Naked Anthropologist interviewed about sex trafficking, the BBC and run-in with movie star

Back in December I wrote briefly about my dramatic – no, melodramatic – experience at a UN event called EndHumanTrafficking, held in the Temple of Luxor. I went at the request of the BBC to be the only dissenting voice in a panel called Can Human Trafficking Be Stopped?, a television programme which showed a few weeks ago. Someday it will be put online – I will advise. David Henry Sterry, author of Chicken, amongst other books, wanted to talk to me about my run-in with Mira Sorvino, and this interview in the Huffington Post is the result.

A Conversation with the Naked Anthropologist about Sex Trafficking

David Henry Sterry, 5 January 2011, The Huffington Post

When I first came out as an ex-sex worker, I started getting invited to prostitute and sex worker conferences. There are two distinct groups who inhabit this world: decriminalizationists and abolitionists. Decriminalizationist conferences are populated by academics, policy wonks and activists, plus a few current and former hos, hookers, call girls and rent boys. Abolitionist conferences are populated by much the same, plus politicians and law-enforcement. Both groups are evangelical, rhetorical and theoretical. Statistics are bandied about, dogma is flung and resolutions are passed. The decriminalizationists keep screaming “Decriminalize sex work!” The abolitionists keep screaming “Sex work is slavery!” and want human traffickers to be hunted down like dogs.

I first met Laura Agustín at a conference in Brussels and was immediately struck by how different she was from all the people I met on either side of the decriminalization/abolitionist divide. First of all, she had a sense of humor. This alone was shocking in either world. But she also had a calm reasonableness about her. She wanted to hear what other people have to say, basically unheard of in either camp. On top of that, the things she had to say were so smart and counterintuitive. And they all made sense. What she had to say explained so much about why so much money is so foolishly wasted when it comes to actually pursuing traffickers. And why human beings with very few resources continuously get the short end of the stick when it comes to choosing where they live and work, and determining their own destiny.

At these conferences, there are certain people you connect with in deep meaningful ways. Laura and I made just such a connection, and it has remained fertile. I read her book, Sex at the Margins, which challenged all the conventional ideas continuously trotted out about migration, sex work and trafficking. She’s one of the few people talking about this subject who will acknowledge the mind-boggling complexity of these issues, which everyone else seems to want to simplify to suit their own needs and grind their own axes. This book led to Laura Agustín — now known as The Naked Anthropologist — becoming an international expert in this emotionally charged arena. Her blog is now one of the go-to resources for well-researched, well-reasoned, sane debate about selling sex for money, crossing borders to work and the reality of what is and is not trafficking.

When she told me she had been invited by the BBC to participate in a debate at the EndHumanTrafficking event in Egypt, I just knew that the fur was going to fly. Sure enough, with her patented calm, unflappable, intellectual yet accessible style, she managed to invoke the wrath of many present and become the target of the wrath of an Academy Award winner in high hooker heels.

DHS: So, Laura, how did you come to be invited to this event?

LAURA: BBC Television was holding one of their World Debates there and invited me. The event itself was limited to particular UN agencies, business leaders and guests of the Egyptian president’s wife – plus several movie actors. It was the kind of event to which you only invite those who agree with you. But the BBC wanted to do a debate, which means they had to get in at least one person who would disagree.

DHS: Yes, those British have some crazy ideas about presenting different sides of an issue don’t they? Haven’t they learned anything from Fox News?

LAURA: Apparently not.

DHS: I saw who the other panelists were: the head of Interpol, an ex-victim of trafficking and a guy who personally saves sex slaves. Didn’t they all see trafficking as it’s traditionally and hysterically presented by the media?

LAURA: It was an incredibly stacked deck, four against one, so it was never going to be a real debate. But I went for the chance to reach the television audience. The BBC World Service is a 24-hour international news channel watched all over the planet, so in my head I was reaching people interested in trafficking issues anywhere who might have doubts about the way trafficking is usually talked about.

DHS: Doubts about what? Don’t we know human trafficking is the greatest scourge of the 21st century? Aren’t millions of people being trafficked as we speak?

LAURA: I try to break down these huge generalisations. Some people are working in conditions that look like traditional slavery, but a lot are undocumented migrants with debts to pay, workers under the age of 18 and people who would rather sell sex than do any of the other jobs open to them. People who say there are 30 million slaves in the world are including all those and many more.

DHS: Wait a minute, I thought we were talking about trafficking. Where does slavery come in?

LAURA: Originally the term trafficking referred to certain kinds of illegal moving of people across borders, but that has changed. Anti-prostitutionists have defined prostitution as violence, rape and now trafficking, but the new word is slavery. I realise some think this is a way to raise consciousness about injustice, but it is confusing to call everyone slaves and erases whatever ability to maneuver lots of people have.

DHS: The setting sounds unbelievable — the Temple of Luxor — how did you feel getting up on that stage?

LAURA: It felt surreal. Not that ong ago I was an NGO worker in Latin America – I didn’t seek out this kind of gig! But something about Sex at the Margins has struck a chord, I have been invited to talk all over the place to different kinds of audiences and I just finished three months as Visiting Professor in Gender and Migration in Switzerland. I had certainly never been in a situation where every single other person in the room was hostile, however. And I have never been attacked by a film actress before.

DHS: Okay, let’s talk about Mira Sorvino, now Goodwill Ambassador for Trafficking for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Was she wearing those hooker heels she loves?

LAURA: She was, but I am not sure she understands that she’s allied with abolitionists. I had only spoken a few times when she began waving her hand to get the moderator’s attention. She demanded to know what I was doing there, why I was being allowed to speak. She seemed to think she could over-ride the BBC. I don’t mind people having different ideas from mine but implying I don’t have the right to speak?

DHS: You mean she tried to stop you from talking? What did the BBC moderator do?

LAURA: She asked me if I wanted to respond, so I said in the British tradition debate means dissent, and the BBC invited me because I have a different point of view. Sorvino came across as wanting to censor me, which is shocking in a ‘goodwill ambassador’, isn’t it? I don’t know quite what they are supposed to do, but acting outraged every time I spoke, keeping up a running commentary to people near her (including Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore), is certainly not ambassadorial.

DHS: Was there any consequence for her breach of etiquette?

LAURA: People applauded, as though attacking me were a heroic act. Someone heard her use the term ‘holocaust denier’, too.

DHS: Wow, comparing trafficking to the holocaust! What do you think was going on?

LAURA: I think the event participants did not understand what the BBC was doing there and thought the panel should be just stating conclusions. Maybe they thought the BBC was there to cover the event! But that would be weird, since such go on all the time — they are hardly newsworthy. Someone had not explained, and they took it out on me just because I questioned some of the statements made.

DHS: What was the take-away for you, from the event?

LAURA: Beware movie stars who see themselves as crusaders.

DHS: I think lots of people misunderstand this whole issue and want to know what they can do to help. Do you agree?

LAURA: Anti-trafficking campaigns are now a popular form of social action, but many don’t know what kinds of abuses take place in the name of saving people. That information doesn’t get discussed at events like the Egyptian one — if it were, maybe things could improve.

DHS: Thanks, Laura, I’m glad you survived your attack from Hollywood.

Note: Many people have written to ask me how to protest Sorvino’s behaviour. The best I can find online is:

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
Goodwill Ambassadors

Coordinators:
Ms. Norha Restrepo, Public Information Officer (Vienna)
norha.restrepo [at] unodc.org
Ms. Simone Monasebian, Chief of New York Office
monasebian [at] un.org

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

11 thoughts on “Naked Anthropologist interviewed about sex trafficking, the BBC and run-in with movie star

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention Sex Trafficking | Naked Anthropologist | David Henry Sterry | Mira Sorvino | Laura Agustín - the Naked Anthropologist on Migration, Trafficking and Sex -- Topsy.com

  2. redpesto

    It sounds like you did the best you could, given the circumstances. The BBC may have stacked the deck, but at least it recognises some notion of ‘balance’ (unlike Fox News), which is why Brits value it.

    PS: Re. ‘trafficking’ – if you’ve followed the ‘Asian men grooming white girls’ row in the UK, you might be aware that the term now seems to be used in relation to ‘internal’ movement of UK citizens within the UK (it’s a myth that there’s passport control at Watford if you’re travelling to ‘the North’).

    Reply
  3. Laura Agustín

    I don’t say the BBC stacked the deck but that it was a stacked deck by virtue of this debate, on trafficking, being held at a campaigning event with a closed participant list. Why did the beeb decide to hold the thing there? I can’t answer that but given they did they had to bring in some outsider to make the thing at all dramatic. You can’t have an hour-long television show out of static people agreeing with each other.

    It is funny therefore that in the highly edited televised version the camera constantly comes back to my face because my surprise or skepticism provided the only drama there was! Silly.

    The term trafficking has for a long time now been used for internal migration, within-borders pimping as it would have been called and prostitution itself, without anyone going anywhere. Not only in the UK but everywhere, it is part of a campaign strategy against selling and buying sex.

    Reply
  4. Dave

    I have had only very few interactions with rescuers, but they always seem stunned when someone questions their claims. They seem to assume that their perspective has won the day and no further debate is necessary. And, in a sense they are right. Almost all mainstream press coverage of them, at least in the U.S., simply repeats their claims without question. Indeed, those who contest their claims are treated like they are from the fringe (ie: like holocaust deniers or alien abductees).

    Reply
  5. Iulius-Cezar Macarie

    I’ll start with the obvious: 1:4 is under no circumstance a balanced or fair challenge (read debate). In any kind of fight most of us succumb when facing this imbalance. Yet, you have demonstrated what many people don’t understand about self-defence, in martial arts. Did you know that with your attitude, defending what you believe in and know about has shown the spirit of a martial artist? Many people, in my view, mistake self-defence (as in standing your ground in defending your own view) in the martial arts for learning how to strike back if attacked (this one having only a partial meaning). So far, I have learnt about your writing, which I found very easy, simple and to the point. Now, I can also say that your attitude at the event in Luxor shows has revealed the martial arts spirit (which by the way, can be applied in any life situation that has nothing to do with fight as popular belief goes). Thank you for your inspiration in both the field (sex work) and as a person.

    Reply
  6. Laura Agustín

    thanks for all the support and see today’s post on an exception to this censoring rule – i feel a great relief to see reasonable thoughts from the so-called Other Side.

    interesting about the martial arts spirit and thank you for the compliment. i have been called a warrior but not, i believe, for the sort of avoidance of confrontation and dichotomy i think you refer to.

    Reply
  7. Cezar

    My pleasure. I think, is more about the art of fighting without fighting then avoidance of confrontation.

    Reply
  8. Juliana Piccillo

    Thanks for fighting the good fight!

    What do you propose we say as activists fighting for decriminalizatoin. The public support (largely fueled by the celebrity crusading) for the anti-sex slavery movement is growing by the second.

    I’m beginning to believe that challenging them on facts isn’t getting us anywhere and with each passing second they push our efforts backwards. We need a strategy!

    I’m facing the girl scouts on this issue tomorrow – help!

    Reply
  9. Laura Agustin

    i agree, juliana, it is clear that debunking the claims obviously does not work. i think about what new message and strategy would be useful every day but sorry to say will not have an answer today!

    Reply

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