The Thrill of Rescue: trafficking, slavery and prestige

In chapter four of Sex at the Margins, I look at history, at the period when the bourgeoisie started to define what society should look like and how everybody should live (whilst nobility and monarchy were fading from power). I did this historical research to try to understand what saving prostitutes was about, how it began and why. The result of that research was really revealing, showing how the role of Rescuer depends on the existence of Victims who need Rescue because their ways of life appear to be wrong. If you want the full-strength theoretical version, read Helping Women Who Sell Sex. The Rescuer gains a positive sense of identity, of Doing Good.

I do not mean to sneer at anyone’s feelings about life’s meaning or the desire to diminish injustice. But it is important not to take at face value claims to be Helping, Saving or Rescuing just because people say that is what they are doing. I take note of how the Rescue Industry sustains itself and grows, how the cultural meaning of helping and saving changes over time, and I am interested in who gets involved and what they say about their actions.

In the midst of economic crisis, intransigent armed conflicts, increasing socio-economic inequality and general anomie, anti-trafficking and anti-slavery campaigns flourish, with more people and more money involved all the time. Presumably it just feels good, being able to be part of something Big and also something apparently Simple, in which everyone can agree: Slavery is bad. Look at images of Rescue Operations, with people rushing in to save others they don’t know from fires and earthquakes: some people find these actions to be the height of nobility.

Celebrities jump on bandwagons for the sake of publicity, which we may giggle over (consider Ashton Kutcher, Emma Thompson and Mira Sorvino.) But the following comments, which come from a serious person, struck me. Kristen Lindsey expresses a sense of thrill at getting to be part of the anti-slavery crusade, at having arrived on time to Do Something about a social scourge. Her words actually make me slightly queasy: the presence of suffering makes her glad because it gives her Important Work to do. The construction of her own identity is the point.

None of us are free, Kristen Lindsey, 26 October 2011, The Huffington Post

… Growing up, just after the 1960s, I feared that I had missed my chance to take part in the most important movement in our country. I now know that I have found my place — and that all of us can step up and join a movement that matters. This year, I became CEO of The Global Fund for Children…

The torch has been passed to us. Putting an end to modern day slavery is our civil rights movement. Now it’s our time to make a difference, and we must continue to work together to ensure that people everywhere are free.

Anyone who still thinks this movement is about women who sell sex: Wake up. It’s gone way, way past that.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

9 thoughts on “The Thrill of Rescue: trafficking, slavery and prestige

  1. Aspasia

    I would really like to point out to Ms. Kristen Lindsey that there is still a lot of work to be done here, at home, in the realm of the civil rights movement. Considering the poor state of far too many Latino and Black communities and schools, clearly true equality is still wanting.

    Reply
    1. Laura Agustín

      So glad you made that comment, Aspasia. Lindsey’s assumption that there was a civil rights movement, past tense, which she ‘missed’ is really horrible. She missed the initial drama, the photogenic symbolic marches, is all. If people like her would see that that was just the beginning and dedicate themselves to the continuance of it all this energy could go into something really necessary and constructive – but of course not so ‘exciting’.

      Reply
    1. Laura Agustín

      Furry, I worked in so-called development before becoming specifically irritated about help to prostitutes. I was in an anti-imperialist rage all the time. When I decided to go back to school and start reading, writing that took ideas about Development and Aid were important to me, and then I moved on to what is Helping itself – and then on to Saving and Rescue. Eventually it all made sense to me, but I can still get queasy when I hear certain comments.

      Reply
  2. Maggie McNeill

    It absolutely astonishes me that people like Lindsey cannot see that a campaign to deny others the right to their own choices is literally the opposite of a civil rights movement. Civil rights are the rights of individuals to opportunity and freedom of choice, not the supposed “right” of some group to forbid others to live in a way which makes them uncomfortable.

    Reply
    1. Laura Agustín

      Maggie, well: Lindsey does not think anyone’s choices are at stake because she thinks they are in chains. At that extreme end of the voluntary-involuntary continuum sheer physical liberation is the beginning of rights: after you are free, you can have choices, and I am sure she would claim that’s what she wants.

      Her comparison with the civil-rights movement is actually quite strange, since that was about black people themselves marching and sitting in and demanding – with the support of some whites, yes, but surely the inspirational aspect derives from the subjects’ own claims to have rights.

      I said she is more serious than the film starts but she doesn’t sound better informed or more reflexive about her own actions.

      Reply
      1. Maggie McNeill

        Her comparison with the civil-rights movement is actually quite strange, since that was about black people themselves marching and sitting in and demanding – with the support of some whites, yes, but surely the inspirational aspect derives from the subjects’ own claims to have rights.

        Precisely. But in this case, the voices of those who are demanding rights are being shouted down by outsiders. It would be as though white people during civil rights days were telling black people that they didn’t know what they wanted and that segregation was actually a privilege.

        Reply
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