ArticlePDF Available

The Campaign Against Sex Work in the United States: A Successful Moral Crusade (2020)

Authors:

Abstract

Sex work was not a prominent public issue in the USA a generation ago. Law and law enforcement were fairly settled. Over the past two decades, however, a robust campaign has sought to intensify the stigmatization and criminalization of the participants involved in all types of sex work, which are now conflated with human trafficking. These efforts have been remarkably successful in reshaping government policy and legal norms and in enhancing penalties for existing offenses. The article analyzes these developments within the framework of a modernized version of moral crusade theory that includes both instrumental and expressive arguments against sex work.
The Campaign Against Sex Work in the United States: A Successful
Moral Crusade
Ronald Weitzer
1
#Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract
Sex work was not a prominent public issue in the USA a generation ago. Law and law enforcement were fairly settled. Over the
past two decades, however, a robust campaign has sought to intensify the stigmatization and criminalization of the participants
involved in all types of sex work, which are now conflated with human trafficking. These efforts havebeen remarkably successful
in reshaping government policy and legal norms and in enhancing penalties for existing offenses. The article analyzes these
developments within the framework of a modernized version of moral crusade theory that includes both instrumental and
expressive arguments against sex work.
Keywords Moral crusade theory .Polymorphous paradigm .Sex work .Sex trafficking .Symbolic politics
Introduction
The past 70 years have witnessed worldwide liberalization of
sexual relations, driven by the larger forces of secularization
and individualization (Frank et al. 2010). Against this back-
drop, two more recent and competing trends have been docu-
mented regarding the sex industry in the USA and many other
nations. The first is a growing mainstreaming and quasi-
normalization of certain types of erotic commerce.
Economic mainstreaming is evident in the spread of adult
content into businesses that previously had no connection to
the sex industry, and in the sheer abundance of and expanding
market for pornography, sex toys, escort websites, strip clubs,
and commercial webcam performances online (Brents and
Sanders 2010;McNair2002). Growing cultural tolerance is
evident in some representations of sex work in popular culture
and in public opinion polls.
1
Recent national polls reveal that the proportion of
Americans who consider pornography morally acceptable
grew from 30% in 2011 to 43% in 2018 (Gallup polls).
Support for legalizing prostitution increased from 38% in
2012 (YouGov poll) to 44% in 2015 (YouGov poll) and
49% in 2016 (Marist poll), and sizeable majorities support
legalization in several other Western nations (Weitzer
2012:78).
2
In 2008, residents of San Francisco, California
voted on Proposition K, a ballot measure that would have de
facto decriminalized prostitution in the city by discontinuing
arrests. The measure was endorsed by 41% of voters. At the
state level, decriminalization bills or legislative task forces
have appeared recently in New Hampshire, New York,
Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington DC.
And a recent court case challenged the constitutionality of
Californias prostitution lawsasserting that such laws vio-
late rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, earn-
ing income, and sexual privacy.
3
These public opinion trends
and legal initiatives break with the conventional American
approach to prostitution policy, which avoided even
discussing legalization. As a municipal commission in
Buffalo, New York, reasoned two decades ago, Since it is
unlikely that city or state officials could ever be convinced to
decriminalize or legalize prostitution in Buffalo, there is
2
In a recent California poll, 51% of registered voters favored legalization and
47% said they would definitely or probably vote for legalization on a ballot
measure. Democrats, independents, young people, men, whites, and high-
income persons were significantly more likely than their counterparts to say
they would vote yes on such a ballot question. Goodwin Simon Strategic
Research poll, January 2019, N= 695.
3
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 16-15927, January
17, 2018. The district and appeals courts rejected each claim, but this remains a
unique example of the larger trend.
1
Some notable television shows, for example, highlight some of the potential
benefits of this kind of work. They include Diary of a Call Girl (Showtime, 5
seasons), The Girlfriend Experience (Starz, 2 seasons), Gigolos (Showtime, 7
seasons), and the A&E documentary Sex For Sale (2019).
*Ronald Weitzer
weitzer@gwu.edu
1
Department of Sociology, George Washington University,
Washington, DC 20052, USA
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-019-00404-1
Published online: 10 September 2019
Sexuality Research and Social Policy (2020) 17:399–414
nothing to be gained by debating the merits of either
(Prostitution Task Force 1999:29).
Parallel to these indicators of liberalization is a clear
counter-trend: the growing stigmatization and criminaliza-
tion of the individuals and businesses involved in sex
work. Over the past two decades, an influential moral cru-
sade has vigorously targeted prostitution, pornography,
commercial stripping and, to a lesser extent, erotic webcam
performances and sugar-datingwebsites (Weitzer
2007).
4
The neo-prohibitionist trend in the USA and else-
where can be viewed as a reaction to the liberalization
trend. The steadily growing availability and mass market-
ing of sexual services and the perceived sexualization
and pornificationof society are viewed by activists and
their political allies as threats to highly cherished traditions
(Attwood 2006;McNair2002). This backlash is part of a
broader symbolic politics in which social forces have
fought other signs of hedonism and permissiveness in
Western societies, such as gambling, recreational drug
use, and hook-upculture.
The moral crusade examined in this article is not confined
to passionate pronouncements. It has engaged in public sham-
ing and has successfully lobbied for enhanced criminalization
and punishment of the individuals and businesses involved in
sexual services and performances. The article presents evi-
dence regarding the claims and policy preferences advanced
by crusade groups and their allies in the state. Rather than
focusing solely on one dimension of this phenomenon, it pro-
vides a panoramic perspective covering the crusadesmain
targets and the key legal innovations resulting from its efforts.
The specific examples discussed here are intended to be illus-
trative and representative of the overall logic of this moral
crusade.
Moral Crusades
Amoral crusade is a movement dedicated to preserving
cherished moral values by mobilizing against a particular
condition or practice. The target is defined as totally evil
with no qualificationsand crusaders are typically fervent
and righteous,believing that their mission is a holy one
(Becker 1963:148). Moral crusades have both symbolic
and instrumental goals (ratifying traditional normative
boundaries, shaming participants, new legislation, in-
creased law enforcement). They may be motivated by al-
truistic and humanitarian goals or primarily interested in
imposing their values on others (Becker 1963). Like moral
panics, moral crusade discourse has distinctive
characteristics:
&Disproportionality: inflation of the magnitude and severi-
ty of a problem with claims that go well beyond the avail-
able evidence;
&Categorical conviction: crusaders insist that the problem
exists precisely as they portray it, reject all counterclaims,
and deny the existence of gray areas;
&Horror stories, in which the worst cases are privileged,
described in detail, and presented as representative;
&Hostility toward at least some of the actors involved in the
targeted activity, branding them as folk devils;and
&Framing of the problem as symptomatic of larger threats to
the mores or to cherished institutions (Cohen 1972;
Garland 2008; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994).
5
In the absence of a compelling counter-narrative, these fea-
tures are conducive to achieving a crusadesshort-orlong-
term goals: eliciting favorable media coverage, alarming the
public, justifying public shaming or carceral treatment of cul-
prits, and generating new legislation.
Some leading analysts argue that moral crusades are fuelled
by status discontent. Crusade actors mobilize against targets
that they associate with a decline in their groups prestige, with
the goal of redeeming and bolstering their threatened way of
life (Gusfield 1963). They are symbolic crusadesnot reduc-
ible to material interests and important for what they sym-
bolize about the style or culture which is being recognized or
derogated(Gusfield 1963:11). The status discontent frame-
work has been applied to anti-pornography campaigns headed
by conservative Christian groups in the late 1960s and radical-
feminist groups in the 1980s:
The rural, old middle class Christians, whose life-style
does tend to dominate the right wing antipornography
crusades, are trying to protect and conserve a life-style
based on sobriety and sexual repression . . . from a
hedonistic life-style based on pleasure, sexual promis-
cuity, or moral lapses with drugs, alcohol, and sexual
activity. The left wing antipornography crusader, the
feminist, is engaged in a similar status struggle. She
desires to raise the status of women and perceives the
submission of women to nude photography as a cere-
monial degradation of the status of women.. ..
4
Sugar-dating sites, such as Seeking Arrangement, allow mostly older indi-
viduals to connect with young women and men and enter into agreements to
support them financially, with the understanding that sex is likely.
5
Moral crusades are conceptually distinct from moral panics. Some of the
hallmarks of moral panics can be of limited relevance to any given moral
crusade: e.g., the panic indicators of widespread popular consensus regarding
the behavior under scrutiny and volatility in the sense that panics tend to erupt
suddenly and subside suddenly (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994:3341). Moral
crusades are ongoing, organized campaigns that may lack public consensus
and volatility but overlap with moral panics in other ways, as indicated in the
bulleted list above.
400 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
[Crusaders on the right] generally strive to preserve the
status of a sexless life except within marriage. In the
case of the feminist left, we are dealing with an attempt
by women to raise the status of women as a group by
demanding that they no longer be required to submit to
rituals of degradation portrayed in or involved in the
production of pornographic materials. (Kirkpatrick and
Zurcher 1983:4; cf. Zurcher and George Kirkpatrick
1976)
The more recent crusade against sex work echoes these
status anxieties, but I argue that the ingredients of status dis-
content have been modernized. In addition to its struggle
against a hedonistic life-styleand the ceremonial degrada-
tionof women, the contemporary crusade also denounces the
material victimization that it associates with sex work; the
contribution of commercial sex to the broader sexualization
of the culture; and the impact of both on the quality of gender
relations and the larger normative order. The problem is in-
creasingly framed as producing both symbolic and instrumen-
tal harms to the well-being of the actors involved and to soci-
ety. The contemporary crusade thus reflects a larger trend in
which moralizing discourses [have] increasingly linked im-
morality to utilitarian claims about the personal or social harm
associated with the wrong(Hunt 1999:411).
The contemporary movement against sex work in the USA
consists of a coalition of the religious right and abolitionist
feminism (OBrien et al. 2013; Weitzer 2007).
6
The religious
right considers sexual commerce perverse and sinful, a source
of moral decay in society, and a threat to marriage and the
family. The core abolitionist feminist tenet differs from this,
defining the sex industry an institution of male domination
over women. Because it is deemed inherently objectifying
and abusive of women, it must be eradicated completely.
This position is not necessarily shared by mainstream
womens rights organizations, which have largely avoided
the issue of sex work.
7
But abolitionist feminism has clearly
established itself as a force to be reckoned with in policy
debates on the sex industry.
The focal concerns of the religious right and abolitionist
feminism thus differ, with each offering a set of principles that
appeals to its respective constituency. Still, although critiquing
sexual commerce on different grounds, their focal concerns
are quite complementary.
The crusade has enjoyed a striking degree of success in
influencing policymaking from the late 1990s to the present.
Core crusade claims have been embraced by key legislators
and incorporated in official government policies, as shown
below. I argue that there are three main reasons for the cru-
sadessuccess:
&First, the extreme stigma attached to sex work and the
widespread presumption of universal exploitation and vic-
timization in sexual commerce (what I call the oppression
paradigm) are conducive to a prohibitionist policy ap-
proach (Weitzer 2010,2012). The oppression paradigm
is so obviouslyvalid and compelling for most
policymakers that it pre-empts even considering alterna-
tive perspectives (Prostitution Task Force 1999). Totally
missing in this processin the USA and most other
countriesis the alternative polymorphous paradigm,
which highlights a constellation of occupational arrange-
ments, power relations, and worker experiences,and
treats victimization, exploitation, choice, job satisfaction,
self-esteem, and other dimensionsas factors that vary
significantly between types of sex work, geographical lo-
cations, race and gender, third-party involvement, and oth-
er structural conditions (Weitzer 2010:8). The minority of
policymakers who are cognizant of polymorphism may be
less likely to accept the claims of this moral crusade.
&Second, a robust counter-discourse and sustained lobby-
ing by sex-work advocates has been lacking. And when
the dominant discourse has been challenged in public,
those who make such counterclaims have been either ig-
nored or denounced as apologists for pimps and traffickers
(e.g., Grant 2014; Porth 2018).
8
This dynamic contrasts
with that of some other moral contestsabortion, drugs,
gay rightswhere crusadersclaims have been vigorous-
ly countered by organized opponents. Media representa-
tions are crucial here. The mainstream news media has
been complicit in its reporting on both trafficking and
sex work. Content analyses of newspaper coverage, for
example, find that journalists typically invoke stereotypes
about sex work and have rarely questioned the dominant
discourse on human trafficking (Gulati 2011; Johnston
6
The religious and feminist coalition members tend tohold opposing views on
other social issues but they largely agree on sex work. The single-issue focus
of abolitionist feminist groupstargeting the sex industry exclusively
trumps all other issues and explains their willingness to work with rightwing
groups in order to legitimize their efforts as a bipartisan enterprise. Groups on
the right include Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family,
National Association of Evangelicals, Catholic Bishops Conference,
National Center on Sexual Exploitation, International Justice Mission,
Shared Hope International, and numerous others. Feminist groups include
the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), Demand Abolition,
Equality Now, Stop Porn Culture, Prostitution Research and Action, and
Standing Against Global Exploitation.
7
However, the National Organization for Women passed a resolution in 1973
(Resolution 141) that endorsed decriminalization. The resolution declared that
NOW opposes continued prohibitive laws regarding prostitution, believing
them to be punitiveand therefore favors removal of all laws relating to the
act of prostitution.
8
It remains to be seen whether some recent attempts to decriminalize prosti-
tution will be successful, given the inevitable intense counter-lobbying by
crusade operatives and the broader stigmatization of sex work. Similar bills
failed in Hawaii in 2007 and 2017. Over the past 30 years, decriminalization
bills have been presented in the South Australian Parliament 13 times, to no
avail (Puddy 2019).
401Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
et al. 2014; Koster and Roth 2016;Marchionni2012;Van
Brunschot et al. 1999).
&Third, activists have successfully conflated sex trafficking
with all types of sex work.
The following sections explore this crusadesassumptions,
claims, and policy outcomes regarding key aspects and types
of sexual commerce.
Conflating Sex Work with Sex Trafficking
The oppression paradigm presents a one-dimensional portrait
of sex work as inherently abusive and exploitative.
9
The cou-
pling of sex work with sex trafficking adds a fairly new pillar
to this paradigm. Here, the crusades central claim is that most,
if not all, sexual commerce involves trafficking,
10
and the
standard script regarding both sex work and sex trafficking
centers on innocence, trickery, exploitation, and violence
(OBrien et al. 2013; Porth 2018). The dominant narrative
on labor trafficking is much less sensationalized.
When a moral crusade achieves its foundational objective,
it may begin to target other problems that it associates with its
original concern (Becker 1963:153). Such domain expansion
is quite apparent in the human trafficking arena: the initial,
singular focus on trafficking has steadily expanded over time.
Chuang (2014:625) calls this conflation of distinct problems
and corresponding net-widening exploitation creep:she
documents the fusion of the previously distinct legal con-
cepts of forced labor, trafficking, and slaveryin official pro-
nouncements and policytrends. A parallel pattern is evident in
activiststwin interests in attracting attention to the trafficking
problem and eradicating sex work by equating it with sex
trafficking (Brennan 2017;Weitzer2007). In the past decade,
types of sex work that were not previously considered hotbeds
of trafficking are now being so defined (e.g., strip clubs, por-
nography, erotic webcam performances). In addition, the fo-
cus has shifted to the demand”—the customers, who are
increasingly demonized, shamed, and subjected to harsh
punishment.
Indeed, prominent anti-trafficking activists have pressed
the government to crack down on the entire commercial sex
trade, and this paper documents growing success in achieving
this goal. One example of this universalizing trend is the 2005
End Demand for Sex Trafficking bill (H.R. 2012), whose pur-
pose was to combat commercial sexual activitiesin general,
because they have a devastating impact on society. The sex
trade has a dehumanizing effect on all involved(§2[a][1]).
This statement also appears in each of the annual Traf fic king
in Persons reports published by the State Department during
the final years of the George W. Bush regime (20052008).
The End Demand bill targeted customers, pornography, lap
dancing in strip clubs, operators of sex tours,and legal
brothel prostitution in Nevada. Parts of the bill were included
in the reauthorized human trafficking statute in 2005
(TVPRA), which contains a section (§201a) that repeatedly
refers to the need to investigate and combat trafficking in
persons and demand for commercial sex acts in the United
States”—seemingly melding the two. Each subsequent reau-
thorization bill has included new mechanisms to combat both
trafficking and sexual commerce as a vector for trafficking.
11
These bills as well as pronouncements in government reports
have steadily stretched the domain of trafficking.
Pornography
The contemporary anti-pornography movement had a prede-
cessor in the USA in the 1980s, when the religious right and
abolitionist feminists succeeded in accomplishing several key
goals: i.e., passage of anti-porn ordinances in two cities; the
formation of a presidential commission on pornography (the
Meese Commission); creation of a new anti-porn unit in the
Justice Department; and increased prosecutions of major pro-
ducers and distributors of pornography, who were depicted as
quintessential folk devils (Department of Justice 1988;
McGee 1993; Vance 1986). This crusade differed, however,
from the contemporary one in that the groups on the right and
left did not collaborate and had almost no direct interaction.
They differed in their core grievances regarding pornography
andtheyoperatedinparalleluniverses,evenassomeoftheir
key goals overlapped (Whittier 2014). This movement be-
came essentially defunct during the Clinton administration in
the 1990s but resurged in the 2000s with the election of
9
Denise Brennan offers an insightful comparison of sex work and other kinds
of work:
"In what other labor sector are workers told that they are exploited? In what
other industry do we ascribe widespread false consciousness and ignore
workersown testimony? What other workers are told they need 'rehabilita-
tion' ? While acknowledging that exploitationincluding extreme conditions
of abuseexists in, for example, domestic work or farm work, there is no call
to rescue all workers. Nor are there efforts to eliminate these industries out-
right" (Brennan 2017: 486).
10
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines sex traf-
ficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining
of a person for the purpose of labor or commercial sex if it involves the use of
"force, fraud, or coercion" against an adult, or if the individual is under 18
years of age and involved in commercial sex, whether or not coercion is
involved (22 U.S.C. Public Law 106386, §103(8[A], 9). All 50 states sub-
sequently enacted trafficking laws. For a discussion of the interest groups and
principal legislators involved in the process leading up to the enactment of
TVPA, see Stolz (2005).
11
A provision in a recent bill seeks to combat trafficking by ending govern-
ment partnerships with the commercial sex industry:No Federal funds or
resourcesmay be used for the operation of, participation in, or partnership with
any program that involves the provision of funding or resources to an organi-
zation that (1) has the primary purpose of providing adult entertainment and
(2) derives profits from the commercial sex trade.U.S. Senate, Abolish
Human Trafficking Act of 2017, S.1311, §19.
402 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
George W. Bush. In its new iteration, feminist and religious
organizations became close partnersinteracting frequently,
co-sponsoring events, and using some identical language.
Their main focal concerns still differ (traditional morality,
womens equality), but these differences have been suspended
in their shared commitment to abolish pornography. Unlike
the 1980s, these groups now comprise a fairly tight coalition.
The exponential growth of the pornography market over the
past two decades heightened anxieties among both branches
of this coalition.
Pornography is legal in the USA (an expression of free
speech) provided that a particular work is not deemed
obscene. The 1973 Supreme Court decision Miller v.
California stipulated that local community standardsdictate
whether a work is obscene. In the typical court case, prosecu-
tors ask a jury to determine whether a work is obscene accord-
ing to that communitys standards. If so, the work is declared
obscene and purveyors are liable to punishment. Whereas
there were few prosecutions of adult obscenity during the
Clinton years and child pornography was the central focus,
the Bush regime expanded prosecutions for both. For the
Clinton years 19942000, the number of defendants facing
obscenity charges in federal court totaled 76. For the Bush
years 20012008, the respective figure was 409.
12
This record
did not satisfy activists. Anti-porn groups expected Bush to
launch a much more vigorous crackdown. Two years after
Bush took office, a leading evangelical organization,
Concerned Women for America, complained that the author-
ities were prosecuting the purveyors of only the most extreme
kinds of pornography:
Until the DOJ [Department of Justice] vigorously and
consistently targets the major hard-core porn producers
and distributors of prosecutable but less deviant materi-
al, the industry will continue to make billions exploiting
women, addicting men, exposing children, destroying
marriages, and polluting the culture while laughing all
the way to the bank. (LaRue 2003)
The former chief of DOJs obscenity unit (and later legal
counsel for the Family Research Council and for the National
Center on Sexual Exploitation), Patrick Trueman, agreed:
The few cases that have been prosecuted involve ex-
treme pornography, depicting violence, defecation, or
animals....Byonlypursuingextremeobscenity,the
mainstream porn industry is given a green light. Theres
this perception that anything other than extreme pornog-
raphy is legal, and its not. The fact that its not being
prosecuted does not make it legal . . . Most porn violates
community standards; that makes it illegal,anditseasy
to prove. (quoted in Laugesen 2007, emphasis added)
AlettertoPresidentBush,signedbyover50activists,
expressed alarm at the explosive increasein the availability
of pornography, which they associated with a cluster of harms
related to the oppression paradigm. The letter argues that traf-
ficking in women and childrenis linked to the spread of
obscenityand that pornography corrupts children, ruins
marriages, contributes to sex crimes against children and
adults, and undermines the right of Americans to live in a
decent society.
13
Although the Attorney General had created
a new Obscenity Task Force in May 2005, activists remained
unsatisfied with the Justice Departments enforcement record
and demanded that President Bush make fighting obscenity
one of your top priorities.
The proliferation and perceived normalization of pornog-
raphy is a driving force behind activistsefforts to criminalize
its production, distribution, and possession. As the leader of
Morality in Media stated,
If we could just send a message to people that this is not
what sex is all about, we will have won more than half
the battle. Whether youre a creationist or a Darwinist,
sex is linked to something greater than masturbating to
depictions of other people having sex. Itslinkedtoa
person. We have a capacity to love. (Robert Peters,
quoted in Beato 2004)
Former DOJ official Trueman agrees:
The mainstream porn industry has been left to do pretty
much whatever it wants. Porn is now so pervasive that
our college students dont even know how to date, be-
cause pornography has conditioned young men to be-
lieve that theyre entitled to sexual services from women
without the need for relationship. Theyre on such a
steady diet of porn that they cant distinguish between
love and sexual desire. (quoted in Laugesen 2007)
If government anti-pornography efforts under Bush were
underwhelming in the opinion of activists, the latter claimed
that such efforts all but evaporated under Obama (e.g.,
DeLong 2012; Reilly 2013). In July 2009, a coalition of
12
Bureau of Justice Statistics figures based on data from the Administrative
Office of the U.S. Courts.
13
Appointment of NewU.S. Attorney General and OtherMatters Regarding
Vigorous Enforcement of Federal Obscenity Laws,September 10, 2007.
Available at: http://www.moralityinmedia.org/obscenityEnforcement/Letter-
Regarding-Appointment-of-New-U.S.-Atty-General_10Sep2007.pdf
(accessed February 10, 2008). The letter was signed by, inter alia, Morality in
Media, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Focus on
the Family, American Family Association, American Decency Association,
and Citizens for Community Values.
403Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
organizations sent the following letter to Attorney General
Eric Holder:
Since the advent of the Internet, illegal pornography has
flooded homes, businesses, public libraries, and even
schools. The results have been devastating to America.
Pornography addiction is now common among men,
women, and even many children. Children are creating
cell phone pornography, in a new trend called sexting.
Pornography use is now a significant factor in divorce.
Hotels, motels, cable and satellite companies, and other
businesses are making tremendous profits by offering
illegal, obscene pornography. America is becoming a
pornified culture.. . . We are compelled to write to
you and ask for an expansion of the Administrations
efforts against the scourge of pornography.
14
The Southern Baptist Convention echoed this sentiment:
To Americas shame, the growth of obscene material online
has been like a rapidly metastasizing cancer. . . . Christians
should petition President Obama to start enforcing the laws
dealing with the production and distribution of obscene mate-
rial(Schwarzwalder 2014). In reality, the number of prose-
cutions under Obama did not decline, as activists claimed, and
were instead on a par with those initiated under Bush. The
number of individuals prosecuted for adult obscenity in fed-
eral courts during the Obama years (20092016) was 393
almost identical to the number (409) prosecuted during the
Bush years (2001-2008) .
15
Insofar as the fraying of traditional mores is insufficient to
generate popular concern and tangible success for a crusade,
secular harms may resonate more powerfully with the public
and policymakers (Hunt 1999). The present crusade has in-
deed attempted to expand and modernize its discourse with
two new arguments: pornographys link to trafficking and the
threat it poses to public health.
Pornography and Trafficking
A prominent abolitionist equates pornography with the traf-
ficking of persons in an article boldly titled Pornography as
Trafficking:
In the resulting materials, these people are then con-
veyed and sold for a buyers sexual use. . . . Each time
the pornography is commercially exchanged, the traf-
ficking continues as the women and children in it are
transported and provided for sex, sold, and bought
again. Doing all these things for the purpose of
exploiting the prostitution of others which pornogra-
phy intrinsically does makes it trafficking in persons.
(MacKinnon 2005:993)
The conflation here of materialsand personsis even more
striking in the bizarre statement that the pornography indus-
try, in production, creates demand for prostitution, hence for
trafficking, because it is itself a form of prostitution and traf-
ficking(MacKinnon 2005:1004).
These arguments are not merely academic. Activists have
seized on the porn-as-trafficking trope. For example,
Concerned Women for America has a webpage entitled
Pornography and Sex Trafficking: The Links.The site
claims that pornography is used to train sex slavesand that
traffickers take pornographic pictures of victims to coerce
them into making films and/or prostituting.
16
Apart from
the fact that only a few anecdotes are offered to support these
sweeping claims, the reasoning itself suffers from a fatal fal-
lacy: inferring the nature of an industry from the actions of
some individuals, who may be entirely outside the industry.
A leading opponent of sex work goes even further, in a
report funded by a $108,000 grant from the State Department:
Production of pornography and Internet sex shows [e.g.,
webcam performances] are markets which often rely on
trafficked victims. . . . In some parts of the world, centers
of trafficking are also centers for the production of por-
nography. An example is St. Petersburg, where represen-
tatives from NGOs report that they have heard of many
cases of women being forced to make pornography. . . .
Budapest has also become the pornography production
capital of Europe. American and European pornography
producers moved to Budapest because of the cheap,
available victims. . . . It is likely that at least some of
the women used in the production of these videos are
victims of trafficking, yet few people think of production
of pornography as a way that victims of trafficking are
exploited. (Hughes 2005:26, emphasis added)
Two problems stand out here. First, the claims are supported
by anecdotal evidence at best. Staff at a single NGO (not
NGOs) are one source and their comments are hearsay
(heard of), while most of the other claims in this two-page
section of the report are entirely lacking in sources. Second, the
author switches between decisiveness (oftenrelyontrafficked
victims) and qualified claims (likely,”“at least some of). The
notionthatproductioncompaniesmovedtoBudapestinorder
to exploit cheap, available victimsis left undocumented in the
report.
14
Letter from Alliance Defense Fund to Attorney General Eric Holder,
July 15, 2009.
15
Bureau of Justice Statistics figures based on data from the Administrative
Office of the U.S. Courts.
16
Available from http://concernedwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/
CWA_Pornography-and-SexTrafficking.pdf (accessed June 4, 2018).
404 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
The state has begun to link pornography and trafficking as
well. One striking example is Congresssrecentdefinitionof
child pornography as a type of trafficking. The Justice For
Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015 modified the 1990 federal
law on child abuse by declaring that child pornography pro-
ducers are human traffickers(Public Law 114-22, §104,
§111). Indicative, again, of domain expansion, a recent
Justice Department report on trafficking now includes figures
on prosecutions for producing child pornography; such pros-
ecutions comprised one-third of the total traffickingcases
from 2011 to 2015 (Motivans and Snyder 2018). Other than
inflating the magnitude of the trafficking problem, it is not
clear why it was necessary to define child pornography as
trafficking, given that producing and possessing it were al-
ready serious offenses under federal and state laws.
APublicHealthCrisis
Another way in which the perils have been secularized is
medicalization of the problem as a public health crisis.
According to one analyst, shifting the debate away from 1
st
Amendment rights and toward porns public health impacts
could be a smart way to modernize their arguments(Phillips
2016). The public health idea was advocated a few years ago
by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), a
leading anti-porn organization whose name change (formerly
Morality in Media, founded in 1962) itself reflects moderniza-
tion: from morality to exploitation .
In the past few years, sixteen state legislatures have passed
resolutions, some unanimously, that blame pornography for a
litany of social problems. Utah was the first to do this, and
NCSE helped draft its resolution (Phillips 2016). The preamble
declares that pornography is a public health hazard leading to a
broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and
societal harmsand calls for action to curb the pornography
epidemic that is harming the citizens of Utah and the nation
(Utah 2016). The resolution claims that pornography
&is biologically addictive;
&interferes with healthy brain development in young
people;
&can have a detrimental effect on the family unit;
&is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry, dis-
satisfaction in marriage, and infidelity;
&creates a sexually toxic environment;
&contributes to the hypersexualization of teens, and even
prepubescent children;
&normalizes violence and abuse of women and children;
&equates violence towards women and children with sex
and pain with pleasure;
&causes low self-esteem and body image disorders, an
increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages,
and an increased desire among adolescents to engage in
risky sexual behavior;and
&increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution,
child sexual abuse images, and child pornography.
Prior to this resolution, Utah had taken the lead in promot-
ing the idea that pornography endangers public health. The
state appointed a pornography complaints ombudsmanin
2000, and Utah is the site of the largest annual anti-porn con-
ference in the country, attended by about 3000 people in 2017
(LaPlante 2018: A11). It is also the headquarters of the
Mormon-founded anti-porn group Fight the New Drug, which
associates porn with addiction, drug use, changes in the brain,
sex trafficking, ruined love relationships, violence, and other
perils. In March 2017, the state legislature passed a bill that
allows parents to sue pornography distributors under certain
conditions if their children view sexual content intended for
adults.
17
The bill was supported by 57% of state residents.
18
Finally, the alleged threats to public health are taken for
granted by the Mormon Church. As one church elder
proclaimed, We do need to see this like avian flu, or cholera,
or diphtheria, or polio(quoted in LaPlante 2018:A11).
The fifteen other state resolutions replicate Utahs, with most-
ly identical language. But there are some intriguing additions as
well. Virginia included the idea that use of pornography, by
either partner, is linked to an increased likelihood that girls will
engage in group intercourse,without explaining how this is
related to public health (Virginia 2017). Equally baffling, in the
unanimously passed Arkansas resolution, is the public health
relevance of the idea that pornography is a multibillion-dollar
industry, and the influences are reaching the highest levels of
society and government(Arkansas 2017). This part of the res-
olution instead reflects the pornification-of-society trope. South
Dakotas resolution declared that excessive usersmay develop
emotional, mental, and medical illnessesand deviant sexual
arousals,while Kansas blames pornography for the rise in the
occurrence of erectile dysfunction in young men(South Dakota
2017;Kansas2018). Idaho includes men, along with women and
children, as the victims of porn, in terms of objectification, abuse,
and violence (Idaho 2018). And Louisiana medicalizes the prob-
lem by referring to a pornography epidemicand cancer on
society(Louisiana 2017). Finally, it should be noted that the
public health frame is not limited to these states; at the national
level, the 2016 Republican Partys platform branded pornogra-
phy a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.
We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace.
17
Distributors are legally protected if they include warnings on their products
and make a genuine effort to verify the age of consumers who access their
websites.
18
The bill was favored by 73% of staunch Mormons, 69% of Republicans,
and 36% of Democrats. Poll fielded January 916, 2017, N= 605 registered
voters (Wood 2017).
405Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
There are many problems with this construction of pornog-
raphy. First, the claims are made by fiat,withnosupporting
evidence provided.
19
Second, none of the proclamations de-
fine pornography. How it differs from non-pornographic but
erotic images or performances is not specified. Third, the term
pornographyis monolithicpresented in a crude, unquali-
fied manner, rather than recognizing the tremendous diversity
in content. Fourth, porn is assumed to be an extremely potent
behemoth: it has a universally devastating effect on those ex-
posed to it and their loved ones. Fifth, there is a failure to
recognize multiple sources of influence on audience percep-
tions and behavior, influences that are not reducible to ones
exposure to pornography alone. Media scholars have long
abandoned the notion that exposure to any given content
(e.g., video games, music lyrics, movies) will, by itself, result
in corresponding audience attitudes or behavior. Sixth, there is
a failure to grapple with testimony from consumers them-
selves. Research documents the myriad ways in which they
interact with and decode sexual content; the kinds they like,
dislike, and choose to view; and positive outcomes such as
physical pleasure or sex education (e.g., Loftus 2002;McKee
et al. 2008; Weinberg et al. 2010). Finally, public health fram-
ing is consistent with one of the hallmarks of moral panic
theory: disproportionality. During moral panics, the intensity
of alarm is substantially in excess of what is appropriate if
concern were directly proportional to objective harm(Goode
and Ben-Yehuda 1994:36). There is no doubt that some con-
sumers experience problems with their use of pornography,
but this occurs at the individual level and does not constitute
a larger public health crisis. It is noteworthy that no global
health agency endorses the claims advanced in the state
resolutions.
Prostitution
For decades, most American police departments focused their
enforcement efforts on street prostitution. Some paid little or
no attention to indoor prostitution, as long as it remained dis-
creet and did not generate complaints from the public (Pearl
1987). As a blue-ribbon commission in San Francisco rea-
soned in 1971, Keeping prostitutes off the streets may be
aided by tolerating them off the streets(San Francisco
Committee on Crime 1971:44). In keeping with the polymor-
phous paradigm, the authorities in some cities distinguished
street and indoor prostitution in their de facto policies and
enforcement practices (Pearl 1987).
Today, all types of prostitution are being robustly targeted.
CATWs website proclaims that all prostitution exploits
women, regardless of womens consent. Prostitution affects
all women, justifies the sale of any woman, and reduces all
women to sex.
20
Portrayed as intrinsically harmful, under no
conditions can it ever qualify as a conventional commercial
exchange. As activist and former government official Laura
Lederer insists: This is not a legitimate form of labor . . . It
can never be a legitimate way to make a living because its
inherently harmful for men, women, and children . . . This
whole commercial sex industry is a human-rights abuse
(quoted in Jones 2002).
21
Activists on the religious right agree
that prostitution can never be a legitimate practice, because it
threatens marriage and the family and contributes to moral
decay in society. For both coalition partners, the twin central
premises are that prostitution is inherently evil and that pros-
titution is inseparable from sex trafficking (Leidholdt 2004;
OConnor and Healy 2006). The two phenomena are
isomorphic.
The Bush regime fully embraced this oppression-paradigm
framing. A major State Department publication, The Link be-
tween Prostitution and Sex Trafficking,proclaimedthatpros-
titution is inherently harmful and dehumanizing;brutal and
damaging to people;the oldest form of oppression;fuels
trafficking;leaves women and children physically, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually devastated; and legal prostitution
creates a safe haven for criminals who traffic people into
prostitution.
22
The sources for these claims were the writings
of five leading feminist abolitionists.
The equation of prostitution with trafficking raises the
question of whether the definition of trafficking in the TVPA
should be changed. Currently, to be prosecutable, trafficking
of adults must involve the use of force, fraud, or coer-
cion.(see footnote 10 above). If all prostitution qualifies as
trafficking, removal of these criteria would seem to be justi-
fied. Indeed, the House of Representatives removed force,
fraud, and coercionfrom the bill reauthorizing the TVPRA
in 2008, thus rendering all prostitution as trafficking. This
domain expansion was rejected by the Senate and the lan-
guage was stripped from the reauthorized statute.
What is missing from this kind of framing is recognition
that trafficking and prostitution differ qualitatively and operate
independently: trafficking involves the process of accessing a
market and prostitution is a type of labor that may or may not
result from trafficking. The Obama regime recognized these
distinctions in one of its annual trafficking reports, stating,
Prostitution by willing adults is not human trafficking regard-
less of whether it is legalized, decriminalized, or criminalized
(Department of State, 2010:8). This important distinction had
19
The one exception is Montana, whose resolution cites writings critical of
pornography, some by prominent anti-pornography activists.
20
Available from www.catwinternational.org.
21
Lederer was a leader in the anti-porn movement in the1980s. Between 2001
and 2009, she was a senior advisor in the State DepartmentsTraffickingin
Persons office. In 2009, she became Vice President of Global Centurion, an
organization fighting sex trafficking.
22
Department of State, Fact Sheet, The Link between Prostitution and Sex
Trafficking,2004 (webpage now defunct).
406 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
no effect, however, on the governments overall approach to
trafficking, which continues to fuse the two in both discourse
and law enforcement practices.
Customers as Folk Devils
Moral discourses impute blame and assign responsibility
(Hunt 1999:411), and the identification of folk devilsis a
staple of moral crusades (Cohen 1972). Initially focused on
pimps and traffickers as the obvious folk devils in sexual
commerce, the crusade now gives equalattention to customers
(the demand), who are portrayed as the root cause of sex
trafficking (but, importantly, not trafficking in other indus-
tries). Crusade members now label both traffickers and cus-
tomers as predators and sex offenders. One writing, for exam-
ple, proclaims that prostitution is best understood as a trans-
action in which there are two roles: exploiter/predator and
victim/prey; the authors advocate putting customers in the
same category as rapists, paedophiles, and other social unde-
sirables(Macleod et al. 2008:30, 27). This is just one exam-
ple of the blanket and hyperbolic stigmatization that is abun-
dant in crusade discourse.
A sizeable body of research contradicts the folk-devil ste-
reotype, showing that customers vary substantiallydemo-
graphically, motivationally, and behaviorally (e.g., Birch
2015; Monto and Milrod 2014;Sanders2008). Many are
looking for companionship and intimacy in addition to sexual
activity, and those who act abusively are in the minority (e.g.,
Brooks-Gordon 2006; Lowman and Atchison 2006;Milrod
and Weitzer 2012;Monto2010).
23
Research on indoor sex
workers has found that they are less likely than street workers
to experience abuse (e.g., Church et al. 2001), and some stud-
ies find that significant proportions of indoor workers have
never experienced violence while at work.
24
Nevertheless, customers are increasingly vilified and
targeted for punishment. The 2005 TVPRA (§204[1b,1c])
authorized $25 million per year to be distributed to police
departments to increase arrests of those who purchase sex-
ual services. More importantly, this statute added the fol-
lowing to the official set of minimum standards for reduc-
ing trafficking: measures to reduce the demand for com-
mercial sex acts and for participation in international sex
tourism by nationals of the country(§104[(b)(1)(A]). That
these twin aspects of demand reduction have been elevated
to official government policy is further borne out in the
State Departments recent Trafficking in Persons reports.
In 2015, for the first time in its 16 years of annual
reporting, the Department added a demand criterion to its
list of measures for assessing and ranking other nations
performance in the anti-trafficking sphere.
25
Countries
must now demonstrate serious and sustained efforts to
reduce the demand for commercial sex acts and participa-
tion in international sex tourism by nationals of the coun-
try(State Department, 2015:50). This requirement is not
only a splendid example of domain expansion but also
disregards the fact that prostitution is legal in several na-
tions (discussed below). In these countries, it appears that
these legal actors are not officially regarded as folk devils
who contribute to sex trafficking. The State Departments
template is designed to pressure other governments to take
a punitive approach to legal participants in sexual
commerce.
Curbing Internet Facilitation
Another target is Internet facilitation of indoor sex work.
Crusade groups insist that certain websites allow pimps
and traffickers to advertise sexual services, and they have
long lobbied for outlawing these sites (Levy 2017). The
2008 TVPRA (§237[c]) provided new resources for police
investigation of the use of Internet-based businesses and
services by criminal actors in the sex industryand for the
dissemination of best practices for apprehending those who
use the Internet for prostitution purposes. But this was just
the beginning. The following decade culminated in a full-
scale suppression of websites that advertise erotic services
or provide forums for participants to discuss their experi-
ences. The rationale for the crackdown was the assumption
that Online advertising . . . has contributed to the explo-
sion of domestic sex trafficking,as a Senate report de-
clared (U.S. Senate 2017:5). The alleged explosionof
online trafficking is not verified in the report, and it should
be obvious that an increase in the number of advertise-
ments does not qualify as evidence of skyrocketing
trafficking.
Craigslist.org was the first website targeted. Its Adult
Services section contained ads for both legal and illicit
erotic services (exotic dancing, escorts, webcam
exchanges, phone sex, massage), which attracted the
attention of the authorities. In November 2008, the
website reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys
general to institute measures to reduce the use of the site
for unlawful purposes, including cooperating with law
enforcement to identify illegal activity on the site. By
mid-2009, however, the authorities had determined that
the content of the ads had changed little and, as a result
of continuing pressure to remove its Adult Services
23
Monto (2010: 244, 243) concludes that most clients do not hold views that
justify violence against prostitutesand that there is no evidence to suggest
that more than a minority of customers assault prostitutes.
24
This was the case for 78% of indoor workers in a British study (N= 135)
and 77% in Belgium (N= 83) (Sanders and Campbell 2007; Europap 2001).
25
Nations that perform poorly on the compliance measures are subject to
economic sanctions under the law. This has convinced some nations to intro-
duce new policies in order to conform to the State Departments demands.
407Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
section, Craigslist did so in September 2010. Many of
these advertisements then relocated to Backpage.com.
Crusade leaders and their political allies, at the state and
national levels, were stymied in their efforts to force
Backpage to close its adult ad section. The main
obstacle was the 1996 Communications Decency Act,
under which Internet service providers and platforms
cannot be held responsible for user-generated content.
26
In 2015, a US Senate investigation requested docu-
ments from Backpage regarding its ad policies and reve-
nue. The companys CEO refused, but the investigation
proceeded and culminated in a Senate report in January
2017 that accused Backpage of intentionally facilitating
sex trafficking.
27
On January 9, 2017, Backpage relented
and removed its Adult Entertainment section, but in
March 2018, seven company officials were charged with
conspiracy to facilitate prostitution, and a week later, the
FBI shut down the entire website. This victory, however,
did not affect other sitesadvertisements for erotic ser-
vices or discussion forums for participants. To make it
easier for prosecutors to target these sites in the future,
Congress amended the Communications Decency Act by
removing liability protections for Internet companies that
allow content that facilitates either prostitution or sex traf-
ficking. The legislationknown by its acronyms FOSTA
and SESTAwas justified with the claim that websites
that promote and facilitate prostitution have been reckless
in allowing the sale of sex trafficking victims and have
done nothing to prevent the trafficking of children and
[adult] victims(H.R. 1865 §2[2]). Depending on the
prostitution-related offense, those convicted under this
law can face up to 10 or 25 years in prison. As a result,
several websites (e.g., Cityvibe, The Erotic Review) shut
down completely on the day the law was signed (April 9,
2018).
The statutes claim that such websites have done nothing
to preventtrafficking is false. For years, both Craigslist and
Backpage worked closely with service providers and law en-
forcement to identify ads suspected of featuring minors. The
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children even re-
vealed that Backpage had supplied nearly three-quarters of
all reports of online child sex traffickingthat the center re-
ceives.
28
As one analyst concluded,
Even though some traffickers make use of these
platforms, there is neither an empirical foundation
for the assumption that the platforms cause traffick-
ing, nor any evidence that shuttering them would
reduce trafficking. To the contrary, allowing
Internet platforms on which sexual services are bro-
kered to thrive may be key to apprehending traf-
fickers and recovering victims. (Levy 2017:404)
Many law enforcement officials have used these websites
in precisely this way (Baskin 2017; Levy 2017).
A key crusade assumption is that blocking these ave-
nues will result in a major depletion of both demand and
supply. Regarding the latter, it is incontestable that such
actions make it more difficult for sex workers to screen
clients and share bad dateinformation with other
workers, thus rendering their work more hazardous.
Such adverse effects have been documented in other in-
stances of enhanced criminalization (e.g., Krűsi 2014;
Levy and Jakobsson 2014), and a 2018 survey of 262
online sex workers found that the vast majority experi-
enced decreases in income, available clients, screening
practices, and worker bargaining power [and] increases
in risk taking, contact from predators preying on desper-
ation, and demands for cheaper services(Peterson et al.
2019:191). Due to an increased fear of arrest for advertis-
ing sexual services, some who advertised on Backpage
and worked indoors have felt pressured to shift to street
selling, where screening is more difficult (Anderson 2018;
Villarreal 2018). Moreover, the statute immediately affect-
ed the ability of sex-worker rights organizations to pro-
mote themselves online and to operate offline: since the
law was enacted, they have been blocked on social media,
called off a planned conference, and suspended some
street-outreach programs (Lennard 2018).
The closure of these websites is a major crusade victory.
29
Even if their demise serves to reduce supply and demand only
slightly, it certainly qualifies as symbolic politics by
interrupting the trend toward the normalization of sexual com-
merce. The well-publicized removal of these websites leaves a
significant cultural footprint, reinforcing the stigma already
associated with sex work. It thereby helps to reestablish con-
ventional normative boundaries, a key goal of this moral
crusade.
26
Nevertheless, in June 2014, the FBI shut down another website where sex
workers advertised, MyRedBook. The owner waslater convicted of promoting
prostitution, sentenced to a year in prison, and forfeited $1.28 million in prop-
erty and cash (Rocha 2015). In 2016, the male-oriented escort site RentBoy.
com was also shut down by the authorities.
27
Backpage was also accused of money laundering, conspiracy to facilitate
prostitution, and modifying the terms used in certain ads in order to avoid the
appearance of impropriety (U.S. Senate 2017).
28
Available from https://www.facebook.com/missingkids/posts/
10156506459006988 (accessed June 5, 2018).
29
A major player in the crusade, Shared Hope International, for example,
declared that anti-trafficking advocates and survivors of sex trafficking and
their families celebrate thislong awaited progress in the effort to combat online
sex trafficking.Regarding FOSTA-SESTAs symbolic benefits: Indeed, rec-
ognizing the harm caused by online platforms as facilitators of trafficking and
exploitation is a critical step in shifting the broader narrative to recognize the
scope of exploitation that occurs in the commercial sex industry(Smith
2018).
408 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
Legal Prostitution Regimes
Because a well-functioning legal prostitution system would
clash with the interests of this crusade, it is imperative that
the very idea of legalization be discredited. At Congressional
hearings and elsewhere, organizations such as the Protection
Project, International Justice Mission, and Shared Hope
International have claimed that legal prostitution systems fos-
ter trafficking (OBrien et al. 2013). In its mission statement,
CATW seeks to challenge acceptance of the sex industry,
normalization of prostitution as work, and to de-romanticize
legalization initiatives in various countries.
30
Legalization
allegedly increases trafficking by removing the constraints
on a formerly illegal and marginalized enterprise. According
to CATWs former co-director, legalized or decriminalized
prostitution industries are one of the root causes of sex traf-
ficking(Raymond 2004:317), a claim echoed by Concerned
Women for America: legalizing prostitution does not remedy
the problem of sex trafficking but rather increases it.
31
The
fact that organized crime thrives under conditions where there
is strong demand for an illicit good or service is simply ig-
nored by this crusade. The lessons of alcohol and marijuana
prohibition, for example, do not resonate.
The legislative debate on the TVPA bill in 1999 and 2000
and the first three annual Trafficking in Persons reports did not
critique legalizationa flaw that activists vociferously
complained about in their testimony in Congress between
2001 and 2003 (OBrien et al. 2013:149150). These con-
cerns were quickly addressed. The 2004 Trafficking in
Persons report proclaims:
The United States Government takes a firm stand
against proposals to legalize prostitution because
prostitution directly contributes to the modern-day
slave trade and is inherently demeaning. When law
enforcement tolerates or communities legalize pros-
titution, organized crime groups are freer to traffic in
human beings. . . . Legalized prostitution is there-
fore a traffickers best shield, allowing him to legit-
imize his trade in sex slaves, and making it more
difficult to identify trafficking victims. (Department
of State 2004:22)
Activists also succeeded in convincing Congress to
adopt a measure denying funding to non-governmental
organizations that either favor or take no position on le-
galization. Since 2003, to be eligible for US funding, any
foreignNGOworkingonthetraffickingfrontmustde-
clare its opposition to prostitution and to legalization.
Similarly, the 2003 Global AIDS Act requires that any
international organization working to curb AIDS must
have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution if it wishes
to receive US funding. This applies to American groups
insofar as they work with or subcontract work to interna-
tional organizations (Masenior and Beyrer 2007), as well
as any group or individual who applies for funding from
the Trafficking in Persons Office. The Justice Department
extended this requirement to anyone who applies for
funding to conduct research on traffickingan apparent
violation of free speech.
In this section, I describe the crusades efforts against
legalizationin discourse and activism. I begin with the
state of Nevadathe only site in the USA where prosti-
tution is legal and regulated by the government. In 1971,
the state legislature passed a bill that allows rural counties
to license and regulate brothels. (Street or escort prostitu-
tion is illegal throughout the state and all types of prosti-
tution are outlawed in the counties where Las Vegas and
Reno are located.) Currently, 21 legal brothels are operat-
ing in seven rural counties. In a 2011 poll, 56% of
Nevadans believed that prostitution should be legal
throughout the state.
32
Brothel owners are screened by county or municipal of-
ficials and are ineligible if they have ever been convicted of
a felony. Condom use is mandatory under state law. Since
the state began to require monthly testing for HIV and sex-
ually transmitted infections in 1986, not one legal brothel
worker has tested HIV-positive. Local governments impose
additional regulations, governing the location of brothels,
licensing, and participantsconduct. The brothels employ a
number of safety precautions designed to prevent or respond
to an altercation, and an in-depth multi-year study reported
that none of the women interviewed had ever felt the need to
press a panic button and that the police are rarely called to
deal with problem customers (Brents et al. 2010:129, 130,
227). The researchers also found that the brothels are not
associated with drug use, violence, crime, or trafficking, and
do not employ minors (Brents et al. 2010:233). Another
study observed that the insulated nature of the brothels
offers prostitutes near foolproof protection from theft, fraud,
or crimeand that Nevadas model advances the larger ob-
jectives of health, safety, welfare, and morals(Snadowsky
2005:229, 226). The workers themselves are generally satis-
fied with the system. In her interviews and observations in
the brothels, Alexa Albert found the workers to be self-
aware professionals there of their own free will. . . . The
women had found a genuine sense of purpose and meaning
in their work(Albert 2001:30, 100).
Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the brothels has been
contested on occasion. Voters in Lincoln County passed a
30
Available from www.catwinternational.org.
31
Available from www.cwfa.org. See also https://concernedwomen.org/is-
decriminalizing-prostitution-the-new-trend/ (accessed June 2, 2018).
32
Public Policy Polling, July 2813, 2011, N= 601 registered voters.
409Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
ballot measure in 1978 that outlawed the countysexisting
legal brothels. More recently, brothel-closure measures
were rejected by 63% of voters in Churchill County in
2004 and by 81% of voters in Lyon County in 2018.
Although these two measures failed to pass, they reflect
the ongoing efforts of local activists to chip away at
Nevadas legal regime.
The groundwork for statewide criminalization began a de-
cade ago, in the form of a State Department-funded investiga-
tion of Nevadas brothels by anti-prostitution activist Melissa
Farley. I describe this report in some detail here because it was
given a stamp of credibility when co-published as an official
State Department report.
The report claims that trafficking is rife in the brothels, but
offers no evidence to support the claim:
Women are trafficked from other countries into
Nevadas legal brothels. . . . In Nevada, twenty seven
percent of our forty five interviewees [or just 12 women]
in the Nevada legal brothels believed that there were
undocumented immigrants in the legal brothels.
Another eleven percent said they were uncertain, thus
as many as thirty eight percent of the women we
interviewed mayhaveknownof internationally traf-
ficked women in Nevada legal brothel prostitution.
(Farley 2007: 118, 119, emphasis added)
In other words, as many as 62% did not believe that women
were trafficked into the brothels, while the remainder either
had no opinion (11%) or believed that undocumented immi-
grants were present (27%). Note that the question asked about
undocumented immigrants, which Farley recasts as trafficked
persons.
When interviewees responded in ways that challenged
her views, Farley simply discounted them: Iknewthat
they would minimize how bad it was(Farley 2007:22).
This technique is a staple of abolitionist discourse: refus-
ing to accept sex workerstestimony if it contradicts the
oppression paradigm (Brennan 2017;Grant2014). If re-
spondents did not describe brothel work negatively,
Farleypressuredthemtodosoduringherinterviews:
we were asking the women to briefly remove a mask that
was crucial to their psychological survival(Farley 2007:
22). In response to another studys finding that Nevadas
legal brothels offer the safest environment available for
women to sell consensual sex acts for money(Brents and
Hausbeck 2005:289), Farley counters with a tenet of the
oppression paradigm: safety is relative, given that all
prostitution is associated with a high likelihood of vio-
lence(Farley 2007: 20). Evidence contradicting her po-
sition, including studies mentioned above, is routinely
dismissed or ignored in Farleysreport.
33
The fact that
the State Department funded and co-published the report
suggests a congruence of activist-government interests
during the Bush years.
In every other place where prostitution is either officially
legal or de facto tolerated, activists have intensified their lob-
bying for criminalization policies over the past two decades.
Moreover, when one branch of government initiates a more
tolerant approach, its action may be negated by another
branch. For example, when Canadas Supreme Court
invalidated the countrys three prostitution laws in 2013, on
the grounds that they interfered with the liberty and safety of
sex workers, abolitionists quickly mobilized and convinced
Parliament to criminalize the act of purchasing sexual services
the following year (Krűsi 2014; Sampson 2014). Similarly,
legalization bills in places where prostitution is currently ille-
gal have been staunchly opposed by abolitionists on the right
and left.
As noted above, the official position of the US Government
is that legalized prostitution fosters sex trafficking. This, de-
spite the fact that the State DepartmentsannualTrafficking in
Persons reports have consistently rated nations where prosti-
tution is legal (e.g., Austria, Australia, Germany, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland) as being in full
compliance with the agencys minimum standards for curbing
trafficking.
34
This does not necessarily mean that legalization
helps to reduce the incidence of trafficking, but it may indeed
have that effect.
33
Farleys views have been roundly criticized. For example, during the suc-
cessful constitutional challenge to Canadas prostitution laws in 2010, Farley
was among those who testified in favor of retaining criminalization. The judge
downgraded her testimony due to concerns about bias:
I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic. . . . [H]er
advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr.
Farleys unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inher-
ently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes
who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence.
Dr. Farleys choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts
from her conclusions. For example, comments suchas, prostitution is
to the community what incest is to the familyand just as pedophiles
justify sexual assault of children . . . men who use prostitutes develop
elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women
make her opinions less persuasive. Dr. Farley stated during cross-
examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed
prior to her research, including that prostitution is a terrible harm to
women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prosti-
tution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her.
Accordingly, for these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farleys
evidence.
Bedford v. Canada (2010), 102 O.R. 3d 321, paras. 35357 (Ontario
Superior Court).
34
This finding conflicts with the State Departments recently added require-
ment, noted above, that other governments must make efforts to reduce the
demand for commercial sex acts,because countries with legal prostitution are
generally not involved in demand-reduction efforts. As the State Departments
recent country narrative on New Zealand stated, The government did not
make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts(Department of
State 2017: 300).
410 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
The Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands, for exam-
ple, concluded that, since legalization in 2000, it is likely
trafficking in human beings has become more difficult,
because the enforcement of the regulations has increased
(Daalder 2007:84),
35
and even the U.S. State Department
reported that Dutch authorities have seen a decrease in
trafficking in the legalized sector(Department of State,
2005:164). Official statistics in Germany show a consis-
tent decline since 2002 (the year of legalization) in the
number of persons officially certified as sex trafficking
victims and the number of persons convicted of traffick-
ing. The former decreased from 1197 in 2000 to 524 in
2014, and the number of convictions decreased from 148
to 77 (Federal Ministry of the Interior 2015). This does
not necessarily mean that trafficking has decreased, but
we might expect an increase in these figures if legaliza-
tion indeed causes an increase in sex trafficking.
Underscoring the complexity of this issue, a 2006 study
by the International Labour Organization concluded, We
have not found any correlation between legalized prosti-
tution and trafficking(quoted in OBrien et al. 2013:
158). The USA offers a contrasting case: Under the
countrys prohibitionist system, the number of trafficking
cases investigated at the local, state, and federal levels
increased from 708 cases in 2011 to 802 in 2015
(Attorney General 2016:5758). Interestingly, the
Obama administrationsfirstTrafficking in Persons report
contains a sentence that suggests that criminalization,not
legalization, contributes to unfree labor practices: As
commercial sex is illegal in most countries, traffickers
use the resulting illegal status of migrant women that have
been trafficked into commercial sex to threaten or coerce
them against leaving(Department of State 2009 :36).
Like the Nevada findings presented earlier, legalization
in other countries has the potential to enhance sex workers
safety, health, and job satisfaction. A unique comparative
study of three diverse state systems in Australia provides
evidence that legalization can be superior to alternative
policies. The study focused on the capital cities in three
states: Perth (brothels illegal), Melbourne (brothels legal
if licensed), and Sydney (brothels decriminalized and un-
regulated). Based on interviews with 605 brothel workers
and site observations across the three cities, Melbournes
brothels were more likely than the other two to supply free
condoms to workers, to have security cameras on the pre-
mises, and to have rooms equipped with alarm systems. In
addition, field observers rated the workplaces on how
worker-friendly they were. Melbournes were most likely
to receive the maximum 5-star rating. Because it puts a
premium on regulating and monitoring brothels,
Melbournes legalization model was found to be superior
to criminalization (Perth) and laissez-faire decriminaliza-
tion (Sydney) (Harcourt 2010; cf. Sullivan 2010).
These findings are not unique to Australia. There are par-
allels in other nations. In comparing these cases, a key finding
is that outcomes for sex workers and other stakeholders are
strongly correlated with the kinds of regulation in place and
the extent to which they are implemented and enforced by the
authorities. Legal prostitution systems vary considerably on
both measures, and thus differentially impact management
practices, workershealth and safety, and public order (e.g.,
Remick 2014; Wagenaar et al. 2017; Weitzer 2012). Some
legal models are consistent with measures of best practices,
while others are flawed or counterproductive (Weitzer 2012).
In other words, legal prostitution is far from monolithic. Space
limitations prevent a full discussion of the complexities of
prostitution policy in places where it is legal and state-regu-
lated, but it is clear that the sweeping claims of crusade oper-
atives are contradicted by in-depth research in these settings.
Criminalization policies, by contrast, generate a host of prob-
lems inherent in other black markets and have well-
documented adverse effects on sex workershealth and safety
(e.g., Krűsi 2014; Levy and Jakobsson 2014; Vanwesenbeeck
2017).
36
Conclusion
The evidence presented here shows that crusade forces and
their allies in the US government have been involved in an
unprecedented campaign against sexual commerce over the
past two decades. Although some of the distinct components
of crusade ideology have been described by other researchers,
the article offers a more comprehensive portrait of the core
claims and discourse as well as its institutionalization in re-
cent policy and law.
What began as a concern about human trafficking in the
late 1990s has widened to encompass sex workin all its forms.
Evidence of this domain expansion can be found in crusade
and official pronouncements, legislation, and law enforcement
practices. The overall trend is a splendid example of rapid
incorporation of a social movements demands in state policy
and practice (cf. Weitzer 2007).
35
In the Netherlands, an anonymous hotline receives reports from customers
regarding possible cases of abuse of a sex worker (Vanwesenbeeck 2017).
36
Analysis of surveys administered to 4,559 sex-trafficking victims in
Europe, at field missions run by the International Office for Migration, con-
cluded: These results confirm results of many other studies that have looked
at the consequences of criminalization policies. Whenever sex work has been
criminalized, sex workers have been moved to more secluded places with the
consequences of being more exposed to different kinds of risks: assault, fraud,
control, and lack of freedom(Di Tommaso et al. 2009: 155).
411Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
The campaign has all the hallmarks of a moral crusade:
&Its discourse makes bold assertions about the magnitude,
severity, and nature of the problemclaims regarding sex
trafficking that are disproportionate to the available evi-
dence and claims regarding sex work that are based on the
essentialist axioms of the oppression paradigm;
&Crusade leaders and their state allies operate with categor-
ical conviction that the evils that disturb them are precisely
as they depict them;
&Atrocity tales privilege the most shocking cases and por-
tray them as representative and generalizable;
&A variety of actors are branded folk devils: traffickers,
customers, website owners, legal brothel owners, and por-
nography producers and distributors; and
&Sex work is depicted as symptomatic of wider threats to
traditional sexual mores, to the family, to gender relations,
to public health, and more.
The growing sexualization of Western culture is an impor-
tant macro-level factor that is viewed with alarm by both the
religious right and abolitionist feminists. Sex work is seen as
an integral part of this trend, along with sexting, skimpy attire,
pole-dancing classes, sex addiction, erotic advertising, and
what some call the pornificationof society.
There are other important patterns in the data analyzed
here. First, the five core pillars above appear uniformly and
consistently throughout crusade discourse, irrespective of the
particular type of sex work under scrutiny. The specific con-
tent of this discourse may change somewhat over time, but
these innovations are variations on the same theme and novel
ways in which the danger can be secularized or medicalized.
Modernization may help to sell crusade claims to members of
the public who are not swayed by arguments confined to im-
morality. At the same time, moralizing discourse clearly has
not been abandoned; that sex work poses a danger to tradi-
tional morality remains a vital pillar in this crusade. It has not
been replaced with utilitarian claims but instead is linked to
them (Hunt 1999), as illustrated in the anti-porn resolutions
fusion of public health with marital dissatisfaction, infidelity,
sexualization, group sex, etc. Second, this moral crusade has
been unencumbered: it benefits from the extreme stigma at-
tached to sex work, a presumption of endemic exploitation
and victimization (the oppression paradigm), and the lack of
a robust counter-narrative (Weitzer 2018). When sex-worker
rights groups and supportive organizations (e.g., Amnesty
International) have challenged crusade and government posi-
tions, they have been belittled or condemned (Grant 2014;
Porth 2018). In addition, the mainstream news media has pre-
sented both sex work and human trafficking monolithically,
essentially echoing the views of crusade leaders and the au-
thorities. Alternative portrayals are rare in the news media.
Third, the campaign has consistently made sensationalized
and sweeping generalizations about sex workassertions
that conflict with a long tradition of research supporting the
polymorphous paradigm and documenting substantial varia-
tion across time, place, sector, and gender (Harcourt and
Donovan 2005; Vanwesenbeeck 2001; Weitzer 2012). The
blanket accusations regarding the public health effects of por-
nography or the characteristics of Nevadas legal brothels il-
lustrate this hyperbolic pattern well.
References
Albert, A. (2001). Brothel: Mustang ranch and its women. New York:
Ballantine.
Anderson, Ted. (2018). Sex workers returned to sf streets after
Backpage.com Shut Down,San Francisco Chronicle, October 17.
Arkansas. (2017). House resolution 1042. State of Arkansas.
Attorney General. (2016). Annual Report to Congress and Assessment of
U.S. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons, Fiscal
Year 2015. Washington, DC: Department of Justice.
Attwood, F. (2006). Sexed up: Theorizing the sexualization of culture.
Sexualities, 9,7794.
Baskin, M. (2017). Law Enforcements Backpage Problem,Pacific
Standard Magazine, January 13.
Beato, Greg. (2004). Xtreme measures: Washingtons new crackdown
on pornography,Reason Online. Available from http://www.
reason.com/0405/fe.gb.xtreme.shtml (accessed August 2, 2009).
Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance.New
York: Free Press.
Birch, P. (2015). Why men buy sex: Examining sex worker clients.New
York: Routledge.
Brennan, D. (2017). Fighting human trafficking today: Moral panics,
zombie data, and the seduction of rescue. Wake Forest Law
Review, 52,477492.
Brents, B., & Hausbeck, K. (2005). Violence and legalized brothel pros-
titution in Nevada. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20,270295.
Brents, B., & Sanders, T. (2010). Mainstreaming the sex industry:
Economic inclusion and social ambivalence. Journal of Law and
Society, 37,4060.
Brents, B., Jackson, C., & Hausbeck, K. (2010). The state of sex:
Tourism, sex, and sin in the New American Heartland.NewYork:
Routledge.
Brooks-Gordon, B. (2006). The price of sex: Prostitution, policy, and
society. Portland: Willan.
Chuang, J. (2014). Exploitation creep and the unmaking of human traf-
ficking law. American Journal of International Law, 108,609649.
Church, S., Henderson, M., Barnard, M., & Hart, G. (2001). Violence by
clients towards female prostitutes in different work settings. British
Medical Journal, 32,524526.
Cohen, S. (1972). Folk devils and moral panics. London: MacGibbon
and Kee.
Daalder, A. (2007). Prostitution in the Netherlands since the lifting of the
brothel ban. The Hague: Ministry of Justice.
DeLong, M. (2012). Rick Santorum: Obama administration is soft on
pornography,Washington Post, March 18.
Department of Justice. (1988). Beyond the pornography commission: The
Federal Response. Washington: Department of Justice.
Department of State. (2004, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2017). Trafficking
in Persons Report. Washington: Department of State.
Europap. (2001). Report Questionnaire 2001 in Belgium. Europap.
412 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
Farley, M. (2007). Prostitution and trafficking in Nevada: Making the
connections. San Francisco: Prostitution Research and Education.
Federal Ministry of the Interior. (2015). Polizei Kriminalstatistik. Berlin:
Federal Ministry of the Interior.
Frank, D., Camp, B., & Boutcher, S. (2010). Worldwide trends in the
criminal regulation of sex, 1945 to 2005. American Sociological
Review, 75,867893.
Garland, D. (2008). On the concept of moral panic. Crime, Media,
Culture, 4,930.
Goode, E., & Ben-Yehuda, N. (1994). Moral panics: The social construc-
tion of deviance. Malden: Blackwell.
Grant, M. G. (2014) Will nobody listen to the sex workers,The
Guardian, March 15.
Gulati, G. (2011). News frames and story triggers in the medias coverage
of human trafficking. Human Rights Review, 12,363379.
Gusfield, J. (1963). Symbolic crusade: Status politics and the American
temperance movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Harcourt, C. (2010). The decriminalization of prostitution is associated
with better coverage of health promotion programs for sex workers.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 34,482
486.
Harcourt, C., & Donovan, B. (2005). The many faces of sex work.
Sexually Transmitted Infections, 81,201206.
Hughes, D. (2005). The demand for victims of sex trafficking. University
of Rhode Island.
Hunt, A. (1999). The purity wars: Making sense of moral militancy.
Theoretical Criminology, 3,409436.
Idaho. (2018). House Concurrent Resolution No. 50. State of Idaho.
Johnston, A., Friedman, B., & Shafer, A. (2014). Framing the problem of
sex trafficking. Feminist Media Studies, 14,419436.
Jones, B. (2002) Traffickin g cops,Wor l d M aga z ine,June15.
Kansas. (2018). Senate Resolution No. 1762. State of Kansas.
Kirkpatrick, R. G., & Zurcher, L. (1983). Women against pornography.
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 3,130.
Koster, K. & Roth, L. (2016) Six problems with media coverage on the
sex trade,Huffington Post, September 22.
Krűsi, A. (2014). Criminalization of clients: Reproducing vulnerabilities
for violence and poor health among street-based sex workers in
Canada. BMJ Open, 4,110.
LaPlante, M. (2018). In Utah, fight against porn is being framed as a
public health crisis. Washington Post, 18,A11.
LaRue, J. (2003) DOJ releases list of obscenity prosecutions during this
administration,Concerned Women for America. Available from
www.cfwa.org (accessed December 28, 2003).
Laugesen, W. (2007). Pornography crackdown,National Catholic
Register, April 22.
Leidholdt, D. (2004). Prostitution and trafficking in women: An intimate
relationship. Journal of Trauma Practice, 2,167183.
Lennard, N. (2018). Law claiming to fight sex trafficking is doing the
opposite by cracking down on sex work advocacy and organizing,
The Intercept, June 13. Available from https://theintercept.com/
2018/06/13/sesta-fosta-sex-work-criminalize-advocacy/ (accessed
June 14, 2018).
Levy, A. F. (2017). The virtues of unvirtuous spaces. Wake Forest Law
Review, 52,403434.
Levy, J., & Jakobsson, P. (2014). Swedens abolitionist discourse and law:
Effects on the dynamics of Swedish sex work and on the lives of
Swedens sex workers. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 14,593
607.
Loftus, D. (2002). Watching sex: How men really respond to
pornography.NewYork:ThundersMouthPress.
Louisiana. (2017). House Concurrent Resolution No. 100. State of
Louisiana.
Lowman, J., & Atchison, C. (2006). Men who buy sex: A survey in the
greater Vancouver Regional District. The Canadian Review of
Sociology and Anthropology, 43,281296.
MacKinnon, C. (2005). Pornography as trafficking. Michigan Journal of
International Law, 26,9931012.
Macleod, J., Farley, M., Anderson, L., & Golding, J. (2008). Challenging
mens demand for prostitution in Scotland. Glasgow: Womens
Support Project.
Marchionni, D. (2012). International human trafficking: An agenda-
building analysis of the US and British press. International
Communication Gazette, 74,145158.
Masenior, N., & Beyrer, C. (2007). The U.S. anti-prostitution pledge:
First amendment challenges and public health priorities. PLoS
Medicine, 4, 11581161.
McGee, J. (1993). U.S. Crusade against pornography tests the limits of
freedom,Washington Post, January 11.
McKee, A., Albury, K., & Lumby, C. (2008). The porn report. Carlton:
Melbourne University Press.
McNair, B. (2002). Striptease culture: Sex, media, and the democratiza-
tion of desire. New York: Routledge.
Milrod, C., & Weitzer, R. (2012). The intimacy prism: Emotion manage-
ment among the clients of escorts. Men & Masculinities, 15, 447-
467.
Monto, M. (2010). Prostitutescustomers: Motives and misconceptions.
In R. Weitzer (Ed.), Sex for sale: Prostitution, pornography, and the
sex industry.NewYork:Routledge.
Monto, M., & Milrod, C. (2014). Ordinary or peculiar men? Comparing
the customers of prostitutes with a nationally representative sample
of men. International Journal of Offender Therapy and
Comparative Criminology, 58,802820.
Motivans, M., & Snyder, H. (2018). Federal prosecution of human-
trafficking cases, 2015. Washington: Department of Justice.
OBrien, E., Hayes, S., & Carpenter, B. (2013). The politics of sex
trafficking. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
OConnor, M., & Healy, G. (2006). The links between prostitution and
sex trafficking: A briefing handbook. CATW and European
Wom e ns Lobby.
Pearl, J. (1987). The highest paying customer: Americas cities and the
costs of prostitution control. Hastings Law Journal, 38,769800.
Peterson, M., Robinson, B., & Shih, E. (2019). The new virtual crack-
down on sex workersrights. Anti-Trafficking Review, 12,189193.
Phillips, A. (2016). Porn has been declared a Public Health Crisisin
Utah,Wa sh i n gto n P ost , April 22.
Porth, K. (2018). Sex, lies, and committee hearings: Challenging prosti-
tution propaganda. In E. Durisin, E. van der Meulen, & C. Bruckert
(Eds.), Red light labour: Sex work regulation, agency, and
resistance. Victoria: University of British Columbia.
Prostitution Task Force. (1999). Workable solutions to the problem of
street prostitution in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo: Task Force.
Puddy, R. (2019). Sex workers visit South Australia Parliament to push
for decriminalization of prostitution,ABC News, March 28.
Raymond, J. (2004). Ten reasons for not legalizing prostitution and a
legal response to the demand for prostitution. Journal of Trauma
Practice, 2,315332.
Reilly, R. (2013). Eric Holder, Porn Facilitator?Dirtylist highlights
lull in obscenity war,Huffington Post, April 3.
Remick, E. (2014). Regulating prostitution in China.PaloAlto:Stanford
University Press.
Rocha, V. (2015). Operator of prostitution site MyRedBook sentenced to
federal prison,Los Angeles Times, May 22.
Sampson, L. (2014). The obscenities of this country: Canada v. Bedford
and the reform of Canadian Prostitution Laws. Duke Journal of
Gender, Law and Policy, 22,137172.
San FranciscoCommittee on Crime. (1971). A report on non-victim crime
in San Francisco, part 2: Sexual conduct, gambling, pornography.
San Francisco: MayorsOffice.
Sanders, T. (2008). Paying for pleasure: Men who buy sex. Portland:
Willan.
413Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
Sanders, T., & Campbell, R. (2007). Designing out vulnerability, building
in respect. British Journal of Sociology, 58,119.
Schwarzwalder, R. (2014). Obscenity and legal prosecution: A case of
non-enforcement,Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission,
Southern Baptist Convention, October 23. Available from https://
erlc.com/resource-library/articles/obscenity-and-legal-prosecution-
a-case-of-non-enforcement (accessed June 8, 2018).
Smith, L. (2018). Shared hope statement regarding FOSTA-SESTA and
the Backpage Seizure.https://sharedhope.org/2018/04/11/
statement-regarding-fosta-sesta/
Snadowsky, D. (2005). The best little whorehouse is not in Texas: How
Nevadas prostitution laws serve public policy and how those laws
maybeimproved.Nevada Law Journal, 6,217247.
South Dakota. (2017). Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 4. State of
South Dakota.
Stolz, B. (2005). Educating policymakers and setting the criminal justice
agenda: Interest groups and the victims of trafficking and violence
act of 2000.Criminal Justice, 5,407430.
Sullivan, B. (2010). When (some) prostitution is legal: The impact of law
reform on sex work in Australia. Journal of Law and Society, 37,
85104.
Di Tommaso, M., Shima, I., Strøm, S., & Bettio, F. (2009). As bad as it
gets: Well-being deprivation of sexually exploited trafficked wom-
en. European Journal of Political Economy, 25,143162.
U.S. Senate. (2017). Backpage.coms knowing facilitation of online sex
trafficking. Permanent Committee on Investigations, Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Washington, DC.
Utah. (2016). Concurrent resolution on the public health crisis SCR 9.
State of Utah.
Van Brunschot, E., Sydie, R., & Krull, C. (1999). Images of prostitution:
The prostitute and print media. Women & Criminal Justice, 10,47
72.
Vance, C. (1986). The Meese commission on the road. The Nation, 2, 65,
7682.
Vanwesenbeeck, I. (2001). Another decade of social scientific work on
prostitution. Annual Review of Sex Research, 12,242289.
Vanwesenbeeck, I. (2017). Sex work criminalization is barking up the
wrong tree. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46,16311640.
Villarreal, A. (2018). Side effect of trafficking law: More street prosti-
tution?AP News, September 24.
Virginia. (2017). House Joint Resolution No. 549.Commonwealth of
Virginia.
Wagenaar, H., Amesberger, H., & Altink, S. (2017). Designing prostitu-
tion policy: Intention and reality in regulating the sex trade. Bristol:
Policy Press.
Weinberg, M., Williams, C., Kleiner, S., & Irizarry, Y. (2010).
Pornography, normalization, and empowerment. Archives of
Sexual Behavior, 39,13891401.
Weitzer, R. (2007). The social construction of sex trafficking. Politics and
Society, 35,447475.
Weitzer, R. (2010). Sex work: Paradigms and policies. In R. Weitzer
(Ed.), Sex for Sale: Prostitution, pornography, and the sex industry.
New York: Routledge.
Weitzer, R. (2012). Legalizing prostitution: From illicit vice to lawful
business.NewYork:NYUPress.
Weitzer, R. (2018). Resistance to sex work stigma. Sexualities, 21,717
729.
Whittier, N. (2014). Rethinking coalitions: Anti-pornography feminists,
conservatives, and relationships between collaborative adversarial
movements. Social Problems, 61,175193.
Wood, B. (2017) Most Utahns support pornography lawsuit bill,Salt
Lake Tribune, February 6.
Zurcher, L., & Kirkpatrick, R. (1976). Citizens for decency:
Antipornography crusades as status defense. Austin: University of
Tex as Press.
PublishersNoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdic-
tional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
414 Sex Res Soc Policy (2020) 17:399–414
... Este dato se podría explicar por la relación entre las posturas de los gobiernos y la de la opinión pública pues como afirman Johansson y Hansen (2024) es más probable que las prestaciones de servicios sexuales a cambio de dinero se consideren inaceptables en países donde el gobierno tome una postura más dura respecto a la prostitución. Aunque las posturas y campañas del gobierno sobre cuestiones de carga moral y política pueden influir en el discurso público e impactar en las actitudes públicas (Benoit et al., 2019;Weitzer, 2020), no se puede olvidar que la relación entre estas suele ser intrincado y dinámico (Soroka & Wlezien, 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Introducción: El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar el discurso político y la percepción social en torno a la prostitución en España. Metodología: Se realiza un análisis de contenido de los discursos políticos de los principales partidos políticos y del debate parlamentario del 21 de mayo de 2024 en referencia a la proposición de Ley del Grupo Parlamentario Socialista. Por otra parte, se emplea un análisis cuantitativo a través del estudio nº 3393 del CIS que corresponde a la Encuesta sobre cuestiones de actualidad: la violencia sexual contra las mujeres (2023). Resultados: Los resultados muestran una avance en la inclusión de la prostitución en los programas políticos pero no de manera continua ni suficiente. En cuanto a la opinión pública se observa que la postura mayoritaria considera inaceptable el sexo pagado. Discusión: Se asiste a un interés en el discurso político por dar respuesta a la prostitución, muy polarizado entre las posturas existentes, lo que se relaciona con el aumento de lainaceptabilidad de la opinión pública. Conclusiones: El abordaje de la prostitución debe realizarse desde un consenso político y social, con la finalidad de seguir avanzando en la lucha contra la explotación sexual de las mujeres.
... Host communities also implement antitrafficking campaigns to raise awareness of the issue of sex trafficking prior to and during the sport events (Kimm & Sauer, 2010;Sant et al., 2023). Moreover, activist groups, such as religious organizations, antiimmigrationists, and abolitionist feminists, often conflate sex trafficking and sex work (Weitzer, 2020) and heighten campaign efforts to promote their views and agenda during these events (De Lisio et al., 2019;Hubbard & Wilkinson, 2015). Research employing qualitative methods has found that although some key stakeholders believed large-scale events to be a potential catalyst for trafficking, others rejected such perceptions (e.g., Matheson & Finkel, 2013). ...
Article
Full-text available
Sex trafficking is a prominent human rights issue that has been increasingly associated with the hosting of large-scale sport events. Despite insufficient evidence demonstrating a causal or correlative link, event stakeholders have implemented antitrafficking efforts in attempts to prevent and promote awareness of sex trafficking. Using Google Trends data to measure audiences’ information-seeking behavior online and Twitter data as a proxy for antitrafficking efforts on social media, we employed a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the change in online demand for sex-trafficking information among the residents of Miami-Dade, the host city of Super Bowl LIV (54). Findings highlight an increase in the online demand for sex-trafficking information in the host city during and after the event. This increased demand attributed to the Super Bowl may offer support for host communities utilizing sport events to promote awareness of pressing social issues.
Chapter
This contribution analyzes the sex worker-led project Reimagining Sex Work, which included focus groups of sex workers and (photo) journalists, shared production of a media guide, and photography workshops, and aimed at destigmatization of sex work in the Netherlands. The resulting “sex worker proof” photos were made available through an image bank and exhibited throughout the Netherlands. We found that the participatory, visual approach enabled sex workers to reclaim control over their embodied representations and, in a radically democratic way, demand access to privileged spaces. Collaborating across differences—with media, academic, governmental, and other actors—created space for alternative, more respectful, and inclusive representations of sex work, which have the power to penetrate resistant structures of willful ignorance and innocence.
Article
The extent to which commercial sex, particularly sex work, should be regulated is an important and controversial policy conversation in the United States. Despite the salience of religion to informing attitudes about morality and bodily ethics, little is known about how some key dimensions of U.S. religion (e.g., religious fundamentalism and Christian nationalism) influence the public’s moral acceptance of prostitution. We investigate this gap using nationally representative survey data ( n = 1,219). Fundamentalist beliefs and Christian statism are both associated with lower moral acceptance of prostitution, adjusting for other religious and sociopolitical characteristics. Disaggregated models also revealed differences in the strengths of these associations by sex. Implications for policy and opportunities for future research are discussed.
Article
В статье исследованы различные подходы к определению в зарубежных государствах в качестве предмета преступлений, связанных с обращением порнографии, смоделированных изображений человека. По причине того, что сеть Интернет предоставляет широкий перечень возможностей доступа к смоделированным материалам порнографического характера, важно понимать контекст их использования. Смоделированная порнография представляет собой контент сексуального характера, изображающий вымышленных антропоморфных персонажей в форматах рисунка, компьютерной графики и нейросетевой генерации (например, в форме дипфейк-образа). Генерируемая порнография производится путем цифровой обработки изображений реальных людей для создания порнографических материалов с помощью техники морфинга, а рисованная использует полностью вымышленных и зачастую нереалистичных персонажей (например, в манге). Особый интерес представляет такой признак смоделированного порнографического материала, как реалистичность, который в некоторых юрисдикциях считается ключевым для криминализации, поскольку предметом преступления признаются только изображения, напоминающие правдивые и вводящие в заблуждение относительно их происхождения. Целью работы выступает определение подходов к явлению искусственно-созданной порнографии как предмета преступления. Установлено, что правовая регламентация смоделированной порнографии различается в зависимости от страны и характера используемого материала. Критерием разграничения в настоящем исследовании выступает отношение к «реалистичной» порнографии, то есть максимально точному изображению человека, производящего крайне-аморальные действия с точки зрения уголовного законодательства зарубежных государств, в том числе различных правовых систем. Установлено, что в число стран, где предметом преступления признается любая смоделированная порнография, входит Республика Индонезия, Китайская Народная Республика, Российская Федерация, Республика Корея, а в США, Австралийском Союзе, Королевстве Испания только воссозданная и нарисованная детская порнография. Исключением являются те государства, в которых обращение исследуемых материалов или предметов не считается преступным, например в Японии и Республике Колумбия. Сделан вывод, что статус смоделированного порнографического контента в изученных нормативно-правовых источниках разных стран варьируется в зависимости от исторических и культурных особенностей региона.
Article
free online copies of the article avaliable at: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W238IBBXJETEJX3E4AZE/full?target=10.1080/00224499.2024.2332932 Sex workers (SW) are subject to social judgment and the associated attitudes, ranging from admiration to contempt. The presence of stereotypical attitudes toward SW is common and can be analyzed using the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), where the concepts of warmth and competence play a central role. The interweaving of both dimensions allows the identification of four emotions and corresponding political positions toward SW: admiration (non-interventionism), pity (abolitionism), contempt (prohibitionism), and fear (regulationism). From the SCM framework, this study offers the construction, validation and performance of a 25-item scale with a snowball sample of 1,543 participants residing in Spanish-speaking countries. The four-factor hypothesized model yielded adequate values. Internal consistency was sufficient on all factors, as was model-based reliability and convergent validity. The scale also showed measurement invariance between gender and age groups, suggesting that the measure is interpreted in a conceptually similar manner by respondents representing different genders or ages. Further analysis revealed that male participants scored significantly higher on admiration. Baby boomers showed less pity and contempt while Millennials showed more fear and less admiration. SW and those who know or work with SW showed less fear and pity and more admiration. The SCM and the process of developing social judgments offer us a way to understand the differences that underlie irreconcilable policy positions. Overcoming these differences requires mutual understanding from scientific frameworks instead of from ideological perspectives.
Article
This research analyzes mass media coverage of The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Online Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), two landmark 2018 bills that changed how sexual content is moderated by internet service providers in the United States. Using critical discourse analysis, I compare the framing of 101 news stories about FOSTA-SESTA published in mainstream U.S. newspapers, feminist media, and LGBTQ magazines over the course of 7 years. Findings describe coverage of online sex work, online child sexual exploitation, and free speech concerns that preceded and followed the landmark ruling from 2017 to 2023. I show FOSTA-SESTA's progression as a topic of discourse during the 2020 presidential election and compare differences between coverage in ideologically diverse U.S. media. While mainstream news originally supported FOSTA-SESTA's efforts to restrict the tech industry and prevent online child sexual exploitation, alternative media tended to present skeptical arguments that supported sex workers and other marginalized communities. Journalism industry interventions are discussed.
Article
Full-text available
On 11 April 2018, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) was signed into law in the United States. FOSTA introduced new provisions to amend the Communications Act of 1934 so that websites can be prosecuted if they engage ‘in the promotion or facilitation of prostitution’ or ‘facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.’ While supporters of the law claim that its aim is to target human traffickers, its text makes no effort to differentiate between trafficking and consensual sex work and it functionally includes websites where workers advertise services or share information, including safety tips.[3] Following the law’s passage—and even before its full implementation—sex workers felt its impact as websites began to eliminate platforms previously used to advertise services. Backpage, an adult advertising website, was pre-emptively seized by the FBI. Other platforms began to censor or remove content related to sex work, including Google, Craigslist, and many online advertising networks. Sex workers in the United States have denounced the passage of FOSTA for reducing workers’ ability to screen clients and ensure safety practices. This paper provides an overview of the findings of a recent survey with sex workers in the United States, details the advent of similar initiatives in other countries, and explores how the legislation conflates trafficking with consensual sex work.
Article
Full-text available
There is a notable shift toward more repression and criminalization in sex work policies, in Europe and elsewhere. So-called neo-abolitionism reduces sex work to trafficking, with increased policing and persecution as a result. Punitive "demand reduction" strategies are progressively more popular. These developments call for a review of what we know about the effects of punishing and repressive regimes vis-à-vis sex work. From the evidence presented, sex work repression and criminalization are branded as "waterbed politics" that push and shove sex workers around with an overload of controls and regulations that in the end only make things worse. It is illustrated how criminalization and repression make it less likely that commercial sex is worker-controlled, non-abusive, and non-exploitative. Criminalization is seriously at odds with human rights and public health principles. It is concluded that sex work criminalization is barking up the wrong tree because it is fighting sex instead of crime and it is not offering any solution for the structural conditions that sex work (its ugly sides included) is rooted in. Sex work repression travels a dead-end street and holds no promises whatsoever for a better future. To fight poverty and gendered inequalities, the criminal justice system simply is not the right instrument. The reasons for the persistent stigma on sex work as well as for its present revival are considered.
Chapter
This chapter takes advantage of a range of recent studies in order to identify and correct some misconceptions about customers and explore their motives. There have been a number of insightful qualitative, interview-based studies of customers. At least two nationally representative surveys have included questions about prostitution use, the National Health and Social Life Survey and the General Social Survey. Internet bulletin boards and websites featuring the opinions and experiences of customers provide a potentially important, although as yet underused, source of information about customers. This article also reports original findings based on two samples of arrested customers gathered from men attending “john schools” in 1997–2000 and 2007.
Book
Book synopsis: As a society we are buying more sex than ever before. Adult sex shops now take their place amongst retailers in the high street and lap dancing clubs compete for an increased share of the leisure economy; hotel chains offer sexually explicit films as part of their standard service, the party selling of adult toys to women in their homes has become a mainstream activity; and at the traditional end of the sexual service economy, prostitution has experienced new growth. Along with this has come new legal measures and attempts to regulate the sexual leisure economy, and far more comprehensive plans than ever before to regulate prostitution, in particular in the form of the new Sex Offences Act. This book seeks to address the range of issues and contemporary debates on the sex industry, including the demand by customers who buy sex, the policing of women who work in the street sex industry, and the violence that pervades prostitution. It shows how these issues have been addressed in policy terms, the problems that have emerged in this, and how a social policy might be formulated to minimize harm and enhance public understanding. Overall the book aims to provide a critical perspective on prostitution policies and the legal chaos and complexities that surround this.