| | In 1907 a group of evangelicals visited Chicago's Everleigh Club brothel, where they handed out leaflets that said, "No 'white slave' need remain in slavery in this State of Abraham Lincoln who made the black slaves free." According to the Illinois poet Edgar Lee Masters, an Everleigh Club regular, "the girls laughed in their faces." In Sin in the Second City, the Atlanta-based journalist Karen Abbott recounts how Minna Everleigh, one of the club's proprietors, "explained graciously, patiently, that the Everleigh Club was free from disease, that [a doctor] examined the girls regularly, that neither she nor Ada [Everleigh, her sister and co-proprietor,] would tolerate anything approaching violence, that drugs were forbidden and drinks tossed out, that guests were never robbed nor rolled, and that there was actually a waiting list of girls, spanning the continental United States, eager to join the house. No captives here, Reverends."
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Some anti-prostitution activists nevertheless believed the Everleigh ladies were no different from slaves. Then as now, opponents of prostitution assumed that no woman in her right mind consensually exchanges sex for money. Abbott challenges that view in her account of Chicago's red light district at the turn of the last century. She interweaves the stories of sex workers and clientele, evangelical activists and conservative bureaucrats, explaining how the term "white slavery" was routinely applied to consenting adults. Reading her historical account, you can hear echoes of that debate in the current crusade against sex trafficking, which similarly blurs the line between coercion and consent.
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This narrative of deceived and kidnapped sex slaves might make for an exciting episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, but the truth is more complex. In 1999 the CIA estimated that 50,000 women in the U.S. are trafficked for sex each year, but that number seems to be wildly inflated. In September The Washington Post reported that, after spending $150 million on task forces and grants since 2000, the federal government had identified only 1,362 victims of sex trafficking in the U.S. The Post also reported that the original CIA estimate was the work of one analyst, who relied mainly on news clippings about overseas trafficking cases, from which she attempted to estimate U.S. victims.
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Steven Wagner, former head of the anti-trafficking program within the Department of Health and Human Services, has commented on the millions of dollars "wasted" in grants aimed at combating sex slavery. "Many of the organizations that received grants didn't really have to do anything," he told The Washington Post last fall. "They were available to help victims. There weren't any victims." Tony Fratto, then deputy White House press secretary, said the issue is "not about the numbers. It's really about the crime and how horrific it is." There's no question the crime is horrific, but the numbers appear to be modest, unless you equate all prostitution with slavery. | |
