thecrazydemoman

yes this is pretty accurate of the founders of the Polaris project. Really great people, heart in the right place, but a bit naive.

The fact is that it is very difficult to spot out victims of trafficking or their pimps/boyfriends. The language of this brochure is very outdated and stereotypical. I know people who are helping in the rescue and rehabilitation of sex workers who wanted out and could not just walk away. They even suffer from using a lot of this info and language even though they are deep in the world and should know better. They just use what the polaris project puts out because they don't have the time, money, or resources to do anything better.

But yeah seriously wow this is useless info. I'd say that this brochure existing is more damaging then not, because people think there is info and a solution instead of realizing that it is wrong.

The simple gist of it is:

A pimp, or boyfriend, is often just as much trapped in trafficking as the "girls" (It can be boys too, so lets just call them workers). They are tasked with finding people and will use what is often called a "lover boy" approach, which is just smothering a girl in gifts and affection and attention. Most of their targets will be of a lower self confidence and be more open to this sort of thing. They will then convince the worker to do things for them and slowly break them into sex acts over time. This is specifically for "domestic" trafficking, where the victim is not literally chained down in any physical way. The worker will have had photos and video of these sex acts often shown to them and that may be used as a way to keep them from speaking about it later on.

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A worker will likely not present any different to you, they're being conditioned not too, but a younger worker may be overly sexual, but this is not a sign of sex work, but of just simply being exposed to sexual acts out of a normal relational context and should be a cause for concern regardless. A sex worker can be as much consensual as forced, many people do sex work because they want to, so assuming someone is a sex worker is not enough to assume they are trafficked. The goal isn't to help trafficked sex workers, the goal is to help any sex worker who wants to get out of that world who may feel they can not do it on their own. They may just have zero contacts outside of the sex work world. They may have an employment contract that will not allow them to quit. They may have children or family members they will be cut off from when they quit working.

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TL:DR> There are many people who are victims in the process of trafficking, and it is unhelpful to call anyone a "Bad guy" as there needs to be help for all parties. Pimps/Traffickers/Loverboys are often also being coerced and need help to escape. Workers/prostitutes/sex workers are often referred to as victims, but this reinforces a view that they are all being forced into it. Many people choose sex work and that should be acknowledged.

We can fight trafficking only by realizing that we can't pluck people out of those situations, we can only help those who want to leave when they want to leave.

Most rescued people will go back into sex work on average 7 times before they actually successfully leave. We can not close the door on them when they go back, Shelters need to know this and have systems in place to protect themselves more then just being a "secret location".

Thank you for the silver kind stranger, I hope that somehow this post helps someone.

We need to change the focus. The harder we push sex work into the shadows the more we make trafficking easier.

How did you handle visas for each country? how much did you plan ahead for?

that's the biggest thing. People don't want to do it, so they find ways out of it. People don't see or appreciate that doing something they don't like may still be beneficial for them and actually better for their entire country.

That’s awesome, and the sort of stuff that should be in more places. We need to break out of the Puritan fear of sex eventually in North America.