“Especially Women and Children”

Abstract

This chapter investigates radical feminists’ construction of human trafficking as a problem by asking how subjects are made intelligible and practices made possible through feminist abolitionist discourse. This chapter argues that feminist abolitionism constructs the human trafficking problem, along with its victims, villains, and liberators, through a series of gendered and racialized demarcations. It then addresses historical precursors to contemporary feminist abolitionists, situate the movement as an outgrowth of 1970s-era radical feminist theory and praxis, and explore the growth of feminist abolitionism as a transnational advocacy network. The chapter suggests that although feminist abolitionists’ adoption of the rhetoric of “human trafficking” in the place of “female sexual slavery” may have contributed to their initial political success, it has become an impediment to efforts to fix the meaning of trafficking to include all forms of prostitution.