There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His prophet. – The Shahada
Most modern religions have some basic profession of faith, a terse (as in Islam or Buddhism) or lengthy (like Christianity’s Nicene Creed) formula which encapsulates the most basic tenet or tenets of that belief system. Like most cults, “trafficking” religion has its professions of faith as well, and the most important one – which can be found in nearly every single article written by or about “Traffickists” – is their version of the Shahada: “A lot of people think trafficking doesn’t happen in [the place about which I’m speaking], but it does.” What is most interesting about this statement is that it almost acknowledges the lack of demonstrable proof, but then attests that the True Believer accepts the “trafficking” faith anyway. Many “trafficking” creeds are like that, especially now that skepticism is starting to show its face among the proselytes; if one compares recent stories about the panic, one can’t help noticing that many more words are spent refuting facts that cast doubt onto the mythology than used to be typical even a year ago. This article from the Baton Rouge Advocate is a perfect example:
Judging by the “End Human Trafficking” billboards and the work of a Baton Rouge-based anti-trafficking group building a shelter in Livingston Parish, sex trafficking is a significant problem in south Louisiana…nevertheless, reliable statistics on the full extent of the problem remain elusive. “A lot of people think trafficking doesn’t happen in Louisiana or in Baton Rouge, but it does,” said Lee Domingue, co-founder with his wife, Laura, of the awareness organization Trafficking Hope…Louisiana law defines sex trafficking as the inducement of a commercial sex act from an adult by force, fraud or coercion, or from a minor irrespective of force, fraud or coercion. Transporting the victim is not required for a violation of the law; facilitating the sex act or benefiting, financially or otherwise, from it is enough to trigger a violation.
This incredibly expansive definition, especially that avails clause, is used to classify as “trafficking” things that no reasonable person would include under the label, then to pretend that the mythic narrative applies to all of it. The fanatics even admit this is so, though they don’t recognize they’re doing it:
The term “trafficking” and its description as “modern-day slavery” can be misleading for both victims and the public, said Judy Benitez…of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault. “It puts the image in our heads of girls being physically restrained or handcuffed or put in a cage, but that is usually not the case,” she said. “Usually it’s more akin to a domestic violence situation where…they could leave, but there are a variety of factors making them unwilling to do so.” Those factors include threats of harm, intimidation, bullying, blackmail and coerced or forced drug use to the point of addiction and dependence…Although the girls do not admit to having been trafficked, Edwards said, the signs are unmistakable…
In other words, if “authorities” don’t like a woman’s choices they simply deny her agency and brand her a “victim”, then go looking for a “victimizer”. This is particularly true if she’s a young woman beneath the Age of Shazam; obviously she is a “child”, exactly equivalent to a five-year-old, and therefore unable to feed herself, find shelter or money, read a map or reason that if one is running away from something, it might be a good idea to put some distance between oneself and the place from which one is fleeing:
“If a child has been missing, or has run away for a month or two, you know somebody is taking care of that child and you start to ask questions about who that person is and why,” [Edwards] said. “Then if you find the child has gone to Tennessee or Florida or Alabama, has crossed state lines, those are things that really raise eyebrows.”
Because clearly, American state borders are patrolled like those between Cold War-era East and West European countries, and thus form solid barriers like the chalk lines of cabalistic summoning circles to anyone who has not yet been struck by the Mystic Lightning of Adulthood. But just in case anyone might see through this infantilizing myth of “innocence”:
…Trafficking Hope spokeswoman Molly Venzke declined The Advocate’s request to be put in contact with a trafficking victim willing to speak about the experience. “We cannot offer that, especially because we haven’t been able to put someone through the process of 18 months of restoration,” she said, adding that it would be exploitative to do an interview…at this point…
Well, something’s exploitative, but it isn’t an investigation into “trafficking” claims. The reporter isn’t completely asleep:
…the lack of data held up a 2011 reauthorization of the federal [Trafficking Victims Protection Act] because, as U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley…noted in committee, without more precise numbers, the government cannot determine whether funding to fight trafficking has been effectively spent…the U.S. government [has] no effective mechanism for estimating the number of victims…
But let’s not dwell on that too long; denying the agency of those who make decisions we don’t like is SO much more rewarding:
“Sex trafficking victims are easily manipulated by their traffickers and have mixed emotions, often believing they love the person”…said [Katherine Green of the Louisiana Human Trafficking Task Force]. “They don’t see themselves as victims at all because it’s a different normality they’ve had to survive.”
“Different normality” = “false consciousness”. And of course we have to demonize clients and imaginary bogeymen, too:
…The reluctance of victims to testify can be frustrating for law enforcement officers who want to get traffickers off the streets and guide victims to the services they need, said Bobby Gaston…with the Louisiana Sheriffs Association…“Many of the cases we thought were trafficking turned out to be prostitution because we couldn’t prove they were being forced…they were so deathly afraid of their ‘johns’ (the purchasers) or traffickers (the pimps) that they wouldn’t give us good (information).”
Oops, we almost forgot to drag in “end demand” rhetoric, and to refer to the crusaders as “experts”:
…Sex trafficking would not exist if there were not a market for sexually exploited individuals, the experts said. “Everything for sale has to have a market of people willing to buy, and that has never been a problem in this realm,” Benitez said. “But nobody wants to talk about that”…Domingue said he supports the idea of “john schools,” where men who purchase sexual favors would learn more about the damaging effects on the women involved…
And last but certainly not least, no “trafficking” screed would be complete without an iteration of the “gypsy whores” myth:
…law enforcement and service organizations are gearing up to respond to the influx of commercial sex activity they believe will inevitably accompany the Super Bowl in New Orleans on Feb. 3…
All mocking aside and all things considered, however, this story actually gives cause for optimism. The “Super Bowl sex trafficking” myth was relegated to a single line only six sentences from the end; the myth as a whole has never caught on in South Louisiana, and has not been heavily hyped by the larger media outlets in the area; and finally, only three out of 18 comments on the story were uncritical, and several of the others contained statements such as, “This looks like a solution in search of a problem”, “shameless yellow journalism…If there are no statistics to substantiate this imaginary problem, why are you writing articles about it?”, “Trying to convince people that they were abused sounds like the suppressed memory racket of years past that ruined a lot of lives”, and “you cannot get $ to stop prostitution so you call it Human Trafficking”. And that is very encouraging indeed.
>“If a child has been missing, or has run away for a month or two, you know somebody is taking care of that child and you start to ask questions about who that person is and why,” [Edwards] said.
I left home before I was 16. Who was looking after me then? Me. I had been doing it for sometime while still at home. Before leaving, I obtained a fake ID saying I was 19. I worked, I rented an apartment. I paid my own bills.
So really, why do these young people turn to sex work? Well, true, some can’t get employment. and often the employment they can get can’t support them. The minimum wage is way too low for that. They need the money. That’s why.
So the problem behind prostitution is really one of capitalism. If you’ve got a problem with prostitution, then you have a problem with capitalism, if you know it or not.
Of course, prostitution also exists in socialist nations. When chosen freely, it’s a valid form of work. It’s always existed, and despite the misguided efforts of busybodies, always will.
I don’t think it’s so much a capitalist thingie as it is simply “life choices”.
Everyone’s on a freeway, passing exits and making choices. You need gas – you look for a good exit, sometimes you pull off on an exit that doesn’t have a gas station – you curse, double back to the freeway and look for another option.
Look, a lot of us aren’t rocket scientists out here – so we don’t have a lot of “options” when we choose a line of work. What I’ve found is … the more dirty, dangerous, or difficult the work – the more people are willing to pay you for doing it for them. This was the choice I was faced with when I ditched college. Hey, I could have made it through – I’ve met plenty of rocks that managed to make it through college but I had no clue where to take it after that. So, I made the choice to do difficult things and I found that I got compensated well for them. It was a surprise to me that I liked doing them. Now, some of the people who were working with me eventually said … “This is BULLSHIT – I’m finding another line of work!” Soooo … it’s not for everyone.
I don’t think prostitution is much different. Women initially choose the work because they have to make choices from a finite set of options and that just seems to be the best one for them at the time. Some, just like my buddies – find that it’s “Bullshit” for them and leave it as soon as they can. Others find they like the pay and actually enjoy it as a career. Many others fall somewhere in between those two.
We live in a very strange world where people with desk jobs just look at people who don’t have them and say … “Oh poor you! If only you had been given the right options and educated properly you could have a wonderful desk job in an office cubicle with fake plants and florescent lighting …”
Nofuckinthanks.
Poverty, independence (from male supremacy), social advancement.
It’s funny you should mention capitalism. The only two instances in recent memory where a society came close to abolishing prostitution are:
1) China when Mao ruled it.
2) Cuba between 1959 and 1989.
Needless to say, these places and times were heavily Communist. Surely prostitutes existed, but not to the degree that they exist in in capitalist or mixed economies.
Because Communist countries are more puritanical than Democracies. The Eastern Bloc and the USSR, were harsh. The puritanism of the USA is close to the Communist bloc.
A number of social democrat nations in Europe, where capitalism and socialism are blended, are quite open and accepting of prostitution (Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, France with qualifications, Switzerland, that conservative nation in Europe, likely more). We in the USA have more in common, ironically, with our Cold War enemies on this particular subject than we do with our allies of that period.
The well-known phenomenon of one culture trying to prove itself morally superior to another by becoming more oppressive. I suspect that this is why some of the early Protestant regimes were so puritanical (for instance, the Puritans themselves).
We are not morally inferior to you Catholics. Look, we still burn witches! We’re even more afraid of nipples than you are!
Only in this case, it’s more like:
We are not morally inferior to you capitalists. Capitalism is what causes moral degradation! Look, we Communists have ended prostitution, homosexuality and serial killers! OK, so a few show up from time to time, but that’s just capitalist contamination!
And in fact I suspect that this is what the US is doing now.
We are not morally inferior to you mixed economy social democracies. Sure, we don’t have universal health care and our trains are slow, but just look at all the hookers and druggies we lock up! You just let them run around. And, and, your taxes are high!
“Sex trafficking victims are easily manipulated by their traffickers and have mixed emotions, often believing they love the person”
Now, I wonder in what situation a cop (or a neofeminist) would believe that a prostitute’s boyfriend or husband is not a “trafficker.”
I’ll answer my own question: Never.
If you know your girl is “turning tricks,” I’m sure they’d say real love would be turning her in to the police. Anything less makes you a pimp.
Of course, only a complete lunatic would believe you would sick the police on someone you really love… I’d hesitate about sicking them on someone I intensely disliked!
“Children don’t wake up one morning and decide they’ll be prostitutes… they’re forced into it”.
Professor of Criminology Dina Siegel (University of Utrecht, Netherlands) has done original research on Eastern European prostitution for over a decade, and she found girls in Romania and Bulgaria that expressed a wish to engage in sex work when they were of age. Yet another prohibitionist lie exposed.
Because those girls have older sisters who are already doing sex work and coming home during the holidays dressed better than the richest girls in Bucharest.
The “average” wage in Romania is $650 per month. That’s the average, as shopkeepers, custodians, laborers, or those in service jobs get much less.
So a lot of girls go to other countries to work in the sex industry. The traffickers want to shut this option down – somehow believing that having no other choice but a menial wage job is equivalent to “saving” these girls.
I met an impressive Romanian girl in an FKK and … over two days she “coaxed” more than a $1000 from me – more than the average wage in Romania and that was only two days and that was only what she got off me, since I’m sure she had other clients besides me. By the end of the month – these girls are raking in cash that only very upper class Romanians ever see and there’s few of them.
Over in the UK we’re seeing a group of Asian (not east Asian) men accused of rape and possible abduction of 14 year old girls in Oxford. The media will no doubt be focusing on the sex trafficking aspect and the possible racial motivations (white girls are easy) when the real question should be focused on why these girls had such chaotic home lives and why no one did anything about it.
And the the group in Ipswich presently being prosecuted. I know this is racist, but all seem to Asian men. Closer to Oxford I am also waiting for the High Wycombe abusers to come to court. Arrests at the end of last year, and no more has been heard. No idea who the perps were for that crime.
I also find the word trafficking bizzare. In these cases its grooming, rape, sexual abuse and paedophilia, quote from an IUSW tweet I just saw on the Ipswich article. Trafficking is the current in word and cause.
I find abolitionists cite these abuse cases as trafficking and prostitution. That end demand will stop this type of abuse. Fuck it won’t. What they do is not main stream prostitution which is advertised in the papers, but girls passed around a group of men in the know. No end Demand rhetoric will stop that type of abuse, what is happening is already illegal, rape and paedophilia. These guys won’t be stopped by new laws with lower potential sentences than what they could get now.
Yes I agree, chaotic home lives, and a failed children home system for those who have been removed from, or been discarded by their parents.
And in the Oxford vase, one of the girls was ignored by the police when she reported these crimes against her.
You should be thankful if your police are reluctant to take kids away from their parents based on hearsay or some nosy neighbor’s judgment of “chaos”. Ours are all too willing, and I’d gladly do without them.
This is not to say that children are never victimized. But at least once the kids are old enough to go to school, all CPS interventions ought to have to start with a complaint by the kid him/herself.
Apparently, they were willing to ignore complaints by the girls themselves. That’s hardly better than taking neighbor’s complaints for fact. I don’t think neighbors’ complaints should be dismissed out of hand, either. They need to be assessed and investigated (by that, I mean a real investigation, not a parody where the conclusion is foregone). Victimized children (or adults, for that matter) might be afraid (or unwilling) to report (because they feel – often rightly, from what I gather here – that the authorities can’t be trusted, or more complex reasons).
Yeah the phrase “we are the government and we are here to help you” should be taken with a salt shaker, a grain being insufficient. They may be, but the chances are just as great that they aren’t.
Thank you for taking the time to explain all this so well and educate all. xxx IN whore solidarity.
Maggie wrote;
Because clearly, American state borders are patrolled like those between Cold War-era East and West European countries, and thus form solid barriers like the chalk lines of cabalistic summoning circles to anyone who has not yet been struck by the Mystic Lightning of Adulthood. But just in case anyone might see through this infantilizing myth of “innocence”:
I know you wrote this tongue in cheek but I think you might have come closer to stylizing the mindset of those you call “lawheads” than perhaps you realize.
I have a different take. Infantilizing of children and women in this culture is rampant. The former when I read of or hear “childhood” as something meaningful other than a process to become an adult; childhood has no value other than as a road to adulthood, childhood isn’t a separate existence with it’s own intrinsic, permanent value. The latter when women aren’t held to the same standards as men. I don’t mean male rules; I mean lying, stealing, and violence, the rules both sexes agree to but to which one is held to a lower standard.
“Innocence” is a concept applied to both childhood and “untouched” women as a positive; innocence expressed by males is immaturity, a lack of knowledge about the world, a negative.
We need to hold both sexes to the same standard; and to accept childhood as what it is: that which leads to adulthood. We continue to infantilize “children”, those past puberty especially, and women because we don’t, or can’t, as a society accept that childhood isn’t an end to itself or that “womanhood” isn’t a separate state from “manhood”.
This isn’t Victoria’s England.
When I was last in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving, I some of the billboards. I tried to snap a pic with my cell phone, but it was illegible. I knew you’d get to these sooner or later.