Okay, I’ll bite. I was actually going to write about this last month but I honestly couldn’t get past the first sentence I wrote, partly in jest, which was “Amazon probably isn’t shipping babies. Shipping babies is very expensive.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you might want to ignore this one. There is a gallows humor that comes with working in anti-trafficking. Being in meetings 9-5 about child exploitation, having coworkers watching basically sexual abuse happen on their computers (for investigations) and storyboarding families trafficked across borders to work in strawberry farms makes the chatter kind of nuts as you gather with coworkers for drinks after work. As you might know, I worked in anti-trafficking organizations on and off in Thailand and in the US since 2008. I’ve interviewed adult and child survivors of labor and sex trafficking, police investigators and social workers to raise awareness and support for the realities of what trafficking is like and what it takes to put lives back together.
If you are bewildered by the uptick in talk of trafficking in your feed, wondering if trafficking itself is rising or if it’s just the perception of it, it’s hard to say. The global pandemic made communities that already experienced trafficking even more vulnerable. I’ve heard from partners that kids are dropping out of school and that child marriage is up (which is included in the global total of 40.3 million estimated to be living in trafficking). Borders are closed, so cross-border labor trafficking is more difficult, but online sexual abuse is up. The data since the pandemic is hard to know, but I have seen this panic about sex trafficking, the conspiracies about sex trafficking specifically, creeping up for awhile now.
Trafficking being used to distract from other things, a (partial) timeline:
2016: Pizzagate. If you don’t know, you’re lucky. If you want a refresher, read this.
2017: I got an email from a well-funded anti-trafficking organization offering a print of a painting for a donation. Go ahead. Click on it. I’ll wait. Did you see it? DID YOU SEE IT? Co-opting the liberation of enslaved people by enslaved people through the historical underground railroad and turning it into a literal campaign for white saviorism. I include this slide in my trainings on storytelling ethically for nonprofits, and I think it’s relevant here because it shows a desire for crusading vigilantes to be equated with, and even worshipped as, child savers.
2019: The director of that same organization went on the news shows advocating for the border wall and, ostensibly, for the separation of children from adults at the border in the name of protecting them from trafficking. It has not been proven that there was child trafficking happening en masse at the southern US border.
2020: Wayfair trafficks kids in armoires. Amazon trafficks babies them in NFL backpacks. These aren’t a) efficient b) true c) both a and b. If you guessed c, you’re right. But people I know, even people I have met in the course of anti-trafficking work, have posted these things as truths, or as shadowy warnings of truths, on Facebook. And QAnon is taking over well-intentioned efforts to #savethechildren by the actual organization Save the Children. This article summarizes it well.
The QAnon strategy of pushing some unobjectionable, often factual content about human trafficking in addition to wild conspiracy theories has blurred the lines between legitimate anti-trafficking activism and partisan conspiracy mongering. Recently, some activists have marched in cities around the country demanding an end to child exploitation. Among them were QAnon believers, toting signs with messages like “Hollywood Eats Babies.”
Anti-trafficking has been co-opted, both online with hashtags and viral content and IRL at protests, to distract from real life issues and events. Using trafficking of children as a political weapon or as a means to distract from elections, black lives matter movements or immigration debates is SO GROSS. Why are they doing it? I really couldn’t tell you. Was this done intentionally? I think so. It’s hard to criticize someone who says they are crusading on behalf of children. People are even coming for Tom Hanks as a trafficker. Coming for Tom Hanks just shows that these people are not really interested in solving the problem of trafficking. There is way more low-hanging fruit than Tom Hanks. Give a kid a scholarship and leave Tom Hanks alone. The man had Covid for crying out loud and even donated his plasma. They are interested in clicks and whipping people up into a frenzy about trafficking. Here’s the thing, TRADING ON THE LIVES of children, real or imagined, is exploitation too. I very much believe that some anti-trafficking organizations are guilty of exploitation in the form of sharing survivor stories for profit, trading on the very real suffering of people for the very promising donor dollars that follow. And so many well-meaning people are expending their energy and effort in self-righteous anger and not meaningful actions. The NYT article did said some organizations have experienced an increase in donations, so all is not lost. And I am glad that people are passionate about protecting children. But letting it be a distraction, letting the trafficking of trafficking happen on your feed is counterproductive. Solution-oriented change is needed: Talk to your partners and sons and daughters about buying sex and sex material. It’s not just someone else’s husband buying sex or someone else’s kid selling his girlfriend’s pictures online. Know the difference between pornography (consenting adults) and child sexual abuse material (any sexually explicit content featuring a minor). Foster a child. Read and listen to survivors like Sophie Otiende and Brooke Axtell. Invest in policy change and legal challenges to slavery and prevention programs. There is much to be done. Message me if you want to get involved and we can find something that fits your abilities and interests.
If you need me you, can find me buried under a pile of chihuahuas to try to spark joy.