was reading a blog post about a failed attempt to inflict a 4 foot rule on strip clubs in one state. The blog post, and the comments, were by a neofeminist so it was interesting reading. I actually came out to protest a similar rule (in this case it was a six foot rule, not that it makes a difference) in Tampa (that sadly passed, causing my favorite stripper to move to Las Vegas). City Hall was packed at that time, and I was one of the few customers who was there. I remember telling a female co-worker that this was the reason I had taken a day off from work, and she simply refused to believe me and thought I was trying to trick her.
The weird thought on the blog was that strippers wanted a 4 foot rule for their own protection, and someone managed to find one stripper who was in favor of the rule. Well, my experience was completely different, of course, with local strippers being stressed out and worried about how they were going to make money (which no one seems to understand is the reason why they do this) when they are legally prevented from offering lap dances. It led to a somber and depressed mood at the clubs, I can tell you that.
Of course, there was a lot of trafficking nonsense in both the posts and the comments, with everyone feeling sorry for those poor exploited strippers. However, one guy piped up with talking about how well the women are treated in, I think it was New Zealand strip clubs (which don’t have four foot rules but where the strippers can have men who misbehave chucked out). Poor fellow, because of course he got attacked. His main crime, of course, was actually knowing something about strip clubs from attending them, rather than knowing mainly from hearsay and conjecture.
By the way, when I say I was one of the few customers at city hall, I mean it was packed with protesting strippers, not by people in favor of the law. We got huge turn outs for all the protests by the people it was actually going to effect and who were being “protected,” but the law still passed.
The reason “A Timeline of Moral Panics in the Last Decade” doesn’t mention trafficking is because it’s all about things that teenagers are supposedly doing, and the Official Story, at least at this time, is that it is creepy adults, not teenagers, enslaving little girls all around the world. Max Reed fails to see the emperor’s nudity because the emperor isn’t in school.
That said, yeah this particular ruler is letting it all hang out, and the sooner people realize that the better I’ll like it.
I wonder what the equivalent would be of the people deciding that being nude is very in.
An example of that might be the legend that wigs were “in” in the 18c because of a bald king; or that the obesity of King Edward VII is why we leave open the bottom button of our suit jackets; or that the Castilian pronunciation of soft ‘c’ is due to a lisping king (that one makes no sense, why would it affect some words with /s/ and not others?).