Oppose changes in Trafficking law -- URGENTLY call write Senators

Sex Work vs. Trafficking: Understanding the Difference
By Melissa Ditmore, RH Reality Check
Posted on May 10, 2008, Printed on May 12, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84987/

Originally posted at RH Reality Check.

Even those who mean well sometimes confuse the human
rights abuse of trafficking in persons with the human
occupation of prostitution, or sex work. It's
understandable because of the history of the two
fields, but it creates rather than solves problems.
Let me try to sort it out here.

The tendency to treat trafficking and prostitution as
if they were the same thing has a long and problematic
history. Legislation and social discussion have often
blurred or denied any difference, but that has always
made things worse rather than better for those
involved.

The trafficking of women and children into sexual
slavery is undeniably a gross abuse of human rights.
Like all trafficking, it involves coercion or trickery
or both. Sex trafficking is an odious forms of
trafficking, but it is far from the only one. Men,
women and children are also -- and more commonly --
trafficked routinely for purposes of household and
farm labor as well as sweatshop manufacturing. Their
lives may be less media-genic than those of sex
trafficking victims, but they are no less brutal,
dangerous and degraded.

A narrow focus on the single aspect of sex trafficking
is often fueled by sensationalist and sometimes
salacious accounts of sexual abuse. It leads us to
ignore these other forms of trafficking, and so denies
help and protection to all the men, women and children
forced into and trapped in abusive working situations
in other industries.

By the same token, treating sex work as if it is the
same as sex trafficking both ignores the realities of
sex work and endangers those engaged in it. Sex
workers include men and women and transgender persons
who offer sexual services in exchange for money. The
services may include prostitution (sexual intercourse)
and other services such as phone sex. Sex workers
engage in this for many reasons, but the key
distinction here is that they do it voluntarily. They
are not coerced or tricked into staying in the
business but have chosen this from among the options
available to them.

A key goal of sex worker activists is to improve
sex-working conditions, but self-organization is
impossible when sex work is regarded as merely another
form of slavery. Then authorities and laws trying to
stop true slavery -- trafficking -- get misapplied to
sex workers, clients and others involved in the sex
industry. Law enforcement raids in the U.S. and
abroad, for example, have led to little success
identifying trafficked persons but instead have driven
sex work underground. This exposes sex workers to an
increased risk of violence and denies them any
protection of laws against assault or access to
medical, legal and educational services. It denies
them their human rights.

A national anti-trafficking law enacted in 2000
recognizes "severe forms of trafficking" as a modern
form of slavery that involves a broad spectrum of
workers and industries. In this interpretation,
trafficking is clearly distinguished from voluntary
sex work and thus avoids the absurdity of equating the
fear and suffering of a trafficked person with the
typical working conditions of voluntary sex workers.
These conditions are often far from ideal, but
nevertheless they are far removed from debt bondage or
enslavement.

It is regrettable that despite the obvious reality of
this perspective, the popular imagination of sex work
tends to return to images of young girls forced into
sexual slavery. Perhaps people would rather read such
stories than hear about more prosaic struggles for
workers' rights -- to organize, to be free from
harassment, to get decent health care. But their
preferences should not be allowed to dictate policy
about either human trafficking or sex work.

Traditional standards of morality have been a major
influence on legislation aimed at trafficking, and on
the ways that trafficking legislation changes the
legal treatment of prostitution. But the 'moral'
position opposing sex work is actually a specific
political and ideological position, and its net effect
is typically to limit women's autonomy.

Sex law is often a front for ideology that constrains
rather than liberates women. What most appalls me
about the recent conflation of trafficking and sex
work in law and policy is that some feminists support
the confusion. These women would normally never dream
of telling other women how to behave, because they
have fought against imposed constraints in their own
lives. Yet they seem to think it is acceptable to tell
sex workers what is best for them, and they are
prepared to use dubious political alliances to advance
their moral agenda.

Women's studies professor Donna Hughes even told the
National Review that George W. Bush is the president
who has done the most for women on the strength of his
policies aimed against sex work. The fact that these
policies do nothing to halt human trafficking and in
fact may be counter-productive seems to be irrelevant.
So does the worse fact that President Bush has
presided over a deliberate reduction in access to
reproductive health care for women in the United
States and around the world.

Women are not the only victims when trafficking is
conflated with sex work. The confusion squanders
opportunities to address real victimization and to
assist people in real situations of abuse. Resources,
time and energy that might actually help trafficking
victims are wasted in sensational "rescues" that are
also ineffective and often counterproductive.

There is a clear need to formulate public policy that
is less emotionally driven and better able to
recognize the real causes, nature and effects of
trafficking in persons. People concerned about the
health and rights of migrants should choose to talk in
terms of migration and mobility and workers' rights --
including sex workers' rights -- rather than confusing
matters by using the term "trafficking" with all its
attendant baggage. That should help clear the debating
field for useful and separate discussions of both.

Melissa Ditmore, Ph.D., was the inaugural Chair of the
Advisory Board of the Sex Workers Project and is a
research consultant on issues of sex work, mobility
and migration, HIV and sexual health. She edited the
Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work (Greenwood
Press, 2006) and edits Research for Sex Work, the
journal of the Network of Sex Work Projects.

© 2008 RH Reality Check All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/84987/