February 20, 2020
By Megan Sam, CAIRES Intern
What is this Panel About?
This panel was an opportunity for students to become more informed about gender violence and its relationship to sex trafficking, especially in the context of Gainesville.
Speakers
The speakers present at the sex trafficking panel included Maddy Coy, Alexandria Wilson, Alison Ungaro, and Sendona Huffty. Coy is part of the faculty of the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research, and has a focus on violence against women, sexual exploitation, sexualized popular culture and pornography, and research and evaluation methods.[1]
Dr Maddy Coy
Wilson is a Ph.D. candidate for the department of political science, and received a Rothman Doctoral Fellowship for her dissertation project “Framing Exploitation: The Women’s Movement and Anti-trafficking Policy in East Central Europe.” [2]
Ungaro and Huffty both have key roles as staff of Created Gainesville, an organization dedicated to restoring lives that have been affected by sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.[3]
Alison Ungaro Sedona Huffty
What is Sex Trafficking?
This panel commenced with addressing the definition of sex trafficking. There are issues with defining it, as the legal definition varies by jurisdiction. Ungaro specified the term, describing it as “Any time a child is used for commercial sex.” Transportation is not required, and in Gainesville specifically, the situation tends to present itself as someone grooming an individual and starting a relationship, which then undergoes a change where one person has control over the other, who is indebted to him/her.
What is the Relationship between Sex Trafficking and Prostitution/ Porn?
Unfortunately research in this area is limited due to underreporting, but the path to both circumstances are very similar, and contain parallel elements. Policies on prostition (whether it is legal or illegal), has a relationship with the sex trafficking market. When looking at the big picture, it is pivotal to analyze how these issues are structural, and to think about the access to women’s bodies.
Demographics of Parties Involved
When asked about the demographics of the parties involved, it was communicated that factors that make life more arduous, such as poverty and racial injustice, increase the vulnerability of a person to being a victim of sexual exploitation. The majority of victims began as minors, are women aged five to seventeen years old, and the majority of cases involve someone close to them. A problematic facet of how we interact with victims is the treatment they get as minors, compared to when they turn eighteen. There is also the possibility of addiction, which the trafficker may force on a victim. When looking at victims individually, there is variance in aspects such as family dynamics, level of education, and socioeconomic status. However, a common thread is childhood sexual abuse, which breaks downs a framework of trust. Teenage runaways are targeted at high rates, and usually preyed upon in forty-eight hours by a trafficker. Additionally, women of color are more likely to be criminalized and overrepresented. The buyers are predominantly men, thus revealing a gender dynamic.
Relationship between Immigration and Sex Trafficking
The relationship between sex trafficking and immigration differs according to the place in consideration. Domestically, in Gainesville there are less illegal immigrants compared to Texas. Immigration thus becomes a different issue. Examining sex trafficking outside of the United States, an issue that appears in Europe is the ease of transportation. There is thus a debate about whether borders can be used to facilitate or stop sex trafficking.Immigration can also affect the dynamic in sex trafficking as there may be a language barrier, and the rate of reporting is very low in situations where an immigrant is involved.
How is Sex Trafficking Working in our own Community?
Many people are often surprised that this is occurring in Gainesville, right here in our community. It happens behind closed doors, in hotels and motels, and every side of our neighborhoods. Locations where sex trafficking is common in Gainesville include massage parlors, which have been described as brothels that blend into society. Exposure partly takes such a long time is because we always imagine it to be somewhere else, but it must be remembered that this is a structured crime. There is a hierarchy, where the head trafficker recruits someone else to do work, and often the highest in command avoids going to jail or having a criminal record. It should also be remembered that anytime there is an influx of people into a space, there is a higher rate of sex trafficking. There are more ads, which protects buyers and traffickers. All these connections today happen behind a screen, which is a huge shift compared to past strategies.
Do Buyers Know they are Buying from Someone who has been Trafficked?
In the UK, when buyers were asked if they were aware, many responded that they hadn’t thought about it. Some attempted to see if the victims were uncomfortable, which raises the point that there is an assumption that buyers would be able to recognize discomfort in the first place. Many men had confessed that paying for sex made them feel guilty and dirty, but perhaps this was due to an awareness of their contribution to exploitation.
Can Sex Work Show Agency Where it’s Not Exploited?
In Ungaro’s work with outreach, she found that none of the women were there because it was something they wanted to do. While some women have contended that working in places such as strip clubs were empowering, when presented with a viable option to get out, most of the women responded that they would take the opportunity. Coy answered no, stating that it is not possible to say a situation is consensual or safe. Many victims are survivors of abuse. She encouraged us to question what other institutions allow for bodies to be for sale and commodified, and stated that the way to end sex trafficking was to end men’s demand for paid sex.
Questions
The panel ended with the audience being able to ask the panelists some of their own questions. The first was, “Can women have agency if they create their own work?” It was answered that though some women may assert that they have agency, there is the exception of the group versus the majority. It is also not possible to know who is safe on used websites, and though some forms of the sex industry may be thought of as “safer,” one must take into consideration factors such as violence, STIs, and the emotional and psychological implications of this. The second question was, “When preying, what are traffickers looking for?” Panelists answered that being young is a trait looked for, and that this situation could happen to anybody’s child. An honest conversation about what a healthy relationship looks like is imperative. The final question inquired how to decrease demand. The response was that it begins with pornography, as the humanity from the people in this media have their humanity stripped from them. Buyers need to be taught the link between pornography to buying sex, and then significant progress can be made to end modern slavery.
[1] https://wst.ufl.edu/people/core-faculty/
[2] https://humanities.ufl.edu/people-in-the-news/alexandria-wilson/