“And you do not have enough evidence to prove there aren’t.”

Gagged, Laura and I are both social scientists. Let me reiterate that point: SCIENTISTS.

You have just asked two scientists to prove a negative, which is a logically and empistemologically impossible thing to do. Either you do not comprehend how positive works, or you are arguing in incredibly bad faith. In either case, you are simply wrong.

It is neither my nor Laura’s responsability to “prove trafficking doesn’t exist”, a logically and empistemologically impossible task, and it is supremely ridiculous to ask us to do something that is impossible. (And, just for the record, it is not even our point that trafficking doesn’t exist, so why should we try to prove that? What we DO believe is that prostitution is being increasingly conflated with trafficking to no useful purpose).

It is the antis’ responsability to give us clear, non-contradictory definitions of trafficking and show us situations in which these definitions operate. For the most part, this is not occuring. For the most part, antis show prostitutes and say “enslaved trafficking victim”. There are, of course, exceptions, but I’d sayy 90% of the anti-trafficking propaganda out there confuses trafficking and prostitution and - worse - does so on purpose.

And you do not have enough evidence to prove there aren’t.

Stop the fight against the fight against human trafficking and suffering and you may find you can actually get somewhere.

“And the thing you must really remember is that when anti-prostitution people use the term “sex slavery”, it is not the “slavery” that they are against, it’s the “sex”. Because if they were truly concerned about the slavery, they’d be doing a fucking lot more about it than they are now.”

Susan and Holly have blown me away here. Comparing child abduction, torture and rape to jailing a prostitute? These are too very different situations and the thought that someone actually thinks this way is scary.

As long as some sex worker advocates jump down the throats of those fighting global sexual slavery, they will continue to completely ruin their credibility.

Criminalization of prostitution in the US = bad.
Sexual slavery/human trafficking = bad.

Get it together, girls.

It seems quite clear from the video that he is talking about actual numbers of Filipino nationals who have approached their embassy in Singapore for assistance because they say they have been trafficked: 59 in 2005, 125 in 2006, and 212 in 2007. I imagine that the embassy keeps track of them in the same way it usually keeps track of the cases of its nationals who seek its help.

And the reason why the so-called anti-prostitution people do not use evidence from sex worker activist groups is because they don’t consider the latter to be legitimate organizations. If the antis used the evidence, then they would be legitimizing them and calling attention that these groups even exist.

And the thing you must really remember is that when anti-prostitution people use the term “sex slavery”, it is not the “slavery” that they are against, it’s the “sex”. Because if they were truly concerned about the slavery, they’d be doing a fucking lot more about it than they are now.

I think you have to look at sexual self determination. If a prostitute cannot decide when or where to have sex, or what kind of sex they do or don’t want to have, I think you could call that forced prostitution, or human trafficking for that matter. It would also be rape.

You question unfounded statistics, but what I read from reports by organizations like tampep, or the Red Thread or Cabiria who have lots of experience with doing fieldwork among prostitutes, and who don’t oppose prostitution per se, is that large groups of prostitutes are “in the power of”, are “completely controlled by” or even cannot work “independently from” certain third persons, called pimps, human traffickers and madams.

I think what they describe is not exactly sexual self determination.

I believe that forced prostitution must be very big indeed.