Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition GRETCHEN SODERLUND This article analyzes recent developments in U.S. anti-sex trafficking rhetoric and practices. In particular, it traces how pre-9/11...
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Running from the Rescuers: New U.S. Crusades Against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition GRETCHEN SODERLUND This article analyzes recent developments in U.S. anti-sex trafficking rhetoric and practices. In particular, it traces how pre-9/11 abolitionist legal frameworks have been redeployed in the context of regime change from the Clinton to Bush administrations. In the current political con- text, combating the traffic in women has become a common denominator political issue, uniting people across the political and religious spectrum against a seemingly indisputable act of oppression and exploitation. However, this essay argues that feminists should be the fi rst to inter- rogate and critique the premises underlying many claims about global sex trafficking, as well as recent U.S.-based efforts to rescue prostitutes. It places the current raid-and-rehabilitation method of curbing sex traf- ficking within the broader context of Bush administration and conser- vative religious
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