Ouch!

Abstract

Trafficking in women’ has, in recent years, been the subject of intense feminist debate. This article analyses the position of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and the writings of its founder, Kathleen Barry. It suggests that CATW's construction of ‘third world prostitutes’ is part of a wider western feminist impulse to construct a damaged ‘other’ as justification for its own interventionist impulses. The central argument of this article is that the ‘injured body’ of the ‘third world trafficking victim’ in international feminist debates around trafficking in women serves as a powerful metaphor for advancing certain feminist interests, which cannot be assumed to be those of third world sex workers themselves. This argument is advanced through a comparison of Victorian feminist campaigns against prostitution in India with contemporary feminist campaigns against trafficking. The term ‘injured identity’ is drawn from Wendy Brown's (1995) States of Injury, Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Brown argues that certain groups have configured their claims to inclusion in the liberal state in terms of ‘historical ‘injuries’. Antoinette Burton (1998) extends Brown's analysis to look at Victorian feminists’ relationship to Empire, arguing that the ‘injured identities’ of colonial ‘others’ were central to feminist efforts to mark out their own role in Empire. This paper builds on Burton's analysis, asking what role the ‘injured identities’ of third world sex workers play in the construction of certain contemporary feminist identities. The notion of ‘injured identities’ offers a provocative way to begin to examine how CATW feminists position the ‘trafficking victim’ in their discourse. If ‘injured identity’ is a constituent element of late modern subject formation, this may help explain why CATW and Barry rely so heavily on the ‘suffering’ of ‘third world trafficking victims’ in their discourses of women's subjugation. It also raises questions about the possible repressive consequences of CATW's efforts to combat ‘trafficking in women’ through ‘protective’ legislation.

Sprostytuowane, zranione, wrobione: konstruowanie reprezentacji pracownic seksualnych w dyskursie abolicyjnym

“…Równocześnie jednak stanowisko abolicyjne oraz wypracowywane na jego gruncie reprezentacje pracy seksualnej wzbudzają niezwykle dużo kontrowersji i wywołują sprzeciw zarówno w ruchu feministycznym, środowisku akademickim, jak i wśród osób pracujących seksualnie (Agustín 2005;Aradau 2008;Bernstein 2010;Davies, J., Davies B. 2010;Doezema 2001;Kempadoo, Doezema 1998;ICRSE 2013;Jahnsen, Wagenaar 2017;Levy 2015;Levy, Jakobsson 2014;NSWP 2015;Scoular, Carline 2014;Ward, Wylie 2017;Zatz 1997). Artykuł ten również stanowi krytyczny głos w debacie dotyczącej założeń leżących u podstaw perspektywy abolicyjnej.…”

“…Dlatego też, jak wskazują nasze analizy, kolejną obok "prostytuowanej kobiety" figurą wyznaczającą kluczowy zrąb podejścia abolicyjnego jest figura pracownicy seksualnej jako "zranionego podmiotu", który wymaga pomocy, ratunku i zaopiekowania (zob. Andrijasevic 2007;Aradau 2008;Bernstein 2010;Burnovsisk, Sutrees 2008;Doezema 2000Doezema , 2001FitzGerald 2010;Hahn, Holzscheiter 2013;Harrington 2005). Mobilizacja wokół figury "zranionego podmiotu" sytuuje abolicjonizm w obszarze opisywanej przez Claudię Aradau "polityki współczucia": takiego projektu politycznego, który uzasadnia roszczenia do politycznych interwencji (w tym przypadku: zniesienia prostytucji czy kryminalizacji klientów) poprzez konstruowanie jednoznacznie wiktymizujących reprezentacji osób będących podmiotem owych interwencji.…”

Human Trafficking and Media Myths: Federal Funding, Communication Strategies, and Canadian Anti-Trafficking Programs

“…the conflation of sex work and human trafficking also frequently depicts racialized or impoverished sex workers as "injured bodies" in need of rescue (Doezema, 2001). this has resulted in immigration policy constraints and restrictions under the guise of protecting vulnerable women from traffickers and environments in which the risk of trafficking can be exacerbated.…”

“…As we shall see, dominant discourses frame the issue of trafficking as a hidden evil that requires both social attention (hence our focus on media campaigns) and legal action, producing a stark and simplified depiction of trafficking, trafficking victims, and traffickers that allows for selective comprehension, exaggeration, and misrepresentation of events (Gamson, 1992). At the same time, this gendered dynamic is strongly racialized, with Indigenous and racialized migrant women (sex working or not) understood as de facto in need of "saving" in western rescue missions (Agustín, 2007;Doezema, 2001;Kempadoo, 2001). these master narratives are buttressed by a "rhetoric of abolition" (Soderlund, 2005, p. 65) that uses a binary division of captivity and freedom to urge the protection and rescue of women from sex work, exploitation, slavery, and trafficking (Soderlund, 2005).…”

“…Approaches that identify violence as a problem between an individual victim and an individual perpetrator naturalize and institutionalize particular people and groups as "risk-bearing" rather than "rightsbearing," thereby contributing to state responses that are focused on security measures, and risk assessment and management (Amar, 2009;Aradau, 2003). Gendered and racialized anti-trafficking crusades tend to treat all women, but Indigenous and immigrant women in particular, as naturally at-risk of engaging in acts that pose threats to themselves and to society (Aradau, 2003;Doezema, 2001;Harding, 2006;Jiwani & Young, 2006). Rather than a product of social conditions such as poverty, racism, or misogyny, risk becomes an ontological characteristic of these women themselves, attached to their gender, and of their racialized "home" context (Arthurs, 2012;Jiwani & Young, 2006).…”