Our obsession with outrage in conversations on human trafficking leaves victims playing oppression Olympics to get our attention. The reasonably decent person wants to end human trafficking. In the most basic sense, human trafficking is a global societal ill that thrives off exploitation. Countless celebrities, dignitaries and luminaries have devoted time and money to awareness campaigns to teach the world the horrors of human trafficking. Activists in faith-based communities and feminist communities alike have also taken up arms to raise awareness and serve victims of human trafficking.
Unfortunately, this global communal desire to end human trafficking relies heavily on sensationalism to promote its activism. Slogans emblazoned with “modern-day slavery” along with pictures of malnourished children and women of color in some foreign slum are ever present in digital and print spaces seeking to fight human trafficking. While raising awareness of the horrific things human beings (read: traffickers) are capable of is certainly useful, it can lead victims not to come forward when their experiences fail to fit within that sensationalist mold. Often, fraud and coercion make it difficult for a person to truly grasp the extent of their victimization at the hands of their exploiter. Raising awareness around human trafficking that relies heavily on testimonies of force erases the complexities and nuances inherent in other forms of control that perpetuate and sustain trafficking.
At the heart of American jurisprudence, laws fighting human trafficking center on a person’s lack of agency and consent to the commercial benefit of an exploiter. This lack of consent, if achieved through the use of force, fraud or coercion, usually means the person whose consent was compromised is a victim of some form of human trafficking. Yet, the stories of human trafficking victims that get platforms in the media tend not to report on manipulative tools of fraud and coercion employed by their traffickers, but rather, they tend to focus primarily on their use of force. In essence, messages we see around human trafficking functionally shock-jock us with greater and greater incidences of violence to describe the experiences of victims. Every victim’s story should be told – including the most heinous ones – however popular discourse around human trafficking tends to focus exclusively on the most salacious and outrageous of experiences.
This focus on the most sensational and outrageous cases of victimization will only lead to greater demand for even more sensationalism just to maintain the attention of the general public. Reporting human trafficking victims’ stories in this manner is dangerous because it forces survivors into somewhat of an “oppression Olympics” to receive services and protection from law enforcement. Agencies serving victims of human trafficking, many of which are sustained by donor funding must drum up testimonial experiences that are not only sympathetic, but also sensational enough to incite enough outrage to raise enough money to continue their work. This creates an environment ripe for donors, service providers and the general public to conclude that anyone who was not a child, or who was not kidnapped at gunpoint, suffering daily rapes, and beatings by the hour, wasn’t truly a victim of human trafficking after all.
If we, as global citizens, truly desire to fight human trafficking and create safe spaces for victims to come forward, we have to let go of the notion that we must first be shocked by horrific stories before being propelled into action.