Trafficking Hysteria Harms Sex Workers
Almost every time I give a lecture or attend a panel, the audience has a similar response. At the end, a woman — probably named something like Emma or Jennifer — will raise her hand and smile demurely. “You’re very brave, Lydia,” she tells me, looking around the audience to make sure that they witness that she respects the whore, “but I’m afraid I simply can’t support sex workers, because of human trafficking.”
Sex work and sex trafficking have been considered diametrically opposed. Lots of sex workers refuse to talk about it at all; certainly it is only in recent years that the UK sex workers I organise with have felt informed enough to engage with the topic with any confidence. Before a serious effort to educate myself, I would parrot the same lines lots of us default to: sex work and sex trafficking are different things. We’re not talking about sex trafficking. We’re only discussing consensual sex work.
Here’s the thing: we are discussing sex trafficking, whether we like it or not. First of all, the legal dividing line between sex worker and trafficking survivor is all but non-existent. The internationally accepted definition of trafficking is known as the Palermo protocol; it describes ‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons’ using fraud, coercion, force or deception for the purposes of prostitution or forced…
