Comments on: Cyntoia Brown and the Commodification of the Good Victim https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/ By and about sex workers Fri, 13 Aug 2021 17:34:15 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Preckwinkle fund-raising e-mail seeks to capitalize on Cyntoia Brown case - Chicago Reader https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1355074 Fri, 13 Aug 2021 17:34:15 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1355074 […] sex work by people under the age of 18 as trafficking, sex workers themselves and their advocates have consistently rejected this blanket descriptor because it undermines the nuances of people’s life circumstances and decisions—nuances that […]

]]> By: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers: Reliving the Decade You Survived | Tits and Sass https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1277584 Thu, 02 Apr 2020 15:02:28 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1277584 […] day to acknowledge the resourcefulness of sex workers themselves. Nobody has worked harder to prevent trafficking than this very community. We’ve made space for workers that survived as well as workers that did […]

]]> By: The Massage Parlor Means Survival Here: Red Canary Song On Robert Kraft | Tits and Sass https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1226407 Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:02:46 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1226407 […] of immediate problems for people experiencing exploitative situations) need to be ousted. Harmful “perfect victim” narratives need to be abandoned. Instead, we need to embrace people’s complicated stories of survival. We […]

]]> By: It has to go way beyond the decriminalization of sex work – the shoestring https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1194159 Tue, 14 Aug 2018 01:35:19 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1194159 […] Farley, and company. Trafficking survivor and sex worker activist and author Laura Lemoon wrote a brilliant piece about this phenomenon at the national media site by and for sex workers which I co-edit, Tits and […]

]]> By: Darin https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1181534 Mon, 19 Feb 2018 01:39:57 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1181534 Excellent piece…to support Ms LeMoon’s point, WA State Task Force Against the Trafficking of Persons made a recommendation 6-5-2017 which was to fund 3 full-time FTE’s placed within rescue orgs: “…These positions would also develop an assessment tool to identify housing options that are accessible, affirming, and safe for survivors. Using that tool, the Housing Coordinators would update a resources list to share statewide.”

The recommendation was to fund the rescue orgs.

]]> By: Jacqueline S. Homan https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1177375 Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:36:13 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1177375 https://medium.com/@jacquelinehoman/born-with-a-bullseye-on-your-back-13709f79ddb9

]]> By: Jacqueline S. Homan https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1177372 Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:28:16 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1177372 When Cyntoia Brown was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced, it was several years before ANYONE in the entire United States even wanted to acknowledge that poor marginalized American women, girls (and basically anyone NOT a rich white cis het male) could actually be victims of the crime of human trafficking, too. This was the public consensus of “conventional wisdom” for nearly a decade after former president George W. Bush enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, which deliberately excluded American trafficking victims.

Privileged rich people in this country all agreed that poor foreign women and girls being trafficked here from the former East Bloc and Southeast Asia were victims of human trafficking because they were forced by brutal pimps into prostitution and never got to keep one penny of any of that money, while poor marginalized women and girls (and anyone not a rich white male) who were victims of the exact same crimes somehow “chose” prostitution because we enjoyed it or something.

It wasn’t until only VERY recently, within the past 3 years or so, that American-born and raised trafficking victims even got acknowledged as bona fide trafficking victims by ANYONE. So that’s a large part of the reason nothing was said by anyone when Cyntoia Brown was convicted and sentenced.

And many of us older survivors who were among the first to speak out about what happened to us paid a HUGE price for it – we got stalked, doxxed, death threats, harassed, viciously slandered, and our Gofundmes attacked and sabotaged – the ONLY option available to many of us for getting any money to be able TO survive as stigmatized and criminalized trafficking victims in post-Welfare Reform America, which never did enough to eliminate job discrimination against non-whites and women, and which never provided enough decent jobs with dignity for all.

]]> By: Louis https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1176881 Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:40:07 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1176881 Wow, this is a beautifully written exposée on the ironic/paradoxical and extremely challenging realities only someone living through being labeled and commodified as a “bad victim” by the anti trafficking wing of the nonprofit industrial complex could share… thank you for your courage and critique.

]]> By: Jones https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1176769 Wed, 06 Dec 2017 06:58:32 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1176769 Morals-driven organizations (from whatever political spectrum) are mostly concerned with propping up their own stories and image. There is a lack of curiosity or genuine interest in the complexity of the stories of others. Victims of traffickers have even more complicated stories; they don’t have ordinary problems. Their stories get compressed / whitewashed in order to be sold at market….even if it is an alternative type of market. I feel much the same way with all types of victim stories…feeling that there is so much more and the actual format cannot convey the story, and the delivering organization is perfectly happy with how compressed and severely edited the story has become (conflicting morals and ethical quagmires removed).

]]> By: Kagehi https://titsandsass.com/cyntoia-brown-and-the-commodification-of-the-good-victim/#comment-1176528 Sat, 02 Dec 2017 19:44:59 +0000 https://titsandsass.com/?p=23451#comment-1176528 This hardly surprises me. Like almost anything that is “morals driven”, the people involved are far more concerned with ending the behavior, than they are ended the exploitation. Its not about helping people find better lives, its about “saving them from this immoral thing they shouldn’t be doing.” Everything after that is not the saviors problem. So, of course they only bloody want to do more for those people that sell the same salvation. And, there are signs of the same behavior that goes with this righteous indignity against trafficking they have – undermine, disparage, and destroy anything/anyone that tries to present a solution that helps the victims, but doesn’t *end* the moral offense.

Which is precisely why we see no laws to protect prostitutes, to make actual traffickers more liable for anything, or otherwise try to change the business, just destroy it. And, to hell with the people that get ruined in the process.

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