IASSCS Keynote Address  

Who are trafficked women? The answer depends on whom you ask.

The Bush administration says they're victims of the global sex trade, poor women lured to foreign countries by despicable men.

But Lynellyn Long calls them risk takers: single mothers whose homelands offer few job opportunities to support their families; sex workers who want careers on a bigger stage; female laborers searching for menial jobs with better working conditions; teenagers who want to escape family violence.

Long, an international consultant who has examined trafficking in Europe and Asia for the past ten years, spoke about her experiences on Thursday as the keynote speaker at the Fifth International Conference of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture, and Society, held at San Francisco State. The theme of the conference: sexual rights and moral panics.

For better or for worse, trafficking has become a moral panic, resulting in new laws and policies, and new moral panics.

Yet the number of women actually trafficked is as murky as their profile. "It's difficult to quantify the problem," Long says. There are different categories of women who are all said to be trafficked. "In addition, some die along the way, and many of the women who do make it, who use trafficking as a migration route and are success stories, don't want to talk about it."

Trafficked women can end up in restaurants, factories, or brothels. Not all of them are sex workers. But President Bush has equated trafficking with sex work, calling it at one international meeting, a "special evil." To rectify the problem, he has taken an anti-prostitution stance, a position that has divided feminists: those who believe prostitution demeans women and should be outlawed and those who support the legalization of voluntary prostitution.

Bush's policies, though, make no distinction between forced and voluntary prostitution. For example, the United States denies USAID grants to organizations involved in HIV/AIDS programs if they advocate for sex workers' rights.

Moreover, Long says, U.S. policies do not always address the realities of women's lives.

In Belgrade earlier this year, she heard about a 16-year-old Iraqi girl whose parents sold her to traffickers, a case that illustrates Bush's misguided policies, she says. The U.S. military "rescued" the young woman in Serbia, where her traffickers had taken her, and sent her back to Iraq, even though she would be stigmatized there - even resold or murdered in an honor killing.

Long recalls, "I brought the issue up with a member of the anti-trafficking program at the State Department and informed them of the case; I learned that trafficking for this administration is about family reunification and family values.  I gave up, thinking my feelings might turn to moral outrage. In examining trafficking as a moral panic, we must look at it from the standpoint of the human rights of sex workers, migrant workers, and young women."

Current discourse on trafficking mirrors that of white slavery in the 19th century, when girls from England, France, and America were transported and sold into marriage or prostitution, Long says. Nineteenth century reactions to white slavery - imposing regulations, such as England's Contagious Diseases Act; passing abolitionist laws; and implementing nationalistic programs on social purity positions are seen today. Holland, for instance, permits and regulates brothels. In Sweden, the buying of sex is outlawed, but not the selling of it. In the United States, grants are denied to groups and countries supporting sex workers' rights, with the belief that licensed brothels abroad will further trafficking at home.

Yu Yun, who attended the IASSCS conference, says the United States uses its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report as a political tool. The TIP report, which ranks countries in terms of their trafficking records, from Tier I to Tier III, determines whether a country should be sanctioned. In 2002, Indonesia unveiled a national plan of action for the elimination of trafficking compelled in part by its Tier III ranking. More recently, when Thailand engaged in discussions on legalizing prostitution, the United States threatened to degrade its ranking, which could have triggered economic sanctions.

Long says, "TIP influences discussion and legislation. In terms of sex workers' rights, it is not furthering the debate. Countries have to provide their own definitions of trafficking. Maybe we need an alternative to TIP."

Worldwide, the moral panic over trafficking has engendered global panics over prostitution, immigration, the spread of HIV and other STIs, and the control of young women. Evidence-based research and reporting could stem unfounded fears, Long says. "We need to look at the reality of young girls' lives, the support for their educational and employment opportunities, and the economics of global migration."