When I've written critiques of Christian anti-trafficking work in the past, the pushback I got most often was, "Why can't you just support the good that they're doing in the world? We're on the same team." So I'd like to quickly address this before moving on to the meat of my critique. I don't write this just to be contrary or just to disagree for the sake of disagreement. I care about people and I care about justice. I believe that the hearts of the people in things like the End It Movement are in the right place and that they also care about those same things. However, I would argue that their are many aspects to this movement that are harmful. That doesn't mean that they are terrible, awful people who intended harm. It does mean that they need to do better. Criticism and pushback come from a place of wanting anti-trafficking work to the best that it can be so that the people who are the most vulnerable, the ones it claims to be working to help.
So, having said all of that, here is the list of my main problems that I have with the evangelical anti-trafficking movement as it currently stands:
Not Looking at Root Causes
"The causes of human trafficking are rooted in a (global) economy in which women's lives are commodities to be traded, used, and abused." - Bernat and Zhilina, Human Trafficking, The Local Becomes Global
This is hands down one of the biggest issues I have with the evangelical anti-trafficking movement. Trafficking doesn't happen in a bubble, but within the activism that I've encountered from these organizations, the causes are almost never mentioned. What is presented instead is an oversimplified, digestible narrative that will tug at your heartstrings (and your wallet) to save the poor helpless women. The stated goal is to "end it, "as per the name of Louie Giglio's large organization, but one cannot end a problem without understanding the root causes. I have yet to see those organizations talking about gender-based violence, labor laws, immigration, neoliberalism, or really any global feminist issue. And yet it is impossible to "fight" trafficking without addressing those things. Finding the source of the problem would logically be the first place to go when trying to end it, would it not? However, according to most pastors I have heard talk about trafficking, the issue is a moral one (ie: sin) rather than related to systemic causes. So go ahead and draw a red X on your hand and put the picture on instagram, but dear god, let's not look at the ways that you or your country might be complicit in the structures and systems that perpetuate the very violence against women that you claim to oppose.
"It's disturbing that nonprofits can raise money to fight sex trafficking in Cambodia but it's much harder to raise awareness about bad trade policies in the U.S. that keep Cambodia poor so that it needs sex trafficking." - Brian McClaren
"Countertrafficking strategies and interventions that do not recognize this connection to labor and migration for economic livelihoods fail to address the structural causes and the consequences of violence against women. Rarely to they expand women's employment choices or bolster their ability to protect themselves against migration and employment-related violence."
"Violence against women is intimately connected to women's labor and working conditions in an increasingly globalized and competitive market economy... state security and criminalization approaches do not attend to the socioeconomic disadvantage and inequalities at the root of labor abuse and trafficking. States have collectively failed to recognize that trafficking is inseparable from global migration processes and to understand trafficking's embeddedness in uneven development and gender inequalities... Above all, the narrow focus on trafficking, especially for sex work, has allowed states to consistently ignore the broader issue of abuse, exploitation, and unfair and unequal treatment of migrant workers, especially in the domestic service sectors, where women and girls predominate." - Jacqui True, the Political Economy of Violence Against Women
Rescue / White Savior Narrative
Images, videos, billboards are everywhere with women and girls helpless and hurting. The paternalistic language of "rescuing her" is built into storyline that is most common among Christian anti-trafficking advocates. Powerless girls and women being held against their will for sex -- I mean, is it really surprising that even notoriously sexist and homophobic organizations like Focus on the Family can get behind that? The girls and women have no autonomy or agency in this story, they are merely pawns to be saved from the horrors of sexual perversion.
"But scratch the surface of most anti-sex trafficking organizations and two things become immediately clear. They are less focused on the so-called traffickers than they are on the young women they claim are trafficked, and they are not interested in distinctions between coercion and choice.'
'The anti-trafficking movement allows the Church to play both the Rescuer and the Redeemer of innocent women preyed upon by the rampant sexual immorality of the world. Indeed, rescue and restoration language is pervasive throughout the Old and New Testaments; after all, it was Jesus who came to redeem the fallen world. The Church’s framing of the discourse around sex-trafficking puts them in a convenient position to rescue girls from sexual misconduct and restore their virginal virtues, all while strengthening their message against sexual immorality.
The focus on sex trafficking, therefore, becomes yet another channel through which Christian institutions are able to carry out their sex-negative agenda, particularly by casting themselves as Rescuer, Redeemer, and even the familiar role of Western male hero saving the passive and helpless female." - Katie Gaddini, Rescuers and Redeemers: The Evangelical Church's Role in the Anti-Trafficking Movement
Labor Trafficking
It seems pretty revealing that although the majority of trafficking that occurs is labor trafficking, not sex trafficking, there is hardly the same amount of energy of concern put into "freeing the slaves" on that front. Labor trafficking is a lot less sexy - arguably because of evangelical's obsession with sex and purity. The guy forced to work in inhumane conditions in a factory doesn't make as dramatic of a sermon point as Liam Neeson's daughter in Taken. And that matters. If organizations are truly "anti-trafficking," forced labor must be addressed with the same passion as sex trafficking.
Raid and Rescue
One strategy endorsed by these organizations is the "raid-and-rescue" model, which many sex workers have been very vocally opposed to. Often times there is no differentiating between sex workers and "victims" in these police raids, which ends up endangering sex workers.
"Prostitutes might be called victims, but they're still arrested, still handcuffed, and still held in cages. The only difference is that they're now in a system that doesn't distinguish between workers and trafficked people. To the courts, anyone who's been arrested for sex work is raw material, incapable of making his or her own choices. Those like Love, who did sex work out of financial necessity, before leaving of her own volition, might as well not exist." - Molly Crabapple, Special Prostitution Courts and the Myth of 'Rescuing' Sex Workers
One strategy endorsed by these organizations is the "raid-and-rescue" model, which many sex workers have been very vocally opposed to. Often times there is no differentiating between sex workers and "victims" in these police raids, which ends up endangering sex workers.
Theology that Upholds Patriarchy & Rigid Gender Roles
The irony in most of the comes down to the fact that most evangelical churches who are so vocal about ending sex trafficking usually have patriarchal theology and heteronormative gender roles. How can one have a theology that directly oppresses women, yet claim to be working to save the poor, oppressed women who are victims of sex trafficking? I would argue that you can't -- that there has to be some cognitive dissonance when one advocates for women to submit to their husbands / male leadership / be secondary in the church, yet fights for the 'rights' of women in other countries.
"How can an institution that constrains women’s power and voice in such systematic and far-reaching ways also argue so passionately for women’s agency and freedom in another realm? And on that point, is freedom only allowable for the Other (foreign) woman? While some churches and Christian organizations do recognize the trafficking of women on a more local level, the majority focus almost exclusively on a romanticized notion of the “noble savage,” the innocent and sexually vulnerable foreign girl, typifying her while maintaining a safe enough distance to not distort these idealizations and fantasies." - Katie Gaddini
Final thoughts
I want to support organizations that are well-intentioned. Really, I do. But when they don't examine the structural causes of the very issue they are trying to fight, when they perpetuate harmful theology, and when they cause more harm than good in the ways they carry out their mission, I cannot stand by silently and say we are "on the same team."
