188: Everybody Wants to Save the Children (feat Esme Providence Brown)
What happens when white knights role-play at saving all the children? What impacts do they have on the actual realities faced by trafficked children and adults? And how does their propaganda—rolled out in blockbuster trauma porn events like Sound of Freedom—stigmatize and endanger adult sex workers, especially those who are already marginalized? Esme Providence Brown returns as our correspondent to run it down.
Brown retired from professional sex work in 2021 after twenty-year career in Manhattan. She first joined us on EP 169 to talk about the strange overlaps between sex work and the neo-tantra yoga movement. In this richly-researched report and discussion with Matthew, she examines the history of and present-day ramifications of anti-trafficking movements—projects that often scapegoat women who are secretly desired but publicly hated.
“Everybody wants to save the children,” Brown says, “but very few people want to step into the tangled web of what this actually means or the history of how ‘salvation’ movements - hobbled by grandiosity, white knighthood, and patriarchal ignorance—have incurred collateral damage while failing in their ultimate mission of liberation.”
Show Notes
169: Neo Tantra & Sex Work (w/Esme Providence Brown)
About Us. U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking.
The New War on Porn Is Age-Verification Laws
Anti-Trafficking Group With Long History of False Claims Gets Its Hollywood Moment
Sex Workers Want Rights, Not Rescue
Who Is Ashton Kutcher’s Anti-Sex-Trafficking Org Helping?
The Sordid History of Right-Wing Pedophilia Conspiracy Theories
The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement
Why Anti-Trafficking Experts Are Torching 'Sound of Freedom'
Gerassi L. A Heated Debate: Theoretical Perspectives of Sexual Exploitation and Sex Work
Maine’s new law partially decriminalizing sex work is not what it seems
Ashton Kutcher Anti-Sex Trafficking Org Thorn Surveils Sex Workers
Shih, E. (2021) “The Fantasy of Human Trafficking: Training Spectacles in Racist Surveillance.” Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, (22), 105–113.
Smolak, A. (2013). White Slavery, whorehouse riots, venereal disease, and saving women
Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker?
Sex Workers Have Been Banned From Airbnb for Years. Will You Be Next?
The “mommy goddess” and the mass reporting of sex workers on Instagram.
Soderlund, G. (2013). Sex trafficking, scandal, and the transformation of journalism, 1885-1917 (1-5, 12, 16, 25, 35, 36, 39, 43, 105, 106, 107-109, 115, 126, 140, 160, 161, 163) University of Chicago Press.
‘Sound of Freedom’ Producer Felt the Naked Breasts of Apparently Underage Trafficking Victim
Tim Ballard’s Departure From Operation Underground Railroad Followed Sexual Misconduct Investigation
Women Accuse Tim Ballard of ‘Spiritual Manipulation, Grooming, and Sexual Misconduct’
Human Trafficking - You're Wrong About Podcast
Jim Caviezel: Encountering God in “Sound of Freedom”
The Fight Against Worldwide Child Slavery & the Sex Trade | Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard
