Before everyone gets too excited about the anti-trafficking bills passed by our Legislature this year, I hope people will take a minute to realize that this is a very controversial area. Anti-trafficking groups have come under widespread criticism for the world view they promote regarding prostitution and for the "solutions" they suggest.
There are two sides to this discussion.
One consists of American anti-trafficking advocates represented by conservative Christian groups, radical feminists and, since early in the Bush years, the U.S. federal government. This side states that prostitution is a form of modern-day slavery, that only its complete abolition is an appropriate goal, and that scholars and organizations who don’t hold those views should be kept out of the discussion.
On the other side are a large number of academics, who have criticized the anti-trafficking "facts" as junk science. Along with them are the sex workers rights movement that consists of various unions and guilds of sex workers throughout the world, and the many nonprofit service providers who follow a harm-reduction paradigm.
The major South Asian anti-trafficking group, The Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women also is often at odds with U.S. anti-trafficking efforts.
The ability to communicate is uneven. The anti-trafficking groups have access to money from well-heeled Christian groups and from the U.S. government.
The government is not in the habit of funding any organizations that oppose their human-trafficking ideas. This creates a gag effect limiting discussion. Foreign organizations have had to sign an actual anti-prostitution pledge to get U.S. government support.This has meant loss of funding to a number of organizations fighting AIDs since they employ sex workers as peer educators and refuse to sign the Bush administration’s pledge.
Compounding the political interference in the ability of professional organizations to participate in this discussion is the difficulty of convincing sex workers to tell their own stories when they contradict the anti-trafficking message.
One should understand that victimization stories have a lot of benefits tied to them. A former sex worker who was a "victim" may be able to clear a criminal record, more easily find new employment, find a husband, or if an illegal alien, avoid deportation. Those without a victim story may have a lifetime of shame to live down. Those currently working face arrest and imprisonment.
Agencies that actively promote the victimization concept seem to hear lots more victimization stories than those that don’t. The anti-trafficking groups explain this by saying the other organizations simply aren’t properly trained in recognizing trafficking victims. This is despite the fact that various harm-reduction organizations in Hawaii have decades of firsthand experience dealing with these issues.
The possibility that much of the victimization stories being told are not the complete truth doesn’t seem to be considered.
Hawaii had its own anti-trafficking task force that met for several years. No harm-reduction-oriented organization was appointed to the task force despite years of experience in the very topics to be discussed.
Everyone wants to see an end to violence, exploitation and abuse in the sex industries for adults as well as minors. We fail to see how penalizing adult consensual prostitution will accomplish that.
We suggest that in the future, press and politicians not limit their knowledge to that supplied by anti-trafficking advocacy groups — but do include information from the Youth Outreach Project, CHOW Project, Arresting Prostitutes is Legal Exploitation and others in the know.
