A few readers of my coverage of sex trafficking have objected that I generalize too much from worst-case scenarios and don’t adequately acknowledge the degree to which many prostitutes are voluntary. They also argue that often the best way to manage the problem is to legalize and regulate. Here’s some of the mail on this, and then I’ll respond:

Jon writes: “I read and watch your coverage on trafficking and sexual slavery and appreciate your efforts to educate. While I am opposed to any forms of slave trade, are you opposed to prostitution between consenting adults? I am aware of the dubious circumstances of how young women are ensnared into such work, but should an able minded adult personally choose to enter this field of work, are you opposed to it?”

Then Kerwin, who attended a discussion on trafficking I moderated at NYU, wrote to object loudly. He is particularly irritated with Ambassador John Miller of the U.S. Trafficking Office (I think Miller has done an excellent job), but he raises larger issues and notes that there are experts who have radically different perspectives: “While Ambassador Miller asks if we academics have spoken with true victims of trafficking, I ask if he has spoken with any of the thousands of sex workers in South Korea who protested their new (US TVPA-approved) anti-trafficking policies, including twenty who even undertook a hunger strike. Has Ambassador Miller spoken with the thousands of people in the Philippines who protested against Japan’s new (US TVPA-approved) anti-trafficking policies? Have you cared to speak with these people…?

“My own academic work deals with male street prostitution in the US, including many runaway youths. While you yourself said that the best experts regarding sex trafficking work on the streets of the US, not one person of the dozens I spoke with would have identified as a sex slave, despite their often desperate plight. Nor is my observation relevant to only men. While specific numbers are difficult to quantify, and vary greatly from city to city, perhaps only one-half of female street-based sex workers in the US have pimps, and often these women are not those who are the most desperate. Furthermore, the degree of exploitation and violence exercised by pimps varies greatly, and I’d argue that not all pimps can properly be construed as slave owners….

”This is not to say that worst-case scenarios do not exist, nor that some horror scenarios do not require the police - they clearly do. However, it is to say that the worst-case scenarios do not represent the entire picture, and that one must make sure that ones efforts to help a few do not make things worse for the many. I fear that your reporting and your words at the NYU event have facilitated this narrow focus upon the worst-case scenarios and the faulty interventions which result from this myopia.”

Let me say first that I haven’t reported much on the street scene in the U.S., so I just don’t know how much coercion there is in U.S. prostitution. It’s something I do want to do more reporting on.

As for the situation abroad, I think it varies greatly. In China and Africa for example, most prostitution seems somewhat voluntary. The prostitutes are often poor and need money and don’t see alternatives, but they are not physically forced into brothels. In contrast, in India, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia, the majority of prostitutes are initially forced into prostitution. The slavery is real. Then after some months they are given greater freedom, and maybe at that point they are held in debt bondage but not physically restrained. And some is clearly voluntary: When girls are liberated from brothels and taken to shelters, some run back to the brothels.

In the comment string on an item below, a reader in Thailand protested that brothel workers there are overwhelmingly voluntary. I think that’s very misleading. It’s true that Thais themselves are largely voluntary, but there are vast numbers of Burmese and Cambodians and other foreigners who are in the brothels involuntarily. And even the Thais (from the north, typically) often start out as minors who are sold the brothels (sometimes by their families). And remember Kosal: She was physically locked up in a brothel in Thailand.

As for legalization of prostitution, I just don’t know. I’m ambivalent. In poor countries like Cambodia or India, a real ban is simply not feasible, so it is probably better to focus on eliminating the forced prostitution and providing health care because that is achievable. In Cambodia, for example, girls in brothels are better off than those in the shadowy fringes, like karaoke bars.

On the other hand, countries that have basically legalized prostitution, like Netherlands and Germany, don’t seem to me to have been successful in eliminating trafficking or coercion. I haven’t reported on it, but Sweden may be the model that seems to have worked the best – cracking down on male customers and on pimps and traffickers. Even that hasn’t been a great success, but of the models for developed countries that seems most successful.

In any case, the debate about legalization of prostitution seems to me to be a distraction. Whatever one thinks of whether 18-year-olds should be able to sell sex, everyone can agree that 14-year-olds shouldn’t be imprisoned inside brothels. So let’s focus not on prostitution, but on slavery — and make that the priority battle.

By Nicholas D. Kristof



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