Every so often an article is just so chock full of prohibitionist idiocy it not only defies categorization, but also cries out for more extensive mockery than I can give it in a news column. This one, from a small-town paper in Wisconsin, is virtually a catalogue of prohibitionist bullshit, so let’s not waste any time in getting to the vivisection.
People ordinarily interpret human trafficking to be something like the horrors of the action-thriller movie Taken. Though it absolutely happens…
No, it absolutely doesn’t. See the tag “The Face of Trafficking” for what actual examples of coerced prostitution look like; you’ll find neither off-the-street abductions of middle-class white American girls nor Ramboesque “rescues”.
…In reality, the definition of human trafficking is the recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing, obtaining or attempting to maintain a person through force, fraud and coercion for labor, services or commercial sex acts…
Wouldn’t it be nice if that really were the operating definition instead of just the one they use in articles? In reality, “human trafficking” means whatever “authorities” want it to mean, most often plain old mundane sex work. For example, look at the next moronic statement:
…“Child sex trafficking has been identified in every Wisconsin county,” [career prohibitionist Morgan Young] said…
If that were actually true, it would’ve made national news. In reality, unless we’re looking at a really long span of time (say, the entire 21st century so far), it’s very unlikely that cops have even arrested an underage sex worker in most of Wisconsin’s largely-rural counties. But throw in a weasel-word like “identified” and the sentence isn’t as blatantly ridiculous to amateurs.
…advocates for domestic violence and sexual assault victims, probation and social work clients, the aging and disability population, and the low-income and homeless communities. Professionals from the law enforcement, medical, legal, faith-based and economic development fields also participated…
Yes, this was a bunch of pigs, prigs, bureaucrats, busybodies and profiteers getting together to share fantasies about a group they conspicuously excluded from the wankfest, because we’d have rained on their parade with actual facts.
…Recent studies show that 15 is the average age a female becomes trafficked…
Nudging a lie up by two years makes it no less a lie. This has been debunked so many times even arch-prohibitionists Polaris now grudgingly admit it’s bullshit.
…Traffickers…can be men, women, husbands, wives, neighbors or coworkers of all races, genders and cultures…
It’s easy to make imaginary people of any demographic group, provided one’s imagination isn’t entirely racist and sexist.
…Other risk factors of people who may be swept up into trafficking include impulsivity, interest in risk-taking, desire for love and acceptance, low self-worth, family conflict, mental health issues, physical abuse history, substance abuse, loneliness, poverty, limited language abilities, a lack of understanding rights and laws, criminal records, minimal education and workforce skills, cultural shame and more…
If one wants to deny people’s agency so as to have an excuse for overruling their personal decisions and inflicting violence on them, stigmatizing mental health conditions, substance use, migrant status and normal adolescent angst is a really good way to start.
…“Sometimes it’s really hard to reprogram people [to believe] they have more to offer than [sex],” Young said. “They can feel like they’ve chosen this”…
Yes, that’s the ever-vile “false consciousness” paradigm there; anyone who behaves in a way “authorities” think she shouldn’t is clearly a passive victim without true free will. Young is so convinced of her own rectitude that she doesn’t even realize what she’s saying about herself by using the word “reprogram”.
…”trafficking also means threatening to cause harm”…
That’s right, if someone threatens you that means you’re a “sex trafficking” victim! It really does mean whatever they want it to mean.
…it is more profitable to force victims into prostitution, where they can be “sold” over and over again…
This is taken directly from cop anti-gang propaganda; cops now pretend bogeyman “gangs” are abandoning the drug trade for “sex trafficking” because “drugs can only be sold once, but a girl can be sold many times.” Translated from the Copese, this means “We’re now using a new excuse to persecute the same people we always have.”
…human trafficking involving minors may also include dancing…
This is a very common lie, despite the fact that raids on strip clubs virtually never turn up anyone under 18 (for obvious reasons).
…That hierarchy of power and control is the reason most victims are not easily convinced that law enforcement, social workers or other crisis professionals are there to help them…
No, the reason they’re not easily convinced is the fact that cops are actually there to harass, rape, rob and cage them, and social workers offer nothing but bog rolls, finger-painting classes and shaming. If sex work were decriminalized and social workers actually offered real and profitable alternatives to sex work, the story might be different.
…A young woman might need help and services, but as Young said, she still may feel like a “bad kid who is going to be punished…they feel like the trafficker is someone they love and trust, and how dare any of us gets between that relationship”…
Prohibitionists’ heads are lodged so far up their own rectal cavities, they don’t recognize how obvious their attempts to infantilize sex workers and pass judgments on their relationships are.
…She added that these cases look a lot like domestic violence situations…
This is the only almost-true statement in the whole farrago of nonsense and lies. I say “almost” because the situations she’s talking about aren’t “almost” domestic violence; they are domestic violence. That “almost” is there to maintain the lies that 1) their relationships aren’t real relationships (see previous item); an 2) that “trafficking” is some special case requiring a whole rescue industry.
…95 percent of human trafficking victims are chemically-dependent and 90 percent have prior criminal records…
No truly stupid “sex trafficking” screed is complete without a brand-new made-up “statistic”; because these fantasists know their audiences are mathematically-illiterate, it’s rare that the claimed bad thing is said to be below 90%.
…Additional goals of the response team are to…continue shutting down and making sex-buying websites illegal…
Just in case you doubted that for the most part, prohibitionists just use “sex trafficking” as a dysphemism for “sex work”. The article closes with a not-atypical list of “signs of sex trafficking” which could apply to a very large fraction of hotel guests, and are therefore excuses for more surveillance, snitching and police violence. Of course, useful idiots like Young (and the author of the article) are unable to see this; they’re so invested in their “sex slave” masturbatory fantasy and the idea of cops as mighty heroes (the word “mighty” is actually used in this mess to describe vice pigs) that they’re completely unable to understand their role in destroying freedom for everyone rather than just people who have sex lives.
