Comments on: What’s Trafficking Got To Do With It: The Media and the Cleveland Kidnappings

By: Linda

Linda — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:08:41 +0000

Excellent piece, thank you.

By: jenny heineman

jenny heineman — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:58:24 +0000

The horrors endured by those strong women are devastating. Conversations like these–and many of the conversations on TAS–are important stepping stones for creating safe spaces in a culture largely dominated by violence.

Thanks for reading.

By: DarkLlama

DarkLlama — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:07:49 +0000

Excellent article.

By: Vegan Vixen

Vegan Vixen — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:28:46 +0000

Thanks, Jenny. This is a powerful example of how sexual slavery can happen outside of the sex industry too. Yet, so many people seem to ignore that and not surprisingly, the women were held captive for about a decade while all this focus on conflating all prostitution with sexual slavery was going on. To the best of my knowledge, this case had nothing to do with the sex industry, but rather with some guy kidnapping young women and teenagers, and holding them captive. These women weren’t saved by anti-trafficking policies that conflate prostitution with trafficking, but by a woman getting away and getting the attention of a neighbor.

By: jenny heineman

jenny heineman — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:19:44 +0000

@LoriAdorable Point well taken and I totally agree. I was trying to address–and maybe too simplistically– how antis portray porn and “pornification” as THE reason for gender based violence. I think that argument often has tinges of victim blaming (“victim” in the sense that antis also often claim people in porn are victims). I tend to view oppression as structural, which isn’t always welcome in pro-sex work debates. I don’t think my structural approach is necessarily antithetical to arguments about sex workers’ agency, though. Yes, micro and macro-level *things* in society work in tandem. But changing the alleged impacts of cultural “pornification” will not happen by eradicating porn. It must happen in larger, structural ways, I believe.

By: LoriAdorable

LoriAdorable — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:58:40 +0000

I was totally in support of this until the very last paragraph: “Pornification is indicative of culture, not the other way around. If we want better porn, we better start changing our culture.” I don’t think the cause and effect are so neat either way. Porn is part of culture– it shapes culture and is shaped by culture. You can’t change our culture without changing porn, and vice versa. Since ‘porn’ is more concrete than ‘culture’ it would actually make more sense to start there, but cultural change is never a single-front battle anyway.

By: Ginger Cookie

Ginger Cookie — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:06:06 +0000

Thank you for a phenomenally rational article. Sex trafficking is sex trafficking is sex trafficking, not kidnapping and not sex work. Just another example of mainstream culture conflating all crime in an attempt to distance themselves from it.

“However, letting sensationalism reign over truth merely serves to disrupt the allocation of resources.” The next thing I tell myself when I want to buy booze instead of pay off my student loans.