We’re working to create a world where no person is bought, sold, or exploited. Read more about our latest efforts here.
In “The Bitter Truth About Sugaring: Deception and false promises in exploitation's new frontier,” Tamar Arenson, of The One Campaign and Megan Lundstrom, co-founder of The Avery Center for Research & Services, will discuss the prevalence of sugaring and attempt to uncover the exploitative nature of these arrangements in a conversation moderated by Dr. Angie Henderson, professor of sociology at the University of Northern Colorado and co-founder of The Avery Center for Research & Services.
We know that chattel slavery in the US was built on a foundation of sexual violence in a myriad of forms. The land theft, resources appropriation and genocide of Indigenous peoples were also characterized by sexual violence. The same can be said of the colonization of Latin America. This history explains today's over-representation of women and children of color in the sex industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the inequalities at the root of so much suffering, exploitation and violence at every level in our relationships, communities, institutions and society. For many working to end gender-based violence, the issue of commercial sexual exploitation has long played a similar role in unmasking the historical and intersectional legacy of privilege and oppression being laid bare in the present moment.
Online porn has become a primary source of sex education for boys and young men around the world. Prior to 2000, most would first encounter soft-core pornographic images in magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse. Since 2000, the internet has become the main vehicle for porn, and hardcore porn is just a click away—it is free, violent, and based on the degradation and abuse of women.
The sex trade is being glamorized as never before – from the promotion of sugar dating, to films and shows that portray rich, independent "sex workers" choosing handsome, rich, kind johns who treat and pay them well, to advocacy from “sex workers” who argue that fully decriminalizing the sex trade is a move to empower women. Yet the reality of legalized prostitution looks far different than the rosy picture painted in popular culture.
We cannot discuss the sex trade in the U.S. without addressing colonization, slavery, and the institutionalized inter-generational oppression of women and girls. Ignoring this history has led to the continued exploitation, and too often criminalization, of women and girls of color.
Pornhub is the largest and most popular pornography website in the world. It is generating millions of dollars in advertising and membership revenue with 42 billion visits and over 6 million videos uploaded per year. And visits have only increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it has no system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts and profits from. And indeed, mounting evidence shows that films of the rape, abuse and trafficking of both women and children are hosted on Pornhub with disturbing regularity.
The testimonies of those who have survived sexual exploitation and human trafficking are the driving force behind our World Without Exploitation work. Credible research and statistics can help us to contextualize those survivor stories, making the systemic nature of this human rights and gender justice problem even more clear. In service to that goal, Katie Feifer – Research Director at The Voices and Faces Project – spearheaded a project whose goal was to survey and assess a large body of U.S.-based research on sex trafficking and exploitation. The resulting report, Get the facts: What we know about sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and prostitution in the U.S., identifies data that can be cited confidently in our advocacy and communications efforts.
