Perspective: Why laws to fight sex trafficking often backfire
A screenshot of the website Backpage.com on April 6, 2018. A 1996 law that shields online services from being liable for what their users do would be weakened by a sex-trafficking bill awaiting President Trump’s signature. By Hallie Lieberman Hallie Lieberman, a sex historian and journalist, is the author of"Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy" and currently researching a book on the history of male sex workers.
More than a hundred years ago, in 1910, President William Howard Taft signed the White-Slave Traffic Act, also known as the Mann Act, into law. Like FOSTA, the Mann Act was supposed to prevent sex trafficking of girls and women. The Mann Act made it a felony to transport a woman or girl across state lines for “prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”
The racism in the White-Slave Traffic Act was right there in its title. It was called white slavery to distinguish it from the recently prohibited practice of chattel slavery in the American South. Moreover, even though the text of the law didn’t say that only white girls and women were protected, in practice, few people were ever prosecuted for transporting black girls or women across state lines.
However, convictions for trafficking belied this claim. Only a tiny percentage of the people prosecuted under the act were traffickers, and most weren’t even involved in the prostitution industry. The Mann Act ended up targeting sex work under the guise of preventing sex trafficking.
The paternalistic nature of the Mann Act hurt both sexes, as it ignored the trafficking of boys and the numerous male prostitutes who escaped prosecution and regulation, unlike their female counterparts. It wasn’t until November 1986 that the Mann Act became completely gender neutral.
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