The Perfect Victim: ‘Young girls’, domestic trafficking, and anti-prostitution politics in Canada

Elya Durisin,Emily Van Der Meulen

doi:10.14197/atr.201221169

Abstract

This article explores debates among politicians in Ontario, Canada, regarding anti-trafficking legislation introduced in 2016 and 2017. We find that contemporary discussions in the political sphere have shifted away from concerns about the trafficking of migrant exotic dancers and toward the sexual exploitation of girls and young women, represented as idealised, inculpable victims. We suggest that this conflates the diverse experiences of girls and adult women, configures them all as child-like, and renders both groups as being in need of state protection. The new ‘perfect victim’ serves to legitimise policy approaches that criminalise sexual services, despite those laws being deemed harmful to sex workers in courts and other venues.

Highlights

‘We can save the girl door and we can save young women all across Ontario if we get this done now.’ Todd Smith (Progressive Conservative Party), 17 April 2017, p. 3604
The current human trafficking preoccupation in Canada centres in large part on the domestic sexual exploitation of girls and young women, frequently referred to as ‘children’ regardless of their age. This represents a significant change from previous understandings of trafficking, for example in the 1990s and early 2000s, when attention in the political sphere was almost exclusively focused on the transnational migration of exotic dancers from Eastern Europe. This new perspective has coincided with a modified political landscape for Canadian sex work law and policy
The Conservative majority government criminalised the purchase of sexual services and related activities in 2014, the Supreme Court ruling the previous year, along with the increasingly visible Canadian sex worker rights movement and the upsurge in research and publications created by and with sex working communities, made it less and less feasible for politicians and others to continue claiming that all adult sex workers were exploited victims

Summary

Introduction

‘We can save the girl door and we can save young women all across Ontario if we get this done now.’ Todd Smith (Progressive Conservative Party), 17 April 2017, p. 3604. The Perfect Victim: ‘Young girls’, domestic trafficking, and anti-prostitution politics in Canada

Results

Conclusion