Targeting Sex Trafficking by Attacking Male Demand

Op-Ed: Targeting Sex Trafficking through Attacking Male Demand

Laura Johnson

Sex trafficking, or modern-day human slavery, is a complex global problem that is often addressed through policies and programs that focus on the supply; namely, the female victims and their traffickers. While these efforts are commendable, the men who purchase sex are glaringly absent, rendered largely faceless and excused even as they blindly fuel the problem at its core: Without male demand for commercial sex services, millions of women would not face coerced sexual, physical and psychological abuse.

Human trafficking affects every country in the world, but poor women and girls from developing countries are particularly susceptible to sex trafficking, an industry of shocking brutality with a global reach: two million women and girls are condemned to sexual slavery each year. They are owned and exploited by pimps, brothel owners and customers for profits, sexual satisfaction and domination. They are stripped of basic human rights and face dangers of physical injury, societal exclusion, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, severe mental health risks and even death.

Working with the supply – the traffickers and trafficking victims – is without argument a necessary component of efforts to break down this industry, addressing contributing factors such as poverty, globalization, lacking educational and economic opportunities and the feminization of poverty. Organizations such as the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) have initiated such strategies, but alone they cannot eradicate the practice of sex trafficking because they ignore, and therefore allow for, male demand that sustains and expands the industry.

This demand is created by men in both Western and developing countries, yielding a thriving industry; global profits are between $7 and $12 billion annually. These men form a large and heterogeneous group, yet they have managed to remain largely anonymous while the prostitutes bear the brutal brunt of law enforcement and social ostracism. In the U.S., for example, criminalization of prostitution through solicitation laws is targeted at both the buyers and suppliers, but male buyers often evade punishment. Their participation in the sex industry is excused through a myriad of myths of male dominance, female subordination and “voluntary” prostitution in a largely patriarchal world system, coupled with biases of class, race and space.

In 2000 the United Nations’ “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children” took a considerable step in combating sex trafficking when it called for measures that would “discourage” male demand. However, this has been deemed too weak and abstract to promote real change. A policy that might serve as a more successful model comes from Swedish legislation, praised for its tangible penalties for male buyers of sex and the normative function it serves in its concrete expression of the rights of women and children. But it, too, has received criticism for imposing penalties that are too light (a fine or maximum of six months imprisonment), for its gendered language and for the unintended consequence of rerouting rather than deterring sex traffickers.

A final demand-focused initiative that has been particularly effective is the education of male offenders, such as San Francisco’s First Offender Prostitution Program (FOPP) and Somaly Mam’s 1999 campaign to educate Cambodian men. FOPP paired law enforcement with an educational and rehabilitative program for first-time offenders, yielding a significant decline in re-arrests, while Somaly Mam’s campaign resulted in about 400 letters written by affected male attendees who were informed about the reality of brothels and prostitution.

While these efforts have signified real progress in addressing the demand side of sex trafficking, much more remains to be done. International protocols must address male demand in direct language with tangible implications for policy. Criminalization of the male buyer must be enforced in practice rather than in theory and include strict-enough penalties to deter demand. Legislation must be written in language that promotes gender equality rather than female protection and male anonymity, and efforts that criminalize male demand must be made in collaboration with the international community. Success depends on the broad collaboration of public and private actors, from governments to women’s movements and non-governmental organizations, in efforts that merge supply- and demand-oriented programs and policies.

More male-education initiatives like those of Somaly Mam and FOPP must work to deconstruct the myths that perpetuate the explosive and destructive exploitation of women. Desensitization to the sexual objectification of women must be achieved by breaking down ingrained notions of male dominance and prostitution as a choice in both men and women. Real change will be contingent on challenging inequalities of gender, race, class and space in developed and developing countries alike.