Anti-Trafficking Efforts and Harm: an appendix to Rachel Rabbit White's post

Rachel Rabbit White interviewed me and a few other sex worker rights activists for a piece on the trafficking statistics debate recently sparked by the Ashton Kutcher/Village Voice debacle. Read the piece: Sex Workers on Trafficking and Real Men Getting Their Facts Straight.
Rachel edited down some of my answers, so here's my full set of responses to her questions.

1.How does quoting false statistics, like Ashton and so many news sources do, harm the cause?

2. Does this harm sex workers?

Unfortunately, good intentions are not enough. I do believe that even one child trafficked into and exploited by the sex industry is too many, but I also believe that it is of a very high importance that in the pursuit of justice, the human rights of all people should be protected. In attempts to stop sex trafficking, there are often human rights abuses that are experienced not just by consenting sex workers but sometimes by the survivors of trafficking themselves. This is highly problematic. For example, here in New York, young people who are commercially sexually exploited are often arrested and imprisoned for prostitution - arrest is often the main way victims of trafficking (both youth and adult) are identified. Some get prison records, while others are put into forced rehabilitation programs that may not meet their needs but are identified as an alternative to prison. In addition to being singled out for arrest, victims of trafficking are sometimes subjected to police raids, which can be very traumatic and often result in detention (but not necessarily a day in court). The 2009 Sex Workers Project report "The Use of Raids to Fight Trafficking in Persons," notes that the people interviewed for the study who did not self-identify as trafficked resented the raids, as did many of the people who identified as victims of trafficking.

Though as our society our reaction to terrible things generally tends toward "find the people responsible for this and put them in prison!" what happens more often is that the people most likely to go to jail or be otherwise detained are the people who actually need services and human rights protections.
 

3. What do you think most people are not getting about trafficking—as far as what trafficking is and isn't?

The annual Trafficking in Persons report published by the U.S. Department of State defines trafficking as "activities involved when one person obtains or holds another person in compelled service." Though sex trafficking often gets the most attention, the International Labour Organization estimates that only one in nine cases of human trafficking are sex trafficking. The other eight cases include domestic, agricultural, textile, and industrial labor as well as child soldiers. Increasingly, in the United States, anti-trafficking legislation is used to enact anti-immigration sentiments.
 

4. The overwhelming response I've seen to Village Voice vs Ashton/ DNA in major publication's comment sections is: "But who cares, even if only one child were trafficked, this is a problem!" What is your response?

5. How has DNA and campaigns like it shunned sex workers who want to help?

Most anti-sex trafficking campaigns are anti-prostitution campaigns full stop, or like Kutcher recently did they recognize consenting adult sex workers as an extreme minority whose opinions are irrelevant. I think it's really important for adult sex workers, especially those who chose their profession, to be educated about the complexities of the issue. Most people who fall into the category of choice and are able to be out are white, middle class, native English speaking, able bodied, cisgender women - and most of the people who are victims of trafficking (or profiled as such) are not. So there is a disconnect there.

It is also important to know that there are both human rights groups and service providers that understand the complexities of sex work and trafficking and support survivors of trafficking in a useful way that centers the needs of the survivors. The reason you don't hear as much about these groups as you hear about the celebrity-endorsed campaigns is mostly because they are busy doing the unglamorous work of providing services and waging legal battles to secure human rights and dignity for the individuals they work with.
 

6. Any words to help readers understand the concept of choice vs circumstance vs coercion?

In most people's realities, all choices are constrained by something. There isn't really such a thing as "free choice," especially when it comes to making a living and supporting your family. Though the mainstream media creates these extremes of the "empowered high class call girl" and the "exploited drug-addicted street worker", the reality of the sex industry is much more complex, and it is important to work to amplify the voices of real people who exist in that gray area. That gray area is "circumstance," and it is the reason most people work at all.