Thank you again. I’m not only deeply touched by your writing, you have my mental wheels churning.
With much love,
S.

But that is not what we are talking about here, is it?

What we are talking about here is how the word “trafficking” gets used and I have a loooooong experience with that. Lots and lots of practical experience, being on the RdJ state anti-trafficking council and the Brazilian federal anti-trafficking council. I have seen, time and again, how everyone – from cops to feminists to church groups on down – have claimed that ALL sex workers are really trafficked and thatt he “proper” role of sex worker rights groups is to teach you all that fundamental lesson.By the way, I would never presume to tell a sex worker how she should work or what she should feel regarding said work. I am currently not a sex worker and have never sold sex, so it is really not my place.

But that is not what we are talking about here, is it?

What we are talking about here is how the word “trafficking” gets used and I have a loooooong experience with that. Lots and lots of practical experience, being on the RdJ state anti-trafficking councila nd e Brazilian federal anti-trafficking council. I have seen, time and again, how everyone – from cops to feminists to church groups on down – have claimed that ALL sex workers are really trafficked and that the “proper” role of sex worker rights groups is to teach you all that fundamental lesson.

So based on my practical experience with these people and what they actually DO. to sex workers, it scares me to see sex workers who beleieve that trafficking rhetoric can be reclaimed.

That is really the long and short of it. It is my practical experience witht he trafficking issue that leads me to put out the warning I wrote above. That is something entirely different feom tellong sex workers how they should feel.

So based on my practical experience witht hese people and what they actually DO. to sex workers, it scares me to see sex workers who beleoeve that trafficking rhetoric can be reclaimed.

That is really the long and short of it. It is my practical experience witht he trafficking issue that leads me to put out the warning I wrote above. That is something entirely different feom tellong sex workers how they should feel.

But hey, if you think you can adapt prohibitionist rhetoric to your own ends, go for it. At the very least, it will provide one more objective example of what happens to sex worker activists when they adopt the opressor’s rhetoric.

Because once again, and this needs to be stressed, “trafficikg” was created for the sole purpose of abolishing prostitution via the use of armd force.

Good luck with that one.

Go ahead and use the words you want. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to do anything. However, I have my opinion and it is informed by personal experinces and by listening to what a lot of sex workers have to say – most particularly sex workers in economies a lot more desperate than the U.S.’ or Canada’s. It is also informed by watching what the cops in my country actually DO and how that gets sold by NGOs who use trafficking to cover every form of “immorality” that they don’t like.

Pointing that out isn’t taking yours – or anyone’s – rightt o a different opinion away from them. And if you think “trafficking” is somehow recoverable as a term for sex worker rights activities, go for it. Use it and find out what happens. I have a pretty good hypothesis as to what that would be, but I could be wrong, of course.

I, however, will continue to point out why I think it is an unrecoverable term. And if you would like to change my opinion on that, it is quite simple: show one example in the 150 year history of the term where it was actually employed to help sex workers.

If you’d like to dialogue with those workers, go for it! I think the Brazilian sex workers movement needs all the international allies it can get.

Yep. People are definitely allowed to hate sex work. Or any job, for that matter.

And saying that, let me say that I have heard hundreds of Brazilian sex workers classify domestic labor, low wage servicee conomy labor, and sexual/affective/reproductive labor as “slavery” in an economy where minimum wage work earns you 300 USD a month, full time.

So which of these sex worker voices should I give priority to?

Robin, Walmart sets the hours and conditions, under the definition of trafficking beig batted around above, an abusive boyfriend who forces a partner to work at Walmart should be considered just as much a traficker as one who forces someone to work elsewhere.

The Palermo Protocol SPECIFICALLY defines trafficking as thhe act of MOVING someone into slave labor, not the act pf hiring them into it.

Here in Brazil, we have plenty of labor brokers who could be qualified as traffickers, but who don’t set hoursa nd wages themselves: they just drive the sheep to market, so to speak.

I am unsure of why you think trafficking is impossible unless the trafficker themselves is setting the wages and hours.

I realize I am talking to someone who has been a sex worker. I also realize that that person probably doesn’t have much experience with coerced labor in the so-called third world, so their experimces with the job-labor market might uave some blind spots.

Thanks for sharing, and for speaking your truth. Like any industry, we’re allowed to hate our jobs and still qualify for protection and rights, and I’m sick of the super privileged happy hooker narrative that now dominates the mainstream.

BRAVA!!

By their definition I’m trafficked too, because I worked before I was 18. I am not trafficked, that is absurd.

On ‘survival sex work’, almost all paid work is either for survival or to get wealthy and have excess. I don’t see what the hell access to fry cook jobs has to do with it, but for what it’s worth you can’t be a fry cook during school hours and make enough to pay for your childrens food, clothing, and education. Sex work hours are often flexible and fit around kids, other employment, family committments, etc.

Also, dude, for a non-sex worker you are contradicting everyone else in the extreme.. most likely the majority of us are sex workers,, the author obviously included. We don’t need to be told what words to use and how to identify. Sex workers are sick to death of that shit.

And NO ONE thinks coercion means “I need money to survive.”