Academic

Human Trafficking, Coercive Sex and Feministing

By Ann Bartow

I’m having a difficult time understanding this post at Feministing. As far as I can tell, the post author prefers that the federal government NOT “waste time” investigating cases where pimps claim that trafficked, prostituted people are “free to leave.”

The author claims that if this law (which at least she links to, unlike the allegedly problematic House amendment, H.R. 3887) (see “factsheet” overview of this law here) is amended in some mysterious way that she describes as “remov[ing] all together the requirement that force, fraud, or coercion be present in instances of commercial sex,” then there will be “delays” in investigating other cases of trafficking. She provides no evidentiary basis for this claim in the post. We are apparently just supposed to believe that by declining to investigate sex trafficking, the federal government will pay more attention to other trafficked people. She disengenuously gives the example of a women who has been waiting a long time to have her trafficking case investigated. Was this delay caused by H.R. 3887? No, because it has not passed the Senate, no less become law. But if it does, the resources the government devotes to human trafficking will actually increase! Needless to say, the Feministing post does not mention this inconvenient fact.

There is a fair amount of dishonest pro-prostitution cheerleading going on at Feministing here, and the fact that the post is long on instrumental outrage but short on specifics is deeply appalling and incredibly suspicious. The text of H.R. 3387 is public information. It was sponsored by Rep. Tom Lantos [D-California] and cosponsored by 42 others, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney [D-New York], who has been written about with great admiration by Feministing bloggers in the past, she was even their “Woman of the Week” once. If not to their readers, don’t the folks at Feminsting at least owe it to Maloney to explain exactly what they think the problem with this bill is, and why?

–Ann Bartow

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on June 06, 2008 (boomark / email).