All of the hallmarks of a moral crusade are evident—framing a condition as an
unqualified evil; creation of folk devils; zealotry among leaders who see their mission
as a righteous enterprise; presentation of claims as universalistic truths; use of
horror stories as representative of actors’ experiences; promulgation of huge and
unverified numbers of victims; and attempts to redraw normative boundaries by
increased criminalization. Prostitution is depicted as immoral or intrinsically harmful,
and systems of legal prostitution as dens of iniquity and oppression. As is typical
of moral crusades, activists (and now government officials) have presented
questionable statistics and anecdotal horror stories as evidence of a worldwide
epidemic of coerced prostitution. The crusade’s sweeping claims are contradicted
by academic research on the sex industry, including comprehensive reviews of the
scholarly literature.133
What is particularly striking is the degree to which current claims recapitulate
arguments made a century ago regarding “white slavery,” a problem that was
largely mythical.134 The anti-trafficking campaign has capitalized on “one of the
most powerful symbols in the pantheon of Western imagery, the innocent, young
girl dragged off against her will to distant lands to satisfy the insatiable sexual
cravings of wanton men.”135 It has been argued that “today’s stereotypical ‘trafficking
victim’ bears as little resemblance to women migrating for work in the
sex industry as did her historical counterpart, the ‘white slave.’”136
This does not mean that coercive sex trafficking is fictional. Force and deception
are realities in the sex trade, and the perpetrators deserve stiff punishment.
But instead of focusing on unfree labor, the campaign has broadly targeted all
migration if sex is sold at the destination. What is largely missing from crusade
discourse is attention to the root causes of migration, such as poverty and barriers
to women’s employment in the Third World and Eastern Europe. Crusade
leaders occasionally mention structural factors, but this has been overshadowed
by the dominant moral discourse and by a focus on individuals and their immediate
circumstances.137
An alternative model would (1) pay more attention to the socioeconomic conditions
that promote sex work, (2) focus on unfree labor rather than prostitution
per se, (3) faithfully represent women’s varied experiences in prostitution, and (4)
identify concrete ways of enhancing workers’ health, safety, and control over working conditions.138 A full discussion of policy implications is beyond the scope
of this article, but any such discussion must take into account differences between
types of prostitution. In other words, policies should be sector-specific. Some
workers, concentrated in the upscale echelon (call girls, escorts), are not interested
in leaving the trade, and their biggest concern is being arrested.139 Other workers,
both internationally and domestically, whether trafficked or not, want to leave the
sex industry, yet resources to facilitate exit are woefully lacking. In the United
States, most cities provide virtually no government-funded support services
for sex workers.140 Desperately needed are resources for counseling, health care,
drug treatment, temporary housing, and job training. Regarding sex trafficking, as
noted above, interventions focused on persons who are unequivocally victims and
perpetrators of coercive trafficking (involving force and fraud) would be a superior
strategy to the undifferentiated and often counterproductive practices of many
faith-based rescue organizations, whose practices are driven by this moral crusade’s
broad goal of abolishing the entire sex industry worldwide.
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