Screening Sexual Slavery? Southeast Asian Gonzo Porn and US Anti-Trafficking Law

Abstract

Do videotaped scenes of Southeast Asian prostitutes intimately engaging western sex tourists provide evidence of victimization by sex trafficking? Scenes presented in popular ‘gonzo’ or professional—amateur pornography of Southeast Asian sex tourism tell a more complex story that requires a critical visual reading practice not only of prostitution but of pornography and slavery. Looking at the particular case of the sexual imaging of Asian women, I show how we need to develop ways of critical reading that do not simply diagnose pornography as racism, prostitution as victimization, or sex as slavery, but as complex scenes of power, agency, and difference. I illustrate the historical use of Asian women’s images to establish how sexuality is tied to racial sexual difference and interrogate scenes of gonzo porn in which the prostitutes engage the camera. I argue that by employing ‘intimate literacy’, we can attend to what the prostitute might be saying through pornography.