‘Sex Slaves’ Or ‘sex Workers’? Cross-cultural and Comparative Religious Perspectives on Sexuality, Subjectivity, and Moral Identity in Anti-sex Trafficking Discourse

Abstract

The global trafficking in women and children (primarily girls) for prostitution and sex work has become a multi-billion dollar industry in recent decades, especially in parts of South and Southeast Asia. Despite their common goal to eliminate or diminish the sex trafficking industry and assist the victims, the various entities engaged in anti-sex trafficking efforts have sharply disagreed about a variety of issues, including a basic definition of sex trafficking and the appropriate strategies for combating it. In this article, I examine one central area of disagreement, which revolves around the issue of the morality of prostitution and other forms of commercial sex work. This issue brings with it divergent, even antithetical, views regarding women's gender roles, self-identity and moral agency in relation to sex work. I show how the religious dimensions of this issue have been inadequately attended to by demonstrating how anti-trafficking discourse is devoid of non-Western religious perspectives. Since Thailand has been the centre for sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry in the Asia-Pacific region, where the greatest percentage of sex trafficking takes place, this article will discuss Thai Buddhist perspectives to illustrate how the anti-sex trafficking discourse has ignored cultural differences in its analysis.