Institutionalized, punitive hysteria

In the current anti-trafficking hysteria in the United States, lawmakers and activists alike conflate trafficking with prostitution as a tactic to promote abolitionism. Women who sell sex are divested of will and figured as helpless children in a deliberate attempt to provoke further panic. [...]

Leaving aside adults, "child sex trafficking" surely constitutes the most vibrant panic of the last few years, despite a lack of evidence that it actually exists (what does exist are teens who leave home). When the runaway child is a male teenager, the predator usually imagined to be exploiting him is likely the gay white man Lancaster describes. But when the runaway is a female teenager, the predator is likely to be imagined as a black man or youth–the classic pimp figure.

source: Article 'The Specialness of (Some) Sexual Crimes - Institutionalized, Punitive Hysteria' by Laura Agustín; www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/30/the-specialness-of-some-sexual-crimes/; Counterpunch; 30 April 2012