{"id":6266,"date":"2014-08-06T20:34:38","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T00:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/?p=6266"},"modified":"2014-08-06T20:34:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T00:34:38","slug":"sex-trafficking-minors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/archives\/2014\/08\/06\/sex-trafficking-minors.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Jane Doe doesn\u2019t get to be a sex trafficking victim"},"content":{"rendered":"

In detailing the story of \u201cJane Doe,\u201d a 16-year-old transgender youth stuck in an adult prison in Connecticut for over six weeks without even being charged, Shane Bauer at Mother Jones<\/a> steps back to describe the context in which Jane grew up. In reading this horrific (but not that uncommon) account of abuse, neglect, poverty, and dreadful state interventions, I came across this sentence:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile in group homes, she says she was sexually assaulted by staffers, and at 15, she became a sex worker and was once locked up for weeks and forced to have sex with \u201ccustomers\u201d until she escaped.\u201d<\/i>\u200a\u2014<\/i>\u200aMother Jones<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What makes this sentence so startling is the choice of the term \u201csex work.\u201d Whether the author realizes it or not, this term is extraordinarily political, especially when applied to an abused and entrapped teenager. I couldn\u2019t help but wonder why the author didn\u2019t identify Jane as a victim of human trafficking.<\/p>\n

Commercial sexual exploitation of minors<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Over the last few years, I\u2019ve been working with an amazing collection of researchers in an effort to better understand technology\u2019s relationship to human trafficking and, more specifically, the commercial sexual exploitation of children. In the process, I\u2019ve learned a lot about the politics of sex work and the political framing of sex trafficking. What\u2019s been infuriating is to watch the way in which journalists and the public reify a Hollywood narrative of what trafficking is supposed to look like\u200a\u2014\u200ainnocent young girl abducted from happy, healthy, not impoverished home with loving parents and then forced into sexual acts by a cruel older man. For a lot of journalists, this is the only narrative that \u201ccounts.\u201d These are the portraits that are held up and valorized, so much so that an advocate reportedly fabricated her personal story<\/a> to get attention for the cause.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The stark reality of how youth end up being commercially sexually exploited is much darker and implicates many more people in power. All too often, we\u2019re talking about a child growing up in poverty, surrounded by drug\/alcohol addiction. More often than not, the parents are part of the problem. If the child wasn\u2019t directly pimped out by the parents, there\u2019s a high likelihood that s\/he was abused or severely neglected. The portrait of a sex trafficking victim is usually a white or Asian girl, but darker skinned youth are more likely to be commercially sexually exploited and boys (and especially queer youth) are victimized far more than people acknowledge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many youth who are commercially exploited are not pimped out in the sense of having a controlling adult who negotiates their sexual acts. All too often, youth begin trading sex for basic services\u200a\u2014\u200afood, shelter, protection. This is part of what makes the conversation about sex work vs. human trafficking so difficult. The former presumes agency, even though that\u2019s not always the case while the latter assumes that no agency is possible. When it comes to sex work, there\u2019s a spectrum. Sex work by choice, sex work by circumstance, and sex work by coercion.<\/a> The third category is clearly recognizable as human trafficking, but when it comes to minors, most anti-trafficking advocates and government actors argue that it\u2019s all trafficking. Except when that label\u2019s not convenient for other political efforts. And this is where I find myself scratching my head at how Jane Doe\u2019s abuse is framed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>How should we label Jane Doe\u2019s abuse?<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the sounds of the piece in Mother Jones, Jane Doe most likely started trading sex for services. Perhaps she was also looking for love and validation. This is not that uncommon, especially for queer and transgender youth. For this reason, perhaps it is valuable to imply that she has agency in her life, to give her a label of sex work to suggest that these choices are her choices.<\/p>\n

Yet, her story shows that things are far more complicated than that. It looks as though those who were supposed to protect her\u200a\u2014\u200astaff at group homes\u200a\u2014\u200atook advantage of her. This would also not be that uncommon for youth who end up commercially sexually exploited. Too many sexually exploited youth that I\u2019ve met have had far worse relationships with parents and state actors than any client. But the clincher for me is her account of having been locked up and forced to have sex until she escaped. This is coercion through-and-through. Regardless of why Doe entered into the sex trade or how we want to read her agency in this process, there is no way to interpret this kind of circumscribed existence and abuse as anything other than trafficking.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So why isn\u2019t she identified as a trafficking victim? Why aren\u2019t human trafficking advocacy organizations raising a stink about her case? Why aren\u2019t anti-trafficking journalists telling her story?<\/p>\n

The reality is that she\u2019s not a good example for those who want clean narratives. Her case shows the messiness of human trafficking. The way in which commercial exploitation of minors is entwined with other dynamics of poverty and abuse. The ways in which law enforcement isn\u2019t always helpful.<\/a> (Ah, yes, our lovely history of putting victims into jail because \u201cit\u2019s safer there.\u201d) Jane Doe isn\u2019t white and her gender identity confounds heteronormative anti-trafficking conversations. She doesn\u2019t fit people\u2019s image of a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. So it\u2019s safer to avoid terms like trafficking so as to not muddy the waters even though the water was muddy in the first place.<\/p>\n

(This entry was first posted on June 19, 2014 at Medium under the title\u00a0“Why Jane Doe doesn\u2019t get to be a sex trafficking victim”<\/a>\u00a0as part of\u00a0The Message<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In detailing the story of \u201cJane Doe,\u201d a 16-year-old transgender youth stuck in an adult prison in Connecticut for over six weeks without even being charged, Shane Bauer at Mother Jones steps back to describe the context in which Jane grew up. In reading this horrific (but not that uncommon) account of abuse, neglect, poverty, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1091,1846,1836,1416,1841],"class_list":["post-6266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgbtq","tag-power","tag-sex","tag-trafficking","tag-transgender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6271,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions\/6271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}