It’s time again for another vivisection of a “sex trafficking” article so breathtakingly stupid, so absolutely and unequivocally unmoored to reality, so completely devoid of the faintest whiff of critical thinking, that it would be a sin to chop it down to a single quote in a news column. I’ve written before of the increasing infiltration of pure Satanic Panic rhetoric into the “sex trafficking” panic; the latter is merely a new version of the former, but stories like this one make that connection abundantly clear:
During the Nebraska State Fair, traffickers may well bring men and women to Grand Island, planning to profit from those looking for sex. The total solar eclipse on Aug. 21 may also attract people who enslave sex workers to Central Nebraska. Those are the thoughts of Melissa Kometscher, who is a human trafficking specialist for the Salvation Army…
Yes, a total eclipse. On the one hand, we’ve seen “sex trafficking” loons claim that events as innocuous as gem and mineral shows attract “traffickers”, so this is no surprise. But unless the Salvation Army has some dogma against amateur astronomy that I’m unaware of, one can only include Moronic Melissa is imagining some sort of Satanic connection, like the Sabbat being held in the dark of the moon. Despite the clear reference in its name, Americans often forget that the Salvation Army is a fundamentalist Christian sect, with all that entails. And they have both a hatred of whores and a long history of denying our agency; the Sallies played a large hand in inventing the concept of “sex trafficking” almost 140 years ago, and were instrumental in bringing it back in this century.
…People who travel to an event sometimes engage in activities that they wouldn’t try in their own hometowns, Kometscher said. When they’re out of town, the chances of someone knowing them are much lower…
This is the crux of the fundamentalist mindset: people will only be moral if they’re terrified of consequences, either from human “authorities” or Divine retribution. To someone locked in this benighted world view, only constant spying and prying by cops & other busybodies keep ordinary people from raping enslaved children. It’s a horrible, sick, twisted belief-system, and I’d genuinely feel sorry for those suffering from it if they didn’t use it as an excuse to sic armed thugs on the rest of us.
…those who force people into sex might travel to Grand Island and set up shop at a local motel for a few nights, Kometscher said. They often publicize their availability on websites, she said…
This is the standard, misogynistic, “women are capable of neither pragmatic sexual decisions nor planning travel” dogma, but I wanted to point out the subtle way Kometscher slides from “such and such might happen” (an absolutely true statement, because anything that doesn’t break the laws of physics could, potentially, theoretically happen) to “such and such happens often”, in this case an absolutely false statement.
…Kometscher is one of three Salvation Army human trafficking specialists in Nebraska…Since starting the job in September, Kometscher has learned a lot of things about…sex trafficking…
She’s an “expert” despite the fact that her training only started 9 months ago. Obviously she must know more than someone like me, who’s been a whore for over 17 years.
Right now, traffickers target people 12 to 14 years old. By providing people in that age group, they “make more money,” she said…
Fantasies like this say a lot more about the fantasist that about the people they’re fantasizing about. I’d find it easy to believe that most people are deeply aroused by being tied up (if I didn’t know better) because I am; what does that say about people who believe that most men are more attracted to 13-year-olds than to adult women? In fact, the great majority of underage sex workers lie up about their age, and in countries where there are larger numbers of very young sex workers than in the West, many young sex workers take drugs to add curves so as to appear older. In fact, only a small fraction of men are primarily attracted to girls in the 12-14 age range; it’s called “hebephilia” and it definitely isn’t typical.
…A lot of times, the trafficker starts out as the subject’s boyfriend. They say, “I love you,” without meaning it…
Behold the colossal hubris of the prohibitionist. They not only feel justified in making judgments about whether other people’s relationships are “real”, but also in making declarative statements about other’s private thoughts. Nobody says that an abusive boyfriend isn’t “really” a boyfriend, unless the girlfriend is a sex worker. And if you think that only pimp wannabes tell girls “I love you” without meaning it, I’m afraid you have a rude awakening coming at some point in your future.
…Brainwashing is common in sex trafficking, Kometscher said…
More magical pimp powers at work. These people have the most fascinating BDSM fantasies.
She’s heard that in Omaha, a trafficker recruited young people at a high school football game. People lured into the trafficking business will try to persuade their friends…
I hear lots of stupid things, especially in news articles about “sex trafficking”, but I’m not a delusional, sexually repressed fanatic so I don’t believe them without proof. And what is it with “sex trafficking” fetishists and football games? The second part is much more insidious; it’s a conflation of a true fact (that most young sex workers learn about it from friends) with the pretense that all young people who do sex work were forced or tricked into it.
…Of those who have been trafficked, 41.5 percent will try suicide at least once…92.2 percent experience violence. It comes not just from their traffickers, but also from customers. The violence can take the form of strangulation, forced sex, stabbing, gunshots and cigarette burns…
97.62% of statistics are made up on the spot. And I must say I’m very disappointed that Kometscher didn’t include being dragged behind a car in her list of things she fantasizes doing to young women while she masturbates.
The victims become confused, Kometscher said. Traffickers often don’t give them a watch. Traveling constantly, they don’t know what time it is or what day it is. They become so disoriented they don’t even know where they are…
Yes, they’re so disoriented and confused that they can’t see the sun, and so brainwashed they’re unable to recognize their home towns while recruiting their friends at high school football games. And not being able to tell what day it is must make it really difficult to maintain a school schedule. This is the kind of self-contradictory nonsense that permeates all “sex trafficking” mythologizing; it’s a sign of the deep and intractable credulity of the typical American mind that this isn’t rejected out of hand by the vast majority who encounter it. 
