In January of 2012, I predicted the demise of “sex trafficking” hysteria, and up until one year ago today that prediction was right on schedule: “…articles critical of “sex trafficking” nonsense started to appear in 2013 and increased in 2014, and by 2015 were fairly common in major publications such as Reason and the Washington Post…[over the past two years] pro-decrim, anti-hysteria articles [have] regularly appear[ed] in small newspapers all over the world. As of [last] year media outlets are asking activists to comment on raids and stings, and the increasing desperation of prohibitionists is like the stink of fear; they’ve even backed down from most of their stupider claims…” In 2017 we saw a lot more media attention to cops raping sex workers, and far more articles written by sex workers themselves than there were when I started blogging almost eight years ago. However, the rest of my prediction for last year has not yet come to pass; I wrote that “sometime in the next 12 months we should see the level of government funding for anti-sex worker hate groups begin to dry up; we’ll be able to tell by their increased pleas for funding and press releases about how vital their work is and how they need the public to help more, plus an increased number of fundraisers (with increasingly silly premises) and perhaps even more money from sociopaths like Swanee Hunt to try to close the gap…” That clearly did not happen, and I suspect the reason is that Donald Trump’s campaign to win something resembling credibility has kept the plugs from being pulled; he’s also announced an increase on government funding for uniformed rapists, and his anti-immigrant rhetoric has reinforced the xenophobia driving the panic. So while I’m still confident enough in the rest of this to remind you of it:
…All through 2018 the hysteria should die down dramatically, and by the end of 2019 only the most fanatical will still be talking about it and the majority of the public will be looking for something else to panic about…by three years from now (four at the outside), we’ll be able to get through a day without having to hear fetishists like Nick Kristof non-consensually foisting their nasty wanking fantasies of gang-raping traumatized 13-year-olds in bondage upon us. Cops and politicians may still prattle about it for a while, but once they realize nobody actually cares any more, that will soon fade away…
…that’s with the caveat that it may take a year or two longer than I originally predicted, so let’s say four years from now rather than from then (i.e. around the end of 2021). And one more thing: remember that even after the moral panic is over, “the laws spawned by the panic will still exist and will continue to be used to destroy the lives of sex workers and our clients and families until decriminalization is achieved a decade or two from now…” Prophecy is not an exact business; scrying mirrors are cloudy and obscure, and as Yoda warned, “always in motion is the future”. But I have a pretty good track record despite not often being believed, so I’m content to stand behind this one for the foreseeable future.
