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Also like to add that they share a strong rhetorical & social relationship to the trafficking non profit rescue complex, which previously united neocons & feminists, but now has made very serious inroads into left discourse. https://twitter.com/sunwells/status/1304837270445240320
https://twitter.com/enbrown/status/1304761953949188096?s=21 https://twitter.com/enbrown/status/1304761953949188096
https://twitter.com/notjessewalker/status/1304800553420181504?s=21 https://twitter.com/notjessewalker/status/1304800553420181504
http://www.denise-brennan.com/s/Molland-2016-International_Migration_Review.pdf
https://www.dukeupress.edu/life-interrupted
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520262065/sex-panic-and-the-punitive-state
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10702890500535707#preview
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-war-on-sex
https://twitter.com/yungneocon/status/1014207968928239619?s=21 https://twitter.com/yungneocon/status/1014207968928239619
Look at the frequent claim that 1/4 trafficking victims are under 18—which is dubious for its own reasons, but setting that aside—now look at the world population age structure. The people aged 18 & under is about 33% of global population.
In other words, people under the age of 18 are *less* likely to be trafficked relative to their rate in the global population. Mostly this is because most trafficking is *labor* trafficking of prime aged working people.
The forced sexual exploitation figures are harrowing but famously dubious—they include many adults voluntarily working in sex work, both in legal & illegal places, and they include cultural practices which, while morally odious, are on the decline, especially since the 70s
The sexual exploitation figures are calculated, in part, for several reasons:
1. They serve the interest of Christian fundamentalists, carceralists, NeoCons, NGOs & certain second wave feminist types
2. As part of this,they are used to justify crackdowns on sex work,& pornography
1. They serve the interest of Christian fundamentalists, carceralists, NeoCons, NGOs & certain second wave feminist types
2. As part of this,they are used to justify crackdowns on sex work,& pornography
3. They are also used, en masse, to harass, raid, repress & deport immigrants & their children—most trafficking raids end up with detention & expulsion of women migrants & their children
4. They allow the people doing *labor* trafficking to cover their tracks & pass blame
4. They allow the people doing *labor* trafficking to cover their tracks & pass blame
5. They play into other narratives—most specifically those meant to manufacture consent for interventionist, imperialist & other narratives, such as liberal feminists pro invasion stance in the run up to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan
In other words, a substantial portion of sexual trafficking statistics are:
1. Adults voluntarily working in sex work
2. Immigrants & their children mis classified as such by NGOs & police orgs for various reasons
1. Adults voluntarily working in sex work
2. Immigrants & their children mis classified as such by NGOs & police orgs for various reasons
3. Labor trafficking victims mis classified purposefully or to cover people’s tracks
4. Practices like forced & child marriages which, while in need of abolition, are not *trafficking*
& finally
4. Practices like forced & child marriages which, while in need of abolition, are not *trafficking*
& finally
5. Practices, ranging from neutral to harmful, which, when done by immigrants & minorities in Gloval North countries or people in Global South countries are classified as such, but not when others do them, & are normalized.
Even in the lowest estimate, forced labor & state trafficking are 80% of the population. 25% of victims are under 18, but 33% of the world is. When one accounts for the misclassification, manufacturing & so on statistics, each of these falls further.
Here’s another article on made up stats for sex work in general https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/27/lies-damned-lies-and-sex-work-statistics/%3foutputType=amp
Here’s a great book on the politics of body counts https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt7zg8b
Where moral panics are not just totally fabricated—such as over Satanism or Broadcast News salubrious reporting on teen drug use & sex—they, historically, correlate with a *fall* in the morally dangerous activity, that preceded the panic itself. Why?
Because usually moral panics about actually occurring phenomena happen when there has been a long slow upswing in collective consciousness & cultural moral change, resulting in a fall in the phenomena at hand.
Let me give you some analogies—anti gentrification stuff often focuses on the cupcake shops, the aesthetics & demographic change & displacement, but these usually occur *after* gentrification in a material, economic, legal, property, & political sense has occurred.
Hegel said the Owl of Minerva flies at midnight, and Tolstoy discusses Great Men riding into scenes of war carnage AFTER the action to take credit—in both cases, philosophy, reflection, consciousness, historical analysis & credit, *follows* the actual social & material events
Changes where changes in consciousness *precede* the social change do happen, but they are far less frequent than when consciousness changes occur *concurrently* with social change or *after* the social change.
One example of this is changing fertility in the US—as a result of the Baby Boom, combined with feminist consciousness raising, fertility rose, while intended children fell, this meant from 1970-1980, There was chronic prolonged forced birth.
Fertility sharply fell from 1975-1990, in large part due to feminism, the rise of consciousness, the access to birth control, and women’s rising education wages, & labor market participation. In 1990 it nearly plateaued—continued to fall but much more slowly
From 1960-1970, in large part due to feminist consciousness raising, labor market changes, & so on, intended fertility sharply fell. From 1970-now, intended fertility has fallen slowly & continuously, albeit slower than actual fertility, resulting in the so called ‘fertility gap’
This is one case where the changes in consciousness, culture, social intereaction, norms & morals went in the opposite direction of demographic & material factors. This induced further social, political & technological change, spurring a reversal.
The mass shifts in these two phenomena meant that from 1960-1980, the two sets of indicators moved in opposite directions, before switching to the same direction but at different rates, for the last 40 years.
Anyway, the last 60 years, but especially the last 120, in the world have seen a profound change in attitudes toward gender, sex, sexuality, kinship, reproduction, identity, employment, adulthood, agency, free choice & so on. For the last 60 years, almost all uniformly positive.
One effect of this is that immoral & harmful acts, events & processes, seem to be rising in frequency, because concern & moral panics have risen in frequency & intensity.
For the next point, set aside who is morally correct & think like an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, psychologist, & humanist. In other words, account for what people consider be morally bad depending on age, gender, class, geography, religion, ideology, etc
For each, falls in the rate of crime & violence rates, drug use rates, teen pregnancy, divorce, trafficking, IPV, smoking, drinking, high school drop out rates, & the ‘poverty draft’, all started occurring *before* the moral panic started. Just look at marriage/divorce
For crime, violence, social unrest & dislocation, social rates in the population started falling before & as incarceration rates rose. In every post war country, crime etc rates rose & then fell, before & independently of imprisonment rates
However, similarly, perceptions of crime rose with the actual rate—albeit, Again, artificially inflated, but then fell briefly with the rate, before continually rising even as violence fell. This is true for social media about crime as well
That brings us to an interesting point—the role of media, social media & so on.
Meanwhile social trust, civic engagement, social capital & so on have fallen.
If we plotted party attendance, rates of sex & number of sexual partners, drug use, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, crime/violence rates, time spent reading, fertility, marriage, divorce & other rates, they’re going to line up & correlate relatively strongly
Meanwhile, alienation, loneliness, anxiety, depression, suicide, the life expectancy of men, & so on, it will move the other way. Labor force participation, employment, inequality, occupational mobility & income growth explain *some* but nowhere near a majority of these trends
