In their Target Article “The Prostitution Problem”: Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes,
Benoit, Smith, Jansson, Healey, and Magnuson (2018) give an excellent account of two
primary positions taken toward sex work, in academia and beyond. The first position
holds that prostitution is an institution grounded in gender inequality, characterized
by and legitimizing the sexual exploitation of women by men. The second perspective
stresses the fact that multiple forms of social inequality intersect to constitute
prostitution as a form of exploited labor.
After thorough review of the available evidence, Benoit et al. (2018) conclude that
the strongest empirical support is definitely for a vision of sex work as work, be
it a form of notably exploited labor due to many different social inequalities. From
my own experience of decades in the field (e.g., Vanwesenbeeck, 1994, 2001, 2005,
2011a, b, 2013, 2017), I fully endorse such a view. This does not, however, detract
from the fact that gender inequality affects sex work practices as much as any other
(sexual) practice. Sex workers are dealing with sexism as much as any other worker—woman,
or man for that matter—and most probably even more, considering stigma and sex worker
rightlessness. One could thus argue that there is at least some truth in both perspectives.
Benoit et al. (2018) go on to acknowledge that, while the evidence supports the “labor
exploitation” over the “sexual exploitation” perspective on “the prostitution problem,”
the global trend has been the opposite. This has led to “repressive policies to punish
men who purchase sex, and protect women who sell sex, and to marginalize the sex sector.”
Although correct to a large extent, I radically oppose an account of repressive policies
as protective of women. On the contrary, much evidence now shows that repressive policies
fundamentally threaten sex workers health and rights (Vanwesenbeeck, 2017). Treating
sex work as exceptional, morally objectionable, and subsequently criminal is demonstrably
ineffective and, as evidence shows, only makes things worse. I also have difficulty,
with the one-sided causality implied by Benoit et al. (2018) as if an analysis of
prostitution as a problem would lead to certain policies to solve that problem. In
my view, it is repression that produces abuse and violence to a large extent and thereby
causes prostitution to be “a problem” in the first place.
Although Benoit et al. (2018) do attend to these mechanisms when discussing critiques
of repressive policies, they do not take a firm stand against them. Their call is
foremost for more robust research that would still have to establish the validity
of either of the two perspectives and the relative effectiveness of the various policy
frameworks. I personally doubt the feasibility of decent comparative research as well
as its usefulness. We already know that most sex work politics are morality politics
and that morality politics are notably pre-scientific and evidence-resistant (Wagenaar,
Amesberger, & Altink, 2017). More importantly, however, I do not think it is fruitful
to go on trying to find out the “truth” about either one of two perspectives on prostitution
as there is at least some truth in both of them. On the whole, I feel we should distance
ourselves from this binary because it produces simplified and stereotypical images
of commercial sex. Rather, we should look at the many processes behind the production
of such imagery, as well of the realities of sex workers themselves. These are not
stagnant phenomena. The “truth” about commercial sex is not absolute, fixed, or static.
On the contrary, the sex trade is a variable, dynamic, complex world that is constantly
changing and evolving. The “truth” as we know it is continually created and shaped
by many different actors on many different levels, not least by the design of narratives
around sex work and the implementation of certain policy regimes against the backdrop
of changing global contexts, shifting economic relations, and technological developments.
Whereas Benoit et al. (2018) appear to embark on an endeavor to discover “the truth”
about prostitution, I would like to shed some light on some of the subtle and not
so subtle dynamics behind the construction of “the truth” and the consequences of
these processes for the daily realities of sex workers. My aim is twofold: (1) to
radically offset the idea of “the prostitution problem” being fixed and stable, and
(2) to illustrate the determining role that repressive policies play in constituting
prostitution as a problem in the first place. Specifically, I will deal with the construction
of “the trafficking problem,” a notion that seems to now have become the dominant
narrative about migration for sex work and even about sex work overall. I intend to
illustrate that while, as Benoit et al. (2018) have shown, the overwhelming evidence
is for a perspective on sex work as exploited labor, the trafficking narrative is
aggressively deployed to uphold a markedly failing imagery of sex work as sexual exploitation
of women and to legitimize decidedly failing repressive politics (Persak, 2014).
Sex Workers on the Move
Many changes can be observed in the business of commercial sex of late. Due to economic,
ideological, and technological developments, a diversification and professionalization
of the sex industry has been noted (e.g., Cunningham et al., 2018; Ward & Aral, 2006).
An increase of information and communication technologies use by sex workers and a
(connected) growing worker independence are examples (Bernstein, 2007; NSWP, 2016;
Sanders, Connelly, & Jarvis-King, 2016). Probably the most widely attended shift,
however, is an increase in migration for sex work. Migration for work has always been
commonplace, not least in the global south (e.g., van Blerk, 2008). For women, working
in the caring professions in another region, country or continent has long provided
a viable alternative to desperate labor situations “back home.” Sex workers have been
a notably mobile crowd anyway, among others because of the stigma attached. But labor
migration, not least by women, may also have increased during the last decades due
to globalization and economic restructuring, the expansion of international travel,
the feminization of poverty, and women increasingly seeking autonomy and independence
(Agustín, 2007; Doezema, 2000; Ward & Aral, 2006). In addition, consumerism and the
commodification of sex may have further enlarged the market for sex work specifically
(Altman, 2001; O’Brien, 2016).
There is ample evidence that migration for sex work is, for the larger part of migrants,
a deliberate, calculated choice (e.g., Agustín, 2007; Bradley, 2010; Hwang, 2017;
Kempadoo, 2012; Sahni & Shankar, 2013; Weitzer, 2007, 2015). Notwithstanding the criminality
and exploitation that is axiomatically part of any illegal landscape, there is, overall,
little evidence of blatant force and coercion into sex work in the countries of origin
(e.g., Agustín, 2006; Doezema, 2000; UN Centre for International Crime Prevention,
2003; Wagenaar et al., 2017). To the contrary, sex work migration may be a path to
independence (van Blerk, 2008) and is not seldomly motivated by a level-headed flight
from sex and gender-related discrimination and violence (Corrêa, Petchesky, & Parker,
2008) or by a full-fetched search for adventure and self-realization (Agustín, 2007).
Hofmann (2010) coined the qualification of it being a form of bodily or corporeal
entrepreneurialism, well-fitting a neoliberalist society. Evidence disclaims the stereotype
that migrant sex workers are all uneducated and motivated by dire financial need (e.g.,
Busza, 2004; Hwang, 2017). They most certainly see themselves as agents.
However, migrant sex workers are mostly framed as devoid of agency, as vulnerable,
innocent victims, ignorant, näive, and manipulable. Where sex workers in general are
seen as either bad or sad, migrant sex workers are seen as mainly sad. There seems
to be a widespread, fundamental inability to combine considerations of push and pull
factors for migration with an acknowledgement of migrants’ agency (Agustín, 2006).
Ethnocentrism and a Western or even colonial gaze may be guilty here (cf. Doezema,
2000; Kempadoo, 2012), but a good dose of sexism may be at work as well: men migrate,
women are trafficked. And not to be understated, a programmatic, strategic maneuvering
by a huge anti-trafficking lobby systematically promotes these negative qualifications
as part of their moral crusade against prostitution.
Anti-Traffickers on the Move
It has been broadly documented that attention for sex trafficking has skyrocketed
during the last couple of decades (Agustín, 2006; Bernstein, 2014; Bradley, 2010;
Kempadoo, 2012; Weitzer, 2007; Wijers, 2015). Magnanti (2016) gave a telling illustration
by calculating from news database searches that there were only three references to
“human trafficking” before 2000, more than 500 in 2010, and tens of thousands since
then. The United Nations Trafficking Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking
in Persons launched in 2000, and the ensuing War on Trafficking by the Bush administration
have been crucial in this respect. At present, the anti-trafficking movement consists
of a diverse coalition of conservative (evangelical) Christians, fundamentalist Islamists,
abolitionist feminists, social activists of diverse stripes, a cadre of Hollywood
celebrities and corporate officials (cf. Bernstein, 2014; O’Brien, 2016). In the U.S.
alone, possibly hundreds of ideology-based organizations, often privately funded with
huge sums of money by right-wing, conservative evangelicals, now exclusively devote
themselves to the war against trafficking, which many admit is really a war against
prostitution (Magnanti, 2016).
The global “anti-trafficking juggernaut” (Kempadoo, 2012) has been analyzed against
the backdrop of “the return of the religious,” notably the reactive politicization
of conservative Christianity (Bernstein, 2010; Corrêa et al., 2008, Corrêa, De la
Dehesa, & Parker, 2014), as well as of the countermovements of globalization as expressed
in strong nationalism, populism, and anti-migration sentiments (Corrêa et al., 2008;
Kempadoo, 2012). Commentators (e.g., Doezema, 2000) observe parallels with the moral
panics and white slavery debates in the beginning of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, where deeper fears and uncertainties relating to women’s growing
mobility and power, a downfall of the family, a loss of national identity, increasing
migration, and perceived threats to social stability also played a major role. The
geographical direction was different but the same rhetoric is employed, and both must
be unmasked as cultural myths, Doezema (2000) asserts. As sexual rights gain visibility,
homophobia escalates (Corrêa et al., 2008) and whorephobia probably no less. The “rise
of the social” in which a newly empowered bourgeoisie felt qualified to rehabilitate
inferiors (Agustin, 2007) and an overall NGO-ization in international cooperation
(Bernstein, 2014; Corrêa et al., 2008) have also been added to the equation that has
resulted in a renewed, powerful, worldwide anti-prostitution movement.
The Making of “The Trafficking Problem”
The anti-prostitution movement makes a good many claims, such as violence being omnipresent
in prostitution, customers and traffickers being the personification of evil, and
sex workers lacking agency, which may all be exposed as problematic, unsubstantiated,
and/or false (cf. Weitzer, 2007, 2015). Crucially, they principally reject the very
concept of benign migration for sex work. One of the strategies is to present only
the horror stories and atrocity tales. Terms such as “prostituted women” and “sexual
slavery” are employed as “staples in their discourse” (Weitzer, 2007, p. 451) and
make any agency in migrant sex workers invisible in the first place. One central,
evidently unsubstantiated and seemingly false claim is about the magnitude of violent
trafficking as “greatly increased” and “very high” with “thousands of trafficked women”
existing at “an epidemic level.” Figures used are incredibly elastic, ranging from
some hundreds thousands of trafficked victims to three or even four million annually.
And many media outlets report such figures matter-of-factly.
However, the production of these high numbers has been critiqued for a lack of methodological
transparency and source documentation, for incorrect extrapolations, and for unacceptable
broadening of the definition of what constitutes a victim (e.g., Gozdziak & Collett,
2005, for the U.S.; Kelly, 2005, for Europe). Inflation of numbers takes place by,
for instance, defining all underage persons as trafficked. Also, the term sex trafficking
is often used for all migrants or “every instance of relocation to a destination where
an individual sells sex” (Weitzer, 2007, p. 453). The definition has also been expanded
in such a way that sex workers’ regular practices of sharing space and sharing information,
either online or offline, are considered trafficking (e.g., Burns, 2015). Other strategies
include the expansion of the number of victims with all “youth at risk of violence”
or with all “possible victims,” qualifications strongly subject to subjective opinion
and profiling. Yet another strategy is to disguise all trafficking as sex trafficking.
As Magnanti (2016) notes, the International Labor Organization estimates that no more
than 21% of trafficked people are in forced sexual labor, but “when you listen to
the media you wouldn’t think trafficking comes in flavors other than sex” (p. 51).
As a consequence of such clear distortions, an embarrassing discrepancy has arisen
between extremely high numbers claimed for victims of trafficking (up to 50,000 every
year) in the U.S. and the really low number (less than 2000 in 10 years) of T-visas
(visas specifically for victims of trafficking) granted (Bernstein, 2010). Magnanti
(2016) sniggers that, on Twitter, there are more accounts for groups supposedly raising
awareness of trafficking than there are actual documented victims (italics in original)
(p. 71).
Enormous amounts of money are spent on efforts to prove sex trafficking and find victims.
Magnanti (2016) provides a series of accounts of such unfruitful endeavors. For instance,
the FBI’s “Operation Cross Country” contributed something in the order of $40 million
in 2015 and 2016 to fight trafficking of children, resulting in the grand total of
two arrests of suspected traffickers, each with one victim, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old
(p. 60). In the UK in 2007, a wide-scale investigation where 55 police forces used
every method at police disposal (1300 locations were raided, 255 women—who later turn
out to be voluntary migrants—were “rescued”) resulted in five convictions of men across
the country (Magnanti, 2016, p. 55). Another example is the Polaris Project in the
U.S., which oversees the National Human Trafficking Resource Centre’s telephone hotline.
It obtained $3.2 million in funding in 2010, during which time they received 471 calls,
which boils down to about $7000 per call. Magnanti (2016) cites fundingtrends.org,
who report that funding for studying trafficking rose from almost nothing in 1991
to the tune of 600 million US dollars by 2010. By the end of 2016, the value of grants
awarded for trafficking amounted to double the money offered for lung cancer and 20
times greater than the funding for malnutrition, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
It has been calculated that the 50 largest anti-trafficking organizations in the U.S.
have an estimated income of about $700 million per year, as of 2015. Combined with
another 40 anti-trafficking groups funded by the U.S. State Department, budgets top
$1.2 billion. “138 traffickers were convicted in 2012: that’s $8.6 million, minimum,
per conviction,” Magnanti (2016) again poignantly observes (p. 73).
The lack of evidence does not seem to bother the anti-trafficking lobby, nor its financers,
or authorities. To the contrary, in many places, the anti-prostitution ideology has
become state policy, in the U.S. for one. Weitzer (2007) illustrated how the anti-prostitution
crusade has permeated every level of policy processes. Crusade ideology is officially
recognized and endorsed; many programmatic and legal changes are in accordance with
the ideology. Sex worker rights activists on the other hand (derogatively called the
“pro-prostitution-lobby” by the anti-trafficking movement), totally lack such access
to U.S. state elites. The popularity of the anti-trafficking rhetoric among state
officials has also been linked to recent neoliberal social transformations of “the
state” itself: a solid strengthening of carceral politics, and new techniques of surveillance
and social control (Bernstein, 2014, p. 348). Radical feminism has also become increasingly
“carceral,” not least in their anti-prostitution lobby.
“Americanization” of Sexual Politics
Clearly, the influence of the U.S. reaches far beyond its own borders. The U.S. footprint
on global developments in matters of sex work, and sexual and reproductive health
and rights more generally, is huge (cf. Corrêa et al., 2008; Kempadoo, 2012). Reviewing
the evidence, Altman (2001) already pondered whether globalization should not rather
be called “Americanization.” At that time, the Global Gag Rule (GGR: a U.S. foreign
policy that prohibits foreign NGOs that receive U.S. family planning funds from providing
or advocating for abortion) had just been reinstated by the Bush administration. The
GGR has ostensibly served as a barrier to a wide range of health services for women
and girls globally (e.g., Center for Health and Gender Equity, 2017). A few years
later, Bush launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), one
of the largest and most influential donor programs in this area that strongly promoted
abstinence and was notably ineffective in serving sex workers (Pisani, 2008). The
Bush administration also cut funding for The United Nations Family Planning Association,
a key source of financial assistance for reproductive health programs. These measures
had disastrous consequences for the altogether vulnerable sexual and reproductive
health infrastructure in many developing countries (Vanwesenbeeck, 2011b). The global
impact of Bush’s prescriptions on sex have been widespread and deep. They inspired
conservative states and social forces to push their political and religious agendas
and, in a large number of cases, Bush administration guidelines and prescriptions
have been incorporated into national policy frames (Corrêa et al., 2008, p. 39). And
then there is also the invasion in Iraq, which fueled anti-Western sentiments in the
Middle East and the Arabic world, promoting the rise of a fundamentalist version of
Islam that holds notably negative views on prostitution (Bradley, 2010).
Two U.S. initiatives directly targeted sex work. In 2003, the Anti-Prostitution Loyalty
Oath, also known as the anti-prostitution pledge, was put in place as part of PEPFAR
and requires NGOs that receive federal anti-HIV/AIDS or anti-trafficking funds to
adopt an organization-wide policy opposing prostitution and sex trafficking. This
provision has had many negative ramifications in the fight against AIDS and, notably,
for sex workers’ health and rights worldwide (e.g., Center for Health and Gender Equity,
2015). In addition, after the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was put in place
in 2000, national interventions to combat trafficking (except their own) are now evaluated
by the US State Department annually. Countries are ranked and those that do not comply
with U.S. standards are placed in the lowest tier and subject to sanctions. The lowest
tier mainly consists of countries that the U.S. considers to be unruly anyway, illustrating
that the trafficking discourse is used toward political ends rather than to protect
victims (e.g., Kempadoo, 2012). Nevertheless, many countries try to comply, in an
effort to compete for international recognition (Bernstein, 2014). Ironically, national
anti-trafficking measures have not only increased abuse of sex workers and human rights
violations (e.g., Corrêa et al., 2014; GAATW, 2007; Vanwesenbeeck, 2017), but also
stimulated rather than reduced migration among sex workers (Ditmore, 2008; Hwang,
2017).
U.S. abolitionists have demonstrably put in a lot of effort to insert their anti-prostitution
framework into the international arena. Europe has certainly been targeted fiercely
and with huge sums of money (Hoff, 2014). A leading role has been taken on by Sweden
that has (as part of their ongoing “nation branding”) aggressively marketed its “Swedish
model” of client criminalization as a feminist policy par excellence (Florin, 2012;
Outshoorn, 2015). A notable low among the consequences was the European Parliament
endorsing an advisory motion promoting “demand reduction” among its member states
in 2014, while in 1986 the Parliament recommended decriminalization of the “exercise
of the profession” (Euchner & Knill, 2015).
The Workings of Anti-Trafficking Politics
Although the anti-trafficking lobby’s main tenet is protection of victims, the evidence
that anti-trafficking policies and criminalization of sex work achieve just the opposite
is overwhelming. Repressive sex work regimes are at serious odds with human rights
and public health principles. Repression fuels stigma and all its negative consequences.
It escalates sex workers’ risks and vulnerabilities and negatively impacts working
routines and relations. It reduces access to health care and the legal system, denies
sex workers’ authority and self-determination, and blocks ways out of the industry
(Vanwesenbeeck, 2017). Underage sex workers in the U.S. “rescued” in “the fight against
trafficking” do not get salvation but get detention, court fees, and criminal records
that only make their lives more difficult (Moore, 2015). Arbitrary arrest and detention,
displacement and forced rehabilitation, deportation, and denial of access to justice
are among the many human rights violations documented as a consequence of “the war
on trafficking” (e.g., Agustín, 2007; Amnesty International, 2016; GAATW, 2007; ICRSE,
2016). Empower Foundation (2012) in Thailand suggested that rescuers actually posed
a greater threat to the safety of sex workers than traffickers. I stand with Magnanti
(2016) who concludes: “The closer we look at the truth about trafficking, the more
we find not women and children being saved from terrible fates, but powerful agencies
claiming money and attention for themselves while the people they supposedly rescue
are arrested, deported, and fall through society’s cracks” (p. 49).
As a rule, migrant sex workers are hit the hardest. Everywhere, their social and working
positions are often weak and vulnerable. When ending up in anti-trafficking raids,
migrant women are the first to be violated. They are routinely “out-migrated” without
any protection being offered. Migrant sex workers are seen as victims but treated
as criminals, Kempadoo (2012) observes. However, actual victims of trafficking are
notably ill-supported. In contrast to the huge sums of money being spend in “the war
on trafficking,” progress in the area of victim assistance and conviction of traffickers
is notably slow (Dottridge, 2014). Restrictive anti-trafficking measures fail to support
victims, violate human rights, threaten health and safety, and actually drive migrants
into the arms of exploitative brokers (Hwang, 2017). Anti-trafficking awareness campaigns
construct a notably narrow understanding of the problem by depicting “ideal criminal
offenders” and they obscure the role restrictive migration regimes in the destination
countries play (O’Brien, 2016). As a result, migrants are rendered vulnerable to traffickers
instead of being “saved” from them.
Conclusion
The radical feminist position that sex work is, by definition, a form of violence
against women has grown into the proposition that all sex work is, by definition,
a form of trafficking. Sex work policies have been reduced to morality-based policies
against trafficking, with ample attention to restrictions on migration. Anti-trafficking
politics target prostitution as the problem, not the concrete problems and inequalities
in and behind prostitution that lead to sexual violence and (labor) exploitation in
their many forms. Maybe Benoit et al. (2018) started on the wrong foot by looking
at perspectives on “the prostitution problem” in the first place. As much as “the
trafficking problem,” use of the phrase “the prostitution problem” contributes, in
its negativity, one-sidedness, and lack of nuance, to unrealistic cultural myths about
sex work. There is, however, nothing mythical about the actual exploitation and abuse
of women (and men) in sex work. But framing the whole industry as “the problem” is
fueling stigma and its consequences. It forecloses effective strategies to fight exploitation
and assist its victims. Dottridge (2017), an ex-director of Anti-Slavery International,
makes this point on the framing of sex work as Modern Slavery: “The types of exploitation
implied by Modern Slavery encourage many government officials to stop paying attention
to conventional techniques for protecting workers such as regulation, workplace inspections,
and trade unions. By creating the impression that they are helpless slaves who need
rescuing from the hands of criminals, they propagate a myth that all informal work
that helps migrants to survive is illicit and should be prohibited, thereby denying
migrants the lifeline on which they often depend.” Demonstrably effective strategies
to fight and prevent labor exploitation in sex work, encompass full decriminalization,
community building integration, and collective governance (cf. Amnesty International,
2016; Östergren, 2017; Vanwesenbeeck, 2017; Wagenaar et al., 2017). And any effective
fight against exploitation should involve the workers themselves, not dismiss them.
Fortunately and increasingly, sex workers do claim voice and will not let themselves
be silenced any longer (e.g., GAATW, 2018; Mgbako, 2016; Stevenson & Dziuban, 2018).
Hundreds of organizations worldwide are now members of the umbrella Global Network
of Prostitution Projects and a couple dozen more are estimated to operate more or
less independently. Sex workers’ migration networks have also been formed (Hwang,
2017). The representation of the sex worker movement in policy making is hampered
by a notion of prostitution as “the” problem. Sex workers should not be seen as part
of the problem but be acknowledged as essential and valuable partners in the solution.