Anonymous asked: I checked your tags and I couldn't find it, but if you've addressed this before I apologize. Recently I've seen some chain posts about women who narrowly escaped sex trafficking. One about a woman nearly abducted by an older woman in a hobby lobby parking lot, the other drugged with heroin by two women in a mall bathroom. Both confirmed as fake by snopes. Intuitively I know myths like these hurt sex trafficking victims and non-trafficked sex workers, but could not articulate how. Could you help?
Myths like this serve to reinforce incredibly abusive and harmful practices of the #rescue-industry by keeping people ignorant and terrified of the realities of sex trafficking, for starters. Sex trafficking almost always involves someone the victim knows just like most acts of violence against women. Specifically, these myths feed into #moral-panic about the sex industry and incite calls for all kinds of ridiculous laws that harm sex workers in the name of protecting innocent victims. In general, sex workers are expected to absorb male violence to protect women society deems valuable.
In addition, we know that women experience the most danger in our own homes due to family and domestic violence yet we’re constantly warned about ‘stranger danger’ and how dangerous the world ‘out there’ is, and this serves to keep women passive, terrified and inside the home while again failing to address the real causes and perpetrators of violence against women. These sex trafficking hoaxes aren’t much different to the mass chain emails sent out by men who run self-defense classes warning women about guys smothering women in parking lots with chloroform and assorted nonsense. They’re designed to terrify women and in this case, perpetuate sex trafficking hysteria.
I’m not sure if this is the response you were after but I hope it helps.