Plenary on The Struggle Against Human Trafficking
NCADV / NOMAS M&M National Conference
August 2, 2010, Anaheim CA

“Sex Workers” vs. “Girls Used In Prostitution”... 
Our Psychological Barriers to Combating Trafficking

Robert Brannon, Ph.D., Chair
NOMAS National Task Group on Pornography & Prostitution

Download the PDF version here

The movement against trafficking faces many daunting kinds of obstacles... But some of the most difficult, frustrating barriers we face are psychological, internal: in the images that we no longer remember where we acquired, the false stereotypes we hold, that somehow guide us; the categories and mental labels that obscure the plain truth.

I am a psychologist, and I want to look at some of the internal “barriers” that confront the growing movement against sex trafficking. And because these obstacles are located in your mind, and in mine, there is reason to imagine that we can chip away at and undermine some of those mental obstacles... to have a “click” that makes a feminist perspective suddenly make sense and come into clear focus. So a first mental barrier to confront is this one:

1. “Trafficking” sounds bad; “Prostitution”... not so bad.

Two girls, age 17, are confined in the same nondescript brothel on a side street in Los Angeles. Each is being sexually exploited, day after day, week after week, by an endless stream of male “customers” who come to buy sex. The girls live in adjacent rooms, are given the same cheap food, and are exploited identically, by the same men.

But one bears an additional huge burden, that the other does not. It involves different laws, and different, unequal perceptions; a burden on her back that you, and I, may be adding to, unwittingly..., in the ways we speak of her, and thus inevitably, to view, and to think of her. One came from overseas, so we say that she is a victim of “sex trafficking.” But the other came from a distant, rural part of the United States. So she is said to be “engaging in prostitution.”

An entirely different set of psychological images, stereotypes, and words that we use every day, surround these two young victims. And, amazingly, even different laws in the United States pertain to them. Laws about sex trafficking, and laws about prostitution, are entirely separate and different.

This matters less than it might, unfortunately, since the laws of both types are currently weak, unenforced, often completely ignored. But such a separation impedes attempts to make progress, and it offers us a window into the mental confusion, sometimes even blindness, that can follow from labels...

The words “prostitution" and sex-trafficking" sound different, and have very different images, , connotations, associations. Sex trafficking sounds ugly, exploitative, cruel, and obviously wrong to most of us. But, “prostitution” still sounds... warmer, friendlier, or at least, definitely, not so bad.

Sex Trafficking seems foreign. We read that women and girls from poor nations in Africa, South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe are transported by the thousands to be prostituted in wealthier countries, especially Holland, Germany, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Japan. In Holland 80% of the women being used there in prostitution were brought from other countries. (Saudi Arabia is also now also a destination.)

And yet, logically, sex trafficking is simply... globalized prostitution. And, what is called prostitution" is almost always in fact, DOMESTIC TRAFFICKING, involving a large amount of moving, travel, and long-distance transporting.

U.S. pimps often obtain young women in rural states such as Minnesota and Iowa. They transport their catches to more affluent regions, where demand is higher, and far away from hometowns, family, and friends. The girls are taken to strict confinement, in large unfamiliar cities, where they have no systems of support.

Studies comparing women trafficked from abroad, and domestic women being used in prostitution, find them highly SIMILAR, in every measurable way: youth, background of poverty, personal histories of early sexual abuse, often of an oppressed ethnic group, little or no family support, current drug addiction, 

Brothels are filled interchangeably with local and foreign women. Male customers use the trafficked and prostituted women interchangeably, for identical purposes. Common Injuries are the same: severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, physical injuries, AIDS and other diseases, high levels of suicide.

The defining and only difference between prostituted and trafficked women, then, is one of almost astonishing irrelevance: whether on not, in their personal road that led to the brothel, they had crossed over a particular kind of arbitrary human political boundary: a national boundary line.

And while these are obviously the same sort of woman abuse, the legal understanding and treatment of them has always been different. Prostitution is considered a police" issue and therefore a matter for individual states. State laws in the US technically “criminalize" the buying and selling of sex, as well as pimping, soliciting, and most related activities; BUT: the basic crime is just a minor Misdemeanor, usually bringing only a modest fine. And both the buyer of sex, and the one who is being bought, are considered equally guilty.

In truth, despite being (faintly) “illegal," prostitution seems like a familiar, often somewhat popular, part of the American social landscape. It is a favorite, endless subject of Hollywood movies, Broadway plays , popular fiction, and of course, jokes. Endless dirty jokes. “The Whore with a Heart of Gold” is a major figure in our cultural mythology, whom we have seen portrayed fictitiously on the screen so many times, we imagine that we know her. She seems sexy, and sort of fun. (More on this image in a moment.)

The victim of trafficking is addressed quite differently. The only national anti-trafficking law is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPA. It provides penalties only for acts which can be proved, in court, to be due to force, coercion, or fraud”. These methods are very easy to conceal, and usually totally impossible to prove in a court under hostile cross-examination. Such a legal process may take years. For a terrified, penniless, traumatized, uneducated young woman, far from home, this legal "proof" was and is a ludicrous requirement. With such a crippling limitation, the TVPA has been almost totally ineffective. Two years after its passage, only four prosecutions across the U.S. had been brought.

Feminist attorney Michelle Dempsey (2007) has very seriously posed a question which sounds facile, but has real legal implications: Should trafficking be viewed by the law as a form of prostitution?, or should prostitution be viewed as a form of trafficking? There are, as it turns out, good and cogent arguments for each. The bottom line of course is that our laws do not protect either type of victim.

2. The Invisibility of all the Men

Now let's go a bit deeper, and peel back another layer of the psychological blinders, the myths, and the un-checked assumptions, that can hide the truth from us.

Close your eyes, say the word prostitution"... a picture, an image, will automatically materialize. 
It will be an image of a woman. But the central, enduring image of prostitution SHOULD be... 
of.... two men. (There they are... Can we see them?) They are exchanging some money; 
they are the Pimp, and, the John. One is a ruthless man who has total, exploitative control of a young woman; the other is one of many men who will pay money to have access to her for sex. The girl or woman being sold is by far the least powerful of the three actors. She is simply the commodity, being exchanged by the two men.

Why are no men at all immediately visible, when we first think of prostitution?

In the exact center of any mental imagery of “prostitution” should actually, functionally, be the Pimp. This short ugly-sounding word encompasses a whole range of “third parties who profit financially" from selling women, including: guards, drivers, procurers, seasoners, madams, and secret brothel owners. This is the party that is largely in control, which plans and controls the exchange, makes the profits, and inflicts the most human misery. Yet of the three parties, the Pimp is usually by far the least visible in our minds.

That pimping is a “crime" at all is so little known that one unhappy pimp, in the recent case involving actor Hugh Grant, went to court and asked a judge to enforce his “contract rights”. He was politely reminded that his “business" is illegal, but he was not arrested.

Not all prostituted women are under the control of some form of Pimp - forced to take orders, relinquish all money, live in daily fear of violence - but the great majority do appear to be. One study of women prostituted out of hotels found that over 80% of them were controlled by pimps. Studies of street-walking prostitutes" have concluded that of over 90% are controlled by a pimp. Of the women who have left prostitution, studied by the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in Portland, 84% said they had been directly controlled by Pimps.

The other male in every transaction is the “buyer” of sex, the customer, the john. We always know that they are there, of course, but they too are largely INVISIBLE at first in our minds, when we think of “prostitution.”

Yet the “johns” are believed to far outnumber prostituted women, by ten or twenty to one. Social scientists cannot be sure, as men’s buying of sex still remains an elusive subject of which little quantitative is definitely known. One study however reported that about 16% of adult men in the United States acknowledged having at some time bought sex, or, been ‘johns’ (Monto, 2004).

The woman being sold is by far the least powerful of the three parties to prostitution. And, she is rendered even more powerless by the greatest, most powerful myth, that we need to confront today; perhaps the deepest-rooted of obstacles in our minds, to our seeing the realities of prostitution.

3. The Happy-Hooker Myth

It can be fascinating, almost Orwellian, to de-construct how... terrible, gut-wrenching abuses of human beings can be made virtually invisible, by a smokescreen of cultural myths and stereotypes, verbal labels, elaborate Hollywood fabrications.

There is in our culture an enduring image of the whore. She is pictured as a strong, sassy, tough, rather wise woman, in full control of her own fun, raunchy life, and, making good money.

Think of how you, of how we all, first learned about prostitution. It was not from talking with prostituted women, or studying scientific data, was it? It was likely from watching Pretty Woman, Klute, Belle de Jour, Never On Sunday, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Last Detail, from all the hundreds of sympathetic fictional whores, created on the screen by Julia Roberts, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Sigourney Weaver, Demi Moore, Melina Mercouri, Catherine Deneuve... Almost every female star has played the enduring Hollywood role of the “Happy Hooker.”

In this familiar scenario, she’s an adult, who knows what she’s doing, is in charge of herself. She could quit if she wanted to, but for now is happy to make good money this way. She sorta likes what she has to do, or at least doesn’t mind it. And a dominating, brutal pimp is rarely even a part of this fun, slightly titillating scenario.

In the real world of today, however, almost all prostitution actually occurs under circumstances that are totally un-like the Hollywood, happy hooker version. Research tells us clearly that the women used in prostitution did not make an informed, adult decision: the average age of entering prostitution is early teens; the circumstances, usually horrendous. Some, having few options, initially agree to it, but they are never told the full truth of the life that awaits them. And there is effectively no exit, no “quitting,” no turning back allowed.

Dr. Kathleen Barry was the first feminist scholar to closely cross-examine idea of "consent to be prostituted”. Her research revealed that once begun, there was no way out, no escape for young women from the nightmare of prostitution, hence the title of her landmark work: "Female Sexual Slavery". A girl barely out of childhood will now be controlled by a ruthless man, who likely works with a network of others; she will in truth become a sex slave. She will never see the money that they will make, by selling her repeatedly to countless other men. Her life will be devastated by being used for years in prostitution, if she survives.

These facts no doubt sound sensationalized; yet, they have now been amply documented. Reliable facts about prostitution are actually very hard to obtain, but there has been enough independent research by social scientists to establish some significant facts. 

Three published studies of prostitution each independently found that the average age of entering prostitution was fourteen (Weisberg, 1984; Silbert & Pines, 1982; Gray, 1973). Another government study put the average age of entering at thirteen (www.justice.gov/criminal/ ceos/prostitution.html). Some of these little girls had been used in prostitution at nine, ten, and eleven years of age (Silbert & Pines, 1982).

An especially telling finding is the astonishing percent of these girls whom had already been the prior victims of serious sexual abuse at home. This has now been reported by so many researchers that it cannot be doubted. Many scholars have independently reported that between 60% and 70% of prostituted women had been previously sexually abused, as children or adolescents (Widom & Kuhn, 1996; Murphy, 1993; Belton, 1992; Simons & Whitbeck, 1991; Weisberg, 1984, p. 4; Silbert & Pines, 1983; 1982, p.479; Papery & Deisher, 1983; James, 1980; James & Meyerding, 1977). Abuse by older male family members - usually fathers, step-fathers, and foster-fathers - is the most common.

Not all victims of childhood sex abuse end in prostitution, or vice versa; but there is such a strong statistical relation that it is clear that childhood sex abuse has catastrophic effects. In fact, it is the major predictor of becoming a runaway and being used in prostitution.

Thirty-eight percent of the girls in one study had been used in pornographic photographs before the age of 16, 10%, before the age of 13 (Silbert & Pines, 1982). Pornography is a branch of the sex industry which merges indistinguishably into photographed prostitution, although it also harms a much wider circle of women and men in the culture, indirectly, through eroticizing woman-abuse and making it “feel sexy” (Brannon 1987, 1991, 1996, 1998; Brannon & Frank, 1990; Russell, 1993; Linz & Malamuth, 1993).

As mentioned before, the great majority of women used in prostitution appear to be under the control of one or more pimps - meaning taking orders, living in fear of violence, & surrendering all money. A woman used in street prostitution will likely be sold to ten or more men a day, 15 hundred men a year (Baldwin, 1989, p.123). In interviews with prostituted women in nine countries, in a study by Melissa Farley, 89% said they would like to escape prostitution immediately (2003).

But with their youth and inexperience, few later have any other resources for survival. Most have not completed high school; most have had zero employment experience (Farley, 2007; Giobbe, 1990, p.72). Seventy-five percent of"call girls" in one study had attempted suicide at least once. Public hospitals have stated that about 15% of all suicide victims are women apparently being used in prostitution (Erbe,1984 ,p. 618-19)

These icy waters run deep. Evelina Giobbe, who was a teen-age runaway herself, who suffered the nightmare of being used for years in prostitution, who somehow escaped, and has become one of our deepest, most trenchant thinkers on this subject, has written:

“Prostitution isn't like anything else. Rather, everything else is like prostitution, because it is the model... for women's condition." 1

But Are There No “Happy Hookers” ? Aren’t there any exceptions? What about truly, genuinely consensual agreements between adults, to have sex for money? Are there not ANY “happy hookers,” women who are genuinely willing to have intercourse for money? Women not struggling to survive, who could do something else, who do have options, but prefer to do this?

It would be silly to deny that there are at least some, since they write books, and show up on network TV shows. Someone who calls herself “The Scarlet Harlot” issues press releases. Such individuals do exist...

So yes, It is true that there are at least some women engaged in prostitution - a relatively small number, perhaps 2% - who are genuinely free to choose, and have other survival options, and so might fairly be described as ‘voluntarily prostituting’.

But the vast industry of sex-for-sale would collapse overnight, if it had to rely on women willing to prostitute themselves. And, this tiny media-seeking group seems to live in a world very far from the life-destroying reality of what actually happens to the overwhelming majority of young women and girls swept into prostitution.

This little fringe of ‘Happy Hookers’ exists then, but it should not be the first concern of public policy. More importantly, it should not be in the foreground of your and my thoughts, when the subject of women’s use in prostitution comes up. It should not blind us, as it so often does, to the overwhelmingly larger numbers of women and girls being abused & exploited in the sale of sex.

We rely on, and add to the weight of the Myth too, when we say “I’m against “FORCED prostitution”. The statement itself may be true, but adding the qualifier, “forced”, actually makes another statement, which you may not consciously intend or recognize. (It’s like telling someone I find you “usually honest,” ...the qualifier that un-does the statement.) In this case, always adding the “forced” to “prostitution” implies that while this kind is bad, there must surely be a lot of other prostitution, that is “un-forced,” purely consensual, and great for all involved.

It is a key word. In lengthy battles at the United Nations, and in the U.S. Congress, the sex industry has pushed hard, to always have that word “forced” included. Going further, they always fight to be sure that any penalties are always limited to the most obvious and indefensible forms, with provable brute force or coercion. So that most extreme form is then piously condemned, while all other prostitution is implicitly exonerated, even legitimized.

What the Happy Hooker Myth hides so well is the plain fact that prostitution, as it is practiced, is not a willing, sex-for-money, Happy-Hooker transaction", but almost always, a devastating life-shattering exploitation of the most vulnerable young women and children, by powerful and callous men.

While the Myth is popular and accepted, few would deny that the word, “Prostitute,” itself, still somehow almost always sounds negative, insulting, or at least, uncomplimentary. As of course does “whore”, and all the other slang epithets. When any of us need or wish to refer to someone in this situation, we naturally often hesitate to say... a “prostitute,” because of the... disparagement that always clings to this word.

The feminist movement has suggested a good and thoughtful alternative: that we refer to someone as a “prostituted woman”, or better, as “a woman used in prostitution”. These short phrases are truthful, clear, and they do not disparage the woman herself.

Notice too that, while “prostitute" keeps the mental spotlight solely on the woman, and to help conceal back in the shadows the two men who are exchanging her, the feminist language does just the opposite. “Used in prostitution” prompts us automatically to asked “used, by whom?” and to widen our mental focus to include the two men, who are actually in control.

But our enemies have devised a very clever Language Trap, into which I am sure many of us have at times unwittingly fallen. And this Trap is so seductive, and so important to think through and understand, that avoiding it is the final psychological obstacle that I will look at today.

4. Our Language Shapes our Perceptions:

Within the branch of Psychology known as Psycholinguistics there is an interesting and long-established observation, often called the “Whorfian Principle;” what it ultimately reveals is how the very words that we’ve been taught, the language that we daily speak, invariably influence and tend to shape the qualities of our thoughts.

Thus, misleading, mis-directing, but “catchy” verbal labels, such as: “Pro-Life", and, Partial-Birth Abortion", can sometimes be very effective in distorting and altering people's thinking about an issue.

One of the most positive words in the English language is... “work.” Sigmund Freud stated that Love, and Work, are the two most important things in life. Certainly the word “work” has many richly-positive associations.

Thus we must, unfortunately, admire the audacity, and the cleverness, with which Priscilla Alexander, a paid professional prostitution-promoter, coined and defined the phrase “SEX WORK”, in her book by that name (1987).

That two-word phrase described, she said, (what is actually) an astonishing agglomeration of un-related and even strongly-opposed categories. It included all the women and girls around the world being used by any branch of the sex industry, whether in brothels, strip shows, pornography, massage parlors, escort services, or whatever.

But it also included all the men and their unseen agents who were exploiting these women: the pimps, pornographers, brothel owners, madams, and all the "investors' in the many legal & illegal branches of the vast sex industry.

And, to add respectability, it included all publishers of either printed or film material dealing with human sexuality, plus all professional sex therapists, sex researchers, serious writers about sexuality, professional teachers, professors, & and sex-educators. Even poor Dr. Ruth was suddenly dubbed a “Sex-Worker.”

The simple-minded definition which brought together this amazing mix of people was: anyone who ‘earned money, in some way’ from... sex. But since “sex” is such a basic dimension of all animal and human life, having some implications for most if not all professions, such a sweeping category can have little real usefulness for communication.

But what it does, and oh-so-effectively, is to hide the staggering world-wide abuse of girls and women used in prostitution, by including them as somehow part of the same “occupational category” as those who are confining and abusing them. Consider, if we said that the Warden, And the Prisoner incarcerated for life, are both engaged in... "Prison Work." The crucial issue of relative power is ignored, made invisible.

Now I am aware that this phrase has been widely adopted, by many young women, by at least some self-identified Third-Wave feminists, “post-modernists”, and others who often see themselves as radicals or progressives. I know that many of us have ourselves used that phrase, sex worker, from time to time. So I ask you to open your mind to hearing a different and clearly feminist perspective. If used at all, the phrase might be applied to some activities, e.g. ‘exotic dancing’, or ‘phone-sex work’. But it is language we should carefully and thoughtfully avoid, if those we are speaking about are the women or girls who are being used in prostitution.

It is somewhat amazing how innocent-sounding language can completely hide, and obscure the realities of power, and of dominance, and of who is free to leave at will, and who is not. When you’re not allowed to ever quit, it is not work; it’s enslavement.

Recognizing now the ability of certain words and language to shape our thoughts, consider the differing images that come to your mind, when you hear these phrases: "A girl being used in prostitution", versus, "A Sex-Worker"

Promoting the “sex work” phrase has been a major tactic of those who seek to push and profit from prostitution. And yet,... how often have you and I heard it used in recent years - especially, even, in progressive and generally liberal circles - by people who didn’t want to say “prostitute” because it didn’t sound nice..., and “sex worker” sounded a whole lot better.

Well, it does sound better. That’s exactly what’s so mis-leading and harmful about it. It’s a white-wash that obscures the ugly truth, and using it can even affect our judgement adversely.

Let me give what I think is a telling illustration of this phrase likely having a harmful effect, from events in the Asian nation of Cambodia. (c.f. Donna Hughes, “WSJ Feb. 27, 2003). There were a number of villages there, which consisted largely of brothels, with many young girls from the villages being used in global sex-tourism prostitution. Girls as young as 10 or 11 were being used, occasionally, as young as 5.

Workers funded by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID , arrived, and started HIV / AIDS prevention projects there. They both wrote, and clearly thought of, these girls as “Sex Workers.” Their stated approach was that these girls needed to be: "EMPOWERED IN THEIR WORK", and, "to assume more responsibility in their own lives." The official goal was not to help them get out of slavery, but only to provide AIDS-prevention education. Their techniques included "assertiveness training," and.... - if you can believe it - "self esteem" training. 
"Assertiveness" would be shown by saying: "Please wear a condom."

A second group in Cambodia, also funded by USAID, conducted research on 750 girls and women being held in 22 different brothels. The researchers acknowledged that “half or more” of them were under 18. And although they knew full well that the girls were confined and imprisoned, they were invariably described in writing as:... “SEX WORKERS”. Thus the official report matter-of-factly states: "Brothel managers retain strict control over sex workers. Each sex worker is considered to 'belong' to her brothel, with severe limitations on her mobility."

And what was the stated GOAL, of this taxpayer-funded USAID research project? It was: "to reduce competition and mistrust between SEX WORKERS and their brothel owners." and, 
“to build solidarity among sex workers"

That's right: They wanted to create better relationships, and more “trust”, between the children trapped in sexual slavery, and their jailers. And in their final report the beaurocrats criticized most of the prostituted girls, for: “being unwilling to spend time building community."

Large amounts of government money was wasted on these misguided, even harmful and cruel efforts. It feels more tragic when we read that just $300 was the average cash amount, the indenture-debt supposedly owed, that could have bought each of these little girls their freedom.

And each instance seems to have been influenced by a mind-set, by language, by a phrase “sex work”, which facilitated the myopia of seeing glaring human sexual abuse as “WORK.”

________________________________________________

I will conclude, with a few words about... fighting back. Enormous challenges confront us. To fight the vast wealth and scope of international trafficking, we will likely have to have some national political leadership. We were all heartened by a statement made by candidate Barrack Obama, two years ago, when he declared:

... there are thousands who are trapped in various forms of enslavement, here in our country, oftentimes young women who are caught up in prostitution. So we’ve got to give prosecutors the tools to crack down on these human trafficking networks. It is a debasement of our common humanity...”

Yet, words alone can seem empty; and tools do already exist, that are simply not being used. The potentially-powerful federal Mann act, which has been US law since 1910, is still largely ignored, and unenforced. A large proportion of women used in prostitution in the US are transported across state lines, triggering that law. And a careful reading would even show that the entire Sex-Tourism Industry, which openly advertises taking men to huge prostitution centers, in Thailand, Korea, and other countries, is in clear violation of this law.

The Defense Department could, effective immediately, enforce a zero-tolerance policy for buying women in prostitution, by US personnel around the world; but it has never done so. President Truman ended racial segregation in the Army with one order from the White House as Commander-In-Chief; Why can’t President Obama order an end to our military’s long-time acceptance and involvement with the sale of women? Feminist Attorney Ken Franzblau (1983) has noted a number of very effective steps to limit the harms to women, of the sex industry and the Internet, that could easily be taken, but have simply not been done.

As for George Bush, who also made some fine speeches: some recall that he earned over $100,000 as a Board Member of a movie company which made a sex-and-violence movie featuring a young woman's body getting ripped up, and 24 other sex exploitation films. ( Bush Made Bundle on Movie Violence !" read a lurid N.Y. Post headline.

But governments have rarely sided with women. One long-ago moment is worth remembering. In about 535 AD, in Constantinople, Theodora, Empress of Byzantium, issued a decree making it punishable by death to entice a woman into prostitution. She then converted one of her Imperial palaces into a shelter, where women who had been used by men in prostitution could go, to start new lives (Chicago, 1979, p.72). In fourteen centuries since, governmental intelligence and compassion has never again quite approached that level.

But history offers glimmers of hope too. A little-known fact is that, in the two or three times and places in the world, that governments have made a genuine effort to completely eliminate prostitution of women, they were able to do so, completely, and without much delay. Pimps were locked up, prostituted women were given aid, money and helped back to normal lives, and all prostitution disappeared, for as long as the government continued its effort and its commitment ( Barry, 1995, Ch.7, & 299-301). The prostitution of human beings can be ended, history tells us, when there is a political consensus to do it.

The only country making a good effort today is Sweden. The Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden came to the US to give this message, speaking in short, simple words, so that perhaps high-tech Americans could hear:

Far too many men see women as objects, as something that can be bought, and sold. According to Swedish law, it is no longer permitted to buy another human being for prostitution purposes. Women and girls are... human beings, and therefore they are not for sale. STOP the prostitution and trafficking in women and children." (Winberg, 2/24/2003, Washington D.C.)

While government’s help will be needed, what can You, and I do, now, today, to combat the global use of women and girls in trafficking and prostitution? The first step of keeping yourself informed on these issues is actually not so easy. “Information” is widely available on the web, but it is often biased and untrue. The sex industry and its allies are very often the invisible funding source behind web sites, groups, and publications.

One reliable source is the Coalition Against Trafficking In Women, at www.catw international.com. Links there will lead one quickly to other good feminist groups worldwide. The excellent web site prostitutionresearch.com. maintained by Melissa Farley and her colleagues is a wonderful source of both breaking information and solid literature. Dr. Farley’s recent book Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada (2007) is the best source of scholarship on prostitution now in print. You can find my own writing & analysis of these & other sex-industry issues on the NOMAS web site, Nomas.org.

I recommend a short free pamphlet, called a “Toolkit on Ending Sexual Exploitation,” from http://www.caase.org,the Chicago feminists at the Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, at caase. org. It looks at issues like sex trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and so forth, and suggests many positive, creative things that a small group or even one person can do to combat them.

But perhaps the most significant and important thing that you and I can do, is something that costs us nothing at all, and can possibly have a real, game-changing impact on this struggle. We need to confront some of those unseen mental barriers, the misleading stereotypes, and distorting myths, that still linger in our minds.

We can widen our field of vision, to see, not just the woman being sold, but all the men involved, who are actually in control;

We can carefully un-wrap the Happy Hooker Myth from around our eyes, from around our minds, and look at the truth, the realities of what is being done to young women now on a huge global scale.

And we can, never again, speak of “Sex Workers”, when we could say, accurately. and raising the awareness of those around us, “women being used in prostitution.

References

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