This article contains themes of sexual abuse and trafficking. Please proceed with this in mind as it can be triggering.
This week on Twitter––along with something about Taylor Swift and something else about Sonic the Hedgehog––a terrifying doorbell ring camera video surfaced and made its rounds on the internet.
The video showed a woman, wrapped tightly in a blanket, facing the cold to stand barefoot on her porch, listening to something intently. Captioned with something like “doorbell camera captures scary moment,” I assumed (before turning the sound on) that a cartoonish ghost would pop onto the screen to try and scare me, but it didn’t come. Instead, a car creeps by and a man comes onto the porch and points. Then it’s over.
When I re-watched the video, with sound this time, I realized the horrifying truth. As a car whizzes by the house, the clear and piercing echoes of a woman pleading for help fill the air. It sounds like the screams are coming from the trunk of the car.
“Somebody help me! Somebody help me, please!” screams the voice.
Videos like this are all over the internet. Stories of women being snatched from their homes or followed around grocery stores are tweeted and shared thousands of times over again. With every stomach-churning video of women being forced into a shady white car, there is a barrage of information about what to do in these intense situations.
You’ve probably heard the following advice.
One Tweet begins, “with sex trafficking being at an all-time high, thought I’d share these tips.” The tips are a list of nine pieces of advice ranging from kicking the taillight out if you find yourself trapped in the trunk of a car to “if you are parked next to a big van, enter the car through the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.”
Another one reads “sex trafficking is getting so bad lately. remember if you hit your lock button 5 times, it’s a speed dial for 911. pepper spray is never a bad idea, always scratch your attacker’s skin so you have their DNA under your nails and trust your intuition. please stay safe ladies.”
Let’s clear one thing up. Sex trafficking is not at an all-time high. It is also not “getting so bad lately”––as if there was ever an okay amount of sex trafficking and it’s only just now getting bad.
The truth is, the rise of sex trafficking (which is the highest it’s been in 13 years) comes from reporting. While the fight to decriminalize sex work continues, society is finally able to more clearly distinguish between voluntary sex work and outright abuse. In past years––with little understanding of sex work––women who were subject to long term abuse were accused of prostitution and jailed. Without the distinction of autonomy, sex workers could be abused and trafficked with the only threat being to their livelihood and wellbeing. This meant that cases of sex-trafficking were pinned on the victim more often than the aggressor.
Sex trafficking has been and continues to be a problem in the US, we have only just started prioritizing the victims.
While I don’t want to discount the stories of girls around the country (I believe their stories and they’re important to talk about), we need to understand trafficking as a systematic problem. Less than 3% of victims are kidnapped in the way we traditionally think of kidnapping. More often, it is vulnerable people––battling addiction, poverty, or abuse––who are lured into the abusive industry by promises of financial or emotional gain.
This doesn’t make them less of a victim. While this maybe doesn’t carry the visceral of images we often associate with kidnapping, it should still be deeply troubling. Their stories are important and pressing––there is a problem with sex-trafficking in this country and many others, it’s just not the story being told.
More often than not, we talk about sex-trafficking in extreme incidents. The ones where a girl is minding her own business only to get pulled into the back of a van, never to be seen by her family again. Of course, this happens (and it’s terrifying) but that doesn’t mean I’m going to take up Tae Kwan Do for my protection.
And, honestly? I’m tired of the advice.
I’m not going to “snap a photo” of a man’s ID every time I meet a new person (real advice) or carry a taser because “yes it’s illegal, but safety is more important” (also real advice). While there are hundreds of people telling me––as a woman––to lock myself in my room and avoid dark corners and back alleys and shopping malls and parking lots, there’s barely any advice on how to report sex abuse. For every thousand posts yelling at me about my safety, there might be one that’s proposing legislation or even asking anyone other than potential victims to care.
This advice is a weak masquerade, a thin veil to tell women that we should fear each looming corner and unfamiliar face we will eventually encounter. We don’t want to admit it to ourselves, but this line of thinking––the kicking out tail lights and carrying pepper spray, the IDing strange men and never lingering in our car–––it all says “make sure it’s somebody else. Make sure you’re not the one.”
I understand this line of thinking, I do. The world is a big and haunting place. Women especially are told constantly and without warning that we are in perpetual danger and nobody’s coming to save us. It is somehow our job––not legislators, not allies––to guard ourselves against these harsh realities and keep ourselves out of the back of the dreaded white car. It feels so natural to protect ourselves and to view others––especially men––as predators.
We have to resist this.
An impossibly harder truth to swallow is that these little measures won’t stop kidnappings. We can scream into the night sky and punch all the right pressure points and package up DNA evidence for detectives in nice little boxes. We can lock our doors and share helpful tips with our friends and check the passenger seat for intruders. We can do all these things and still disappear into thin air without warning. The world won’t get safer just because it wasn’t you missing on the news this time.
Photo by Erik McGregor, Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images file
We need to demand protection. Rather than arming yourself and hiding away from society, stand with sex workers. If we want real safety, it comes from a systematic level. As the 2020 election approaches, support candidates who work to uplift the dignity of marginalized communities. Vote. Understand the complexities of a system and continue talking about this issue, even when it doesn’t involve the white middle-class. And don’t buy a taser.