The Sex Trafficking Panic Is Based On Myths (Buzzfeed)
Read the full article by Jenny Heineman & Brooke Wagner at Buzzfeed.com
As they crack down on sex workers and pass outrageous new laws, our politicians and moral crusaders make some bold claims: Hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of sex trafficking is one oft-cited figure. Kids are entering sex work at an average age of 13, says another. But is any of this true?Good data is hard to come by in an industry kept largely in the shadows. That’s why, from 2012 to 2014, we spent nine months walking a stretch of road in Las Vegas well known as a gathering point for sex workers and their customers. We were part of a team who tailed along with those sex workers as they plied their trade, ducking into cars and alleyways to sell their services. We handed out condoms and other harm-reduction material, and we had a definite purpose — we were researchers, paid through an Obama-era grant from the US Department of Justice.
Our goal was to collect the data needed to provide an accurate estimate of the extent of sexual human trafficking in the United States.
What the study revealed, after interviewing 949 people across 6 cities — 171 of them in Las Vegas — was that many of the assumptions that inform government policy on sex workers are merely myths. And those myths are easily disproved once you bother to get the data, which we did.
The most consequential of these myths is that no one chooses sex work, and most are pushed into it by abusive pimps — each common beliefs among many who seek to further criminalize the industry. No woman would choose this life, so this belief goes, and behind every woman trading sex is a pimp or trafficker. The national data from our project paints a more nuanced picture. Jenny Heineman holds a PhD in sociology with emphases in feminist and queer theories. She has been researching the sex industry for nearly a decade.
Brooke Wagner holds a PhD in sociology and is an assistant professor at Wittenberg University. She teaches courses exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, and crime.