Since I live in Thailand, I might miss the normal coverage buried toward the back of many
newspapers about trafficking and the Superbowl. But I am sure it will be there. But this year I
will have to depend on this internet coverage to make my point.
Here is the annual story: the anti-sex extremists know from years of experience that when it is
Superbowl time they can usually find plenty of news media who are pleased to get some
titillating coverage from associating all the crazy extreme myths about sex trafficking with the
Superbowl, and also every other big sports event. The World Series – yes! The World Cup – yes!
Matches between the top ranked Chess Masters – well, maybe not.
My email box brought me an example a few days before the big game. Some American – I think
Americans but it is often hard to tell these days – by the name of A21 sent me notification of their
Superbowl scam. I suspect they will meet their goals to get lots of publicity and to sign up some
celebrities (football players) who either get paid something or are talked into what they think will
be their humanitarian duty. Sad.
This A21is what we call a NGO which stands for Non-Government Organization. I won’t share
contact information except their name – A21. One reason it is not clear what country they popped
up from is that a year of two ago (pre-covid) a group with a video player was scaring young
women by asking them to watch their video. This took place in a large open underground space
where people in Bangkok Thailand are bustling around to switch from the Sky Trains to the
MRT Train.
There are many of these kinds of NGOs and most funded by a combination of donations and
grants from governments and especially money from the U.S. Government. Whether in the USA
or anywhere around the world the objective is to strike fear into the hearts of young girls and
their parents.
I am offended by this type of project because the United States, and some other places, are rife
with fear already. I am old enough to remember when many people did not lock house and car
doors. Fear of crimes is always helpful to police, lawyers, and especially NGOs. Also, hysteria
also thrives on fear. Plus, I often read the whole newspaper and for years I have seen the scare
stories of a flood of prostitutes and traffickers who will be showing up for the big games. Those
stories are often found on or near the front page.
About a week after the game, I have often seen the follow story that a real journalist asked some
questions of the local police and discover – again – that there was no evidence of any increase in
prostitution or prostitutes. None, again! How ’bout that. But the anti-sex organization got their
publicity out of it anyway. The truth shows out on the back pages if at all.
I will provide a quote from Magee MacNeil’s blog, The Honest Courtesan. Magee is my hero for
her years of this kind of relentless coverage to tell the truth about sexual topics under constant
exaggeration and, yes, lies like this Superbowl scam.
Here is what she said:
“the [claim that the] Super Bowl…is linked to a spike in human traffickingt.is solemnly
repeated by [cops], [politicians] and news outlets…[even though] it’s a myth . It has
been debunked many times over , including by some leading organizations that fight trafficking.
Academic studies and serious news reporting have found no connection between trafficking and the
game…Like all urban legends that just won’t die, this one appears to confirm but compartmentalize
our fears…It’s like the fake but persistent Halloween story that pedophiles snatch trick-or-treaters
from their porches…Panic over the sexual abuse of children…is good for law enforcement
business…and because fear of crime is good for the news business as well, false or imagined
threats uttered by [cops] and repeated uncritically by news outlets or even in [cop glorification]
statements that serve police interests, and dramas like CSI Become part of body of ‘Copaganda’ and become commonly accepted despite being demonstratively untrue.”
If you find this series of articles interesting, I urge you to sign up for The Honest Courtesan.
I also found this.
‘Next year you can ignore the next wave of Superbowl donation scamming.
5 Sex Workers Speak Out On The Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Myth
WRITTEN BY KATIE TANDY POSTED IN SOCIETY+POLITICS’
The narrative that the Super Bowl brings with it an influx of sex trafficking is not
only false, but actively dangerous.
This piece was written before 2016’s Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California. But
as happens every year, sex trafficking has been back in the news in the days
leading up to Houston’s hosting of the event in 2017.
“The FBI and local law enforcement agencies claim they arrested 360 sex buyers and 68
traffickers and the recovery of 30 juvenile victims in a six-month operation in anticipation of the
2015 Super Bowl. The year before that, the FBI said authorities recovered 16 children between
the ages of 13 and 17 and arrested more than 45 pimps and their associates in Super Bowl-related operations.”
Another day, another dollar. Another year, another chaotic morass of misinformation, misguided
arrests, and moralistic hand-wringing. I speak, of course, of the Super Bowl, and the pervasive myth that with it comes an inevitable influx in sex trafficking.
To be perfectly honest, I had donned my boots and tromped alongside many feminist comrades
who believed this narrative to be true, bolstered by weighty data, harrowing tales, and an
instinctual feeling that where men gathered, so too did sex trafficking.
But what I discovered is that those on the front-lines — from sex workers themselves to activists
and NGOs — have been trying to combat this fictitious, if compelling, myth for decades. And
worse yet, this narrative directly harms those it claims to protect, all the while obscuring
other — valid — human rights violations at play.
When the smoke clears, the elaborate rhetorical and statistical “movement” to fight the rise in
sex trafficking during the Super Bowl amounts to little more than capitalism and neo-puritanism
writ large.
They’ve got chilling numbers to justify the influx of police, agents, and stings, as well as the
sweeping use of costly resources.
The trouble is, myriad organizations — and, in particular, the Global Alliance Against Traffic In
Women (GAATW) — deftly argue that these numbers are manipulated, exaggerated, and often
straight-up falsified. Their 2011 report, What’s The Cost Of A Rumor?, outlines the myriad
inaccuracies that are trotted out again and again as truth.
ESPLERP argues that the majority of that money is euphemistically used to “create awareness on
sex trafficking” — but also to “pay their board members six figure salaries. Hardly any of that
money goes to the people they claim to be rescuing.
John Kane is the author of Lonely Sex Tourist available on Amazon
