BBC Human Trafficking Debate now in UK: Mira Sorvino’s Moral Outrage

Mira Sorvino was not wearing her Mighty Aphrodite clothes when she attacked me at the BBC World Debate programme on Human Trafficking. Her dress was a demure tartan instead, though with high transparent platform heels.

The programme has become accessible online in the UK, which it was not originally, so if you couldn’t see it before try again – it may now be watchable wherever you are. I wrote about the background to this show before I was flown to Luxor for it and afterwards when it went online in January.

Editors cut and re-arranged the debate from its original sequence, softening Mira Sorvino’s personal attack on me by placing it quite late, when in reality she freaked out only a few minutes after we began – after I had answered a question only twice, I think. She was backed by an audience composed of non-critical anti-trafficking campaigners brought in by the UN and Mrs Mubarak, now fallen from prestige but acting like a queen at the time (December 2010). There’s more about the Sorvino experience at the Huffington Post, but I can’t explain whether or not she knows how to reconcile her earlier sex-worker role with her moral outrage now.

If you have time to click here, I’d be grateful to know if it is not available wherever you are – that is, if you get a message saying Not available in your area. Even if you don’t have the time or will to watch the whole thing. If you want to see La Sorvino, she comes a few minutes into Part 4.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

13 thoughts on “BBC Human Trafficking Debate now in UK: Mira Sorvino’s Moral Outrage

  1. Maggie McNeill

    The video works here in North America.

    Since the professions of actress and prostitute are like two trees growing from the same root (and indeed were inextricably entwined until sometime in the 19th century), and since nearly every American actress has played a sex worker of one kind or another at some point in her career, I consider the anti-whore stance of actresses like Sorvino and Demi Moore to be the height of hypocrisy. I’m not sure how they rationalize it in their heads, but presumably it has to do with the increasingly-repeated bogus “statistic” (which seems to have started in Europe but recently arrived here in the mouth of Kristin Davis) that “80% of prostitutes are coerced”. As you have previously discussed, there’s this prevailing belief (even among many prostitutes’ rights activists) that it’s possible to draw a sharp, clear line between voluntary and involuntary prostitution, as though A) sex workers are somehow exempt from the ordinary economic pressures that force everyone else to work, and B) every non-sex worker is ecstatically happy with her job all the time. I suspect Sorvino and her ilk rationalize that they’re only trying to “rescue” the “involuntary” prostitutes, and that handsome, brave, friendly, wise and helpful Hollywood-style policemen can instantly tell the difference and will leave sex workers on the “voluntary” side of that bright, clear line unmolested.

    Reply
    1. Laura Agustín

      Here’s an amusing note: Kutcher just tried to distinguish between willing strippers and trafficked victims and the abolitionists have a petition up against him. Poor lad can’t win, because he just doesn’t understand the issues.

      Reply
      1. Maggie McNeill

        Not to be cruel, but it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who attack others, try to call the law down on them and set themselves up as experts on things they know absolutely nothing about.

        Reply
  2. Kez

    I’m so glad to see that the video works in NZ. All too often we are blocked and I’m keen to watch this as I have an essay due for Uni next week on sex trafficking!

    Reply
  3. John

    Just came across this. Does anyone take any notice of Sorvino, Kutcher and their posturing? Marx and Engels had the answer to this a century and a half ago “Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’” but nobody was going to blame the system of buying and selling itself for these problems – least of all the airheads whose position at the top of the tree relies on a preposterously overvalued celebrity.

    The sex issue is a blatant smokescreen. Even if they succeeded in closing the sex industry down altogether what’s the next step? Close all restaurants because if people didn’t buy meals out nobody would be transported far from home to work in appalling conditions in London restaurants (believe me, I’ve seen them). Then when all those people have been ‘rescued’ let’s have everyone make their own clothes – because in my chequered career I’ve cause to know that you don’t need to go to Asia to see people worked to exhaustion at their sewing machines to earn a pittance making clothes for major High St shops. Then let’s make everyone grow their own food because the gang masters in the fields are often ruthless – and that’s just in England!

    I liked Badawi. It looked like she tried to chair the thing fairly and she seemed to have a good grasp of what each contributor was getting at. And I liked Laura’s parting shot – we’ll get closer to an answer when we at least offer people something better than the thing we’re ‘rescuing’ them from. But what most of the migrants want is what our economic system has conditioned them to want – prosperity. Since it’s clearly absurd to offer prosperity as an official reward for subverting the system that’s not an option. None of the panel, including, I suspect, Laura would be in favour of actually abolishing the capitalist system (though I live in hope!) so perhaps Zainab’s question – what are you going to do about apart from having conference after conference – was the most astute remark of all.

    Reply
    1. Laura Agustín

      Badawi knows the real score, as did others from the BBC. The question is more why they chose to use a fundamentalist revival meeting as the venue for the trafficking programme. Politics, undoubtedly. They were nice to me and agreed to give me plenty of time in the debate because a) they knew how awful the situation was for me and 2) they needed me for dramatic effect.

      I have no idea why you would ‘suspect’ me of anything on the subject of capitalism. As I managed to say during this thing, it is possible to talk about migration policy and labour markets, that’s what I want to do, but no one picks up that ball. You must have missed my reply to Badawi, who actually agreed to ask that question with me beforehand.

      Reply
      1. John

        Thanks for a quick response and clarification. I watched the whole broadcast through once only and, of course, I don’t know how it was edited but I just got the impression that Badawi was not as indulgent of the purveyors of outrage as some chairmen would have been. I take your point about the BBC. The most offensive thing in the whole programme, for me, was when they focussed on the boy who asked the simplistic question about the punishment comparison with drug offences. Apart from anything else I wondered why nobody pointed out that the availability of severe sanctions doesn’t seem to have stopped the drugs business. Was that one of the things edited out? Or did they just get away with using a youngster to ask a simplistic question on the assumption that people wouldn’t dare challenge the validity of the comparison? The programme was far from perfect but it wasn’t just the usual parade of victims in support of a pre-determined conclusion. I think a lot of people will have picked up on your points even if the panel and the audience was heavily weighted on the other side of the scales.

        As for ‘suspect’, I didn’t intend to use the word in the sense of ‘accuse’ but more in the sense of ‘guess’. Basically, I meant there was no evidence that you were advocating a worldwide economic revolution – which is something I would expect you to mention were it the case. Personally I think the only answer actually is a radical change in the means of production and distribution; but it’s still gratifying to hear someone like you challenge spurious and often self-serving tinkering with the symptoms of a hugely inequitable system. Now I’ve found your site I look forward to reading more well-informed comment.

        Reply
        1. laura agustin Post author

          Most of the audience questions were removed completely, others were moved to points where they hadn’t occurred and otherwise manipulated. The show was set at a meeting where no one was asking the sort of questions you mention. Besides Mrs Mubarak the funder was the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, whose line is prohibition. The audience was full of charities, one of those pushed that child forward. I was the single person on the panel who might have said something and I didn’t even object to Ashton Kutcher’s line about 13 years being the ‘average age’ of entrance into prostitution. After all I knew why they’d invited me and stuck to the theme, mentioning migration policy and labour markets (I have a book about all this, Sex at the Margins) and that was enough to outrage the movie stars. Had I mentioned capitalism or revolution it all would have been edited out. Badawi’s roots are in Sudan, she knows what people who travel illegally say.

          Reply

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