How to Figure out if You’re Being Sex Trafficked

“Everybody’s trafficked by
something.” That’s how Police Lieutenant Jim Gallagher, who runs a
series of controversial sex work stings/salvation missions in
Phoenix, Arizona,
sees it. “People that enter into a life of prostitution
typically don’t do it because they want to. There are circumstances
in their life that lead them to what is typically a really bad
circumstance.” 

I like Gallagher’s statement because it succinctly captures the
mindset of the nouveau anti-sex-trafficking brigade. Because all
things being equal some sex workers might prefer to be secretaries
or astronauts, they are “trafficked” into it. Voila! All
prostitution is sex trafficking! That’s easy. 

Sex worker and writer Tara Burns nicely challenges this
idea by adopting the rhetoric of Buzzfeed. “Are you being sex
trafficked?” she asks today at The New
Inquiry. Take
this short quiz to find out! 

“Being a sex worker means that people constantly try to explain
to me that I’m a victim who doesn’t know what I’m doing to myself,”
writes Burns in the quiz’s intro. “It’s exciting to think that
women in the sex industry are forced into sexual bondage by evil
men, but the boring reality is that most often we have to go to
work to pay the bills, just like everyone else.” 

So what are you waiting for? Go find out if you, too,
might be a victim of sex trafficking!

Pretty sure you’re not? The real point of the quiz is to spark
conversation about “the complexities of choice, coercion, agency,
and sex work.”