Everybody knows that the Super Bowl is the single biggest day of the year for human sex trafficking in the United States. Well, everybody who doesn’t do any research about it at all, anyway.

In all seriousness, I really shouldn’t have to say either of the following two statements, but here goes:

1. People who engage in human trafficking of any kind, be it for sex work, agricultural work, textile work, and so forth, are the scum of the earth and deserve to be thrown into a very dark pit full of spiders.
2. No evidence exists to support assertions that the [Super Bowl, World Cup, Olympics, etc.] draws a massive influx of trafficking victims (which seems to have become synonymous at times with sex trafficking victims.)

In 2011, when Dallas hosted the Super Bowl, people predicted that tens of thousands of children, “some as young as 12 years old,” would be in the city specifically for the Super Bowl. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott even managed to get in a dig at Mexico: “Super Bowl XLV on Sunday in Cowboys Stadium is of particular concern because of Texas’ 1,200-mile border with Mexico, which makes the state a bigger target for international rings, says Abbott, the attorney general.” Here’s the thing, though: there was no evidence to support those predictions, and no evidence that such a massive influx of traffickers and trafficking victims actually took place. It happened, no doubt, but it is unlikely that it happened at any greater rate than during other weekends.

This is an odd issue, because it is one of the few where some people on the right and left are united, in a sense, albeit for different reasons. On the right, you have the usual squeamishness about sex, women, and so forth. It doesn’t surprise me when right-wing news sources parrot the conventional, albeit unsupported, wisdom. On the left, you have obviously valid concern over people’s well-being, but it is often taken to an extent far, far beyond the evidence.

Several serious problems present themselves with this particular myth. For one, little to no effort is made to differentiate people who are forced into sex work against their will from people who engage in it voluntarily, whether from economic necessity or actual enjoyment. (For my part, I think consensual sex work by adults should be decriminalized (PDF file), but that’s an issue for another blog post.)

Second, the rhetoric places almost exclusive emphasis on juvenile female sex workers, to the exclusion of male and transgender sex trafficking victims and victims of trafficking in any other area. This makes the work of stopping actual trafficking more difficult, but don’t take my word for it. Rachel Lloyd from  Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) offers three reasons why the Super Bowl myth harms the effort to help trafficking victims: credibility (the claim gets so overblown that it obscures the truth), false alarms (see “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf”), and limited resources (if you throw everything into Super Bowl weekend, you have little left for the rest of the year.)

You want an example of misuse of limited resources? How about this: Continue reading →