Sex Trafficking of Women and Children: Male Sexual Violence, Public Health, and the International Survivor Movement

This chapter explores the health of women and children exploited globally through sex trafficking. Like the feminist literature relating to prostitution and sex trafficking, public health perspectives are divided on the role the sex industry plays in human trafficking. Some public health discourses talk about the importance of prevention in relation to sex trafficking, as well as other forms of male sexual violence, while others focus on harm minimization approaches in relation to the sex industry, emphasize managing violence rather than preventing it, and see sex trafficking as distinct from the sex industry. Drawing on voices from feminism, the social sciences, and survivor movements that see sex buying and male sexual violence as facilitators of human trafficking, this chapter discusses how those with a lived experience of prostitution/sex work inform debates about the industry and solutions to sex trafficking. The chapter argues that an “abolitionist” approach to the sex industry promoted by survivors of prostitution draws on the feminist and public health literature that aims to prevent male violence against women more broadly.