How Porn Fuels Sex Trafficking

In a worldview of slavery, society generally agrees that it is inhumane and degrading, and most people are astonished that there have been times in history where slavery was accepted as normal and acceptable. Somehow, still, many people are accepting of a form of modern-day slavery: human sex trafficking. And while many people claim to be opposed to human sex trafficking, what many don’t know is that the demand for human sex trafficking is fueled by pornography and the porn industry.

Though no one knows its true origins, The Willie Lynch Letter declares itself over three-hundred years old. [1] According to the story, Virginia colonists in 1712, unable to control their slaves, reached out to a slave owner named Willie Lynch for help. “Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies,” he responds, “where I have experimented with some of the newest, and still the oldest, methods for control of slaves.” The letter is essentially a slavery instruction manual—how to “break” slaves, how to organize, brainwash, and set them against one another to make them easier to subject.

Despite questions about its authenticity, [2] the letter has found its way into everything from Hollywood scripts to political speeches, and from college reading lists to Hip-Hop albums. It’s as if the letter takes all of the objectification, dehumanization, and inhumanity in the worldview of slavery and encapsulates them in just a few short pages. “We will use the same basic principle that we use in breaking a horse,” the letter explains. “What we do with horses is that we break them from one form of life to another; that is, we reduce them from their natural state in nature.”

Whether or not the letter is real, it seems noteworthy that when Corey Davis, a New York pimp, was arrested by federal investigators in December of 2006, a copy of The Willie Lynch Letter was sitting in his Mercedes. Other titles on Mr. Davis’ reading list included The 48 Laws of Power and Whoever Said Whoring Wasn’t Easy?

The books weren’t the only things seized. Investigators also took his $91,000 watch, the Timberland boots he used to stomp girls when they didn’t obey (pimps call it “timming”), and of course, the tee shirt Davis was wearing when he was arrested. It said, “The Beatings Will Continue.” [3]

Why would a modern New York pimp be reading a 300-year-old set of instructions for how to break a slave? Considering the degree of intimidation, coercion, brainwashing, and violence that that accompanies sex trafficking today, it makes a lot of sense.

How bad is the problem of modern-day sex trafficking?

Sex trafficking activists occasionally have to defend their use of the word “slavery.” [4] Some people don’t believe the sex trafficking problems we have today rise to a level that would merit such an emotionally charged word. Others feel the word somehow romanticizes the problem. In fact, believe it or not, arguing about the word “slave” is just one small part of the larger debate about sex trafficking, especially in the United States. Some people question whether the problem is really as bad, or as big, or as widespread, as the reports make it sound. [5] Others question the motives of the abolitionists and human rights activists on the front lines of the fight. [6]

Here at Fight the New Drug, we know sex trafficking is a huge global problem and that this modern form of slavery is inherently, inseparably linked to the problem of pornography. Because this is an underground issue numbers are harder to come by, but if anything, the numbers reflecting what is actually happening around the globe are bigger than what has been reported. And isn’t even just one person being trafficked, one too many?

Our goal is to give you the facts, so consider this your one-stop read to learn all the basics about sex trafficking and its relationship to porn. Then you’ll and have the information you need to draw conclusions and join the conversation about how porn fuels sex trafficking.

What is sex trafficking?

The legal definitions get technical, but sex trafficking is a type of human trafficking, and human trafficking is exactly what it sounds like: trafficking in humans. If “trafficking” means buying and selling things, or moving things so they can be used for profit, then “human trafficking” means buying or selling humans, or moving humans so they can be used for profit. It’s the purest form of objectification—the literal commoditization of a person.

Whether you knew it or not, chances are very good that, at some point in your life, you have eaten fruit that was picked by a slave, worn a shirt that was made by a slave, used a device that was partially produced by a slave, or stood in a building that was built by a slave. Estimates of the number of slaves worldwide are between 21 and 32 million. [7] The vast majority of them come from vulnerable populations like immigrants, refugees, the impoverished, and children. They may be forcibly taken or lured away with promises of good jobs, only to find themselves powerless, in a foreign place, with nowhere to turn. Often they owe money to the people—the traffickers—who brought them. Traffickers will hold the debt over their heads, confiscate their immigration papers, threaten them with legal action or deportation, threaten them or their families with violence, and even inflict violence if the victims do not place themselves in servitude. The traffickers are often the only ones around who speak the victims’ language, and the victims find themselves in a foreign land, cut off from home or help. Working in these circumstances, they earn an estimated $150 billion every year for their abusers in all kinds of industries and settings, from factories and farms to hotels and brothels—even in the United States. [8]

Of those millions of global human trafficking victims, a little less than a quarter—about 22 percent—are trafficked for sex acts. (Those 22 percent earn a whopping 66 percent of the global trafficking profits! [9]) That’s what sex trafficking is: the roughly 22 percent of human trafficking wherein the victims are exploited for sexual purposes.

Now, before we go any further, we know what you’re thinking. This is the part where most people start visualizing the Hollywood version of sex trafficking: young boys and girls kidnapped or tricked in some Third World or Eastern European country, kept in chains and forced to perform in black market pornography, or to work as prostitutes in some massage parlor, seedy motel, or other makeshift brothel—or boys and girls from the same backgrounds, smuggled into the United States and abused in similar ways.

And yes, those stories do exist. They’re not just real; they’re closer to home than you imagine. Just read the way one police raid of a quiet little house in a middle-class New Jersey suburb was described in the New York Times.

Read more at fightthenewdrug.org