episode 2 of Taken

I watched the second episode of Taken: Hunting the Sex Traffikers last night and there wasn't anything in it that has changed my opinion. What they seem determined to do is to deny agency to sex workers.

They know these women are not coerced but they need to show that they are victims. Throughout they have said that the women are exploited. That is a matter of opinion.

In last night's show they had a man talking about Learned Helplessness Syndrome. While he was talking they showed footage of street sex workers in Madrid, although I don't know how that is relevant to the subject of the documentary which is Brazilian women in Britain.

Learned Helplessness is not a syndrome. It is a theory not a fact. You can't just diagnose Learned Helplessness when someone does something you don't want. He said that the women are not threatened with having their families attacked. The manipulation is more subtle than that.

Mark Viner had relationships with some younger Brazilian women. The idea is that he psychologically manipulated these women into thinking that he loved them. I don't believe that. They say he had a million pounds. Do you not think that was the attraction for them? They lived the high life for years and then moved on.

I'm not trying to denigrate the women. I admire them. I'm not trying to blame the victims because I don't believe they are victims. They are just trying to make money and sex work allows them to do that. For themselves and their families.

Some of the women were raped and robbed. This happens because they have closed down all the well-run brothels. Such as Sandys Superstars in Manchester. And arrested women who work together. They have created this situation just as they have created the situation in which heroin addicts die of overdoses.

Then they say "Look how terrible prostitution and the drugs trade is, we must crack down on them". Give us more power. It's not working. It will never work.

In Cambodia and other countries women who are detained by anti-traffickers often run away. The anti-traffickers cannot accept that the women didn't want to be 'rescued' and instead say they are incapable of deciding what is best for them. It's called 'false consciousness'. See running from the rescuers.

There is a word for denying the agency of women: it is called objectification. I don't believe in the theory of objectification but if you do - or at least Martha Nussbaum's version - you can see that women are being denied the ability to choose for themselves. Not just the ability to choose, the very idea that they are capable of choosing sensible actions for themselves.