Expressions of Discontent

How much "sex trafficking" is there? Activists and some politicians are fond of claiming that huge numbers of women, and even children, are trafficked from third world countries to rich countries where they are forced into prostitution under slavery conditions, and most sex workers are working under such duress. One politician is quoted saying, "Something like 80% of women in prostitution are controlled by their drug dealer, or their pimp or their trafficker". These claims have struck me as implausible, and the BBC programme More or Less, which is an excellent documentary series looking at the importance of numbers in our lives, has decided to investigate. I'm pleased to say that the BBC confirms my suspicion that the sex trafficking figures are nonsense. The phenomenon may exists, but it is plainly much less common than the activist make out. What's more, the show interviews some politicians, and gives us a glimpse into the mindset of the current UK government, which seems to hold that any abuse of statistics is okay, if it serves a political purpose, and facts don't matter if they conflict with the prejudices, blind assumptions and dogmas of the politicians.

It is clear that the myth of mass sex trafficking is cooked up as an excuse by politicians and activists who wish for quite different reasons (moralism or xenophobia) to clamp down on either prostitution or immigration, or both.

Here's a link to the podcast of the program (downloadable as a podcast for the next few days).

Here's a link to the report by Ruth Alexander from the programme.

If only we could get rid of innumeracy, we could perhaps have much better government.

[Edit:] I notice there's an article in The Register on this topic, and it links an article from the Guardian and another from the Telegraph, both highlighting how the government and activists are putting a massively false spin. The Telegraph article gives this quote, which rather deflates the sex traffic hype:

As for trafficking, the only official report from the police operation
Pentameter 1 shows a tiny proportion, just 0.11 per cent, of people in the sex
industry have in fact been trafficked. A subsequent operation, Pentameter 2,
found 167 trafficked people, which is still only 0.21 per cent.

Another quote from the Telegraph article succintly identifies the thinking behind the legislation that the government is proposing:

The many dubious ideologies behind these groups include the radical
feminist thesis that all heterosexual sex is exploitation, a Marxist view that
all work is exploitation, and a religious evangelism which argues that all
non-procreational sex is wrong.

The Guardian article gives the sex workers' angle, and accuses the government of persecuting sex workers and refusing to listen to them, as well as being generally blind to reality. Sample quote:

The 21 people around the table had between 250 and 300 years of experience
in the sex industry, and all spoke positively about their clients, described the
problems caused by our criminalisation, warned that driving the industry further
underground would only endanger us and expressed hope this event would be part
of a continuing process of involvement.

[Edit #2]: Adding links from commenter Laura Agustin to very good Guardian website article and blog on this topic:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/19/humantrafficking-prostitution

http://www.nodo50.org/Laura_Agustin

Thanks for the links.

Labels: politics, prostitution, sex trafficking, statistics