More Mollycoddling

[Note: I'm on vacation in what may what's proving be very limited internet service. I've been mostly relying on \pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing posts. I'm taking the opportunity to use (limited) access here in a car-repair waiting room to try to catch up on a couple of ideas, but I may not still won't have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away.

I generally say sarcasm and irony are indications of either powerlessness or a sense thereof. This post contains sarcasm, which suggests my level of feeling about the issue of what to do about prostitution and trafficking in the face of exceptionalist accusations of "pro-prostitution cheerleading" in the face of perfectly reasonable concerns about the still-pending amendments to the Wilberforce/TVPA bill by... interest groups with perfectly respectable anti-trafficking credentials. --fl]

Jhak of The Human Trafficking Project says

The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) recently released, *Rights to Survival & Mobility: An Anti-Trafficking Activist's Agenda*, a new report highlighting the disproportionate impact of human trafficking on Asian and Pacific Islander women and girls. Human trafficking is the third most profitable underground enterprise, rivaling the drug and arms trade. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that the largest group of persons trafficked into the U.S. are from East Asia and the Pacific.

Read all about it here.

Now on the one hand that sounds like a great, credible women's organization with boots-on-the-ground, there-but-for-fortune-go-I attitude towards trafficking.

Unfortunately?

"This is an extremely critical time to discuss the impact of human trafficking on API communities, especially in light of the pending reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act," says NAPAWF's Anti-Trafficking Project Director, Liezl Tomas Rebugio. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, HR 3887, offers extended protections for foreign domestic workers but also attempts to transform anti-trafficking legislation to prostitution legislation. Specifically, HR 3887 expands the Mann Act--a federal law that prohibits the transportation of persons across state lines for the purpose of prostitution--to include prostitution activity within states, and calls prostitution "sex trafficking". Essentially, this creates a new federal prostitution crime and identifies all prostitution as "sex trafficking", even if *force, fraud or coercion* is not present.

Yup, unfortunately if they prefer the current approach that serves their *actual client demographic* instead of 100% anti-prostiution-only gender-essentialism they're mere "dishonest pro-prostitution cheerlead[ers.]"

Want proof? Why, just listen to their "pro-trafficking mollycoddling" in the *next* paragraph.

This limited approach to human trafficking is a strategy that NAPAWF is highly critical of. *Rights to Survival & Mobility* broadens the discourse on human trafficking to include root causes, such as poverty, gender-based discrimination, globalization and militarism. Furthermore, NAPAWF links the anti-trafficking movement with other social justice movements such as worker's rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights and human rights.

And after all *everyone* knows that worker's rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights, and human rights are *all* euphemisms for pimping.