Silencing Dissent

Abstract

It is clear throughout this book that trafficking discourse has often been characterised by vicious debate about the moral harm of sex work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the United States, where abolitionists have sought to construct and defend this moral imperative. In this chapter, we demonstrate how this moral imperative about the inherent harm of sex work has come to dominate trafficking policy-making in the United States, intentionally obscuring any opposition through an attempt to control both trafficking discourse and trafficking policy-making. This experience is compared to the Australian experience in which a clear moral imperative has not taken hold, at least to the same extent. In this chapter, we explore the tactics used in Australia and the United States to undermine individuals and organisations supportive of alternative perspectives, as well as those who refute the value judgement that sex trafficking is a harm caused by legalised prostitution. Firstly, we demonstrate how trafficking discourse has been controlled through the practice of ‘naming and shaming’ and ‘exposing’ dissenters to abolitionism, as well as through the sidelining of sex worker experiences. Secondly, we demonstrate how policy has been controlled through both formal and informal methods used by governments to exclude opposition to current policy.